Major Crimes and True Crime

Execution by guillotine of Sister Maria Restituta Kafka for refusing to remove the crucifix by nazis Execution by guillotine of Sister Maria Restituta Kafka strongly criticizes Nazi regime  Maria Restituta Kafka working as a nurse at the municipal hospital in the Lainz Hospital. she met members of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and joined their community at the age of 20 and was given the religious name of Maria Restituta. During World War 1, Kafka serve as a nurse in the hospital. she was called 'Sister Resolute'. after the Anschluss in which Germany annexed Austria. Kafka strongly criticize the Nazi government and against the implementing the Nuremberg Laws. The Nazi authorities demanded that the crosses to be removed, but she refused. she was arrested by the Gestapo, the Nazi Secret police for hanging the crucifixes, and  also of having writing a poem mocking Hitler. she was sentenced to death by the guillotine for conspiracy to commit treason. She was beheaded...

Eva Mozes remembers waking up in Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945. "It was quiet," Eva recalls. "It was very eerie to have such a quiet morning. We thought maybe this would be the day that we would be free." That afternoon, Soviet troops arrived, liberating the remaining prisoners. In footage taken after the camp's liberation, Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, can be seen walking hand in hand out of Auschwitz. Eva and Miriam were born in a small village in Romania in 1934. When the twins were just six years old, their town was annexed by Hungary, and when they were 10, it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Hungarian and German authorities sent Eva, Miriam, their parents, and their two older sisters to a ghetto in the nearby town of Szilágysomlyó (Simleu Silvaniei) in 1944. From there, they were then deported to Auschwitz. Upon their arrival, Eva and Miriam were separated from their family and selected by SS doctor Josef Mengele for his notorious experimentation ...

In the fall of 1944, ten-year-old Thomas Buergenthal found himself all alone in Auschwitz, destined for the gas chamber. Thomas had already survived the Kielce ghetto and a forced labor camp by the time German authorities deported him and his parents to Auschwitz in August 1944. Typically, children were taken on arrival and murdered in the gas chambers, but, because there was no selection when Thomas and his family arrived there, he managed to survive. His mother was taken to the women's section of the camp, but Thomas and his father remained together. However, Thomas remained in grave danger. The SS guards regularly selected prisoners to be murdered in the gas chambers and as a child Thomas stood out. While he had survived a number of selections by hiding, this time, Thomas had been caught. "They saw me as a child, and they motioned me to go one way, and my father go the other way," Thomas remembered. "And that's the last I saw of ... my father." Thomas and...

Agi Geva’s mother made her promise never to remove the tattoo inked on her arm at Auschwitz-Birkenau. “This is proof of us being there,” she told her daughter. “The letter A and the number.” At age 14, Agi was registered as a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and was forcibly tattooed with her prisoner number. For Agi, the pain of receiving the tattoo was surpassed by the pain of being stripped of her identity. “They kept on telling us, "You have no names from today. You are just numbers." Agi, her mother, and sister survived four camps, forced labor, and a death march before they were liberated by American troops in April 1945. During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the only camp where prisoner numbers were tattooed. After liberation, Auschwitz survivors were able to shed the uniforms, but the tattoos remained. #HolocaustSurvivor #HolocaustRemembranceDay #HolocaustMemorialDay

“In Auschwitz, I never cried, and people around me never cried.” Irene Weiss was just a teenager when she learned to turn off her feelings in order to survive. When a Nazi officer selected Irene to perform forced labor at Auschwitz-Birkenau, it gave her a chance to survive that was denied to her mother and younger siblings, who were murdered upon arrival. She was assigned to a unit responsible for sorting through the stolen personal belongings of Jews. The storage barracks where she worked were next to one of Auschwitz's gas chambers. Irene often saw the faces of those unknowingly headed toward their deaths. Sometimes they would stop and talk to her. Other times, she heard their screams. “When we worked night shifts … this place was close enough to the train platform that you could hear in the night the whistle of the train and then you would hear the humming noise of large crowds. You could hear people in the distance. Within a few minutes or so the large column of young women, mo...

One of Maria Dworzecka’s earliest and strongest memories was when she was separated from her mother at two and a half years old. “I still have shivers when I think about it,” Maria later testified. Born to Jewish parents in Bialystok in June 1941, Maria was only a few days old when the Germans invaded Soviet-occupied Poland. Her father was killed shortly after the invasion. While Maria and her mother, Bela, were forced into the Białystok ghetto, they later escaped and fled to a nearby town where they lived under false Christian identities. In spring 1944, the German occupiers rounded up and deported non-Jewish Polish civilians at random as a reprisal for anti-German activity in the area. Maria and Bela were walking down the street when her mother was suddenly grabbed by German authorities, as they believed she was a non-Jewish Polish woman. Maria cried out for her mother, but Bela pushed her away, hoping to protect her. All alone, Maria was left to wander the streets. She eventually sa...

Irene Meyer was born in Paderborn, Germany, on July 31, 1925. She was Jewish, the daughter of Henriette and Julius Meyer. She had a little sister, Ellen.  In 1942, Irene and her family were deported to the Terezín camp in Czechoslovakia. They were held there for two years. On October 9, 1944, the family was sent to Auschwitz. Irene’s parents and little sister were sent directly to the gas chamber after they arrived in the camp.  Irene, however, was selected for forced labor in the camp. She was only in Auschwitz for a short time, and soon she was sent to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Once again, she was there for a short time. She was then sent to the Buchenwald camp, and from Buchenwald, she was sent to Bergen-Belsen.  Irene fell ill with typhus in Bergen-Belsen, but survived long enough to see the camp’s liberation on April 15, 1945. Irene, an orphan at age nineteen, was completely alone after liberation. She was extremely weak from her time in the camps, and neve...

American tank commander George Gross encountered “an outburst of pure, almost hysterical relief” from an abandoned trainload of Jewish prisoners found near Farsleben, Germany, at the end of the war.  #OnThisDay in 1945, two US Army units came across a train carrying 2,500 Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Nazi officers guarding the train fled when they saw American vehicles, leaving the passengers locked inside the train.  As American soldiers opened the doors, Gross remembered the prisoners looked like “skeletons.” They had been starved in Bergen-Belsen for months and spent days in the train with inadequate food, water, and sanitation. SS officers were transporting the prisoners from Bergen-Belsen to the Theresienstadt ghetto in occupied Czechoslovakia to prevent the prisoners from being liberated. The officers had orders to blow up the train if it could not reach its destination.  Upon encountering the train, one of George’s fellow soldiers cal...

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...

After the Nazis killed most of their family, three surviving brothers formed a rescue and resistance group that welcomed Jewish refugees. Escaping to the swampy woods in German-occupied Poland (today Belarus), Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Germans. They not only preserved the lives of those hiding with them but created a community for Jews in the middle of war-torn Europe.  Tuvia was determined to accept and protect all Jews regardless of age or gender. Under his leadership, the community thrived. Workshops employed over 200 people, including tailors, carpenters, and blacksmiths. The partisan leaders also managed a primitive infirmary, a school for the children, and a synagogue. This vibrant Jewish forest community recreated a sense of belonging that the Nazis aimed to destroy.  The partisans also fought against the Germans by disabling trains and blowing up bridges, even as they were hunted by the Nazis and their collaborators. After the wa...

Jack and Sylvia Amar knew they would get married—the only question was when. They had agreed to wait until the Nazis left Greece and their lives returned to normal. But after learning they were slated for deportation, their plans changed. They would get married in the ghetto in Thessaloniki. Though the ceremony wasn’t what they envisioned, Jack and Sylvia hoped their marriage would prevent them from being separated. Their hopes were shattered when they arrived at Auschwitz. Jack was sent with the men, and Sylvia was sent with the women.  The first time Jack and Sylvia saw each other through the camp fence, they both broke down into tears. Miraculously, they both survived. They found each other after the war and eventually started a new life together in the United States. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Meryl Menashe #Holocaust #History

Francisco Boix, a Spanish photographer, stole photos that were used as evidence in Nuremberg. It marks the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Prisoners photographed by the camp's Identification Service, where Francisco Boix worked. Some 200,000 prisoners of various nationalities passed through Mauthausen, liberated by the US Army on May 5, 1945, and other concentration camps dependent on it, such as Gusen. Half died, including 4,761 of the 7,200 Spanish Republicans who were confined there. A group of prisoners tear down the Nazi symbol installed at the entrance to the Mauthausen camp on the day of liberation. Spanish photographer Francisco Boix documented the first hours after the Nazis escaped. Francisco Boix Another moment of the demolition of the Nazi symbol installed at the entrance to the Mauthausen camp, on the very day of liberation. Francisco Boix Photograph taken on the day of the liberation of Mauthausen, showing hundreds of dead in the Nazi camp. Boix didn...

Private Hershel Wright of the United States Army distributes oranges to survivors in the Wöbbelin concentration camp, 5 May 1945 When Allied forces arrived to liberate the Wöbbelin camp in northern Germany, they encountered scenes beyond anything they could have imagined: hundreds of corpses lay scattered throughout the camp, among them emaciated, gravely ill survivors. The liberated prisoners were quickly transferred to hospitals, but even after liberation, not all survived. Many succumbed to illness and exhaustion - others, tragically, to overeating after years of starvation. This photo captures one of the first moments following liberation: a small act of giving, offered to those who had been stripped of everything. Yad Vashem Photo Archive

Private Hershel Wright of the United States Army distributes oranges to survivors in the Wöbbelin concentration camp, 5 May 1945 When Allied forces arrived to liberate the Wöbbelin camp in northern Germany, they encountered scenes beyond anything they could have imagined: hundreds of corpses lay scattered throughout the camp, among them emaciated, gravely ill survivors. The liberated prisoners were quickly transferred to hospitals, but even after liberation, not all survived. Many succumbed to illness and exhaustion - others, tragically, to overeating after years of starvation. This photo captures one of the first moments following liberation: a small act of giving, offered to those who had been stripped of everything. Yad Vashem Photo Archive

An American officer supports a Holocaust survivor from Budapest at the Penig concentration camp, April 1945. Penig Camp, located south of Leipzig, was a forced labor camp where Jewish women from Budapest were employed in the production of aircraft parts. When soldiers of the U.S. Army’s Third Army liberated the camp, they found 68 Jewish women, all in a state of extreme starvation. The American army ordered staff from a nearby German hospital to care for them.  The photograph was taken by a U.S. Army Signal Corps soldier and distributed by the American military.  Yad Vashem Photo Archives.

Michał Klepfisz was born in Warsaw on April 17, 1913. His mother was a school teacher. His family was Jewish, but not particularly religious. He went to university in Warsaw, where he studied polytechnics. In 1939, after the war started, he lived in Lviv and later in Donetsk. Eventually, Michał heard the rumors of what was happening to his friends in family in Warsaw and came back to the city. He lived outside of the ghetto under a false name: Tadeusz Mecner.  Eventually, Michał became connected with the ŻOB- the Jewish fighting organization in the ghetto. Due to his knowledge in polytechnics, Michał was able to help the resistance produce explosives. He was later caught and arrested. He was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, but jumped off the train, therefore escaping almost certain death. He was injured from his jump, but made his way back to Warsaw to continue helping the resistance.  When he returned home, Michał helped sneak food and weapons into the ghetto. On Ap...

Women and children on their way to Gas Chamber 4 at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944. The photographs are taken from the Auschwitz Album — a unique collection of images captured by SS photographers at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the spring and summer of 1944, documenting the arrival, selection, and looting of Hungarian Jewish deportees. The Auschwitz Album was discovered after the war by Holocaust survivor Lili Jacob in an abandoned house in Nordhausen, Germany. In the 1960s, she made the album available to the prosecution at the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, and in 1983 she donated it to Yad Vashem. In 1994, the album was transferred to Yad Vashem’s conservation laboratory, and in 1999 it was fully digitized using advanced digital technology. The information accompanying the photographs was integrated into the Yad Vashem Archives database.

Joseph von Hoppen Waldhorn was the French-Jewish son of Rosa (neé Israel) Waldhorn and Michael von Hoppen Waldhorn. He was born in Paris on the 14th of November 1930. He had two sisters: Zalie (1927) and Helene (1922).  His father was a Polish Jew and his mother a Hungarian Jew. Joseph and Zalie were born in Paris while their sister was born in Czechoslovakia, in her mother's birthplace after it was annexed to Czechoslovakia from Hungary. After the German invasion of France, foreign-born Jews were deported first. In 1941, Michael was imprisoned in Drancy where he remained for 6 months. In 1942, not long after he was released, he was once again arrested and sent back to Drancy. 6 days later, he was put on a cattle train to Auschwitz where was murdered on arrival on the 24th of July 1942.  After Michael was deported, Rosa went into hiding in an attic in Paris. She was denounced by an informant and deported to Auschwitz on the 2nd of September 1943. She did not return. Helene man...

When so many other Germans remained silent, the members of the White Rose risked their lives to speak out against the Nazi regime. Composed of mostly university students, including brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend, Christoph Probst, the White Rose wrote pleading messages and distributed them to thousands of Germans. They begged their fellow citizens to rise up against the Nazis and their persecution of Jews. “The Jews, too, are human beings,” they wrote. On February 22, 1943, the Scholls and Christoph were tried for the crime of treason, convicted, and beheaded in a matter of hours. While their voices went unheard then, today—more than 80 years later—the group serves as a symbol of righteous rebellion.  Photo: George J. Wittenstein (akg-images.co.uk) #Holocaust #History #OTD #OnThisDay

Klaus Barbie had no regrets about sending thousands to their deaths. He personally tortured members of the French resistance and was responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews from German-occupied France.  As head of a local office of the Gestapo, the Nazis' political police force, Barbie made a name for himself as the "Butcher of Lyon."  In 1944, he learned that 44 Jewish children were being sheltered in a nearby village. He had the children arrested and sent them to Auschwitz. None survived. Years after the war, and after escaping to South America, Barbie was captured and tried for crimes against humanity. Despite his conviction in 1987, Barbie remained a devoted Nazi, stating: “I am proud to have been a commanding officer of the best military outfit in the Third Reich, and if I had to be born a thousand times again, I would be a thousand times what I’ve been.” Photo: Wikimedia #Holocaust #History

Did you know that some Jews supported Mussolini before the Holocaust? Italian Jew Ettore Abenaim—pictured on the right—was a member of the Italian Blackshirts. This armed group attacked political opponents of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, such as Communist and Catholic organizations. Unlike Nazism, early Italian fascism was not overtly antisemitic. This photo was taken in 1936 in Pisa. By November 1938, Mussolini's government passed anti-Jewish race laws and excluded them from the National Fascist Party and other areas of Italian life. After the Nazis took over Italy in 1943, Ettore was deported to Auschwitz, where he died.  In total, the Nazis deported over 8,000 Jews from Italian territory, mostly sending them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only about 1,000 returned after the Holocaust. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Emmanuele Pacifici

Julie Keefer’s constant cries put her family in danger. In the end, this may have saved her life. After escaping the Lwów ghetto, Julie, her sister, Tola, and their family hid from the Nazis in a forest hideout for several months. Over time, the girls’ crying put the Jewish family at risk. Their grandfather made the painful decision to place two-year-old Julie and baby Tola with a friend. Soon after they were removed, the Germans discovered the hiding place in the woods and murdered everyone inside. Julie’s grandfather, who was away visiting the girls, was the only survivor. Julie never saw her parents again. During the chaos of the war, Julie and Tola were separated, and Tola was sent to a Catholic orphanage. After the Holocaust, Julie and her grandfather desperately searched for Tola but they were unable to locate the baby. Julie never lost hope of finding her sister. Despite all that she lost, Julie chose to share her story with visitors at our Museum. “For many, many years I did no...

A sign on the shoe factory bulletin board prompted Harry Harrison and his wife, Dot, a Christian couple, to take in a little Jewish girl fleeing Nazi Germany.  When Esther Starobin arrived by boat in England, she was just two years old. Her desperate parents had agreed to send their youngest child to live with strangers in the hopes of saving her. What began as a good deed blossomed into bonds that lasted a lifetime. Over eight years, Esther came to see the Harrisons and their son, Alan, as a second family. “That was really the happiest time of my childhood," she remembered. Esther later learned that her parents had been murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. Alan and Esther are still close today. Photos: Esther, Esther's family, Esther's foster family Credit: USHMM, Esther Rosenfeld Starobin #Holocaust #History #Survivor #NationalFosterCareMonth

This photo was taken secretly inside the Ravensbrück concentration camp. A group of prisoners documented the medical experimentations that German doctors were performing on them. Joanna Szydłowska traded her bread to another prisoner for a camera. She was one of 74 Polish women subjected to cruel experiments, including unnecessary surgeries.  Doctors cut open some women's legs and intentionally infected them to try to simulate battlefield wounds. Some of the women were given no medication when they became desperately ill. Ravensbrück was liberated on this day in 1945 after most prisoners had been evacuated from the camp. Some of the experimentation victims testified at trials after the war. The photos they took were part of the evidence. Continue reading  #OTD #OnThisDayinHistory #Holocaust