Major Crimes and True Crime

"Men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms," reported journalist Edward R. Murrow, about his experience at Buchenwald concentration camp following its liberation. "Death had already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes." At the start of the war in Europe, Murrow was a rising broadcast journalist. Reporting in London during the Blitz, Germany's air assault on Great Britain, he risked his life to bring the sounds of war into American homes. These reports cemented Murrow's reputation as a trusted source.  In 1942, Murrow reported on mass murder by the Nazis. "What is happening is this: millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered." More than two years later on April 15, 1945, while reporting on the liberation of Buchenwald, Murrow witnessed the aftermath of Nazi atrocity firsthand.  Murrow's account was the first testimo...

"There we were in that train, over a hundred people," Holocaust survivor Leo Schneiderman remembered about his deportation from the Łódź ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in August 1944.  "The only facility in the train was two buckets for over a hundred men, women, and children. ... It was unbearable hot. Lack of air." The Germans and their allies and collaborators used the European rail network to deport Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe to ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers.  #OnThisDay 34 years ago, the German railcar on our third floor became the first artifact to be installed in the Museum. Because of its immense size and weight, moving it into the Museum through any kind of door was impossible. So it had to be lowered in by crane during construction. Leo was liberated in May 1945. #Holocaust #OTD #History #WWII less