Major Crimes and True Crime

Did you know that Audrey Hepburn helped the Dutch resistance during the Holocaust?  Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, on May 4, 1929. Her mother was a Dutch noblewoman and so she grew up in the Netherlands, mainly in Amsterdam. When the Nazis invaded Amsterdam, Audrey went by the name “Edda van Heemstra” as having an English sounding name was dangerous under occupation.  In 1942, her uncle was executed by the Nazis and her half brother was deported to a concentration camp. Her other half brother went into hiding shortly thereafter. Audrey witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust from the outside. After the war, she said: “more than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train. I was a child observing a child.”...

At age 27, with no prior trial experience, Ben Ferencz prosecuted what was then called “the biggest murder trial in history.” He secured guilty verdicts against 22 perpetrators, including Nazi officials, at the Nuremberg trials. They were tried for the murder of over a million people, most of whom were Jewish. Ben was a recent Harvard Law graduate when he was tasked with helping to set up the United States’ first war crimes branch in Europe. He collected evidence of Nazi crimes as the Allies liberated concentration camps. "I had peered into hell," Ben said of what he witnessed. Ben became a prosecutor only because no one else was available when new evidence was uncovered.  After the trials, he devoted his life to fighting for peace and justice.  Photos 1 and 2: USHMM, courtesy of Benjamin Ferencz #OTD #Holocaust #Birthday

During the Holocaust, many heroic women resisted the Nazis in any way they could. Some fought the Nazis directly, while others offered covert help to those in harm's way, assisted with rescue efforts, or aided the underground resistance. After escaping the Lenin ghetto, photographer Faye Schulman joined a partisan group and documented its activities through her photographs. A non-Jewish Danish woman, Ebba Lund, helped smuggle Jews by boat out of German-occupied Denmark to safety in Sweden. In the Netherlands, Frieda Belinfante produced convincing fake ID cards for those hiding from persecution. Ala Gertner paid with her life after trying to help destroy a crematorium in Auschwitz. While imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, Vladka Meed smuggled information, forged documents, weapons, and more between the ghetto and the outside world. We honor these women and the many others who spoke out and fought back against the Nazis. Click the link in our bio to learn more about one of these brave ...

Even with their lives on the line, these Jews stood up to the Nazis.  Nearly half a million Jews had been trapped inside the Warsaw ghetto since fall 1940, living and dying in terrible conditions. Over the following years, hundreds of thousands were sent to be killed. In the winter of 1943, sensing that the Nazis wanted to deport everyone left in the ghetto, Jewish resistance forces planned to fight back. #OnThisDay in 1943, their armed resistance against the Nazis began. Armed with pistols, homemade grenades, and a few automatic weapons, about 700 ghetto fighters—mostly young adults—held off Nazi forces for 27 days. The Nazis were shocked by the strength of their resistance. Eventually, Nazi forces took back control of the ghetto by burning it down block by block.  By the end of the uprising, more than 7,000 Jews had been killed. Nearly 50,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps and killing centers where most were killed. As the first large Jewish armed uprising during Worl...

In 1943, Stefania Podgórska, a young Polish woman, made the riskiest decision of her life—to hide 13 Jews in German-occupied Poland. As a teen, Stefania began working at a local grocery store owned by the Diamant family. She quickly became close with them. The Diamants and other Jews from their town were forced to live in a ghetto. Despite the danger, Stefania helped the family by exchanging their valuables for food.  In summer 1943, fearing the Germans would soon liquidate the ghetto, Josef, one of the remaining Diamant family members, asked Stefania if she would be willing to find a larger home to hide him and other Jews. She quickly found a cottage with a large attic, and Josef became the first of 13 Jews to find refuge there.  Stefania and her younger sister, Helena, cared for the hidden Jews throughout the war. The sisters brought them food, washed their clothing, and made sure they didn’t raise suspicion—especially when Germans forcefully moved into their home for severa...

While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Dr. Otto Wolken made a daring decision—he risked his life to help save a 12-year-old boy.  Despite having his medical degree stripped by the Nazi regime, Otto was selected to work as a camp doctor. He tried to help those whom he could, but many of his patients died from disease or were sent to the gas chambers. "There are ... incidents that remain with me, which I have not been able to forget," Otto reflected.  In 1944, a young Italian Jewish boy, Luigi Ferri, arrived in Auschwitz, where he met Otto. Determined to keep Luigi alive, Otto first hid him in the barracks for weeks. Luigi was later put to work as an errand boy, protecting him from the gas chambers. When the camp was evacuated and its prisoners placed on death marches in early 1945, Luigi hid once again, this time with Otto. They survived, and are pictured here after their liberation. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Frieda Fisz Greenspan #Holocaust #History #NationalDoctorsDay

Horrifying Nazi Experiments Conducted On Humans For those born after the Cold War era, it's hard to imagine a time when the entire world wasn't aware of the medical experiments conducted in World War II-era Germany. When looking back on the medical experiments of WWII, it may be easy to feel like we're reading science fiction. However, the actions committed by military scientists in WWII Germany were very real. Decades later, researchers still debate whether or not there's a moral quandary in using the findings of Third Reich scientists in modern medicine. From seemingly innocuous experiments on eye pigmentation to procedures involving the creation of conjoined twins and the examination of internal organs, all of the worst experiments the Nazis conducted on people are on this list. Artificial Insemination Heinrich Himmler, a leading SS member, ordered Dr. Carl Clauberg  to artificially inseminate concentration camp prisoners through various e...

Woman who survived Auschwitz when gas ran out is about to turn 101 Klara Marcus was a 30-year-old Auschwitz prisoner in 1944 when she was forced to strip naked and march into the gas chamber — only there was no more gas left. “God was watching over me that day,” said Marcus, who is about to celebrate her 101st birthday, the Central European News reported. “I was chosen towards the end of the day with a large group of other women and we were made ready for the gas chamber,” said Marcus, of Sighetu Marmatiej in northern Romania. “But when they put us inside and went to turn the gas on, they found they had run out,” she said. “One of the guards joked that it was our lucky day because they had already killed so many, they didn’t have any gas left for us.” She then managed to escape from the infamous Nazi death camp in southern Poland, where more than a million people were killed. “After I got free, I managed to make my way back to my home to look for my family,” said Marcus — but she disco...

Poland confirms Minnesota man as Nazi commander Poland will seek the arrest and extradition of a Minnesota man exposed by The Associated Press as a former commander in an SS-led unit that burned Polish villages and killed civilians in World War II, prosecutors said Monday. Prosecutor Robert Janicki said evidence gathered over years of investigation into U.S. citizen Michael K. confirmed "100 percent" that he was a commander of a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion. He did not release the last name, in line with Poland's privacy laws, but the AP has identified the man as 98-year-old Michael Karkoc, from Minneapolis. "All the pieces of evidence interwoven together allow us to say the person who lives in the U.S. is Michael K., who commanded the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion which carried out the pacification of Polish villages in the Lublin region," Janicki said. The decision in Poland comes four years after the AP published a story establishing that ...