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catt-nuevenor · 1 year

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I remember the book thief. It was a good, sad, book.

I held off answering this until I finished the book, and here we are. I finished the Book Thief yesterday.

It is a very good book and I highly enjoyed my time with it. I also think it is a very important book, and it deserves the accolades and awards it has achieved over the years since its first publication.

That all sounds like I'm gearing up for a 'but', doesn't it?

I'm not, not really. But I've found myself coming back to the comment of 'sad' a lot while I was listening to it and since I finished it.

I say the following to give context to my approach to the book, not to associate myself directly with the struggles of the characters, or the historical events they are based on in an exploitative or inherently informed manner.

A bit of background on me. I'm a history nerd. I did an undergraduates degree in ancient history and archaeology, I watch documentaries for fun and leisure, I regularly consume books that deal with world history and such things do not shy away from difficult topics.

Side recommendations for non-fiction books related to WW2 and the topics discussed in the Book Thief:

Their Darkest Hour: People Tested to the Extreme in WWII by Laurence Rees

The Good Germans: Resisting the Nazis, 1933-1945 by Catrine Clay

Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany by James Wyllie

The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees

The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 by Robert Gerwarth

Obviously Content Warning for Extreme Violence, Radicalisation, Bigotry, Genocide, and Psychological Trauma. These are not pleasant books at times, they are important.

Secondary bit of background info on me. My Grandfather served in the Royal Signals Corp during WW2 and volunteered the day war was declared in England. He served in Africa, Italy, took part in the D-Day landings, moved up through Belgium, the Netherlands, then into Germany where he and his unit were put in charge of minding SS prisoners in a converted concentration camp, north-northeast of Hamburg, for two years after peace was declared. During his time in Germany before the official end of the conflict, he served as a signalman with the 15th Scottish Division, this includes the liberations of Bergen Belsen, Neuengamme, and a sub camp of Neuengamme, Bad Segeberg concentration camp, the latter of which is where the SS prisoners were held.

I am incredibly lucky for three things in relation to my Grandfather:

He and my Grandmother kept all their letters from the war, labelled them in frankly archival detail, and passed said letters down to me.

Working in Signals allowed my Grandfather to write about events during the war that might not have otherwise made it past army censors, such as details, and dates.

He was a very good writer, and he wrote every day about all that he had seen.

Now, all that out in the open for everyone to get on the same page (more or less), back to the Book Thief.

In all honesty, I laughed and cheered more times than I felt upset while listening to it. I adore Rosa Hubermann, though I'd loathe her in reality if I had to deal with her, she and her 'tact' made me cackle with glee so many times. Zuzack's descriptions are as beautiful as they are at times a little too flowery for my personal tastes, but they are immersive despite this. And of course the Narrator is wonderful.

I always knew what was coming and the depth of what was happening beyond our view of events in the story, so it did take some of the punch out of matters for me. I couldn't ever say I was sad while listening to it.

A book can be read in as many ways as there are individuals to read it. My reading of it left me with a strong impression of civilian life during the third reich from a child's perspective, it taught me how to swear in German much to my (learning) German-speaking father's delight and bemusement, and it's given me a new recommendation to put forward to the teen offspring of friends as a good first book to discussing the complexities of WW2.

So, yes. I highly recommend the Book Thief by Markus Zuzack.

#asks #The Book Thief #Book recommendations

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carbone14 · 6 months

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Lancement du paquebot Cap Arcona – Chantier naval Blohm & Voss – Hambourg – 14 mai 1927

Le 3 mai 1945, le Paquebot Cap Arcona est coulé par l'aviation britannique avec deux autres navires (le Thielbek et le Deutschland) alors que sont parqués à bord des milliers de déportés. Le 14 avril 1945, Himmler ordonne de transférer les prisonniers du camp de concentration de Neuengamme vers la Suède pour les remettre aux alliés en échange de certains avantages. Le naufrage du Cap Arcona a causé la mort d'environ 5 250 personnes.

#WWII #avant-guerre #pre-war #marine marchande #merchant marine #paquebot #ocean liner #cap arcona #chantier naval blohm & voss #blohm & voss shipyard #hambourg #hamburg #allemagne #germany #14/05/1927 #05/1927 #1927

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ninen-amar · 2 years

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Neuengamme concentration camp. Hamburg, Germany. 06 / 05 / 2016

#germany #remember

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iwasntfree · 12 days

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In "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" the narrator has a dream the night before Sebastian dies. He imagines that his half-brother's hand has been horribly maimed in an accident. In the early fall of 1945, in his apartment in Cambridge, Mass., Nabokov dreamed of his brother Sergei. He saw him lying on a bunk in a German concentration camp, in terrible pain. The next day he received a letter from a family member in Prague. According to camp records, "Sergej Nabokoff" had died on Jan. 9, 1945, of a combination of dysentery, starvation and exhaustion. Neuengamme was liberated four months later.

Lev Grossman, The gay Nabokov

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f0xd13-blog · 3 months

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Trollmann became famous in the late 1920s.[3] On 9 June 1933, he fought for the German light-heavyweight title and although he clearly led by points over his opponent Adolf Witt, the fight was judged "no result".[3] The audience rebelled, and the Nazi officials were forced to acknowledge Trollmann as the victor. However, six days later he was stripped of the title. A new fight was scheduled for 21 July, with Gustav Eder as Trollmann's opponent. Trollmann was threatened that he had to change his "dancing" style or lose his licence. Trollmann arrived the day of the match with his hair dyed blonde and his face whitened with flour, the caricature of an Aryan. He took the blows of his opponent as he was asked for five rounds before he collapsed.[4]

The persecution of Sinti and Roma in Germany dramatically increased in the following years.[5] Sterilization often preceded their internment in concentration camps, and Trollmann too underwent this operation. In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, and fought on the eastern front.[6] He was wounded in 1941 and was returned to Germany as a result.[7] The Gestapo arrested him in June 1942, and he was interned in Neuengamme concentration camp. He tried to keep a low profile, but the camp commandant had been a boxing official before the war and recognized Trollmann.[7] He used Trollmann as a trainer for his troops during the nights. The prisoners committee decided to act, as Trollmann's health deteriorated. They faked his death and managed to get him transferred to the adjacent camp of Wittenberge under an assumed identity. The former star was soon recognized and the prisoners organized a fight between him and Emil Cornelius, a former criminal and hated Kapo (a prisoner given privileges for taking on responsibilities in the camp, often a convict working for a reduced sentence or parole). Trollmann won, Cornelius sought revenge for his humiliation and forced Trollmann to work all day until he was exhausted, before attacking and killing him with a shovel. Trollmann was 36 years old.[1]

Before a roma

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brookstonalmanac · 5 months

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Events 12.13 (before 1960)

1294 – Saint Celestine V resigns the papacy after only five months to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit. 1545 – The Council of Trent begins as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation. 1577 – Sir Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage. 1623 – The Plymouth Colony establishes the system of trial by 12-men jury in the American colonies. 1636 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians, a date now considered the founding of the National Guard of the United States. 1642 – Abel Tasman is the first recorded European to sight New Zealand. 1643 – English Civil War: The Battle of Alton takes place in Hampshire. 1758 – The English transport ship Duke William sinks in the North Atlantic, killing over 360 people. 1769 – Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, with a royal charter from King George III, on land donated by Royal governor John Wentworth. 1818 – Cyril VI of Constantinople resigns from his position as Ecumenical Patriarch under pressure from the Ottoman Empire. 1862 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee defeats Union Major General Ambrose Burnside. 1867 – A Fenian bomb explodes in Clerkenwell, London, killing 12 people and injuring 50. 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: The city of Nanjing, defended by the National Revolutionary Army under the command of General Tang Shengzhi, falls to the Japanese. This is followed by the Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese troops rape and slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians. 1938 – The Holocaust: The Neuengamme concentration camp opens in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany. 1939 – The Battle of the River Plate is fought off the coast of Uruguay; the first naval battle of World War II. The Kriegsmarine's Deutschland-class cruiser (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee engages with three Royal Navy cruisers: HMS Ajax, HMNZS Achilles and HMS Exeter. 1943 – World War II: The Massacre of Kalavryta by German occupying forces in Greece. 1949 – The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 1957 – The Mw  6.5 Farsinaj earthquake strikes Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII, causing at least 1,119 deaths and damaging over 5,000 homes. 1959 – Archbishop Makarios III becomes the first President of Cyprus.

#Events

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warmaster-uk · 2 years

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A Flemish prisoner in Breendonk Prison, Belgium, 1944. The Breendonk internment camp was located in a Belgian fortress built at the beginning of the twentieth century along the Antwerp-Brussels highway. Originally one in a chain of fortresses constructed to defend Belgium against a German attack, Breendonk was near the town of the same name, about 12 miles southwest of Antwerp. It was surrounded by high walls and a water-filled moat and measured 656 by 984 feet. In August 1940, the Germans, who had occupied Belgium in May of that year, turned the fortress into a detention camp. Fewer than 4,000 prisoners in total were confined in Breendonk during its existence. Most of the non-Jewish prisoners were leftist members of the Belgian resistance or were held as hostages by the Germans. Several hundred people were murdered in the camp through torture, executions, and harsh conditions. In September 1941, the Belgian Communist prisoners were sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp. Jewish prisoners in Breendonk were segregated from other prisoners until 1942. Thereafter, they were transferred to the Mechelen (Malines) transit camp View This Term in the Glossary in Belgium or deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing centre in Nazi-occupied Poland. With Allied forces approaching the camp, the Germans evacuated Breendonk in August 1944. The remaining prisoners were transferred to the Mechelen camp and then deported to camps in Germany and occupied Poland. Original photo by George Rodger, Information by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/) #secondworldwar #ww2 #worldwartwo #worldwar2 #war #history #militaryhistory #military #colourised #colorized #colourisedhistory #colorizedhistory #color #colour #colorizedhistoricalphotos #colorization #colourisation #retro #goodolddays #classic #goldenoldies #colorizedphoto #colourisedphoto #prison #holocaust #belgium #breendonk #detention #1944 https://www.instagram.com/p/CjOqKWbKnJb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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fuckyeahhistorycrushes · 3 years

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Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski - Polish boxing champion who boxed in Auschwitz to survive

One of the first prisoners taken to the camp was 23-year old Polish boxer, Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski. Before the war, Teddy was the bantamweight vice-champion of Poland and a champion of Warsaw. ''He was a student of the legendary Polish trainer Feliks Stamm, whom Pietrzykowski credits with having made a 'gentleman' out of him, by teaching him the meaning of Poland's national motto: ''God, Honour, Homeland''.'' (''The Boxer's Encounter with a Saint'', Joseph Czarnecki). After the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, Pietrzykowski had hopes of joining the Polish army that was forming in France, as a fighter pilot, but he was arrested by the Germans on the Hungaro-Yugoslav border. He was transferred to Auschwitz in the first mass transportation. His camp number was 77. Once the prison guards became aware of his boxing talents they quickly forced him to compete for their entertainment. For Pietrzykowski, it was a fight for survival.

His first boxing opponent was Walter Dünning who, before the war, was a middleweight vice-champion of Germany. Dünning was 70kg, Pietrzykowski about 40/45kg. Dünning stopped the fight when he realised that he was losing, and Pietrzykowski got a loaf of bread and a bar of margarine as a prize.

More fights were to follow. Pietrzykowski threw himself into them, knowing full well that he risked death by starvation. For his fellow inmates, every blow he struck was a source of pride and hope. "We were elated. We said to ourselves, 'As long as there's a Pole punching a German in the face, Poland's not lost.'' His most celebrated Auschwitz match was against Schally Hottenach, a 96-kilo German. Teddy won with a second-round knockout. Those fights were like a hope transfusion in a place without hope. A Pole beating up a German in the German concentration camp, in the face of unspeakable horror. We are aware of 40 to 60 boxing matches. He lost only once – to a Jewish boxer, Leu Sanders, the Dutch light-middleweight champion. Eventually, Pietrzykowski won in a rematch. ''Sanders was a very good boxer, and in the fight with him I had to make the greatest effort of my life... His wife and children were gassed in Birkenau.'' (''The Boxer's Encounter with a Saint'', Joseph Czarnecki)

Pietrzykowski was collaborating with cavalry captain Witold Pilecki, who got into the camp voluntarily under a false name to gain proof of Nazi crimes and organise resistance. In his reports, Pilecki recalled Pietrzykowski as a boxer who shared the food he won with other resistance members.

One day Pietrzykowski noticed a guard severely maltreating Fr. Maximilian Kolbe (a Polish Catholic priest). The boxer decided to give the guard a lesson. He told the SS officers to stand up to him in a fist-fight. The Germans agreed and in the next moment the guard was knocked out on the ground with one blow. The beaten Kolbe asked Teddy to leave the guard in peace. Pietrzykowski met Father Maximilian once more. He gave him a piece of bread. The next day he learned that someone stole it from Kolbe. Pietrzykowski was enraged. He seized the thief but the Franciscan did not let to hurt him. “As I had a piece of bread in a pocket, I gave it to Kolbe and he, before my very eyes, gave it to the thief saying ‘he is also hungry’”, told Pietrzykowski.

On 14th of March, 1943, he was relocated to the Neuengamme camp near Hamburg, where he fought about 20 matches, and then to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where he was eventually liberated by British soldiers. After the liberation he joined the Polish 1st Armoured Division under Major General Maczek as a sports coach. Then he returned to Poland and became a PE teacher in Bielsko-Biała. He didn't pursue a boxing career after the war – he devoted himself to working with youth. In one of the gyms he worked in, he wrote a motivational slogan on the wall for his pupils: "To be, is to be the best."

#history #history crushes #tadeusz pietrzykowski #teddy pietrzykowski #poland #boxing #sports #ww2 #auschwitz #maximilian kolbe #witold pilecki #world war 2 #Neuengamme #bergen belsen camp #general maczek #submission

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ifelllikeastar · 2 years

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Remembering ~ Anne Frank

Anne was a German girl and Jewish victim of the Holocaust who is famous for keeping a diary of her experiences. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Anne's diary from June 1942 to August 1944 is regarded as the most famous personal account of the Holocaust.

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam in 1942 to escape persecution under Nazi occupation. She gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, lit. 'the back house'; English: The Secret Annex), in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

During World War II, Anne Frank hid from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms, in the rear building, of the 17th-century canal house, later known as the Secret Annex.

From 1942 to 1944, eight people all lived in the Secret Annex.

Otto Frank, wife Edith, children Margot and Anne Frank. The van Pels family, Hermann, wife Auguste, and son Peter. They were also joined by Frtiz Pheffer.

They were completely dependent on six helpers; employees and friends of Anne's father. The helpers provided food and clothing, as well as books, magazines and newspapers.

The six helpers were, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Johan Voskuijl and wife Bep and Jan Gies and wife Miep.

While in hiding, her family was betrayed two years later by Willem Gerardus van Maaren (the person most often suggested as the betrayer of Anne Frank) Her family was sent to concentration camps at Auschwitz and later Belson.

The only surviving person in the Frank family was Anne’s father Otto. Edith Frank died of starvation at Auschwitz in January 1945. Margot and Anne Frank died of spotted typhus in February 1945 and their bodies thrown into a mass grave.

Hermann van Pels died in the gas chambers in October 1944, wife Auguste died at the Theresienstadt concentration camp of typhus in 1945 and son Peter van Pels died at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in May 1945.

Fritz Pheffer died of a gastrointestinal infection at Neuengamme concentration camp in 1944.

Born Annelies Marie Frank on June 12, 1929 in Frankfort, Germany and died circa February 1945 at Bergen- Belson concentration camp, Nazi, Germany at the age of 15 (three months before her 16th birthday)

Read more here: https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/

#anne frank #jewish #holocaust #love #secret annex #dutch #germany #world war II #auschwitz #belson #bergen-belson

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dirjoh-blog · 2 years

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The dark history of Porsche-Porsche and the Nazi regime.

When you think of a sports car, one of the names you think of is Porsche. When you see a Porsche driving by , there is no second guessing to what car it is. The Dutch police used Porsches between 1962 and 1996. n the early 1960s the absence of a speed limit indications on Dutch motorways saw serious accidents on the rise, so the Rijkspolitie(State police) was tasked with finding a suitable…

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#Albert Speer #Arbeitsdorf concentration camp #Car Racing #History #Neuengamme Concentration camp #Porsche #Sachsenhausen #Volkswagen #World War 2

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uranianrights · 2 years

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Danish Homosexuals and Asocials in Nazi Concentration Camps

Brief context before we start: About 6,000 Danes were interned in concentration camps. The breakdown is, according to this source, 2850 resistance fighers, 1900 police officers, 141 border gendarmes, 150 Communist, 481 Jews, 450 “Asocials”. The low number of Danish Jews interned is because most of the Danish Jewish population managed to flee to Sweden.

What follows is a translation of this article: https://folkedrab.dk/artikler/danske-homoseksuelle-og-asociale-i-nazistisk-koncentrationslejr (all emphasis mine)

During the occupation, Danish homosexual men were arrested and deported to the concentration camp Neuengamme, because German authorities perceived them as a threat against society. They were placed in the same group as the so-called “asocials” and “habitual offenders.” After the war, the asocial group was the only one to receive a massive amount of rejections of compensation: their deportations were thought to be their own fault.

Detainment and Deportation of Asocials and Habitual Offenders

From September 1944 to January 1945 a group of at least 465 Danish men were arrested and deported to the concentration camp Neuengamme in Germany. This happened because the German authorities had arrested the Danish police and German police were now in charge of crime prevention in Denmark. The original plan was for the arrestees to stay in Denmark, but the Danish prisons and camps were full to the brim so instead the group was deported to Neuengamme.

The 465 men were arrested in two ways:

German police raided places they knew to be haunts of criminals and black market traders. If the German police judged that there were grounds to uphold the arrest, the detainees were deported to Neuengamme.

German police reviewed the Danish police's registries of former convicts, made a selection and then went out to the former convicts' addresses and arrested them.

The detainees were called “asocials” and “habitual offenders” by the Nazis. The “asocial” term referred to homosexuals, criminals, the unemployed, vagabonds, the homeless, beggars, Roma, prostitutes and alcoholics. The “habitual offender” term was used about people who had broken the law more than once. The Nazis saw the group as a threat to society because they wouldn’t conform to the social community – according to the Nazis. Both homosexuals, asocials and habitual offenders were deported to concentration camps to be “reeducated.”

Many were not criminals at all

The word habitual offender evokes ideas of hard-boiled criminals who have committed several serious criminal acts and keep sliding back into crime. For the 465 men who were deported, this was not the case in the vast majority of cases. Actually many of them had never even been convicted of anything illegal. As many as 175 of the 465 men were not registered as convicts in the National Registry. Several others had already served their sentence many years back and had committed no new criminal acts since. Some men had committed just one criminal act in the 1920s and were arrested by the Nazis based on that. Many had only committed minor crimes.

Why were they detained – Crime Prevention or Racial Ideology?

The immediate reason for deporting the 465 men was crime prevention: The German authorities were afraid a rise in crime would occur after the arrest of the Danish police. But if the goal was to fight crime, why deport people who weren’t criminals or had only committed minor crimes?

The question is which type of crime prevention was in use and who the Nazis saw as criminals. The Nazis saw both asocial and “habitually offending” behavior as a result of hereditary degeneration, endangering the health of the Aryan race and the morals and norms of the community. In Germany, asocials and habitual offenders were sterilised or castrated in an attempt to improve the qualities of the Aryan race, and interned in concentration camps to be reeducated.

Even though the main reason for the deportations was the German authorities wishing to prevent crime in Denmark, the way it was carried out was infected by Nazi racial ideology. When the Nazis feared a rise in crime and quick action was required, they used racial ideology as their compass in defining who was a criminal and how they should be punished. That is how the deportations included people who could be categorised as asocials and habitual offenders even though they weren’t criminals.

No Pink Triangles

It is known for sure that there were homosexual men among the 465 Danish men, who were deported as asocials and habitual offenders, but it’s unclear how many and who they were. Some of the homosexual men had been previously been convicted by the Danish authorities for relationships with other men. German police likely took notice of them when they went through Danish registries of former convicts, then went to find them and arrest them and deport them to Neuengamme. They were registered as asocials and habitual offenders and thus wore black triangles in the concentration camp like the rest of the group, unlike other homosexual men who wore the pink triangle and were deported under the classification “homosexuals” because they had violated the German paragraph 175 that prohibited homosexuality. It’s unknown why the Danish homosexuals weren’t given the pink triangle but it may be because the Danish homosexuals were convicted under Danish morality laws that only criminalised some forms of homosexuality. As part of the larger group and as former criminals they could thus be classified as asocials and habitual offenders, but the low number may also have played a role.

The Crimes of the Homosexual Men

It is not known exactly what prior convictions the homosexual men had, but Danish law prohibited several forms of homosexuality. Prior to 1933 one could be punished simply for being an active homosexual (”sodomy”). In 1933 a new penal code was enacted in which the prohibition against sodomy was lifted. Private homosexual relations between adult men were thus no longer forbidden, but homosexual men could still be convicted under the new penal code: The new law prohibited homosexuality in public (“immorality” and “obscene conduct”).

From lists of the deported criminals it can be discerned that some of them were convicted for immorality, but we don’t know whether this was homosexual or heterosexual immorality. There were also punishments for prostitution and homosexual relationships to young men and boys. The new penal code set the age of consent as 16 for heterosexuals and 18 for homosexuals. Additionally, the so-called “seduction paragraph” was introduced which prohibited “abuse of age and experience-based superiority” with an age of consent of 18 for heterosexuals and 21 for homosexuals. There was a further difference in that for heterosexuals, the paragraph required proof of “gross abuse” while for homosexuals, only proof that “abuse” had taken place was required. It would take until 1976 before the age of consent was lowered to 15 for both homosexuals and heterosexuals and the seduction paragraph was repealed in Denmark.

Thus homosexual men could be punished for sexual acts in public, for receiving payment for sex and for sex with men and boys under 18 and 21. It is thus highly likely that the homosexual men were deported to Neuengamme for relationships we would not perceive as criminal today.

17 castrated men with "inclination towards committing constitution-related sexual crimes"

The Danish authorities negotiated with the Germans to release the deported men and get them home from the concentration camps. If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could document that the deportees had changed their ways, they were more likely to be released. Therefore, the Medical Examiner's Council was asked for an opinion on 17 men who had previously had an "inclination towards committing constitution-related sexual crimes". The Medical Examiner's Council replied that the 17 men were able to live a "... full social life, without any risk that they might again be in conflict with the law", because they had previously been castrated and thus were no longer in possession of their “inclinations”. In at least one case, it led to a release.

We do not know for sure if these 17 castrated men were homosexual, but there are several elements that suggest it. For example, psychiatry at the time used the term “constitution-related” about homosexuals who were innately homosexual.

Some returned home, many died

The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested the deportations from the beginning and were in dialogue with the German authorities in an effort to have as many of the so-called asocials and habitual offenders returned home as possible. The first prisoners were released one by one or in small groups by German initiative already by December 1944, following inquiries from loved ones, while Danish home transport began in February 1945. In April 1945 the last prisoners arrived home with the White Buses.

But the Danish authorities were also discriminatory in their down-prioritization of the negotiation of the cases of the asocials and habitual criminals. According to Councilor A. Tscherning in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they had to "wait behind the more useful members of society".

Some prisoners never returned home. There is no agreement among historians about how many asocials and habitual offenders lost their lives, but numbers vary between 15% to 30%. The most reliable numbers point to a mortality closer to 30% than 15% however. Compared to other groups of deported Danes (resistance fighters, Communists, police, Jews, etc) this is the highest mortality rate and this despite the fact that the asocials and habitual offenders were deported for a shorter period of time.

Life in the Concentration Camp

There are many reasons to believe that conditions during and following the stay in the German camps were worse for the Danish asocials and habitual offenders than for the resistance fighters. In the camps were they lived together, there was no national solidarity between them: the two groups kept to themselves. The asocials ranked lower in the hierarchy of the camp and were often excluded from the prisoner community

In the Frøslev Camp, the asocials were, as ordered by the Germans, isolated in their own barrack and had their hair shaven into a mohawk so they could be differentiated from the other prisoners on sight. They were made to march as a punishment and the other prisoners looked down on them and did not allow them into their togetherness.

In Porta Westfalica, a sub-camp of Neuengamme, a great number of the asocials were placed together with the Danish resistance fighters and the negative view of the asocials is evident here too: The resistance fighers describe how the asocials were doing physically and psychologically worst, complained the most of the work and conditions in the camp and were accused of being unable to show solidarity with the other prisoners due to their criminal background. It is notable, however, that the resistance fighters always speak of the asocials negatively as a group, never as individuals. There were actually several friendships between resistance fighters and asocials, for example between the police officer Knud Wiese and the street urchin Hjalmar. This goes to show that the social conditions in the camps were complex and the stigmatisation of the asocials was due both to the concentration camp hierarchy system and the then-current negative notions about criminals that the resistance fighters were affected by. How the asocials themselves experienced conditions in the camp is unfortunately largely unknown.

From other camps were homosexuals were interned and wore the pink triangle, we know that their mortality was very high: about 60%. Apart from Jews, this was the highest mortality rate among interned groups. This was due to the homosexuals’ status as the lowest one in the camp hierarchy, where both guards and other prisoners looked down on them. It remains unclear how conditions were for the Danish homosexuals and whether or not they differed from the bigger group of asocials and habitual offenders. Most likely conditions did not differ much. The crucial difference between Danish homosexual men and other homosexual men in the camps was that the Danes wore the black triangle and were classified as asocials or habitual offenders and thus not as homosexuals. This meant that there was no way for guards, prisoners and others in the camps to tell that they were convicted for homosexuality.

Hid their sexuality

There are no accounts by Danish prisoners that mention homosexual men or homosexuality among the Danish prisoners. The Danish resistance fighter Jørgen Kieler, who was interned at Porta Westfalica, even writes in his memoir that there were no Danish homosexual prisoners in the camp. Many of the Danish asocials were interned in Porta Westfalica and if there were homosexual men in this group, it has apparently not been visible to Kieler and others in the camp. The homosexuals had good reason to hide their sexuality, as the cases of homosexual relations in Porta Westfalica were looked upon very poorly. Several Danish prisoners mention the so-called “Russian boys” (Soviet prisoners of war) who prostituted themselves for prison functionaries in exchange for protection, food and lighter work. Due to this prostitution as well as racial prejudices against Eastern European, they were despised by their fellow prisoners. Hiding their sexuality likely improved the chances of survival for the Danish homosexuals compared to other homosexuals whose sexuality was visible.

No recognition or help after the war

Most of the so-called asocials and habitual offenders were granted neither compensation nor recognition for their suffering the first many years following the war and to this day not many know that this group was also a victim of Nazi persecution.

On October 1st 1945, the Danish government passed a law about compensation for the victims of the occupation in recognition of the great need for public assistance in the people whose existence had been destroyed by the events of the war. One could receive compensation for death or disability due to acts of war, including persecution and deportations by the German occupational force, as well as for so-called tort compensation for imprisonment and deportation. 78% of applicants from the asocial and habitual offender group had their applications for compensation for their time in concentration camps rejected. This was the highest rejection rate among all groups of deportees who applied. In many cases, the Compensation Council in effect accepted the German reasoning behind the arrests and claimed that the asocials had brought their imprisonment and deportation on themselves.

Silence and Shame

While stories of deportations of e.g. resistance fighters to the concentration camps were told in the post-war period, there was silence concerning the asocials. This silence has largely lasted up until today. The asocials and habitual offenders had no prisoner community, no interest organisations and no spokespeople, who could – or would – tell their stories. The group lacked the resources, the political backing and the historical research that gave other groups their place in the common memory of the war.

The negative notions about the asocials did not disappear in 1945. In Danish eugenicist legislation, people with physical disabilities, mental illnesses, psychotic conditions, arsonists, epileptics, alcoholics and – in particular – the feebleminded were sterilised, forbidden from marrying or placed in asylums up until 1969, just as castrations of homosexuals and sex criminals continued. These pervasive prejudices have helped maintain the silence and hindered a recognition of homosexual men and others from the group of asocials and habitual offenders as victims of Nazi persecution.

#nazis #eugenics #black triangle #concentration camps #danish history

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eretzyisrael · 3 years

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The German chief executive also acknowledged his company’s “special responsibility in connection with the Third Reich.”

Volkswagen was founded in 1937, as part of Adolf Hitler’s vision to enable German families to own their first car. On May 26, 1938, Nazi dignitaries gathered near Fallersleben in northern Germany to lay the foundation stone for the Volkswagen Works. Adolf Hitler was present, predicting that this Volkswagen, initially known as the Kraft-durch-Freude-Wagen, or KdF-Wagen, would be “a symbol of the National Socialist people’s community.”

During World War II, the Wolfsburg-based firm manufactured vehicles for the German army, using more than 15,000 slave laborers from nearby concentration camps.

One VW plant engineer traveled to Auschwitz and personally selected 300 skilled metalworkers from the massive transports of Hungarian Jews in 1944. In addition, 650 Jewish women were transferred to assemble military munitions. The official relationship between the Nazi concentration camps and Volkswagen was cemented when the Fallersleben facility officially became a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Although popularized by the Nazis, “Arbeit Macht Frei” was coined by the 19th century linguist, ethnologist, and author, Lorenz Diefenbach.

The inscription appeared at the Dachau concentration camp, set up by Heinrich Himmler in 1933 to use dissidents as slave labor, and later became part of the Nazis’ deception for the real use of the concentration and death camps. The most infamous camp gate that contained the slogan was at Auschwitz in Poland.

#volkswagen #holocaust #auschwitz #dachau

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comrade-meow · 3 years

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[‘Assignment to Slave Labour’, Auschwitz, Poland, c.1940. US Holocaust Memorial Museum.]

Menstruation and the Holocaust

Periods are a fact of life, but little talked about. How did women in the concentration camps cope with the private being made public in the most dire and extreme circumstances?

Menstruation is rarely a topic that comes to mind when we think about the Holocaust and has been largely avoided as an area of historical research. This is regrettable, as periods are a central part of women’s experience. Oral testimonies and memoirs show that women felt ashamed discussing menstruation during their time in the concentration camps, but, at the same time, they kept bringing the subject up, overcoming the stigma that is attached to them.

Typically, menstruation has been seen as a medical problem to be overcome rather than as a natural occurrence and a part of life. Medical historians, for example, have explored the forced experiments in sterilisation that were conducted in Auschwitz. Sabine Hildebrandt examined the research of the pathologist Hermann Stieve, who experimented on female political prisoners awaiting execution in Plötzensee. Stieve looked at the effect stress had on the reproductive system. Similarly, Anna Hájková has written about the Jewish Theresienstadt prisoner and physician František Bass’ research on amenorrhoea, the loss of menstruation, which focused on how it was caused by the shock of incarceration. Interestingly, however, almost all this research discussed ovulation (and its lack) rather than menstruation, even though both are part of the same biological function.

Periods impacted on the lives of female Holocaust victims in a variety of ways: for many, menstruation was linked to the shame of bleeding in public and the discomfort of dealing with it. Periods also saved some women from being sexually assaulted. Equally, amenorrhoea could be a source of anxiety: about fertility, the implications for their lives after the camps and about having children in the future.

A much-cited argument in Holocaust scholarship, made by Hannah Arendt, is that the totalitarian regime of the camps broke human solidarity, making them a very isolating place to be. But, contrary to this view, periods could provide moments of bonding and solidarity among prisoners: many older women gave help to teenagers, who experienced their first period alone after their families had been murdered. When we look for it, many survivors talk with great openness about their periods. Having or not having a period could shape daily experience of the camps.

What is a woman?

After deportation to camps and ghettos, due to malnutrition and shock, a significant number of female Holocaust victims of reproductive age stopped menstruating. Many were afraid that they would be left infertile after their bodies were forced to their limits, making the intrinsic link between periods and fertility apparent and increasingly central to their lives. Gerda Weissman, originally from Bielsko in Poland and 15 years old during her incarceration, later reflected that a key reason she wanted to survive was because she wanted to have children. She described it as ‘an obsession’. Similarly, the French publicist, resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo mentions a discussion that took place among a room full of women:

“It’s upsetting not to go through those unclean period … You begin to feel like an old woman. Timidly, Big Irene asked: ‘And what if they never come back afterwards?’ At her words a ripple of horror swept over us … Catholics crossed over themselves, others recited the Shema; everyone tried to exorcise this curse the German were holding over us: sterility. How could one sleep after that?”

These reactions reflected both religious and cultural diversity, showing that regardless of faith, culture or nationality, it was a worry all could relate to. The historian of Holocaust literature S. Lillian Kremer argued that, in addition to the fear of becoming infertile, the prisoners’ uncertainty over whether their fertility would return if they survived made the loss of menstruation a ‘dual psychological assault’ on female identity.

Upon entry into the camp, prisoners were given shapeless clothing and had their heads shaved. They lost weight, including from their hips and breasts, two areas commonly associated with femininity. Oral testimonies and memoirs show that all of these changes compelled them to question their identities. When reflecting on her time in Auschwitz, Erna Rubinstein, a Polish Jew who was 17 when in the camps, asked in her memoir, The Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust (1986): ‘What is a woman without her glory on her head, without hair? A woman who doesn’t menstruate?’

[Untitled drawing by Nina Jirsíková, 1941. Remembrance and Memorial Ravensbrück/SBG, V780 E1.]

It is only due to the commercialisation of a natural physical occurrence that we now have resources such as pads and tampons that are specifically geared towards easing the ‘inconvenience’ of menstruation. Terms such as ‘sanitary equipment’ show that menstruation is treated as a health and hygiene concern - something to be sanitised. The reality of the camps, however, meant that menstruation was hard to avoid or hide. Its suddenly public nature took many women by surprise and made them feel alienated. An additional obstacle was the lack of rags and the lack of opportunities to wash. Trude Levi, a Jewish-Hungarian nursery teacher, then aged 20, later recalled: ‘We had no water to wash ourselves, we had no underwear. We could go nowhere. Everything was sticking to us, and for me, that was perhaps the most dehumanising thing of everything.’ Many women have talked about how menstruating with no access to supplies made them feel subhuman. It is the specific ‘dirt’ of menstruation more than any other dirt, and the fact that their menstrual blood marked them as female, that made these women feel as though they were the lowest level of humanity.

The humiliation was furthered by the struggle of finding rags. Julia Lentini, a 17-year-old Romani from Biedenkopf in Germany, spent her summer months travelling through the country with her parents and 14 siblings. She was placed on kitchen detail during her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau and later Schlieben. She discusses in her testimony how women had to learn tricks for survival when it came to menstruation in the camps. ‘You took the undergarment slip they gave you, ripped it and made little rags, and guarded those little rags like they were gold … you rinsed them out a little bit, put them under the mattress and dried them, then nobody else could steal the little rags.’ Rags were precious and, being so, they were not immune to theft. Some people compensated by using other materials. Gerda Weissman recalls: ‘It was a hard thing because you had no supplies you know. You had to find little pieces of paper and some things from under the loos.’

Rags could almost be considered to have their own micro-economy. As well as being stolen, they were given away, borrowed and traded. Elizabeth Feldman de Jong’s testimony highlights the value of second-hand rags. Not long after she arrived at Auschwitz, her periods disappeared. Her sister, however, continued to menstruate every month. Experiments involving injections in the womb were common, but if a woman was on her period doctors often avoided operating, finding it too messy. One day, Elizabeth was called to have an operation. There were no clean clothes as opportunities to wash were limited, so Elizabeth put her sister’s underwear on and showed the doctor, telling him that she had her period. He refused to operate. Elizabeth realised she could use her sister’s situation to save herself from experimentation and did so another three times at Auschwitz.

Shame and salvation

Livia Jackson, barely old enough to menstruate, felt repulsion at seeing blood flowing down the legs of another girl during roll call: ‘I would rather die than have blood flowing down my legs.’ Her reaction conveys a common attitude: although the lack of access to supplies to stem their menstrual flow was not their fault, many women still felt ashamed.

Scholar Breanne Fahs argues that women’s bodies are viewed as ‘leaky and troublesome’ and their bodily functions are seen as inconvenient, distasteful and unhygienic. Men, on the other hand, tend to receive praise for their secretions: urine, flatulence and semen can be seen as humorous, even sexy. Yet the very notion that periods are repulsive could save women during the Holocaust from being raped. Doris Bergen’s classic discussion of sexual violence in the Holocaust includes an interesting example of two Polish-Jewish women assaulted by Wehrmacht soldiers:

On 18 February 1940 in Petrikau, two sentries … abducted the Jewess Machmanowic (age eighteen) and the Jewess Santowska (age seventeen) at gunpoint from their parents’ homes. The soldiers took the girls to the Polish cemetery; there they raped one of them. The other was having a period at the time. The men told her to come back in a few days and promised her five zlotys.

Similarly, Lucille Eichengreen, a young German-Jewish prisoner, recalled in her memoir that during her imprisonment in a Neuengamme satellite camp in the winter of 1944-5, she had found a scarf and was thrilled: she planned to use it to cover her shorn head. Worried that she would be punished for owning a prohibited object, Eichengreen hid the scarf between her legs. Later, a German guard took her aside and, while attempting to rape her, groped her between her legs and felt the scarf. The man exclaimed: ‘You dirty useless whore! Phooey! You’re bleeding!’ His error protected Lucille from rape. In discussing these stories, we must discern the irony at hand: it is rape that should be viewed as disgusting and menstruation as natural and acceptable.

Camp families

Some teenagers experienced their first period in the camps alone, separated from their families or orphaned. In such cases, older prisoners provided help and advice. Tania Kauppila, a Ukrainian in Mühldorf concentration camp, was 13 when she started her periods. She did not know what was happening and shed many tears. She was scared that she was going to die and did not know what to do. Older women in the camp taught her and others in the same position about periods. The girls were taught how to handle it and what they needed to do in order to cope with the blood flow. It was a different learning process than they would have had at home: ‘You tried to steal a piece of brown paper, you know, from the bags and do the best you can’, recalled Kauppila. This story reoccurs across numerous oral testimonies. Many orphaned survivors who had just started mentioned the help of older women, who took on both a sisterly and motherly role in helping these young girls, before they experienced potential amenorrhoea; older women usually lost their period within the first two or three months of imprisonment.

Feminist scholars such as Sibyl Milton have pointed out the female ‘camp families’ that formed. It is striking, however, that the sisterhood of menstruation has not been written about. As Lentini highlights, if a girl got her period and did not know who to talk to, an older woman would usually ‘explain it very simply’. Twenty-year-old Hungarian Vera Federman spent time in Auschwitz and the Allendorf. She and a friend were able to get work in the kitchen, a precious job. Eating extra potatoes caused their periods to come back and then both girls stole rags from the female guards. This theft, of course, put them in great danger (not to mention the threat of losing their job), but Federman stressed the solidarity with her friend as they teamed up to help each other. In the often violent world of the camps, older women were willing to help educate unknown young girls, expecting nothing in return.

Gendered social networks of support and help developed in the camps. Arendt wrote that ‘the camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment of eliminating, under scientifically controlled conditions, spontaneity itself as an expression of human behaviour’. The female solidarity brought about by the shared experience of menstruation, however, tells another story.

After the liberation, the majority of those who suffered amenorrhoea during their time in the concentration camps eventually started menstruating again. The return of periods was a joyous occasion for many. London-born Amy Zahl Gottlieb was, at 24, the youngest member of the first Jewish Relief Unit ever posted overseas. While discussing her work with liberated camp members in her interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Gottlieb described how women began to lead normal lives and started to menstruate again; they were thrilled to be able to start having children. Menstruation became a symbol of their freedom. One survivor spoke of it as ‘my womanhood returning’.

The study of menstruation, a topic that has until now been perceived as irrelevant, or even disgusting, gives us a far more nuanced view of women’s experience of the Holocaust. We can see how notions of menstruation, rape, sterility and sisterhood changed in the camps. It seems that periods, a long-stigmatised topic, became, sometimes in the space of only months, a legitimate topic for women in camps.

Following the recent turns to cultural history, the history of the senses and the history of the body, we also need to recognise menstruation as valid and as defining victims’ experiences during the Holocaust.

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European Network of Migrant Women

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