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Operation Last Chance
Operation Last Chance was launched July 2002 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center with its mission statement being to track down ex-Nazis still in hiding. Most of them were nearing the end of their lifetimes, hence the operation's name. Efraim Zuroff is director of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem who serves as the Israeli liaison as well as overseer of this project, the focus of which is an investigation, prosecution, and conviction of the last remaining Nazi war criminals and collaborators. Many have obtained citizenship in Canada and the United States under false pretenses; usually by misrepresentation, omission, or falsification of their criminal past, specifically, war crimes which rose to the level of crimes against humanity. Prosecutions and convictions Operation Last Chance assisted in the prosecution and interim conviction of John Demjanjuk for his alleged role in the torture and murder of Jews in various concentration camps, among other atrocities. Demjanjuk became an A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance. The center has close ties to public and private agencies, and regularly meets with elected officials of the United States and foreign governments and with diplomats and heads of state. It is accredited as a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe. The center publishes a seasonal magazine, ''In Motion''. The center is named in honor of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal had nothing to do with its operation or activities other than giving its name, but he remained supportive of it. "I have received many honors in my lifetime," Wiesenthal once said, "when I die, these honors will die with me. But the Simon Wiesenthal Center will li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish Jews
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy which ended after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century. During World War II there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators of various nationalities, during the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, called the Holocaust. Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a renewed interest in Jewish culture, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, and the opening of Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews. From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 until the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Office Of Special Investigations (United States Department Of Justice)
The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of the U.S Justice Department was created in 1979 to identify and expel, from the United States, those who assisted Nazis in persecuting "any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion." This involved gathering, verifying, and presenting in court eyewitness and documentary evidence of decades-old crimes. The evidence was incomplete and scattered around the world. Much of it was then in Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain. Nonetheless, the OSI investigated 1,700 persons suspected of being involved in Nazi war crimes. Over 300 have been prosecuted with at least 100 stripped of their U.S. citizenship and 70 deported, the most recent in 2021. Others have left voluntarily, fled, or have been blocked from entering the U.S. Immediately after World War II, Americans chose not to dwell upon the war's atrocities, and cold war threats caused governments to recruit former Nazis for intelligence work. Newly formulated U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Egner
Peter Egner (1 February 1922 in Yugoslavia – 26 January 2011 in Bellevue, Washington, United States) was born in Yugoslavia, a ''Volksdeutsche'' who had acquired American citizenship in 1965. He was involved as a member of the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD) in the guarding of prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia. Egner was on the List of Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Life Egner was a member of the intelligence service of the Nazi Party, the SD. After the war, Egner emigrated to the United States. In 1965, he applied for U.S. citizenship, which he acquired the following year. He worked as a food and beverage manager before retiring in 1980. He lived quietly with his wife in Portland, Oregon. During his naturalization, Egner stated that he had been a ''Wehrmacht'' soldier, but concealed his involvement in the SD. Role as a Wachmann in Yugoslavia Egner served in an ''Einsatzgruppe'', a majority of whose member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Operation Reinhardt
or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin Lambert, Christian Wirth, Heinrich Himmler, Franz Stangl and others. , participants = , organizations = SS, Order Police battalions, ''Sicherheitsdienst'', Trawnikis , camp = BelzecSobiborTreblinka Additional: ChełmnoMajdanek Auschwitz II , ghetto = European and Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland including Białystok, Częstochowa, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Warsaw and others , victims = Around 2 million Jews , survivors = , witnesses = , documentation = , memorials = On camp sites and deportation points , notes = This was the most lethal phase of the Holocaust. Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt (german: Aktion Reinhard or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treblinka Extermination Camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Managed by the German SS with assistance from Trawniki guards – recruited from among Soviet POWs to serve with the Germans – the camp consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp (''Arbeitslager'') whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the cremation pits. Between 1941 and 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estonian Jews
The history of Jews in Estonia starts with reports of the presence of individual Jews in what is now Estonia from as early as the 14th century. Jews were settled in Estonia in the 19th century, especially following a statute of Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1865 allowed the so-called Jewish "Nicholas soldiers" (often former ''cantonists'') and their descendants, First Guild merchants, artisans, and Jews with higher education to settle outside the Pale of Settlement. These settlers founded the first Jewish congregations in Estonia. The Tallinn congregation, the largest in Estonia, was founded in 1830. The Tartu congregation was established in 1866 when the first fifty families settled there. Synagogues were built, the largest of which were constructed in Tallinn in 1883 and Tartu in 1901. Both of these were destroyed by fire during World War II. The Jewish population spread to other Estonian cities where houses of prayer (at Valga, Pärnu and Viljandi) were erected and cemet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latvian Jews
The history of the Jews in Latvia dates back to the first Jewish colony established in Piltene in 1571. Jews contributed to Latvia's development until the Northern War (1700–1721), which decimated Latvia's population.R. O. G. Urch. Latvia: Country and People. London, Allen & Unwin. 1938. The Jewish community reestablished itself in the 18th century, mainly through an influx from Prussia, and came to play a principal role in the economic life of Latvia. Under an independent Latvia, Jews formed political parties and participated as members of parliament. The Jewish community flourished. Jewish parents had the right to send their children to schools using Hebrew as the language of instruction, as part of a significant network of minority schools. World War II ended the prominence of the Jewish community. Under Stalin, Jews, who formed only 5% of the population, constituted 12% of the deportees.Swain, G. Between Stalin and Hitler. Routledge, New York. 2004. In comparison, 90% ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine). The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow a " Lithuanian" ( Ashkenazi, non- Hasidic) style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Lithuanian Jews lived is referred to in Yiddish as , hence the Hebrew term (). No other famous Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish, "the genius of Vilna"). Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–1797) to give his rarely used full name, helped make Vilna (modern-day Vilnius) a world center for Talmudic learning. Chaim Grade (1910–1982) was born in Vilna, the city about which he would write. The inter-war Republic of Lithuania was home to a large and influential Jewish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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