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Auschwitz Concentration Camp Survivors
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Concentration Camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concentration camps operated by Germany's allies. on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Following the Night of Long Knives, 1934 purge of the Sturmabteilung, SA, the concentration camps were run exclusively by the SS via the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and later the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Initially, most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on different groups were arrested, including "habitual criminals", "asocials", and Jews. After the beginning of World War II, people from German-occupied Europe were imprisoned in the concentration camps. Following A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include '' If This Is a Man'' (1947, published as ''Survival in Auschwitz'' in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and '' The Periodic Table'' (1975), linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written. Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-story apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some, after careful consideration, have suggested that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note, there were no witnesses, and he was on medication that could have affected his blood pressure and caused him to fall accidentally. Biography E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If This Is A Man
''If This Is a Man'' ( it, Se questo è un uomo ; United States title: ''Survival in Auschwitz'') is a memoir by Italians, Italian History of the Jews in Italy, Jewish writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian resistance movement, Italian anti-fascist resistance during the World War II, Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz concentration camp, Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. Background to the memoir Primo Levi was born in 1919 in Turin. His forebears were History of the Jews in Turin, Piedmontese Jews. He studied chemistry at the University of Turin, graduating ''summa cum laude'' in 1941, notwithstanding the restrictions imposed by Mussolini's Manifesto of Race, racial laws. In 1942 he found a position with a Swiss drug company in Milan. With the German occupation of northern and central Italy in 1943, Levi joined a partisan group in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man's Search For Meaning
''Man's Search for Meaning'' is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity. The book intends to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One constitutes Frankl's analysis of his experiences in the concentration camps, while Part Two introduces his ideas of meaning and his theory called logotherapy. According to a survey conducted by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress, ''Man's Search for Meaning'' belongs to a list of "the ten most influential books in the United States." At the time of the author's death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies and had been ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Jaku
Edward Jaku (born Abraham Salomon Jakubowicz; 14 April 1920 – 12 October 2021) was a survivor of several German concentration camps during World War II, who wrote of his wartime experiences after emigrating to Australia. This memoir is called ''The Happiest Man on Earth'' and was published when he was 100 years old. It became an immediate best seller. Eddie had a sister Johanna (Henni) who also survived the Holocaust, and he changed his name to Edward (Eddie) as a tribute to his sister, who called him Eddie as an affectionate nickname. Biography Jaku recounts that as a boy in Leipzig, Germany, he truly believed that he was part of "the most enlightened, the most cultured, the most sophisticated society in the whole world". His outlook changed following the rise of Nazis, when he was initially expelled from his school for being Jewish. His father organised an alias for him with false ID papers, and he was sent to an engineering college far away from Leipzig for his own safety ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Else Ury
Else Ury (1 November 1877 – 13 January 1943) was a German-Jewish novelist and children's book author. Her best-known character is the blonde doctor's daughter Annemarie Braun, whose life from childhood to old age is told in the ten volumes of the highly successful ''Nesthäkchen'' series. The books, the six-part TV series ''Nesthäkchen'' (1983), based on the first three volumes, as well as the new DVD edition (2005) caught the attention of millions of readers and viewers. During Ury's lifetime ''Nesthäkchen und der Weltkrieg'' (''Nesthäkchen and the World War''), the fourth volume, was the most popular. Else Ury was a member of the German ''Bürgertum'' (middle class). She was pulled between patriotic German citizenship and Jewish cultural heritage. This situation is reflected in her writings, although the ''Nesthäkchen'' books make no references to Judaism. In 1943, Else Ury was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was murdered upon her arrival. Life Else Ury ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including '' Night'', a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as "the most important Jew in America" by the '' Los Ang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfréd Wetzler
Alfréd Israel Wetzler (10 May 1918 – 8 February 1988), who wrote under the alias Jozef Lánik, was a Slovak Jewish writer. He is known for escaping from Auschwitz concentration camp and co-writing the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which helped halt the deportation of Jews from Hungary, saving up to 200,000 lives. Background Wetzler was born in Nagyszombat, Austria-Hungary (now Trnava, Slovakia). After his birthplace became part of Czechoslovakia, he was a worker in Trnava during the period 1936–1940. He was sent to the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) camp in 1942 and escaped from it with Rudolf Vrba on 10 April 1944. Together with Rudolf Vrba he wrote up the story of his experiences in Slovak as ''Auschwitz, Tomb of Four Million People'', a factual account of the Wetzler–Vrba report and of other witnesses. The document combined the material from the Vrba–Wetzler report and two others, which were submitted together in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials as document no. 022-L, exhibit no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. Distribution of the report by George Mantello in Switzerland is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada. Vrba and his fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary and shortly before the SS began mass deportations of Hungary's Jewish population to the camp. The information the men dictated to Jewish officials when they arrived in Slovakia on 24 April 1944, which included that new arrivals in Auschwitz wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simone Veil
Simone Veil (; ; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate and politician who served as Health Minister in several governments and was President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. As health minister, she is best remembered for advancing women's rights in France, in particular for the 1975 law that legalized abortion, today known as ''Veil Act'' (). From 1998 to 2007, she was a member of the Constitutional Council, France’s highest legal authority. A Holocaust survivor, of both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, she was a firm believer in the European integration as a way of guaranteeing peace. She served as president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, from 2000 to 2007, then subsequently as honorary president. Among many honours, she was made an honorary dame in 1998, was elected to the Académie Française in 2008, and in 2012 received the grand cross of the Légion d’honneur, the highest cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edith Stein
Edith Stein (religious name Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce ; also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe. She was born into an observant Jewish family, but had become an agnostic by her teenage years. Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915, she took lessons to become a nursing assistant and worked in an infectious diseases hospital. After completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1916, she obtained an assistantship there. From reading the life of the reformer of the Carmelite Order, Saint Teresa of Ávila, Edith Stein was drawn to the Christian faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Catholic Church. At that point, she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liliana Segre
Liliana Segre (; born 10 September 1930) is an Italian Holocaust survivor, named senator for life by President Sergio Mattarella in 2018 for outstanding patriotic merits in the social field. Born in 1930 into a Milanese family of Jewish origins, in 1938 Segre was expelled from her primary school after the promulgation of the Italian Racial Laws. In 1943, she was arrested with her family and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The only survivor among her relatives, with the end of the World War II in 1945, she returned to Milan. After decades of silence, in the 1990s she started to speak to the public, especially young students, about her experience. Biography Born in Milan into a family of Jewish origins, Segre lived with her father Alberto and her paternal grandparents, Giuseppe Segre and Olga Loevvy. Her mother, Lucia Foligno, died when Liliana was not yet one year old. Her family was secular, and the awareness of being Jewish came to Liliana only after the dram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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