Walter Richard Rudolf Hess was born April 26, 1894 and became was a prominent figure in Nazi Germany, acting as Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party. On the eve of war with the Soviet Union, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom, but instead was arrested. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life internment at Spandau Prison, where he remained until his death in 1987 as a result of strangulation by an electrical cord. The official cause of death was recorded as suicide.
Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Reichspogromnacht, Crystal Night and the Night of the Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany, 9-10 November 1938. Jewish homes along with 8,000 Jewish shops were ransacked in numerous German cities, towns and villages as civilians and both the SA (Sturmabteilung) and the SS (Schutzstaffel) destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in shards of glass from broken windows, the origin of the name 'Night of Broken Glass'. Jews were beaten to death, 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps and 1,668 synagogues ransacked, with 267 set on fire.
Leon Goldenberg was born in 1864 in Czernowitz in Bukowina into a Jewish family. He entered the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1886 and died in Vienna in 1920.
This collection consists mainly of correspondence from friends and acquaintances of Valerie and Andrea Wolffenstein, two sisters of Jewish origins, who converted to Christianity and who managed to survive the war in hiding in Germany. Valerie and Andrea Wolffenstein were both born in Berlin, in 1891 and 1897 respectively. Valerie trained as a painter and worked as a secretary for Reichskunstwart, Dr Edwin Redslob; from 1931 for the writer and film director, Eberhard Frowein; and after a period of unemployment, for Dr Paul Zucker, architect and art historian. There followed a period of forced labour with the company Zeiss-Ikon, and from January 1943 she lived in hiding until liberation by the Americans at the end of the war. Since which time she lived with her sister in Munich.
Andrea studied music at the Berlin Hochschule and taught piano from 1924, until she was forbidden to teach aryan children. Thereafter she spent a short time as a music teacher at the Jewish Goldschmidt-Schule. She then worked as a forced labourer for the armaments manufacturer, Scherb und Schwer, until going underground with her sister.
During World War Two, Traunstein, Bavaria, was the site of a subcamp of Dachau concentration camp. In 1946 it became a displaced persons camp housing Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. In 1997 the City archive of Traunstein put on an exhibition about the camp entitled Ein Leben aufs Neu. Juedische Displaced Persons auf deutschem Boden, 1945-1948.
This collection consists of transcripts of interviews conducted for the TV programme 'The Hidden Jews of Berlin'. The programme was made by Kessler Productions in conjunction with Darlow Smithson Productions for the Secret History series on Channel 4. It was transmitted on 17 August 1999. The producer was Peter Kessler, the director was Clara Glynn, and the executive producer was John Smithson.
Josef Mueller was born in 1910, the 18th of 19 children of David and Rosa Mueller in Mosbach, Baden Wuerttemberg. After school he trained as a bookbinder and picture frame-maker, in which trade he worked, interspersed with periods of unemployment, until he joined the SS in 1936, where he commenced working full-time for the organisation in Heidelberg. He married Rosa Krauss on 22 March 1937 and they had 2 children. He joined the Waffen SS in September 1939. After sustaining an injury fighting in Russia, he was sent to work for the Chief of Police in Cracow, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Krueger. He was involved with 'resettling' Jews and became commandant of the work camps at Plaszow. It was during this period that he committed war crimes.
On 5 March 1944 he was captured by the Russians near Lublinca. He stayed in various POW camps in Nowosibirsk, Moscow and Stalinowgorsk. According to the embassy of the USSR in West Germany, he was sentenced to 25 years hard labour in 1949 for 'Crimes against the Soviet people during the war by Fascist Germany'. On 14 October 1955 he was released and he returned to Germany, where he lived with his family in Limbach, until re-arrest by the German authorities in 1960. He was tried and convicted of murder, incitement and accessory to murder on numerous counts, in August 1961. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but released on parole in November 1970.
Wilhelm Rosenbaum was born in 1915 and was found guilty of multiple murders whilst in charge of the police training school at Bad Rabka, Poland. He received 16 life sentences at his trial in Hamburg in 1968, but was released shortly after on the grounds of ill health.
This collection documents the experiences of a Jewish family in Vienna and Budapest during the Nazi era. One of the correspondents, Mitzi, was a close friend of the depositor's mother in Vienna, where they were both born before 1900. When the war began she, her husband, Lutz, and their daughter, Eva, were living in Budapest. After the war the family emigrated to Israel. The Schlesinger family had emigrated to Great Britain, but the two families remained in contact for 40 years. The depositor provided the translation.
Esther Pauline Lloyd was born in London in 1906 of Jewish parentage. She later married a non-Jew, having relinquished her Jewish identity and brought their children up as nominal Christians, which, according to an entry in her diary, she later regretted. Having been deported from Jersey without her family by the occupying Germans in February 1943, she later managed to successfully appeal the decision and was released in April 1944 and allowed to return to Jersey.
The Wiener Library collated this material about former Nazis who found refuge in a number of Arab countries in the Middle East including Syria and Egypt, some of whom became involved in those countries' intelligence services.
The Comité voor Bijzondere Joodsche Belangen (the Committee for Special Jewish Affairs) was founded in Spring 1933 by Dr David Cohen with the object of bringing together all the various Jewish interest groups to co-ordinate protest activities against the persecution of Jews in Germany and to deal with the burgeoning refugee problem. Out of this organisation was born a second, the Comité voor Joodsche Vluechtlingen (the Committee for Jewish Refugees), which was responsible for the day to day running of the relief effort in Amsterdam. Its remit grew to include assisting Jewish refugees nationwide and representing their interests to the government.
The Conference on the problem of Jewish refugees was held in Evian, France, on the shore of Lake Geneva, in July 1938. Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed this international conference in the wake of Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938, which substantially exacerbated the refugee problem. Delegates from 32 countries gathered from 6 to 15 July 1938. As the sessions proceeded, delegate after delegate excused his country from accepting additional refugees. The Evian Conference failed in its primary objective - to find safe haven for the Jews of Nazi Germany. Even the establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees just before the conference adjourned was unable to make a difference.
On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín (Theresienstadt), a fortress, built in 1780-1790 in what is now the Czech Republic, and set up prison in the Small Fortress (Kleine Festung). By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (große Festung, ie the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp.
Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. Dr. Siegfried Seidl, an SS colonel, served as the first camp commandant in 1941. Seidl oversaw the labour of 342 young men, known as the Aufbaukommando, who converted the fortress into a concentration camp. Although the Aufbaukommando were promised that they and their families would be spared transport, eventually all were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943, for Sonderbehandlung, or gassing without selection.
Eva Noack-Mosse , a Jewess, was born in 1908 in Berlin, the daughter of Max Mosse, professor of medicine. She married a non-Jew, Moritz Noack, in 1934, with whom she lived until she was deported to Theresienstadt in February 1945. Whilst an inmate, she worked as a typist in the statistical office. On June 10, 1940, the Gestapo took control of Terezín (Theresienstadt), a fortress, built in 1780-1790 in what is now the Czech Republic, and set up prison in the Small Fortress (Kleine Festung. By 24 November 1941, the Main Fortress (große Festung, ie the town Theresienstadt) was turned into a walled ghetto. The function of Theresienstadt was to provide a front for the extermination operation of Jews. To the outside it was presented by the Nazis as a model Jewish settlement, but in reality it was a concentration camp. Theresienstadt was also used as a transit camp for European Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
The SS (Schutzstaffel) was founded in 1925 with the object of protecting the Nazi Party leader, Adolf Hitler. By 1936, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS had assumed responsiblity for all police and security matters throughout the Third Reich. The Reichsführung SS SD Hauptamt (SS High Command Security Service Main Office) was the internal security branch of the SS.
Carl Schmitt, the controversial and influential political and legal theorist, was born on 11 July 1888 in Plettenberg, Westfalen. He was professor for jurisprudence in Greifswald, 1921; Bonn, 1922-1923; Berlin (Handelshochschule), 1926; Köln, 1933; and again in Berlin, during the Nazi era when he achieved the exalted position of 'Crown Jurist'. During his career as a successful academic and teacher, he became recognised as a fierce critic of the Weimar constitution, which he accused of having weakened the state and of relying on liberalism, which, in his view, was incapable of solving the problems of a modern mass democracy. His loyalty to the Nazi cause had long been suspected by elements within the SS Security Service and his anti- semitism was regarded as opportunistic. As a result of a critical article in the SS periodical Der Schwarze KorpsSchmitt was investigated by the Security Service and subsequently lost most of his prominent offices, and retreated from his position as a leading Nazi jurist, although he retained his post as a professor in Berlin thanks to Göring. He never again dealt with domestic or party politics, but turned his attention to the study of international relations, and soon passed into obscurity. After the war he continued to publish but never held office. He remained a controversial figure, having never been formally charged with complicity with the Nazi regime, nor ever exonerated. He died on 7 April 1985.
Cecil Roth (1899-1970), Jewish historian and editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Judaica, was born in London, saw active service in the British infantry in 1918 before entering Merton College, Oxford, obtaining his doctorate in 1925. He trained as an historian with a special interest in Italy, his first major work being The Last Florentine Republic. He was reader in Jewish Studies at Oxford from 1939-1964. When he retired in 1964 he settled in Jerusalem, taking up a visiting professorship at Bar-Ilan University.
Walter Gordon was a Jewish doctor from Hildesheim, Lower Saxony.Max Nelki was a Jewish resident of Hamburg during the 1930s, who was sentenced to 2 years for race defilement and spent some time in a concentration camp; found refuge in Shanghai; and returned to Hamburg after the war.
This material documenting the persecution of Jews in Danzig during the 1930s was donated by two members of the former Danzig Jewish community: Mr Berent, representative of the board of the Jewish community; and Dr Erwin Lichtenstein, representative of the Danzig synagogue community and editor of the independent Danziger Rundschau, who later became a lawyer in Tel Aviv and representative of the circa 1500 strong former Danziger Jewish community in Israel.
The slave labour camp at Moerfelden-Walldorf, 30km south of Frankfurt, housed mostly Jewish women prisoners, who worked either on preparing the ground for building Frankfurt airport or for the company Züblin und Cie AG. It was open from 2 November 1943 to 26 March 1945.
The SS (Schutzstaffel) was founded in 1925 with the object of protecting the Nazi Perty leader, Adolf Hitler. By 1936, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the SS had assumed responsiblity for all police and security matters throughout the Third Reich.
Wolfram Sievers, who became the Reichsgeschäftsführer der Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutschen Ahnenerbe (the Director of the Society for Research into the Spiritual Roots of Germany's Ancestral Heritage), was born in 1905 the son of an evangelical church musician in Hildesheim. His Gymnasium schooling was aborted not, as he claimed on the witness stand at the Nuremberg Trials, because he had to find a practical occupation on account of the difficulties caused by the separation of his parents, but, as he states in his SS- Personalfragebogen, because of his desire to be more actively involved in the 'deutsch-völkisch' Schutz und Trutzbund. Thus demonstrating from early on his fascination for German ethnicity and pre-Christian culture.
Sievers was a witness at the first Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and was himself convicted of being a war criminal on account of his involvement in experimentation on concentration camp prisoners. He was executed on 2 June 1948.
Malines (Mechelen) concentration camp was situated in a former barracks by the river in the city of the same name in Belgium. It was appropriated by the Germans in 1942 to serve as an assembly camp for all the Jews of Belgium and other 'undesirable' groups. The camp was divided into several groups including those to be deported; nationals of neutral countries or Germany's allies; borderline cases (ie mixed race); political prisoners and, in the final stages of the camp's existence, Gypsies.
Nothing is known about H. Loebl. Josephine Winter was a Jewish immigrant to Great Britain from Vienna.
The Central Information Bureau for Jewish War Sufferers in the Far East was founded in 1917 by Sam Mason, a special delegate sent by the Hebrew Immigrant Society (better known as HIAS) in New York. Its function was to deal with the problem of refugees attempting to reach America (and other countries) from the Far East. The main office was established in Harbin, China, but branches were also set up in Yokohama, Japan, and Vladivostok on the eastern seaboard of the Soviet Union. Though the Bureau continued to deal with the problems of victims of the 1914-1918 First World War until the late 1920's, it changed its official name to The Far Eastern Central Information Bureau in 1923 and took its cable address 'DALJEWCIB' which became the organisation's name in everyday use. At this time Meir Birman became involved in the Bureau's work and was to manage it until its dissolution some 25 years later. Connected with HIAS since 1918, the Bureau worked in very close co-operation with the umbrella Jewish refugee organization HICEM (the amalgamation of HIAS, JCA and the Emigre organisation of Berlin). From 1938, the numbers of German, Austrian and other central European Jews, including Polish and Czechoslovakians, requesting asylum grew drastically. With the Japanese occupation of northern China in the early 1930s, the situation of the Jews in Harbin deteriorated, until, in September 1939, the Bureau moved its head office to Shanghai. At that time Shanghai remained one of the few places, which refugees could enter without a visa. Throughout 1939 and 1940, Jews continued to flood into Shanghai, until with the outbreak of the Pacific War some 18,000 Jewish refugees reached Shanghai, of which about 8,000 originated from Germany and about 4,000 from Austria. At the end of the Pacific War in August 1945 the Bureau formed part of the world-wide chain of organisations trying to trace other Jewish refugees in order to place the Shanghai refugees in secure countries. This work continued for a number of years after the war ended.
The Hilfsverein für jüdische Studierende, Berlin (aid organisation for Jewish students) was founded in 1841 with the object of assisting poor Jewish students at state secondary schools in Berlin, by providing interest free loans and grants to cover examination costs. It is not known when it ceased functioning.
According to their own constitution, the World Jewish Congress is a voluntary association of representative Jewish bodies, communities and organisations throughout the world, organised to assure the survival and to foster the unity of the Jewish people. Its origins lie in the immediate aftermath of World War I in the cooperative efforts by Jewish communities around the world in religious, legal, political and relief matters. In the aftermath of World War II the World Jewish Congress played a central role in the creation of Jewish policies with regard to peace treaties, the prosecution and trial of Nazi war criminals and reparations for Holocaust survivors.
Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the largest in Germany with its 130 satellite camps and units, was situated 5 miles north of Weimar in Thüringen. It was established in July 1937 when the first group of 149 mostly political prisoners and criminals was received. Some 238,980 prisoners passed through Buchenwald from 30 countries. 43,005 were killed or perished there.
On the eve of World War Two, the city of Lodz in Poland had a population of 665,000 people of which 34 per cent were Jews. The Jewish population was very active in the industrial sector and the community had a very vibrant cultural life, consisting of sports clubs theatres and newspapers. The Jewish community also produced many renowned authors, artists and poets.
After the German army occupied Lodz on 8 September 1939 there began a campaign of anti-semitic persecution of increasing severity reaching a peak with the creation of the Lodz ghetto, which was officially sealed off from the outside world on 1 May 1940. Thousands were brutalised and hundreds were murdered in the process. The ghetto was only ever conceived of as a temporary measure and ultimately it was planned to rid the city of its entire Jewish population. In the meantime the population of the ghetto, nominally represented by a council of Jewish elders, was forced to live in appalling overcrowded conditions with minimal food and no sanitation. 43,500 people died during the ghetto's existence mostly through starvation and disease.
The deportations, initially to Chelmno, began in January 1942. In total 70,000 inhabitants were sent to their deaths during this first stage. There followed a period of relative quiet when the ghetto became a giant labour camp. The death camp at Chelmno was reopened in June 1944 on the orders of Himmler, who wanted to finally liquidate the ghetto and over 7000 ghetto inmates were murdered in the space of 3 weeks. Another 65,000 Jews were deported to their deaths at Auschwitz during the remainder of 1944. The remaining 1000 Jews at Lodz were liberated by the Russians on 19 January 1945.
Julius Bloch was born in Bruehl/ Baden in June 1877. He became a member of the Jewish Gemeindevorstand in Pforzheim, Baden Wuertemberg, in 1923; member of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, Frankfurt/ Main, where he was also chairman of the Jewish welfare committee and head of the regional office for the Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland. He was responsible for rationalisng the provision of welfare to Jews in Frankfurt by centralising the numerous smaller organisations into one large organisation. By May 1938 he was living in London. In 1946 he was deputy of the New Liberal Congregation, London. He died in London in 1956.
Dr. Käthe Spiegel was the daughter of the Professor of Public Law at the German University of Prague, and for many years senate member of the Parliament of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Ludwig Spiegel. She trained as a historian and librarian and worked as her father's secretary. She also worked for a number of other mostly student organisations in Prague. Letters of reference suggest that she probably emigrated to Great Britain in 1939.
Bruno Streckenbach, SS Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei was born Hamburg, 17 February 1902; head of Gestapo, Hamburg, 1933; Führer der Einsatzgruppe I in Poland and commanding officer of Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst, Cracow, September 1939; joined Waffen SS, 1943; made General, 1944; arrested by the Red Army, 10 May 1945; sentenced to 25 years hard labour, 1952; released October 1955; thereafter he became an office clerk. He was indicted for the murder of at least 1 million people in 1973. The court in Hamburg suspended the proceedings on account of his ill health. Died, 28 October 1977.
Marek Vajsblum was a Polish journalist and author.
Ernst Schaefer, born 1891, was a Jewish lawyer employed by Osram, until 30 June 1938, when, by verbal agreement he officially left the employment but was to be retained as an 'adviser' until 30 June 1941. Schaefer came to England in May 1939 shortly after his two daughters (from his second marriage to a non-Jew) arrived on the Kindertransport. His young son and wife remained in Germany.
Unknown
Richard Korherr was born in Regensburg, 1903, graduated from his academic studies with honours and went on to publish statistical works, which earned him high praise; joined the National Bureau of Statistics, 1928. The Bavarian prime minister appointed him chairman of the board of Reich und Heimat, a government-sponsored society. Korherr's book Geburtenrückgang (Decline in Birth Rate) was well received; Benito Mussolini personally translated the Italian version. The 1936 edition had a foreward by Himmler. Director of the Würzburg municipal bureau of statistics, 1935-1940, and also lectured at the local university. From 1934 he worked concurrently as head of the section of statistics and demographic policy in the headquarters of Rudolf Hess, then deputy Führer. In 1937 and 1938 Korherr published Untergang der alten Kulturvölker (The Demise of the Old Civilized Peoples) and in 1938 an atlas under the title Volk und Raum (People and Space). In May 1937 Korherr joined the Nazi party but he did not become a member of the SA or SS. On 9 December 1940 He was appointed chief inspector of the statistical bureau of the Reichsführer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei (SS Head and Chief of Police) and of the Reichskommisariat für die Festigung des Deutschen Volkstums (National Commission for the Strengthening of German Folklore), both posts under Himmler. In December he began processing data for the 'Final Solution', a task in which he was assisted by Dr. Erich Simon, a Jew, who was the statistician of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland.
He became known for the 'Korherr Bericht', a detailed statistical report on the deportation of Jews which was updated every 3 months in 1943 and 1944. At his trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann stated that the Korherr report had served him in the planning stages of the extermination. Gerald Reitlinger, in his book The Final Solution, describes the report as 'a source of inestimable value... [as it] tallies with so many counter-checks that its honesty may be assumed where counter checks are lacking...'.
After the war Korherr spent some time in the allies' custody but was one of the earliest to be released, and later emerged unscathed from the de-nazification process. He was no doubt helped by the fact that he rescued Erich Simon, the Jewish statistician of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland. An affidavit and correspondence, also in this collection, by the latter supports this. However, Korherr lost his job at the West German finance ministry after publication of the 1962 edition of Reitlinger's book.
Reichsministerium der Justiz (Justice ministry) was one of the ministries of the Third Reich. The Richterbriefe are a series of confidential letters addressed to the Nazi judiciary from the Reichsministerium outlining in detail the stance that should be taken and verdicts, which should be given in numerous case scenarios. They were a method of further controlling and subordinating the judiciary to Nazi ideology. They came about shortly after the appointment of Otto Georg Thierack to the position of Reichsminister der Justiz in August 1942.
Dr. George F.J. Bergmann was a German Jew who enrolled in the French Foreign Legion as a foreign national living in France in 1939. He was later interned in the notorious prison, Hadjerat M'Guil, in French North Africa and later fought for the British in a pioneer corps company. His origins are not known. He emigrated to Australia after the war. Evidently he was a keen mountaineer.
Fritz Zietlow was born 24 August 1900. He was a law student, one of the early Nazi party activists, who became a Nazi party member in July 1925. He served the party as Gaugeschäftsführer (regional organiser) in Kiel and was a member of the Prussian state council from March 1932. After his legal studies in Kiel and Greifswald he began working as an editor on the Schlesischer Zeitung then on Der Angriff. At the end of 1932 he became the chief editor of the official party paper, the Ostfriesischen Tageszeitung.
Despite being regarded as ideal material for a position as lecturer at the Reichspresseschule, and being nominally included on the staff of that organisation in 1937, he never took up the post. It is thought that this may have been because he was fired by Goebbels from his post on Der Angriff for stealing from the petty cash.
Unknown
The origins of the International Tracing Service date back to a 1943 initiative at the Headquarters of the Allied Forces, which enabled the section for International Affairs at the British Red Cross in London to provide this function. Spurred by the need to acquire more precise information about the fate of forced labourers and refugees in Europe, the task was taken over by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces on 15 February 1944. From the end of the war until 30 June 1947 the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration assumed the task of supporting and repatriating millions of non-German refugees. It moved to Bad Arolsen, Germany in January 1946, which was the geographical centre of the 4 occupation zones. On 1 July 1947 the International Refugee Organisation took over the Central Tracing Bureau, which, as of 1 January 1948, under the name International Tracing Service, is still valid today.
Lebensborn (Fount of life), registered association, established in December 1935 within the SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (Race and Resettlement Main Office- RuSHA). In an extension of the marriage order of 1932, the Lebensborn Statute of September 1936 charged every SS man to produce at least 4 children, whether in or out of wedlock. The children were to come into the world in well-equipped Lebensborn homes, which protected the mothers from the surrounding world. Lebensborn provided birth documents and the child's basic support, and recruited adoptive parents. Financed by compulsory contributions from the RuSHA leadership, by 1944 a total of 13 homes were maintained, in which some 11,000 children were born. Estimates for the number of kidnappings of racially suitable non-aryans vary from several thousand to 200,000.
This microfilm collection consists of material gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania, by a group of refugee Polish-Jewish writers and journalists, who formed a committee to collect evidence on the conditions of Jews in Poland under German occupation.
The papers relate to the activities of two anti-Nazi activists, Arthur Geissler and Erich Arp, who, at the end of the war, were indicted by a British Military Court for 'the unlawful appropriation of authority' by arresting the former Ortsgruppenleiter Krömer, Elmshorn, Schleswig-Holstein, at gun point.
Regional courts (Landgerichte) and the higher, appeal courts (Oberlandgerichte) throughout former West and East Germany conducted some 1800 Nazi war crimes trials involving some 3500 defendants from the end of the Second World War until the modern era.
Dr. Letitia Fairfield (1885-1978), born of Irish extraction received her medical education at Edinburgh and spent her working life in London, becoming the first woman senior medical officer to the London County Council. She joined the LCC service in 1911 and in 1920 was sent on a mission to the West Indies - and in 1938 to Malta - to advise on how to deal with venereal diseases in women. In 1943 she was appointed to the Colonial Office committee on this subject. In 1942 she was appointed a member of the Ministry of Health's Advisory Committee on the welfare of mothers and young children. Earlier activities included the preparation of a report on women's lodging houses in 1927. Later that year she went to America, under the auspices of the Commonwealth Fund of New York, to study child guidance.
In her early years she was an active supporter of the Women's Suffrage Movement and a member of the Fabian Society. In 1930-1932 she was president of the London Association of the Medical Women's Federation. She was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple and for many years regularly attended the meetings of the Medico-Legal Society of London, of which she was a vice-president. She was also co-editor of the Medico-Legal and Criminological Review.
She was an ardent and influential member of the Catholic Church. This is borne out by her documented presence in this collection on a number of committees of Catholic welfare and special interest groups.
The prosecution of what became known as the 'Riga Ghetto Case' (LG Hamburg vom 29.12.1951, [50] 14/51) was significant because it signalled a change in policy on the prosecution of war crimes trials in Great Britain. The British originally planned to prosecute the five defendants accused of the most serious crimes, in a Control Commission Court (ie for crimes against humanity) and let the 11 lesser accused be tried in a German Spruchkammer for membership of illegal organisations. After some delay, the decision was made in Spring 1948 by the Foreign Office to hand over the prosecution of all the defendants in the Riga Ghetto case to the German authorities, stating that the German courts were perfectly capable of undertaking the work.
The Committee for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Baltic Countries, (made up of former inmates of camps in Riga/ Buchenwald and formerly known as the Group of Baltic Survivors in Great Britain), formed a sub-committee, which met in London, to assist in the investigation of crimes for this trial. Its activities consisted of contacting potential witnesses and gathering statements and affidavits in support of the prosecution. At one point, the General Secretary of the Committee, Josef Berman, a Latvian Jew and former inmate of Riga and Buchenwald, was asked to go to Hamburg to meet the investigating judge in the case. Much to the latter's dismay, most of the statements which had been gathered over the past years could not be used by the investigating judge because they apparently did not meet the rigorous criteria demanded by German courts.
The trial outcome consisted of the following: two defendants were given life sentences, one was acquitted, one was given 1 year 8 months. Whilst many potential defendants had already died, or in certain cases had escaped - such as Herbert Cukurs, who fled to Brazil in 1946 and was, in 1965, killed by an Israeli Mossad hit squad - some escaped after being released from custody by the British, the most important of whom was Viktor Arajs, who was finally convicted at the Hamburg Landesgericht in 1979 and sentenced to life imprisonment for mass murder. An additional barrier to prosecutions for crimes committed in Riga, was the fact that much of the relevant documentation had been appropriated by the Russian authorities, and was therefore inaccessible. Many potential defendants would have out-lived the period of the statute of limitations (in the cases of offences that carried a sentence less than life imprisonment) or would have died by the time this material was made available. A reluctance, for political reasons, to extradite suspects to Eastern Block countries presented a further barrier to prosecutions.
On January 21, 1981, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of United States of America v. Feodor Federenko (1907-1986). At issue was whether the defendant, Feodor Fedorenko, a seventy-four-year-old Ukrainian-American who during World War Two had served as an armed guard at the infamous Treblinka extermination camp, should have his American citizenship revoked on the basis of this newly discovered fact about his past. The original case, having found in Fedorenko's favour, was successfuly appealed. Fedorenko became the first Nazi war criminal to be deported to the Soviet Union. In a court in Southern Ukraine, June 1986, he was found guilty of treason; voluntarily going over to the side of the Fascist aggressors; taking part in punitive actions against the peaceful population; and mass executions of citizens of many countries. He was sentenced to death in Kiev in 1986.
The fortnightly anti-Semitic periodical, Weltdienst, was founded by Ulrich Fleischauer, a retired German lieutenant, in Erfurt on 1 December 1933. August Schirmer, who, having already been employed at Weltdienst in the 'American Section', took over publication of the periodical in July 1939. Shortly afterwards he announced the relocation of the offices to Frankfurt am Main, where all anti Jewish 'research establishments' under Alfred Rosenberg's direction were concentrated. Schirmer resigned in August 1943, at which time Weltdienst was published in 18 languages.
Weltdienst continued well into 1944. Kurt Richter, the new publisher, was also director of an 'International Institute for the Enlightenment of the Jewish Question', also called 'Weltdienst'. This institute organised gatherings of European antisemites 'with a view to securing an exchange of ideas and experiences designed to steadily strengthen the common European defence action against Jewry'.
In 1934 Weltdienst was given the task of rounding up Russian émigré experts to defend the veracity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at Bern. This anti-Semitic forgery came under public scrutiny in June 1933, when a right wing Swiss nationalist organisation known as the National Front began distributing it during a demonstration in Bern. A group of leading Swiss Jews filed a suit against the distributors, contending that the document, which described a Jewish plot to take over the world, fell under the ban on 'indecent writings'.
Boris Tödtli born in 1901 in Kiev of Swiss parents; fought with White armies during Russian Revolution; taken prisoner by the Red Army near the Romanian border in early 1920; Tödtli contracted typhus and was sent to a hospital in Odessa; lived with his parents, until, in January 1922, he joined the ranks of Russian emigration.
With no trade skills, Tödtli wandered from one menial job to another in the 1920s; in 1923 studied photography in Zurich, where he worked for 2 years before moving on to Paris, Geneva, Lausanne and finally, in 1932, to Bern. There he became a dental technician. Until 1933, when he joined Roll's National Front, Tödtli apparently did not engage in any political activity. It was only in that year that he found a home in the Nazi movement and that his bilingual fluency and anti-Semitism made him a useful go-between for Russians and Germans.
When he joined the National Front Tödtli also began to establish contacts with Russian right wing circles. It was probably through these contacts that he first became aware of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Approached by Markov II of Weltdienst in November 1934, to help arrange the defence of the Protocols in court, he immediately appointed himself 'Chief of the Swiss Section of the Russian Imperial Union' and dispatched letters to dozens of right wing exiles asking for their expertise and testimony at the trial. He was unable to persuade witnesses to attend the trial, not least because of the costs involved.
More important for Tödtli, he became so closely associated with the Russian émigrés and the Nazi bureaucracy that in November 1936 the Bern police charged him under Article II of the Swiss Espionage Act of 21 June 1935. In 1937 he was sentenced to two months in prison, which he managed to avoid by fleeing to Germany. However, after the signing of the Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Russians became a political liability for the Third Reich, and in December 1939 Tödtli was extradited to Switzerland, where he was promptly imprisoned. He died during World War Two.
This collection of correspondence and papers relates to the infamous Bern trial of the distributors of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', in particular to the appeal, which took place between 27 October and 1 November 1937, in which the original verdict, convicting the distributors of falsification and plagiarism, was overturned on a legal technicality, although the appellants were not compensated.
The material was originally housed in a folder entitled 'Protokolle Prozess Bern Appellation' (front cover); 'Bern Protokolle Prozess II Instanz' (spine). Their custodial history prior to deposit is unknown. At some point they came into the possession of Hans Jonak von Freyenwald, and were subsequently referred to as the 'Freyenwald Collection at the Wiener Library'.
Jonak von Freyenwald, born 1878 in Vienna; held various civil service posts until retirement in 1922. He worked for the Anti-semitic organisation Weltdienst between 1934 and 1940 in Erfurt, then Frankfurt. Between 1934 and 1937 he worked as an academic assistant for the Swiss defendants and their lawyers in the Bern trial of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'.
The United Restitution Office was founded in 1948 by an initiative of the Council of Jews from Germany. This organisation persuaded the main representative organisations of Jews in Britain, USA and France to set up offices in their respective countries to deal with claims for restitution from the German government especially from poorer claimants who were without the means to do it alone.
Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf (now Lambinowice in Silesia) also known as Kommando E562, became a part of the Auschwitz/Monowitz concentration camp complex. It was opened in 1939 to house Polish prisoners from the German September 1939 offensive. Later approximately 100,000 prisoners from Australia, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, France, Greece, New Zealand, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and the United States passed through this camp. In 1941 a separate camp, Stalag VIII-F was set up close by to house the Soviet prisoners. In 1943, the Lamsdorf camp was split up, and many of the prisoners (and Arbeitskommandos) were transferred to two new base camps Stalag VIII-C Sagan and Stalag VIII-D Teschen (modern Èeský Tìšín). The base camp at Lamsdorf was renumbered Stalag 344. The Soviet Army reached the camp 17 March 1945.