Holocaust Remembrance Day January 27 Photo Essay

The UN General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, every member state of the UN has an obligation to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides. This year’s theme is Rescue during the Holocaust: The Courage to Care.

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day.

‘Holocaust survivors, politicians, religious leaders and others marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with solemn prayers and the now oft-repeated warnings to never let such horrors happen again.

Events took place at sites including Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former death camp where Hitler’s Germany killed at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, in southern Poland. In Warsaw, prayers were also held at a monument to the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking from his window at St Peter’s Square at the Vatican, warned that humanity must always be on guard against a repeat of murderous racism.

“The memory of this immense tragedy, which above all struck so harshly the Jewish people, must represent for everyone a constant warning so that the horrors of the past are not repeated, so that every form of hatred and racism is overcome, and that respect for, and dignity of, every human person is encouraged,” the German-born pontiff said.’(independent)

In addition to a candle-lighting ceremony, the Museum is hosting a public program with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Captain Witold Pilecki and the Resistance in Auschwitz
Sunday, January 27, at 2 p.m.
Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Theater

Learn more about the program and register here.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/ihrd/comment_post.php

A soldier from the U.S. 7th Army looks at the door to a gas chamber in the Dachau camp

U.S. soldiers discovered these boxcars loaded with dead prisoners outside the Dachau camp. They force German boys — believed to be members of the Hitler Youth (HJ) — to confront the atrocity. Dachau, Germany.

Victim of a medical experiment immersed in freezing water at the Dachau concentration camp. Dachau, Germany, between August 1942 and May 1943. Yad Vashem photo.

German civilians from Nammering are forced to bury the corpses of prisoners shot by the SS during evacuation from Buchenwald to Dachau. Nammering, Germany, May 19, 1945.

Bones of anti-Nazi German women still are in the crematoriums in the German concentration camp at Weimar, Germany, taken by the 3rd U.S. Army. Prisoners of all nationalities were tortured and killed, April 14, 1945 (NARA Photo)

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Holocaust Don’t Let This Happen Photo Essay I

 

It is inconceivable that a Human being can harm this much!

 

May this be reminder to us that we do not sit back and keep quiet when things are happening around us as was done.

 

“

Irene Hizme, A Twin Remembers the Medical Experiments at Auschwitz

 

 

Irene and her twin brother Rene were born Renate and Rene Guttmann. The family moved to Prague shortly after the twins’ birth, where they were living when the Germans occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. A few months later, uniformed Germans arrested their father. Decades later, Irene and Rene learned that he was killed at the Auschwitz camp in December 1941. Irene, Rene, and their mother were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and later to the Auschwitz camp. At Auschwitz, the twins were separated and subjected to medical experiments. Irene and Rene remained separated for some time after their liberation from Auschwitz. The group Rescue Children brought Irene to the United States in 1947, where she was reunited with Rene in 1950.

Personal Account: “I, of course, have, um, unfortunately a lot of memories of, um, of the hospital and, um, the doctor’s office. It, I seem to recall spending a great deal of time, um, there. And also being in the hospital and being very sick. And, um, I know one time, when I went to the doctor’s office, that they took blood from me and, it was extremely painful because it was from the left side of my neck. That’s a strange thing to remember. I also remember having blood taken out of my finger, but that wasn’t quite so bad. And I also remember having to sit, um, very still for long periods to be measured and, or weighed, or in X rays. I rem…I remember X rays, X rays. Um…and injections. I remember injections. And then I’d be sick. Because then I, I’d be in this hospital. And I remember having a high fever, because I know they were taking my temperature, somebody was. Um, I really got to hate doctors. I, I got to be afraid. I used, I was terribly scared of doctors, I still am. They’re a nightmare. Hospitals are out of the question and illness is unacceptable.”

 

 

 

Women and children on the Birkenau arrival platform known as the “ramp”. The Jews were removed from the deportation trains onto the ramp where they faced a selection process – some were sent immediately to their deaths, while others were sent to slave labor

Women and children on the Birkenau arrival platform known as the “ramp”. The Jews were removed from the deportation trains onto the ramp where they faced a selection process – some were sent immediately to their deaths, while others were sent to slave labor.

 

Elderly men waiting at the entrance to sector BII of the camp, apparently before they were to be taken to the gas chambers. In this area, those who were selected for death were marched towards Crematoria IV and V.

Sometimes putting a name to a person or child hurts, it brings tears to your eyes, especially in this case, inside Auschwitz, near the busy gas-chambers. The little girl in the middle represents 1.5 millions Jewish children, please study her, look at the eyes, the hands, her stance, her little dress and perky hat. Ask yourself how many friends did she have, when was her birthday, did she have a dog or cat, could she ride a bike, did she have a bike? I would like to pick her up and run away with her into the woods, to the hills, to hide her and protect her. Look to the left of her at the baby in arms, see the whole picture,

 

The “Final Solution” Begins Operation Barbarossa,the German offensive into the USSR, marked the start of [the implementation of] the plan for the mass-murder of the Jews.Visitors track the activities of one killing unit, Einsatzgruppe C, that served in Eastern Galicia and the Ukraine through the unusual amount of documentary evidence regarding its activities.

Auschwitz4.jpg Soon after liberation, a Soviet physician examines Auschwitz camp survivors. Poland, February 18, 1945. — Federation Nationale des Deportes et Internes Resistants et Patriots

 

Auschwitz-glasses.jpg

http://www.fold3.com/page/94047273_auschwitz_concentration_camp/

 

Holocaust Auschwitz Concentration Camp Medical Experiments

I am posting some accounts of the Concentration Camps run by The Nazis during The Second Word War to remind people of the cruelty Man is capable of and the need to guard against such evil.

Oral Depositions.

A war crimes investigation photo of the disfigured leg of a survivor from Ravensbrueck, Polish political prisoner Helena Hegier (Rafalska), who was subjected to medical experiments in 1942. This photograph was entered as evidence for the prosecution at the Medical Trial in Nuremberg. The disfiguring scars resulted from incisions made by medical personnel that were purposely infected with bacteria, dirt, and slivers of glass. — DIZ Muenchen GMBH, Sueddeutscher Verlag Bilderdiens

During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands ofconcentration camp prisoners without their consent.

Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories. The first category consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel. In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater potable.

The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. At the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen,Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, andNeuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and sera for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005250

Irene Hizme
Born: 1937, Teplice Sanov, Czechoslovakia

Describes medical experiments at Auschwitz [Interview: 1995]

“I, of course, have, um, unfortunately a lot of memories of, um, of the hospital and, um, the doctor’s office. It, I seem to recall spending a great deal of time, um, there. And also being in the hospital and being very sick. And, um, I know one time, when I went to the doctor’s office, that they took blood from me and, it was extremely painful because it was from the left side of my neck. That’s a strange thing to remember. I also remember having blood taken out of my finger, but that wasn’t quite so bad. And I also remember having to sit, um, very still for long periods to be measured and, or weighed, or in X rays. I rem…I remember X rays, X rays. Um…and injections. I remember injections. And then I’d be sick. Because then I, I’d be in this hospital. And I remember having a high fever, because I know they were taking my temperature, somebody was. Um, I really got to hate doctors. I, I got to be afraid. I used, I was terribly scared of doctors, I still am. They’re a nightmare. Hospitals are out of the question and illness is unacceptable.”

Irene and her twin brother Rene were born Renate and Rene Guttmann. The family moved to Prague shortly after the twins’ birth, where they were living when the Germans occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. A few months later, uniformed Germans arrested their father. Decades later, Irene and Rene learned that he was killed at the Auschwitz camp in December 1941. Irene, Rene, and their mother were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and later to the Auschwitz camp. At Auschwitz, the twins were separated and subjected to medical experiments. Irene and Rene remained separated for some time after their liberation from Auschwitz. The group Rescue Children brought Irene to the United States in 1947, where she was reunited with Rene in 1950.

— US Holocaust Memorial Museum – Collections

During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands ofconcentration camp prisoners without their consent.

Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories. The first category consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel. In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater potable.

The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. At the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen,Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, andNeuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and sera for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. The Ravensbrueckcamp was the site of bone-grafting experiments and experiments to test the efficacy of newly developed sulfa (sulfanilamide) drugs. At Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, prisoners were subjected to phosgene and mustard gas in order to test possible antidotes.

The third category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview. The most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele atAuschwitz. Mengele conducted medical experiments on twins. He also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how different “races” withstood various contagious diseases. The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish “Jewish racial inferiority.”

Other gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals were a series of sterilization experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck. There, scientists tested a number of methods in their effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilization of Jews, Roma, and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005636

 

 

“

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Vatican Builds With Mussolini’s Millions

The silence of the Vatican during the Holocaust was deafening.

Not only this, more than turning a Blind Eye to Mussolini when he was torturing and killing people ,Vatican used the Money of Mussolini to build ‘the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.’

If double speak and moral decay needs an example ,don’t look elsewhere’

The Church will do .

Vatican

Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.

But these office blocks in one of London’s most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican.

Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church’s international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.

Since then the international value of Mussolini’s nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James’s Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland.

The surprising aspect for some will be the lengths to which the Vatican has gone to preserve secrecy about the Mussolini millions. The St James’s Square office block was bought by a company called British Grolux Investments Ltd, which also holds the other UK properties. Published registers at Companies House do not disclose the company’s true ownership, nor make any mention of the Vatican.”

http://www.reddit.com/tb/16zkni

Auschwitz Recreated in Exhibition.Slideshow.

“The Berlin Biennale may have disappointed in recent years, but now it’s back with a bang, thanks to Polish curator Artur Zmijewski. He wants to put politics back into art — and he’s succeeding. The exhibition, which opens Thursday, includes an encampment by the Occupy movement, Palestinian stamps and transplanted trees from Auschwitz.

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Some might ask whether the 320 concentration camp trees were really necessary, the young birch trees that were dug up in the surroundings of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and are supposed to put down roots in Berlin.

 

Auschwitz, ashes, earth and now this delicate green. Perhaps it’s too pretty, and the chain of associations too simple, to really do justice to the horror.

 

On the other hand, 320 new Holocaust memorials have been planted in Berlin. Although it wasn’t done in secret, it happened — unlike Berlin’s most prominent Holocaust memorial — without any debate or votes in the German parliament, the Bundestag. The birch trees simply appeared — in parks, schoolyards and even on the grounds of the building that houses the representation of Lower Saxony state in the capital. That in itself is a coup.

Artur Zmijewski likes it when art changes reality, and when it becomes reality. He isn’t as fond of other types of art. The trees are a project of the 7th Berlin Biennale art exhibition. And Zmijewski, the enemy of art, is its curator.

Sense of Melancholy

The Biennale is one of the most important contemporary art events in Germany. It has helped Berlin be taken seriously as a center for contemporary art. The federal government’s cultural foundation is supporting it to the tune of €2.5 million ($3.3 million).

Like almost no other biennial art festival, the Berlin exhibition depends on the city and its atmosphere, and on the various locations and neighborhoods where art is being exhibited. The Biennale centers around the Kunst-Werke (KW) exhibition space on Auguststrasse in the city’s central Mitte district. The neighborhood was once a run-down part of East Berlin, imbued with a sense of melancholy that seemed very authentic, especially to foreign visitors. Despite the fact that Mitte has now been completely gentrified, it has retained some of its former atmosphere.

Artists that were unknown at the time and later became famous, like German painter Jonathan Meese and the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, participated in the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. If they achieved anything, it was to draw attention to themselves. Every two years after that, at each new Biennale, artists would attempt to interpret society and the zeitgeist. Only the last Biennale, in 2010, which was curated by Vienna artist Kathrin Rhomberg, was forgotten soon after it opened. It didn’t seem “Berlin” enough, and it tried too hard not to be noticed and to get everything right with conceptual art. The event was such a failure that the organizers didn’t even reveal the attendance statistics afterwards.

But the upcoming 7th Biennale will likely be one of the most noted art shows of 2012, despite the fact that the famous Kassel exhibition Documenta, which only takes place every five years, is also happening this year. It officially starts on Thursday, but it’s actually been underway for some time. Zmijewski has been the talk of the Berlin art scene since his appointment as the festival curator in 2010. He has exceeded expectations, and then some.

Destroying Books

That’s because Zmijewski began by producing some rather strange pieces of news. He publicly called upon artists to submit applications to take part in the exhibition, requesting that they indicate their political views as part of the application. A full-scale book-destroying event was announced, which reminded many of the book burnings of the Nazi era. And Zmijewski appointed what he called “associated curators” from Russia who were members of the infamous Voina artists’ collective. International arrest warrants have been issued for two members of the group, who are accused of hooliganism and the use of violence. And then there is the logo of this year’s show, which vaguely resembles a rune — something that is controversial in Germany because of the Nazis‘ use of Germanic symbols. Zmijewski is clearly a man who is not afraid of the bold gesture.

Zmijewski, an even-keeled man who sports a beard and has a large ego, is also an artist. He has participated in the Venice Biennale and the Documenta.Newsweek considers the Warsaw native to be one of the 10 most important contemporary artists. In one of his films, happy, naked people hop around in the gas chamber and cellar of a former concentration camp. The work, titled “Berek”, was recently banned from a Berlin exhibition after visitors had complained, prompting critics to accuse the organizers of censorship. Now Zmijewski plans to simply show the short film at the Biennale, as a symbol of a conflict over art.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,829691,00.html

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