Major Crimes and True Crime

Mose Ratowski was born on August 11, 1933. He was the son of Jewish parents Luba and Benyamin in Šiauliai, Lithuania. There were about 8,000 Jews living in the town before the war. In 1941, the Nazis invaded and established a ghetto. Mose and his family were held in the ghetto. Conditions there were deplorable.  The ghetto was partially liquidated in October 1943. Only some residents were allowed to stay, including Mose and his family. They were later deported in July 1944. The remaining residents were sent to labor camps in Germany rather than to the extermination camps due to the fact that the USSR army was approaching. Mose was killed in Dachau in early spring of 1945. He liked died of starvation, sickness, or exposure. He was twelve. May his memory be a blessing.  REMEMBER MOSE RATOWSKI.  #holocaust #shoah #neveragain #neverforget #jewish #remembering #history #wwii less

Ida Fensterszab was born on November 18, 1929. Ida was born in France to Jewish parents. Ida’s story is different from the ones I usually post, as she is given the rare chance to tell her own story. As Ida remembers it…  “I was detained at midnight on January 30, 1944, by two French gendarmes in the little village of Jeune Lie, in the Deux-Sevres. I was fourteen years old. My parents had hidden me with a French family beginning in June 1940. The night of my arrest, I was hoping to escape through the door-window of my room, but the woman who was taking care of me told me that the gendarmes had orders to take her husband if they didn’t find me. Many neighbors, including a member of the local council, tried to convince the gendarmes not to take me. In vain. So I left with my little bundle and a few provisions in the black Citroen that was supposed to take me to police headquarters in Melle. As we drove off, one of the two gendarmes wiped his forehead and said, “What a terrible job!” B...

Jiřina Steinerová was the Czech-Jewish daughter of Leo Steiner and Johanna Steinerová (née Utitzová). She was born in Prague on the 24th of January 1942.  Her parents were Czech Jews. Leo was once the star of a popular band in Prague but was banned from performing as of 1940 due to being the only Jewish member. He was involved with Jewish and non-Jewish men who passed out clothing and food stamps to people who shouldn't have received them officially, the Jews and Roma. The group was reported to the Gestapo by a jealous ex-lover whom Leo once had an affair with until his wife became pregnant. In 1941, Leo was arrested with the other group members and taken to Dresden where he was executed on the 24th of February 1942. He never met his daughter. His wife and daughter were deported to Terezín on the 3rd of August 1942, and then to Auschwitz where they were murdered in late 1942/1943. Jiřina was under a year old The following is Leo's last letter to his family: “Dresden, 23.2.1942 ...

Maria Orlicka was the daughter of a poor Polish family. She was born in Jaworzno on the 2nd of July 1928. Maria took care of the house while her parents worked. In 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and Jaworzno was taken over by German troops, more particularly so because it was in an area that was formerly part of German territory.  In 1942, Maria was arrested at the age of 14 for using black-market ration cards to get food, accusing her of selling it off for profiting. She was deported to Auschwitz and from the 2nd of April 1943, she was a prisoner in Auschwitz under the prisoner number 39849. She was kept in Bunker 11 where prisoners were chosen to be executed and murdered by firing squad at the infamous "death wall". However, rather than executing her, she was deported to a slave labour camp for children in Łódź ghetto, also called Litzmannstadt by the Germans. Her parents were told she'd been executed, resulting in her father's death from a heart attack. 16 year o...

Rieka van Emden was the Dutch-Jewish daughter of Salomon van Emden and Frouktje van Emden-van Coevorden. She was born in Groningen on the 19th of July 1933. She had a brother, Schilo (1935) and an unnamed sibling that died at birth in 1941. On the 19th of October 1942, 9 year old Rieka and 7 year old Schilo were murdered in Auschwitz with their mother. Their father passed selection but perished in February 1943. Although we will never see what Schilo looked like, this is the only photo that remains of Rieka, one that was taken 9 years before her death, and just months after her birth. Those of us here in the future see this beautiful little girl and know she will only live for 9 years. At the time it was taken, no-one knew what was to come. Remember Rieka van Emden and her family. May their memories be a blessing ✡ #theholocaust #rip #auschwitz #holocaustvictims #annefrank #rememberthem #ww2 #history #auschwitzmemorial #jewishhistory #murder less

holocaust.victims: Grietje van der Kar-Posno was born in Rotterdam on December 9, 1911. She was Jewish, the daughter of Heintje Snoek-Canes and David van der Kar. Her father died when she was a small child. She had six siblings and was married to Marinus Arie Posno.  Grietje had six children with her husband. Marinus sadly died in 1940. Their children were Marinus Johannes Cornelis (1933), Hendrika (1934), Cornelia (1936), David (1937), Arie (1939) and daughter Matje (1940). Grietje was a single mother of six, which at the time was extremely difficult and the family lived poorly. Cornelia and Hendrika were removed from their mother’s care in 1941 and sent to live in a Jewish medical institution in Apeloorn. On January 21, 1943, the Nazis chased more than a thousand patients out of their beds and sent them on cattle cars to Auschwitz, including Grietje’s two small children. Hendrika and Cornelia were killed in Auschwitz on January 25, at ages seven and eight.  Meanwhile, Grietj...

Lea Dragica Deutsch was a child actress who was murdered in the Holocaust. She was born on March 18, 1927 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). She was Jewish, the daughter of Stjepan and Ivka. She had a little brother, Saša.   As a child, Lea had a charmed life. She lived in a three story home, which was located at Gundulićeva street 39. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was an educated housewife. She started off with small roles in professional productions of Shakespeare plays, and soon became a well known dancer and actress in films. She was nicknamed „The Croatian Shirley Temple” and even had a short documentary made about her.  In 1941, the Independent State of Croatia began the implementation of race laws which prevented her from acting. Immediately after the establishment of the NDH, she was banned from the theater where she performed and later from her school. After the war, her friend Relja Bašić said: „She used to sit motionless on a bench across from the theater...

On the banks of the Danube River in Budapest, not far from the Hungarian Parliament building, sit sixty pairs of old-fashioned shoes, the type people wore in the 1940s. There are women's shoes, there are men's shoes and there are children's shoes. They sit at the edge of the water, scattered and abandoned, as though their owners had just stepped out of them and left them there. If you look more closely, you see that the shoes are rusted, made of iron and set into the concrete of the embankment. They are a memorial and a monument to the Hungarian Jews who, in the winter of 1944-1945, were shot on the banks of the Danube River by the members of the Arrow Cross Party. Known as "The Shoes on the Danube Promenade", the memorial was conceptualized by film director Can Togay, and was created by Togay together with the sculptor Gyula Pauer. It was installed on the Pest bank of the Danube River in Budapest in 2005. At three separate places on the memorial, cast iron signs ...

Lyusya Turiyan was the Ukrainian-Jewish daughter of Katerina (née?) And Rakhmiel Turiyan. She was born in Kiev in 1937. She had a sister, Galina (?). In September 1941, 5 year old Lyusya and her mother were murdered during the Babi Yar massacre. 33,771 Jews were shot to death in Babi Yar ravine by Nazi soldiers and voluntary Ukrainian auxiliaries. Her father may have survived. Her sister survived Remember Lyusya Turiyan and her family. May their memories be a blessing ✡  #theholocaust #rip #auschwitz #holocaustvictims #annefrank #rememberthem #ww2 #history #auschwitzmemorial #jewishhistory #murder less

Dina Laffi was the Italian daughter of Ettore and Maria (née Ventura) Laffi. She was born in Castel d'Aiano on the 16th of July 1933. She had 4 brothers: Pietro (1941), Giovanni (1944), Fernando (1935) and Italo (1938) and a sister, Marina (1931). Her parents were Italians and the family lived in Marzabotto. 11 year old Dina was murdered in the Marzabotto massacre on the 30th of September 1944, when the Germans rounded up the Laffi family plus 4 displaced people and killed them in the farmyard of Collula di Sotto house. The survivors found the charred corpses along the barn wall and the half-collapsed house. The dead included her parents, Marina (13), Fernando (8), Italo (6), Pietro (3) and Giovanni (4 weeks) as well as her 3 cousins, Primo (7), Demetrio (5) and Massimo (3 months), her aunt and uncle and grandparents. Her grandfather Giuseppe was forced to watch the murder of his family before he was killed by the SS. The other 4 people included 2 children and their mother as well ...

Sha’anan Lent was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine (now, Tel Aviv, Israel) in 1926. He was the son of Girsh and an unknown mother. When Sha’anan was very young, his parents immigrated to Poland, where they settled in Warsaw.  He had a happy childhood in Warsaw and was a student. In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. In 1940, all Jews were forced to live in a very small section of the city, which was dubbed the Warsaw ghetto. Thousands of people died in the ghetto due to the extremely crowded and disgusting conditions and lack of food.  In April of 1943, a group of teenagers and young adults started an uprising against the Nazis. Sha’anan was a part of this group. For nearly a month, the Jewish fighters were able to fight the Nazis with smuggled arms and homemade explosives. Unfortunately, the uprising was crushed and nearly all the fighters were killed.  Sha’anan fell during the fighting on May 3, 1943, after shooting three Nazis. He was able to pass his rifle...

viInes Alcabes was born on April 15, 1916 Demotika, Greece. Ines was Jewish, the daughter of Esther and Nissim. She and her parents moved to Paris, France, when she was very young. She was single and worked as a secretary. She surely had a happy life, until the Nazis invaded in 1940. Sometime in January or February of 1943, she was deported to the Drancy internment camp. Just a little while later, she was deported to Auschwitz (on February 12, 1943). She arrived in the camp a few days later. She did not survive. She was murdered under unknown circumstances in the camp around age twenty-seven. May her memory be a blessing. Her mother was also murdered in Auschwitz.  REMEMBER INES ALCABES.  #holocaust #shoah #wwii #jewish #auschwitz #paris #neveragain less

The man in this picture is Adolf Eichmann. He was the Nazi who worked to convince the Jewish people to get on trains, and he worked out the logistics of getting them to the concentration camps. At the end of World War II, he fled to Argentina, where he worked in an automobile factory and lived in near poverty until May 11, 1960, when he was captured by Israeli Mossad agents Eichmann was snuck out of Argentina and taken to Israel where he would stand trial. On May 31, 1962, he was executed for his crimes. go through the link in my profile to read the full article #ww2 #worldwar2 #worldwartwo #secondworldwar #war #battle #bulge #belgium #europe #soldier #german #germany #axis #thirdreich #usa #america #unitedstates #infantry #hitler #adolfhitler #historyphoto #history #oldphoto #ww2history #executed less

Kazimiera Mika (née Kostewicz) was just ten years old when her most painful moment became international news. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929, Kazimiera and her older sister Anna (born 1925) lived a happy life on the outskirts of the city. On September 13, 1939, (just twelve days after the beginning of WWII) Kazimiera and her sister were gathering potatoes from a field along with some of their friends. Suddenly, a nearby home was bombed. The women in the field fell flat, hoping they wouldn’t be seen. As the German bombers flew away, they resumed working, thinking that the threat had passed.  However, just a few minutes later, two German Luftwaffe pilots returned to the home they had just bombed. The flew very low to the ground, and were able to see that there were only women and children in the field. Despite this, they opened fire with machine guns, killing two of the seven women. Kazimiera’s fourteen-year-old sister was one of those killed. American journalist, Julien Bryan, was n...

OnThisDay in 1942, Reinhard Heydrich—one of the chief architects of the Holocaust—drove through Prague on his regular route. But this time, two Czechoslovak agents were waiting for him.  They ambushed Heydrich on his drive and rolled an explosive under his car. Heydrich died from his injuries a few days later. In retaliation for Heydrich's death, the Nazis unleashed a wave of terror in the occupied Czech lands.  The assassins, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, were eventually discovered by the Nazis. Both men died before they could be captured. They are remembered today for their role in the resistance to the Nazis. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Atlantic Foto Verlag Berlin #Holocaust #History #OTD less

You may have seen these photos, but do you know their story? These images show the dehumanizing process Jews faced as they arrived at Auschwitz: getting out of overcrowded trains, being sorted into lines, and waiting to be sent to their death. The photos were taken by the Nazis in May 1944, at the start of the Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After liberation, Holocaust survivor Lili Jacob discovered an album containing these photographs in an abandoned SS barrack. As she flipped through the album, Lili discovered a photo of herself, along with many of her neighbors and relatives. She was shocked. To this day, we do not know why the album was created or who the original owner was. Some think it was created by the SS to document the efficiency of Auschwitz. It may also have belonged to Richard Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz and the commander of Dora-Mittelbau, the camp where Lili discovered it. Photos: Yad Vashem #OnThisDay #Auschwitz #Holocaust less

István Domonkos looked up to his older brother, Péter. "He was a much better student than I was," István admitted. "He was an excellent mathematician."  But Péter graduated high school just as Hungary passed the first of three major anti-Jewish laws in May 1938. As a result of these laws, tens of thousands of Jews lost their jobs, businesses, or livelihoods. “In that world with the anti-Jewish laws one couldn’t get a decent job,” recalled István.  During World War II, the Hungarian government required Péter to perform forced labor because he was Jewish. His forced labor unit was sent to the warfront in summer 1942.  Less than a year later, Péter’s father received a note that read, “We inform you that Péter Domonkos, forced laborer, who was born in 1919 in Budapest, mother’s name Gabriella Rózsa, died in January 1943 at Marki and was buried on the site.” Both István and his father survived the Holocaust. Photo: USHMM, Centropa Collection #Holocaust #History less

Have you heard about the medical experiments performed on twin children during the Holocaust? Among the darkest stories of Holocaust perpetrators is that of Josef Mengele, a doctor who was the architect of cruel and unnecessary procedures. Mengele earned the nickname “Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, where he worked shifts on the arrivals ramp, deciding which Jewish people would be gassed immediately and which would be temporarily allowed to live. Even when he was not on duty, Mengele could be spotted at the ramp, searching for twins. Mengele performed legitimate research on twins prior to World War II. But at Auschwitz, the normal medical ethics did not apply. Mengele was not concerned if his experiments killed the young Jewish or Romani twins who were the subjects. Sometimes both twins were forced to undergo painful and unnecessary medical procedures. Other times one twin was kept unharmed to be compared against the other. The twins in these photos were subjects of Mengele's ex...

Malka Zauerman was born in Oświęcim, Poland, in 1935. She was Jewish, the daughter of Mozes and Roza (née Vulkan) Zauerman. Malka was just four years old when the Second World War started and Poland was invaded. Soon after the Nazis arrived, Malka was sent away from her home and forced to live in the Sosnowiec ghetto. Conditions in the ghetto were horrible. On August 1, 1943, a revolt broke out in the Sosnowiec ghetto. As a result, the Nazis liquidated the ghetto and murdered nearly all of the residents. Tragically, Malka was among those murdered. She was sent to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers at age eight. May her memory be a blessing.  REMEMBER MALKA ZAUERMAN.  #holocaust #sosnowiec #jewish #wwii #ww2 #history #auschwitz #remembering #history less

Zalman Gradowski was a Polish Jew deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1942. Like many others, he arrived with his entire family. Within hours, his wife, mother, and other relatives were murdered in the gas chambers. But Zalman survived – selected for the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners forced to assist in the extermination process: removing corpses from the gas chambers, extracting gold teeth, burning the bodies, and disposing of the ashes. Living in the shadow of death, he knew he had little chance of survival. But he was determined to leave behind a record. In secret, Gradowski began writing. On scraps of paper, he documented everything: the mechanics of mass murder, the unimaginable suffering, the names and last words of victims. He buried his testimony in metal containers near the crematoria. His words are not just history – they are a cry for memory, justice, and human dignity: “I want to leave behind a monument to the dead, a tiny piece of paper with words so...