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Filip Müller
Filip Müller (3 January 1922 – 9 November 2013) was a Jewish Slovak Holocaust survivor and a member of the ''Sonderkommando'' at Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German concentration camp during World War II, where he witnessed the murders of tens of thousands of people. Auschwitz Müller was born in Sereď in the Czechoslovak Republic. In April 1942, he was sent on one of the earliest Holocaust transports to Auschwitz II, where he was given prisoner number 29236. Müller was assigned to the ''Sonderkommando'' that worked on the construction of crematoria and the installation of the gas chambers. Once the crematoria were completed, Müller was assigned to a ''Sonderkommando'' unit tasked with operating the killing facilities; his performing this role, he believed, was the only reason the Germans kept him alive. Müller's unit would meet new arrivals of men, women, and children at the undressing area just outside the gas chambers, in the basement of the crematoria. He testifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sereď
Sereď (; ) is a town in southern Slovakia near Trnava, on the right bank of the Váh River on the Danubian Lowland. It has approximately 15,500 inhabitants. Geography Sereď lies at an altitude of above sea level and covers an area of . It is located in the Danubian Lowland on the Váh river, around south-east of Trnava, west of Nitra and around east from Bratislava. The closest mountain ranges are the Little Carpathians to the west and Považský Inovec to the north. History The town was first mentioned in 1313 as ''Zereth''. In the Middle Ages, it lay on the trade route called "Bohemian Road" which ran from Buda to Prague on the right bank of the Váh river. Thanks to its location, livestock and grain markets were held in the town and thousands of cattle moved through the town each year. Its commercial importance ended in 1846, when the Pozsony-Nagyszombat (now: Bratislava-Trnava) railway was built. However, the Seredian market tradition survived and the Seredian M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zyklon B
Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consists of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth. The product is notorious for its use by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust to murder approximately 1.1 million people in gas chambers installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and other extermination camps. Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany used a similar product as a chemical weapon. Degussa purchased Degesch in 1922. Their team of chemists, which included and Bruno Tesch, devised a method of pack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stein & Day
Stein and Day, Inc. was an American publishing company founded by Sol Stein and his wife Patricia Day in 1962. Stein was both the publisher and the editor-in-chief. The firm was based in New York City, and was in business for 27 years, until closing in 1989. History Stein and Day's first book was Elia Kazan's '' America America'', published in 1962, which was a bestseller and was adapted into a film by Kazan. The success of many of Stein and Day's books was attributable in part to the amount of publicity work that Stein and Day did for each book Stein worked with Kazan daily for five months on Kazan's first novel '' The Arrangement'', which was #1 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list for 37 consecutive weeks. The firm relocated from Manhattan to Briarcliff Manor, New York in 1975, and published about 100 books a year until the company declared bankruptcy in 1987, selling its backlist in 1988. Stein and Day's demise was the subject of Stein's book '' A Feast for Lawyers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Rogerie
André Rogerie (25 December 1921 – May 2014) was a member of the French Resistance in World War II and survivor of seven Nazi concentration camps who testified after the war about what he had seen in the camps. Rogerie was born in Villefagnan in the Charente department of south-western France. His trajectory was "typical of the complexity of the movement of deportees among the camps." His eyewitness account of Auschwitz-Birkenau exemplifies the self-published eyewitness accounts published in the immediate aftermath of the war, but ignored until the 1980s. He is also notable for having produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium, also ignored by historians for decades until the 1987 publication of ''Le Monde juif'' by . Early years and entry into the French Resistance André Rogerie was born to Joseph and Jeanne Rogerie in Villefagnan, in the department of Charente in western France on 25 December 1921, the fifth child in a Catholic military family. His fathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henryk Mandelbaum
Henryk Mandelbaum (15 December 1922 – 17 June 2008) was a Polish Holocaust survivor. He was one of the prisoners in the ''Sonderkommando KL Auschwitz-Birkenau'' in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who worked in the crematory. Only 110 out of 2,000 Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau survived the war. As of the death of Dario Gabbai in 2020, no former Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos are known to be alive. Mandelbaum was imprisoned as a Polish Jew at the age of 21 years. He fled from the Sosnowiec Ghetto and was reimprisoned on 22 April 1944, in Birkenau. Auschwitz After arriving to Auschwitz, Mandelbaum was designated to forced labour in the crematory. He had to carry the corpses of the people who were gassed with Zyklon B, check body orifices for valuables and break out dental gold. In 1944 the capacity of the crematoriums was too small to burn all the corpses of prisoners killed. Mandelbaum and others had to dig two huge pits, then burn the dead bodies in them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German language, German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, death and concentration camp complex. Hans Hofmeyer led the "criminal case against Robert Mulka, Mulka and others" (reference number 4 Ks 3/63) as chief judge. Overall, only 789 individuals of the approximately 8,200 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz and its sub-camps were ever tried, of whom 750 received sentences. Unlike the Auschwitz trial, first trial in Poland held almost two decades earlier, the trials in Frankfurt were not based on the legal definition of crimes against humanity as recognized by international law, but according to the state laws of the West Germany, Federal Republic. Prior trial in Poland Most of the senior leaders of the camp, including Rudolf Hös ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erich Kulka
Erich Kulka (18 February 191112 July 1995) was a Czech-Israeli writer, historian and journalist who survived the Holocaust. After World War II, he made it his life's mission to research the Holocaust and publicize facts about it. Biography Early life Erich Kulka was born as Erich Schön to a Jewish family as the youngest of five children in Vsetín. His parents were Siegbert (Vítězslav) Schön and Malvína Schön. Erich studied at Gymnasium in Valašské Meziříčí. In early 1930s he started to work for a company of Rudolf Deutelbaum. He had a secret relationship with his wife Elly (née Kulka) and fathered a son, Otto (born 1933). Erich and Elly married in 1938. Concentration camps In 1939 after the outbreak of World War II, he was arrested by the Gestapo for anti Nazi activity in Špilberk prison, an old castle on the hilltop in Brno, Southern Moravia. Later during the war he was transferred and managed to survive throughout five-and-a-half years in other conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auschwitz Resistance 282 Cropped
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of #Auschwitz I, Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; #Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, #Auschwitz III, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a Arbeitslager, labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and List of subcamps of Auschwitz, dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany Causes of World War II#Invasion of Poland, initiated World War II by Invasion of Poland, invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theresienstadt Family Camp
The Theresienstadt family camp (, ), also known as the Czech family camp, consisted of a group of History of the Jews in the Czech Republic, Jewish inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who were held in the BIIb section of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp from 8 September 1943 to 12 July 1944. The Germans created the camp to mislead the outside world about the Final Solution. Deported from the ghetto in seven transports in September and December 1943, and May 1944, the prisoners were not subjected to selektion, selection on arrival, an unusual situation in Auschwitz, and were granted a number of "privileges", including the creation of a children's block that provided the only attempt at organized education at Auschwitz. The living conditions nevertheless remained poor and the mortality rate was high. Most of the inhabitants who did not die of starvation or disease were murdered during the camp liquidations on 8–9 Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gunskirchen
Gunskirchen is a town in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. Geography Gunskirchen lies in the Hausruckviertel. About 11 percent of the municipality is forest, and 78 percent is farmland. Internal combustion engine maker Rotax has been headquartered at Gunskirchen since 1947. History World War II During World War II one of the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp was located in the village. The camp was rather short-lived. In December 1944, construction for the Gunskirchen camp began. It was planned to house several hundred slave laborers. When the camp was opened in April 1945, however, thousands of prisoners evacuated on death marches from Mauthausen started to flood Gunskirchen. Dr. Edith Eger was among them. In these overcrowded conditions, diseases such as typhus and dysentery spread rapidly through the starving and weakened camp population. The prisoners were—with the exception of 400 political prisoners—Jews from Hungary whom the Germans had forced t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further Subcamp (SS), subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, St. Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp. The Mauthausen main camp operated from 8 August 1938, several months after the Anschluss, German annexation of Austria, to 5 May 1945, when it was liberated by the United States Army. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death March
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war, other captives, or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinct from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Convention requires that prisoners must be moved away from a danger zone such as an advancing front line, to a place that may be considered more secure. It is not required to evacuate prisoners who are too unwell or injured to move. In times of war, such evacuations can be difficult to carry out. Death marches usually feature harsh physical labor and abuse, neglect of prisoner injury and illness, deliberate starvation and dehydration, humiliation, torture, and execution of those unable to keep up the marching pace. The march may end at a prisoner-of-war camp or internment camp, or it may continue until all those who are forced to march are dead. Notable death marches Jingkang incident In 1127, during the Jin–Song wars, the forces of the Jurchen-led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
