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Auschwitz
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, 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 labour 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 initiated 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). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf 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 Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. The report, distributed 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 Hungary during World War II, invaded Hungary and shortly before the Schutzstaffel, SS began mass deportations of Hungary's Jewish population to the camp. The information the men dictated to Jewish officials when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IG Farben
I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German Chemical industry, chemical and Pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was formed on December 2, 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies: Agfa-Gevaert, Agfa, BASF, Bayer, :de:Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, Griesheim-Elektron, Hoechst AG, Hoechst, and Weiler-ter-Meer. It was seized by the Allies of World War II, Allies after World War II and split into its constituent companies; parts in East Germany were nationalized. IG Farben was once the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world. IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937, and three company scientists became List of Nobel laureates, Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extermination Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki (; 13 May 190125 May 1948), known by the codenames ''Roman Jezierski'', ''Tomasz Serafiński'', ''Druh'' and ''Witold'', was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground scouting; in the aftermath of World War I, he joined the Polish militia and, later, the Polish Army. He participated in the Polish–Soviet War, which ended in 1921. In 1939, he participated in the unsuccessful defense of Poland against the invasion by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union. Shortly afterward, he joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement. In 1940, Pilecki volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in order to infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement that eventually included hundreds of inmates, and he secretly drew up reports detailing German atrocities at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. 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'' (''Se questo è un uomo'', 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), a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories, each named after a chemical element which plays a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written. Levi died in 1987 from injuries sustained in a fall from a third-storey apartment landing. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although that has been disputed by some of his friends and associates and attributed to an accident. Biography Early life Levi was born in 1919 i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, 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 primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz concentration camp#Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Belzec extermination camp, Belzec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor, and Chełmno extermination camp, Chełmno in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of Victims of Nazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arbeit Macht Frei
() is a German phrase translated as "Work makes one free" or, more idiomatically, "Work sets you free" or "Work liberates". The phrase originates from the title of an 1873 novel by Lorenz Diefenbach and alludes to John 8:31–32. Following the Nazi Party's rise to power in 1933, the phrase became a slogan used in programs implemented to combat mass unemployment in Germany. Today, it is primarily known for its use above the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Because prisoners were generally not released from the camps and performed forced labor under horrific conditions, the phrase has come to be understood as meaning that the only way for prisoners to gain a sort of freedom was to work until they died. Origin The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by the German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, , in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour. "The truth will set you free" () is a statement of Jesus found in J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski (; 8 April 191717 April 1991) was a Polish boxer, Polish Armed Forces soldier, and a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme concentration camps run by the German Nazis during World War II. He was part of the first mass transport to Auschwitz in June 1940, and was transferred to Neuengamme in 1943. He is remembered as the boxing champion of Auschwitz. Pietrzykowski's life story has been the subject of several books and movies. Early life Pietrzykowski was born on 8 April 1917 in Warsaw to father Tadeusz, an engineer, and mother Sylwina (''née'' Bieńkowska), a teacher, both members of the Polish intelligentsia. In his youth he joined the boxing section of the Legia Warsaw club, where he trained under Feliks Stamm. He received a number of positive write-ups in the interwar Polish sports press, and was nicknamed "Teddy" or "Teddi". He was at the height of his sports career in the years 1936 and 1937; in 1935 his boxing section advanced to the A- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Maria Kolbe (born Raymund Kolbe; ; 8 January 1894 – 14 August 1941) was a Polish Roman Catholic priest, Conventual Franciscan friar, missionary, saint, martyr, and a Nazi concentration camp victim, who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications. On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "the patron of our difficult century". His feast day is 14 August, the da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates#1980, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel bibliography, 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including ''Night (memoir), Night'', which is based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald during the Holocaust. As a political activist, Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime, advocating for justice in numerous causes around the globe, including that of Refusenik, Soviet Jews and Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews, Apartheid, South African apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian genocide, the War in Darfur, the Kurdish independence movement, the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Enforced disappearance#Argentina, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ''Allgemeine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liliana Segre
Liliana Segre (; born 10 September 1930) is an Italian Holocaust survivor, named List of senators for life in Italy, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
