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Leica Freedom Train
The Leica Freedom Train was a rescue effort in which hundreds of Jews were smuggled out of Nazi Germany before the Holocaust by Ernst Leitz II of the Leica Camera company, and his daughter Elsie Kuehn-Leitz. Background Ernst Leitz's optics company, founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers. Pensions, sick leave, health insurance — all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled employees, many of whom were Jewish. As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II, son of the founder and head of the company from 1920 to 1956, began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for help to get them and their families out of the country. As non-Jews, Leitz and his family were unaffected by Nazi Germany's Nürnberg Laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities. Rescue mission To help his Jewish workers an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leitz Ernst Ii
Leitz may refer to several German companies: *Esselte Leitz GmbH & Co KG, founded by Louis Leitz in 1896, a German manufacturer of office products **Louis Leitz (1846–1918), German inventor and founder of Esselte Leitz GmbH & Co KG * Leitz GmbH & Co. KG, founded by Albert Leitz in 1876, a German manufacturer of machine tooling for wood and plastics *Ernst Leitz GmbH, founded by Ernst Leitz, a former German firm now divided into three independent companies: **Leica Camera Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, Telescopic sight, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetz ..., manufacturer of cameras ** Leica Geosystems, manufacturer of geodetic equipment ** Leica Microsystems, manufacturer of microscopes and owner of the Leica brand {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland. Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government began isolating Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Leitz II
Ernst Leitz II (1 March 1871 – 15 June 1956) was a German business person and humanitarian. He was the second head of the optics company now known as Leica Camera and organized the Leica Freedom Train to allow people, most of whom were Jewish, to escape from Germany during Nazi times. Life Ernst Leitz was the second son of the entrepreneur . After an apprenticeship as a mechanic in his father's business and training as a merchant, Leitz joined the company as a partner in 1906 and became sole shareholder after his father's death in 1920. Leitz initially devoted himself to the development of new microscopes, in particular the world's first binocular microscope that could also be used for high magnifications, which was launched in 1913. The large research microscope with built-in illumination (1935) also became a great success. The Leica, a 35 mm camera developed by Leitz's collaborator Oskar Barnack with the interchangeable lenses of was distributed worldwide from 1925. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leica Camera
Leica Camera AG () is a German company that manufactures cameras, optical lenses, photographic lenses, binoculars, Telescopic sight, rifle scopes and microscopes. The company was founded by Ernst Leitz in 1869 (Ernst Leitz Wetzlar), in Wetzlar, Germany. In 1986, the Leitz company changed its name to Leica, due to the fame of the Leica trade-name. The name Leica is derived from the first three letters of the founder's surname (Leitz) and the first two of the word camera: lei-ca (LEItz CAmera). At this time, Leica relocated its factory from Wetzlar to the nearby town of Solms. Leica Camera AG is 55% owned by Austrian investment firm ACM Projektentwicklung GmbH, and 45% owned by The Blackstone Group which licenses the Leica brand name from the Danaher Corporation-owned Leica Microsystems GmbH. History From the year 1907 to the 1950s, the buildings that formed Leica factory were built on Ernst Leitz Street in Wetzlar, and remained until 1986, when the factory was moved to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for by using the classical electromagnetic description of light. Complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often difficult to apply in practice. Practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cannot be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wetzlar
Wetzlar () is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany. It is the twelfth largest city in Hesse with currently 55,371 inhabitants at the beginning of 2019 (including second homes). As an important cultural, industrial and commercial center, the university town is one of the ten regional centers in the state of Hesse. A former free imperial city, it gained much of its fame as the seat of the Imperial Supreme Court (''Reichskammergericht'') of the Holy Roman Empire. Located 51 kilometers north of Frankfurt, at 8° 30′ E, 50° 34′ N, Wetzlar straddles the river Lahn and is on the German Timber-Frame Road, which passes mile upon mile of half-timbered houses. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Lahn-Dill-Kreis on the north edge of the Taunus. Tourists know the city for its ancient town and its medieval Catholic/Protestant shared cathedral of St. Mary. Notable architectural features include the Eisenmarkt and the steep gradients and tightly-packed street layout of a me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the Chancellor of Germany, chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated European theatre of World War II, World War II in Europe by invasion of Poland, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his Military career of Adolf Hitler, service in the German Army in Worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romanis as "enemies of the rac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kristallnacht
() or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening.German Mobs' Vengeance on Jews", ''The Daily Telegraph'', 11 November 1938, cited in The name (literally 'Crystal Night') comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristide Briand
Aristide Pierre Henri Briand (; 28 March 18627 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (19181939). In 1926, he received the Nobel Peace Prize along with German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann for the realization of the Locarno Treaties, which aimed at reconciliation between France and Germany after the First World War. To avoid another worldwide conflict, he was instrumental in the agreement known as the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, as well to establish a "European Union" in 1929. However, all his efforts were compromised by the rise of nationalistic and revanchist ideas like Nazism and Fascism following the Great Depression. Early life He was born in Nantes, Loire-Inférieure (now Loire-Atlantique) of a '' petit bourgeois'' family. He attended the Nantes Lycée, where, in 187 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
