Major Crimes and True Crime

In 1944, at Auschwitz, Ilse was just twenty years old when she was separated from her younger sister the moment the doors of the cattle car opened. In the chaos, she didn’t scream goodbye — instead, she gave a clear instruction: “Remember the numbers.” Her sister thought Ilse was talking about the number tattooed on her arm, just one more prisoner number among so many. But Ilse had hidden something special in those digits — coordinates, secretly placed inside the number. It was a kind of map, marked on her skin, meant to live on even if she didn’t. After the war ended, her sister followed the numbers and found her way to an old house near Kraków. Under a loose floorboard, she discovered a small tin box. Inside were their mother’s earrings, some letters, and one photo — the two sisters smiling under a cherry tree, holding each other close. “My sister gave me everything,” she said. “Even when she had nothing.” Continue reading

Faye Schulman, a brave resistance fighter during World War II, was born on November 28, 1919, in a small town called Lenin, Poland. She grew up in a big family and learned how to take photos from her brother Moishe. She often helped him with his photography business. On August 14, 1942, the Nazis killed 1,850 Jewish people in the Lenin ghetto. Among them were Faye’s parents, sisters, and younger brother. Only 26 people were left alive that day, and Faye was one of them—saved because she knew how to take and develop photos. The Nazis forced her to develop their photos of the massacre, but she secretly made copies for herself. During a raid by resistance fighters, Faye escaped into the forest and joined a group called the Molotava Brigade. This group was made up mostly of former Soviet soldiers who had escaped. Faye was allowed to join because her brother-in-law had been a doctor, and they badly needed anyone with even a little knowledge of medicine. Though she had no training, Faye work...

Dreadful, horrible question to ask, yet cold, cold, cruel logic provides the answer. Nazis were gathering hair of the victims not as a piece of an individual person but as something useful, as a commodity. In simple terms, they did not even want to squander anything, including the physical remains of people they were killing. Germany was engaged in a great war, the great war and the government was willing to exhaust all the possible resources. To the Nazis, the hair removed off the heads of the victims was nothing more than raw material such as wool or perhaps animal fur. They used the death camps like their factories and the hair was a commodity. They would wash the hair, disinfect the hair and stuff it into enormous bundles very tight. These were large and hefty packages they referred to as bales. These bales would be taken out of the camps and exported to German firms. What was the hair used for? It was primarily used to manufacture industrial felt. This is a heavyweight, very tough...

He was only four years old when he was taken from his home and thrown into the nightmare of Buchenwald. His name was Joseph Schlipstein, and among thousands of faces filled with fear, his was one of the youngest. In that place, there was no mercy for children. But his father refused to give up. In a desperate move, he hid Joseph inside a suitcase, keeping him out of sight from the SS guards. For a while, that small case of canvas and leather became his shelter — a thin shield against a world trying to erase him. The hiding place, however, could not stay secret forever. One day, the guards found him. And something unexpected happened: instead of punishing him, some of them — maybe out of a sudden sense of pity, maybe just on impulse — began calling him the “mascot” of the camp. It was a strange and almost unbelievable act in a place created to destroy every sign of kindness. And so, Joseph stayed alive. In 1948, when he was seven, he sat in front of an American journalist. He was still ...

Barbara Aal was born on October 20, 1938, in Amsterdam, the only child of Fritz and Julia Aal-Broches. She grew up at Nicolaas Maesstraat 136, surrounded by her loving parents and the simple joys of neighborhood friends. Photographs from those early years show her playing happily with children next door, a little girl who should have known only games, stories, and safety. Barbara’s world was small and bright, shaped by the ordinary rhythm of childhood. But behind those moments, the shadow of occupation was growing closer. She was Jewish, and by the time she turned five, the Netherlands had become a place where even the youngest were not safe from hate. In 1943, Barbara and her parents were arrested by the Nazis and sent to the Westerbork transit camp, a place where families lived in uncertainty, waiting for the trains that would decide their fate. For a while, they stayed together, her parents trying to comfort her in a world stripped of certainty and kindness. Westerbork was not yet A...

There have been many examples of crazy last words from death row inmates (how about that clever John Wayne Gacy and his immortal “Kiss my ass” right before his execution). I decided though to focus on the last words of the Lincoln assassins and conspirators. John Wilkes Booth  was a native of Maryland and somewhat of an aristocrat. He was born into a family of actors and he himself was one of the more famous actors of his day. Despite his Confederate sympathies, Booth continued to live and work in the North throughout the Civil War. As the war was coming to a close and it was clear the Confederacy was doomed Booth and a few associates hatched a desperate plot. Just maybe, they decided, the South still had a chance if they could kidnap President Lincoln and take him to Richmond where he would be ransomed in exchange for independence. Unfortunately for them, Lincoln failed to appear where the gang expected him. Days later the Confederate army of Robert E. Lee surrendered, effectively...

CAUGHT ON VIDEO: 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL BRUTALLY ATTACKED BY ADULT WOMAN INSIDE MCDONALD'S IN CALIFORNIA LOMITA, Calif. -- Family members and community leaders are calling for justice after a 13-year-old was attacked and beaten inside a Southern California McDonald's, an incident that was captured in a now-viral video. Kassidy Jones told her mom that she was walking out of the restroom inside the Lomita restaurant last week when the woman seen in the video locked eyes with her. She said the woman seemed upset and said that she fights kids. That's when the teenager says she was attacked for no reason. In the video, the adult woman is seen pulling Kassidy's hair, forcing her to the ground and hitting her multiple times. "My daughter is hurting emotionally. She can't sleep at night. She's bruised... She doesn't want to go to school because she's tired of the kids and everybody asking her what happened and making fun of her," said Angelina Gray, her moth...