Hilfswillige
Hiwi (), the German abbreviation of the word ''Hilfswilliger'' or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during World War II, a member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of Eastern Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler reluctantly agreed to allow recruitment of Soviet citizens in the Rear Areas during Operation Barbarossa. In a short period of time, many of them were moved to combat units. Overview Hiwis comprised 50% of the 2nd Panzer Army's 134th Infantry Division in late 1942, while the 6th Army at the Battle of Stalingrad was composed of 25% Hiwis. By 1944, their numbers had grown to 600,000. Both men and women were recruited. Veteran Hiwis were practically indistinguishable from regular German troops, and often served in entire company strengths. Between September 1941 and July 1944 the '' SS'' employed thousands of collaborationist auxiliary police recruited as Hiwis directly from the Soviet PO ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Battle Of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 19422 February 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (later renamed to Volgograd) in Southern Russia. The battle was marked by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, with the battle epitomizing urban warfare. The Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle to take place during the Second World War and is one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties. Today, the Battle of Stalingrad is universally regarded as the turning point in the European Theatre of war, as it forced the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (German High Command) to withdraw considerable military forces from other areas in occupied Europe to replace German losses on the Eastern Front, ending with the rout of the six field armies of Army G ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bełżec Extermination Camp
Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total entailed the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The camp operated from to the end of . It was situated about south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943. Between 430,000 and 500,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by the SS at Bełżec. It was the third-deadliest extermination camp, exceeded only by Treblinka and Auschwitz. Only seven Jews performing slave labour with the camp's '' Sonderkommando'' survived World War II; and only Rudolf Reder became known, thanks to his official postwar testimony. The lack of viable w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trawniki Men
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a population of 2,893. History During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Poland, Trawniki was the location of the Trawniki concentration camp. This camp provided slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS ''Ostindustrie''. They worked in appalling conditions with little food, and many died of disease, malnutrition and ill treatment. From September 1941 until July 1944, the camp was also used for training guards recruited from Soviet Union, Soviet Prisoner of war, POWs, who were known as "Hiwi (volunteer), Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. European non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II, "those willing to help"), for service with Nazi Germany, Auxilia ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trawniki
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regional capital Lublin. The village has a population of 2,893. History During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Poland, Trawniki was the location of the Trawniki concentration camp. This camp provided slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS ''Ostindustrie''. They worked in appalling conditions with little food, and many died of disease, malnutrition and ill treatment. From September 1941 until July 1944, the camp was also used for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs, who were known as " Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. "those willing to help"), for service with Auxiliary police in occupied Poland. In addition to serving as guards at concentration and death camps, the ''Trawniki men'' (German: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2nd Panzer Army
The 2nd Panzer Army (german: 2. Panzerarmee) was a German armoured formation during World War II, formed from the 2nd Panzer Group on October 5, 1941. Organisation Panzer Group Guderian (german: Panzergruppe Guderian) was formed on 5 June 1940 and named after its commander, general Heinz Guderian. In early June 1940, after reaching the English Channel following the breakthrough in the Ardennes, the ''Panzergruppe Guderian'' was formed from the XIX Army Corps, and thrust deep into France, cutting off the Maginot Line. In November 1940, it was upgraded into ''Panzergruppe 2''. The 2nd Panzer Group (german: Panzergruppe 2) was formed in November 1940 from Panzer Group Guderian. In October 1941 it was renamed the 2nd Panzer Army. Panzer Group 2 played a significant role in the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in 1941 when it was a constituent part of Army Group Centre. Operational history 2nd Panzer Group was part of the Army ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German gra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ukrainians
Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christians. While under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, and then Austria-Hungary, the East Slavic population who lived in the territories of modern-day Ukraine were historically known as Ruthenians, referring to the territory of Ruthenia, and to distinguish them with the Ukrainians living under the Russian Empire, who were known as Little Russians, named after the territory of Little Russia. Cossacks#Ukrainian Cossacks, Cossack heritage is especially emphasized, for example in the Shche ne vmerla Ukraina, Ukrainian national anthem. Ethnonym The ethnonym ''Ukrainians'' came into wide use only in the 20th century after the territory of Ukraine obtained ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lublin
Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of the Vistula River and is about to the southeast of Warsaw by road. One of the events that greatly contributed to the city's development was the Polish-Lithuanian Union of Krewo in 1385. Lublin thrived as a centre of trade and commerce due to its strategic location on the route between Vilnius and Kraków; the inhabitants had the privilege of free trade in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lublin Parliament session of 1569 led to the creation of a real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thus creating the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lublin witnessed the early stages of Reformation in the 16th century. A Calvinist congregation was founded and groups of radical Arians appeared in the city ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trawniki Concentration Camp
The Trawniki concentration camp was set up by Nazi Germany in the village of Trawniki about southeast of Lublin during the occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function. It was organized on the grounds of the former Polish sugar refinery of the Central Industrial Region, and subdivided into at least three distinct zones. The Trawniki camp first opened after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, intended to hold Soviet POWs, with rail lines in all major directions in the General Government territory. Between 1941 and 1944, the camp expanded into an SS training camp for collaborationist auxiliary police, mainly Ukrainian. in 1942, it became the forced-labor camp for thousands of Jews within the Majdanek concentration camp system as well. The Jewish inmates of Trawniki provided slave labour for the makeshift industrial plants of '' SS-Ostindustrie'', working in appalling conditions with little food. There were 12,000 Jews i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the ''Generalgouvernement'' roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. The basis for the formation of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prisoner Of War
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war in custody for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, such as isolating them from the enemy combatants still in the field (releasing and repatriating them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishing them, prosecuting them for war crimes, exploiting them for their labour, recruiting or even conscripting them as their own combatants, collecting military and political intelligence from them, or indoctrinating them in new political or religious beliefs. Ancient times For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, enemy fighters on the losing side in a battle who had surrendered and been taken as prisoners of war could expect to be either slaughtered or enslaved. Ear ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |