|
Chełmno Extermination Camp
Chełmno, or Kulmhof, was the first of Nazi Germany's extermination camps and was situated north of Łódź, near the village of Chełmno nad Nerem. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland. The camp, which was specifically intended for no other purpose than mass murder, operated from , to , parallel to Operation Reinhard during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust, and again from , to , during the Soviet counter-offensive. In 1943, modifications were made to the camp's killing methods as the reception building had already been dismantled. At the very minimum, 152,000 people were murdered in the camp, which would make it the fifth deadliest extermination camp, after Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec extermination camp, Bełżec, and Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibór. However, the West German prosecution, citing Nazi figures during the Chełmno trials of 1962–65, laid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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] [Amazon] |
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] [Amazon] |
Jewish Ghettos In German-occupied Poland
Ghettos were established by Nazi Germany in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland after the German invasion of Poland.Yitzhak Arad, ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.''Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce,'' Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1960. Most ghettos were established between October 1939 and July 1942 in order to confine and segregate Poland's Jewish population of about 3.5 million for the purpose of persecution, terror, and exploitation. In smaller towns, ghettos often served as staging points for Jewish and mass deportation actions, while in the urban centers they resembled walled-off prison-islands described by some historians as little more than instruments of "slow, passive murder", with dead bodies littering the streets. In most cases, the larger ghettos did not correspond to traditional Jewish neighborhoods, and non-Jewish Poles and members of other ethnic groups were ord ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sonderkommando
''Sonderkommandos'' (, ) were Extermination through labor, work units made up of Nazi Germany, German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp ''Sonderkommandos'', who were always inmates, were unrelated to the ''SS-Sonderkommandos'', which were ''ad hoc'' units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945. The German term was part of the vague and euphemism, euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e.g., ''Einsatzkommando'', "deployment units"). Death factory workers ''Sonderkommando'' members did not participate directly in killing; that responsibility was reserved for the SS, while the ''Sonderkommandos'' primary duty was disposing of the corpses. In most cases, they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp and forced into the position ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Grojanowski Report
The Grojanowski Report is an eye-witness account about atrocities in the Nazi Chełmno extermination camp, written in 1942 by Polish-Jewish escapee from the camp, Szlama Ber Winer (also known incorrectly as Szlawek Bajler), under the pseudonym of Yakov (or Jacob) Grojanowski. Szlama Ber Winer managed to make his way from Chelmno to the Warsaw Ghetto and gave detailed information about his week-long experience with the ''Sonderkommando'' at that death camp to the Ghetto's Oneg Shabbat group, headed by historian Emanuel Ringelblum. Report contents Winer described the entire extermination procedure at the camp, how people were murdered in gas vans, how their corpses were removed by the forest commando, how the inside of the vans were cleaned between loads, and how the bodies were buried in large mass graves. Winer wrote: Winer also described the brutal treatment of '' Sonderkommando'' prisoners, left alive to dispose of the corpses, and his escape from the camp. Oneg Shabbat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War, especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army. In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy) was renamed the "Soviet Army". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was split between the post-Soviet states, with its bulk becoming the Russian Ground Forces, commonly considered to be the successor of the Soviet Army. The Red Army provided the largest land warfare, ground force in the Allies of World War II, Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its Soviet invasion of Manchuria, invasion of Manchuria assisted the un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Soviet Prisoners Of War (Nazi Germany)
During World War II, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment. In June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union and carried out a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Among the criminal orders issued before the invasion was for the execution of captured Soviet commissars and disregard for Germany's legal obligations under the 1929 Geneva Convention. By the end of 1941, over 3 million Soviet soldiers had been captured, mostly in large-scale encirclement operations during the German Army's rapid advance. Two-thirds of them had died from starvation, exposure, and disease by early 1942. This is one of the highest sustained death rates for any mass atrocity in history. Soviet Jews, political commissars, and some officers, com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Łódź Ghetto
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. It was the second-largest ghetto in all of German-occupied Europe after the Warsaw Ghetto. Situated in the city of Łódź, and originally intended as a preliminary step upon a more extensive plan of creating the '' Judenfrei'' province of Warthegau, the ghetto was transformed into a major industrial centre, manufacturing war supplies for Nazi Germany and especially for the Wehrmacht. The number of people incarcerated in it was increased further by the Jews deported from Nazi-controlled territories. On 30 April 1940, when the gates closed on the ghetto, it housed 163,777 residents. Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944. In the first two years, it absorbed almost 20,000 Jews from liquidated ghettos in nearby Polish towns and villag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Holocaust In Bohemia And Moravia
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre-World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. By 1946, only about 14,000 of the pre-war population of 118,000 remained. Before the Holocaust, the Jews of Bohemia were among the most assimilated and integrated History of the Jews in Europe, Jewish communities in Europe; antisemitic prejudice was less pronounced than elsewhere on the continent. The first anti-Jewish laws in Second Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia were imposed following the 1938 Munich Agreement and the German occupation of the Sudetenland. In March 1939, Germany invaded and partially annexed the rest of the Czech lands as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. More anti-Jewish measures followed, imposed mainly by the Protectorate administration (which included both German and Czech officials). Jews were Aryanization, stripped of their e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Greater Poland
Greater Poland, often known by its Polish name Wielkopolska (; ), is a Polish Polish historical regions, historical region of west-central Poland. Its chief and largest city is Poznań followed by Kalisz, the oldest city in Poland. The boundaries of Greater Poland have varied somewhat throughout history. Since the Late Middle Ages, Wielkopolska proper has been split into the Poznań Voivodeship (14th century to 1793), Poznań and Kalisz Voivodeship (1314–1793), Kalisz Administrative division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, voivodeships. In the wider sense, it also encompassed Sieradz Voivodeship (1339–1793), Sieradz, Łęczyca Voivodeship, Łęczyca, Brześć Kujawski Voivodeship, Brześć Kujawski and Inowrocław Voivodeship, Inowrocław voivodeships (the last two known as Kuyavian) which were situated further east, and the Santok, Santok Land, located to the northwest. The region in the proper sense roughly coincides with the present-day Greater Poland Voivodesh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Romani (people)
{{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , pop = 2–12 million , region2 = United States , pop2 = 1 million estimated with Romani ancestry{{efn, 5,400 per 2000 United States census, 2000 census. , ref2 = {{cite news , first=Kayla , last=Webley , url=http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2025316,00.html , title=Hounded in Europe, Roma in the U.S. Keep a Low Profile , agency=Time , date=13 October 2010 , access-date=3 October 2015 , quote=Today, estimates put the number of Roma in the U.S. at about one million. , region3 = Brazil , pop3 = 800,000 (0.4%) , ref3 = , region4 = Spain , pop4 = 750,000–1.5 million (1.5–3.7%) , ref4 = {{cite web , url ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Chełmno Trials
The Chełmno trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personnel, held in Poland and in Germany following World War II. The cases were decided almost twenty years apart. The first judicial trial of the former ''SS'' men – members of the '' SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof'' – took place in 1945 at the District Court in Łódź, Poland. The subsequent four trials, held in Bonn, Germany, began in 1962 and concluded three years later, in 1965 in Cologne. A number of camp officials, gas-van operators and ''SS'' guards, were arraigned before the court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at Chełmno (a.k.a. ''Kulmhof'') in occupied Poland in the period between December 1941 and January 1945. The evidence against the accused, including testimonies by surviving witnesses, former prisoners, and mechanics attending to repair needs of the ''SS'', was examined in Poland by Judge Władysław Bednarz of the Łódź Distr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
