Major Crimes and True Crime

Joseph and Lotte Isenberg were desperate to escape the Nazis when they agreed to become farmers in the Caribbean, leaving the comforts of Luxembourg behind. The Jewish couple found refuge in the Dominican Republic as a result of the Evian Conference, which began #OnThisDay in 1938. The Evian Conference hoped to address the growing refugee problem in Nazi-controlled Europe. However, of the 32 countries in attendance, only the Dominican Republic agreed to expand immigration quotas to accept more Jewish refugees. The country welcomed 645 Jewish refugees, but the offer had not solely been a humanitarian one. The dictator General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina wanted to improve his reputation following his government's massacre of Black Haitians in 1937 and to bring more white people to his country, whom he assumed would be wealthy.  Joseph and Lotte settled in Sosuá, where the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee had established a Jewish agricultural settlement. While the sett...

Henia Lewin was just a toddler when her parents placed her in a suitcase and smuggled her out of the Kovno ghetto. After Nazi Germany invaded their hometown in summer 1941, Henia and her parents were forced into the Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto in Lithuania. Meanwhile, German authorities and their Lithuanian collaborators began to carry out mass killings of Jews. Henia's parents faced a difficult choice—try to get Henia out or stay together. As regular mass killings continued, her parents made their decision—Henia was sedated and successfully smuggled out of the ghetto. Henia's mother saved many other children this way too. For the next two years, Henia lived with a Lithuanian family. After the war, she was reunited with her parents, who had escaped the ghetto and survived the Holocaust in hiding.  Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Henia Wisgardisky Lewin.  Continue reading

Samuel Willenberg set out to destroy the Treblinka killing center. But could he succeed?   Samuel and other Jewish prisoners seized what weapons they could find at Treblinka #OnThisDay in 1943. They attacked the guards and set buildings on fire, but their revolt didn't go as planned. In the confusion, hundreds of prisoners stormed the main gate.  Dodging gunfire, Samuel miraculously escaped. He was one of the very few survivors from Treblinka—925,000 Jews were killed there, most in the gas chambers. While Samuel didn't destroy Treblinka, he kept fighting the Nazis and shared his story with the world. He was the last known living survivor of the revolt when he died in 2016. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Shmuel and Ada Willenberg.  Continue reading