Wilhelm Merzbach was director of the family business, Bankhaus S Merzbach.
Nothing is known about the author of the manuscript except that he was 82 at the time of writing.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established in 1936. It was located at the edge of Berlin, which gave it a prime position among the German concentration camps: the administrative centre of all concentration camps was located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen became a training centre for SS officers (who would often be sent to oversee other camps afterwards). Executions took place at Sachsenhausen, especially those of Soviet POWs. While some Jews were executed at Sachsenhausen and many died there, the Jewish inmates of the camp were relocated to Auschwitz in 1942. Sachsenhausen was not designed as a death camp; instead, the systematic mass murder of Jews was conducted primarily in camps to the east.
Kurt Ferber was a resident of Berlin-Mariendorf; he is likely to have been employed by an iron manufacturing business, based in Berlin, although in what capacity it is not known. He refers to his many years service with the 'Spionagepolizei' (1252/1/8), it is not clear what that was, or when and where his service took place. He also refers to his time as a member of the border police in Silesia (1252/13). With regard to his family, the only information which emerges is that he had a cousin, who had been living in inner China for 10 years as a missionary (1252/1/11).
Olga Bruewitsch-Heuss, the other correspondent, was resident at the home of Major Runde, Berlin-Wilmersdorf Konstanzerstrasse 10 up until she moved to Bregenzerstrasse 15 flat 3 (1252/1/14, dated 22.10.1932) after a period of illness. The only information known about her family is that she had an uncle, General Giessler. Both correspondents were probably members of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, since this organisation is referred to in the correspondence and there is further material relating to it in the collection.
Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur was founded by Alfred Rosenberg on 19 December 1928 in Munich. The purpose of the league was to promote the beliefs of Hitler on the nature of German culture and to combat Jewish influence in German cultural life. In May 1933 it was recognized as the official cultural organisation of the NSDAP.
Gertrud Wilmersdörfe born 1915 Oberpfalz, Bavaria, an anti-Nazi and Jewess was convicted in 1934 of anti-Nazi activities in Frankfurt am Main along with 3 other co-defendants at a trial in Kassel and sentenced to 4 months imprisonment.
Unknown.
Wilhelm Hollitscher arrived in England on March 31 1939 at the age of 66 from Vienna. Apparently a life-long diarist, he recommenced writing his diaries on 13 June 1939. After his arrival in England Hollitscher stayed at Salford, soon after moving to Petts Wood, Kent, where he lived throughout the duration of the diaries, except for a period of 10 weeks internment [25 June- 1 September 1940].
Doris Winter was forced to discontinue her education at the school where she produced this work as she was Jewish; attended a boarding school in Sweden, 1934-1935; returned to Cologne and realised that she was unable to receive any training or qualifications; went to England and spent the summer in a holiday home for Jewish children from Leeds, April 1936; began nursing training, 1936; after the fall of France in 1940 she was asked to leave the hospital within 24 hours because of her official status as a 'friendly enemy alien'. Fortunately she had already passed her exams.
After a brief period of unemployment she worked at the Lingfield Epileptic Colony, Surrey and also at the Anna Freud nurseries in Hampstead under the American Foster Plan. She became matron of the 54 Camden Road Wartime Day Nursery, which was run by the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education, with the object of releasing women for essential work.
The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group was a military formation of the British Army that served in Europe during the Second World War. Although the brigade was formed in 1944, some of its experienced personnel had been employed against the Axis powers in Greece, the Middle East and East Africa. More than 30,000 Palestinian Jews volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces, 734 of whom died during the war.
The brigade and its predecessors, the Palestine Regiment and the three infantry companies that had formed it, were composed primarily of Middle Eastern Jews. The brigade was nevertheless inclusive to all Jewish and non-Jewish soldiers so that by 1944 over 50 nationalities were represented. Many were refugees displaced from countries that had been occupied or controlled by the Axis powers in Europe and Ethiopia. Volunteers from the United Kingdom, its empire, the Commonwealth, and other 'western democracies' also provided contingents.
Gurs was a major internment camp in France, near Oloron-Sainte-Marie, 80 kilometers from the Spanish border. Established in 1939 to absorb Republican refugees from Spain, Gurs later served as a concentration camp for Jews from France and refugees from other countries. While under the administration of Vichy France (1940-1942) most non-Jewish prisoners were released and approximately 2000 Jews were permitted to emigrate. In 1941 Gurs held some 15,000 prisoners. The camp was controlled by the Germans from 1942 to 1944, during which time several thousand inmates were deported to extermination camps in Poland. An unknown number succeeded in escaping and reaching Spain or hiding in Southern France. Gurs was liberated in the summer of 1944.
The Jewish ghetto in Kraków (Cracow) was one of the five main ghettos created by the Nazis in the General Government, during their occupation of Poland during World War Two. It was a staging point to begin dividing 'able workers' from those who would later be deemed worthy of death. Before the war, Kraków was an influential cultural centre for the 60,000-80,000 Jews that resided there. Janina Fischler-Martinho was a survivor of the Jewish ghetto at Cracow.
Papers probaby compiled for an exhibition on the fate of Jews in Vienna during the Nazi era.
Karl Neumann was born into a Jewish family in Picin, Czechoslovakia, 1895. He trained at a business school and after initially working with his brother he went into business on his own in 1933. In 1939 on account of persecution by the Nazis on racial grounds he fled to London.
Lisbeth Perks was born into a Jewish family in Vienna c 1930; came to Great Britain as a refugee, 1939. Whilst bringing up her family she studied pianoforte with Herbert Sumison and Kendall Taylor and gained an associateship of the Royal College of Music. She has taught in many schools and at her own home.
The depositor was the grand-daughter of Feodor Schweitzer, the subject of some of the documents. The family came to Great Britain, 1938-1939. The relationship of the individuals referred to in the earlier documentation to the depositor is unknown. It appears that one of the depositor's ancestors was a court photographer in Berlin in the 1860s.
Born 1916, Wolfgang Josephs, a German Jew from Berlin, came to Great Britain sometime in the mid 1930s. He was interned as an enemy alien at the outbreak of war and later transported on the 'Dunera' to Hay Internment Camp, Australia. On his return to Great Britain in 1941 he enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, later changing his name to Peter Johnson. He was a military interpreter for the British occupying forces in Germany at Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, May 1945-Oct 1946 where he was involved with the denazification process. Whilst there he also took an interest in the returnees from concentration camps, arranging correspondence between them and their families all over the world. The Wiener Library has a copy of a tape recorded interview with him, the original being produced for the Imperial War Museum, which details his life as an internee in Great Britain and Australia.
'The Hyphen' was founded in 1948 by a group of younger continental Jewish refugees (between the ages of 20 and 35), many of whom were the children of members of the Association of Jewish Refugees, who having settled in Great Britain, found that owing to their similar background and experiences they had interests and problems in common. The group was to have no particular religious or political bias. The intention was to provide cultural, social and welfare activities in a way that would enable them to feel at home in their newly adopted country. The name 'The Hyphen' was chosen because it symbolized the gap between the older generation of refugees who had no intention or desire to integrate into British society, and the ideal of seamless integration which the younger generation aspired to but could not immediately realise.
One of the group's first activities was the setting up of a study and discussion group, which covered topics such as immigration in general, as well as German-Jewish immigration into Britain; German-Jewish history, and British cultural and political topics. Its most popular functions became the social gatherings, dances, and rambles in the Home Counties. 'The Hyphen' never had more than 100 members at one time but there were between 400 and 500 names on its mailing lists. The activities eventually petered out and the group was wound up in 1968. Compared with other German-Jewish institutions it was rather marginal, but for the members it fulfilled a very important function by giving them a sense of belonging during a difficult period of settling in to a new society.
Charlotte Salomon was born in Berlin in 1917 into a cultured and assimilated middle class Jewish family, and died in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 26. 'Life or Theatre?' is the name she gave to a sequence of nearly 800 gouaches she produced between 1940 and 1942. Subtitled 'a play with music', it combines images, texts and musical references to recreate a life scarred both by family tragedy and Nazi persecution, yet interspersed with moments of intense happiness and love.
Two Czech Torah scrolls were given to the Northwood and Pinner Synagogue from the towns of Kolin and Trebon. It was decided to research the history and background to these scrolls. The content of this collection is the result of that research.
Frederick (Fritz) Ullstein was the son of Hermann Ullstein, the youngest of the 5 Ullstein brothers, responsible for building up the Ullstein publishing House to become the largest in Europe, prior to compulsory purchase by the Nazis in 1934, on account of the family's Jewish origins. Frederick came to Great Britain in the 1930s, became a farmer, served in the British army during the war and married into the Guiness family. After the war he was involved in claiming back for the Ullstein family what was rightfully theirs. Once the business was back in the hands of members of the Ullstein family, it became evident that for a number of reasons, they were not able to recreate the success, which the firm enjoyed before the Nazi seizure of power. Sustained interest by Axel Springer eventually resulted in the latter's company taking over the firm. Frederick Ullstein became an employee of Aldus Books, based in London.
.Aldus Books, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Doubleday and Co. Inc. of New York, USA Division was run by Wolfgang Foges, who came to Great Britain from Austria to get married in 1936. In Vienna he had edited a fashion magazine. He founded Adprint in Great Britain in 1937. This company created and produced illustrated books, the best known of which were the 120 volumes of the Britain in Pictures series, published in England by Collins, and translated into several languages by the Ministry of Information.
In 1941, Foges had been granted British citizenship for important services to the war effort and soon after his naturalisation he was appointed an honorary advisor to the Colonial Office on books and publications.
In the early 1950s, under the imprint of Rathbone Books, a series of books called The Wonderful World was published in association with Doubleday and Co. Inc. New York. This was the start of many further series of internationally co-produced educational and general knowledge books, written by distinguished British authors. In 1960 Aldus Books was founded.
Peter Kien was born in January 1919 in Warnsdorf, Czechoslovakia, the son of a textile manufacturer, whose business collapsed during the economic crisis of 1929. He began painting whilst a student at the German Realschule in Brünn and continued his schooling in art at the Prague Academy where he studied under Willi Nowak. The situation in Czechoslovakia got steadily worse particularly for Jews after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. During this time he met Ilse Stransky. They married in September 1940. In December 1941 he was deported to Theresienstadt.
In Theresienstadt he met many more artists and writers whilst working in the graphics department. He became increasingly active as a portrait artist and sketcher of fellow inmates. Above all he immersed himself in the theatrical and musical life of the camp.
In July 1942 he was joined by his wife and in January 1943 by his parents. He wrote poetry and several plays and his libretto for the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder der Tod dankt ab which had its premiere in Amsterdam in 1975.
He was sent to Aushwitz on the last transport in October 1944 along with his wife and parents where he was murdered.
Fred Dunston (previously Fritz Deutsch), the depositor, worked in the Youth Aliyah offices and later the Palästinaamt, Vienna (after the former was destroyed during Kristallnacht), and also as youth leader or member of the Elternschaft in the Youth Aliyah centres of Great Engeham Farm, Kent, Braunton and Bydown, Devon.
Youth Aliyah or Aliyat Hanoar, as it was known in Hebrew, was created by Recha Freier, wife of a Berlin Rabbi, in 1932. Combining productive agricultural training with educational and Zionist values it gave many young Jewish children a purpose and occupation during the period of mass unemployment, the result of the breakdown of the German economy.
Circumstances in late 1938 Europe meant that it became imperative to send Jewish children abroad. Auslandhascharah was the overseas version of Youth Aliyah where children and young people were trained with a view to eventually emigrating to Palestine. England was added to the list of countries and the London office soon became the busiest, reflecting the popularity of Great Britain as a destination.
Funding of the centres came from the British Council of the Young Pioneer Movement for Palestine (Hachsharath Hanoar), whose executive committee comprised Mrs Israel M. Sieff, Mrs Norman Laski, Mr M. Schattner and Mrs Lola Hahn-Warburg.
Great Engeham Farm, Kent, was received as a gift as a result of an advertisement in the London Times. It opened in June 1939 and a total of 134 children and 30 chalutzim lived there rent free. It served primarily as a transit camp for between 300 and 350 children aged 13-16.
Bydown, Devon, was founded by a group from Great Engeham Farm who were forced to move there in November 1939 when Kent was designated off-limits to aliens. Its headmaster was Dr. Fridolin M. Friedmann, a former headmaster of the Landschulheim of Caputh, near Berlin. It closed at the beginning of October 1941 when the lease ran out.
The agricultural training centre at Braunton, Devon, was a collaborative project between Youth Aliyah, Hechaluz and the British Council of the Young Pioneer Movement for Palestine. The accommodation housed 30 people who engaged in farm work. The centre existed between March and December 1940.
Bernhard Reichenbach, 1888-1975, was the son of a Jewish businessman and a protestant teacher; childhood and schooling in Hamburg; later became an actor in Bochum and Hamburg, 1912-1914; studied literature, art history and sociology in Berlin; active in the youth movement and a member of the Freie Studentenschaft, Berlin. As a medical orderly in World War One he won the Ehren Kreuz II Klass. In 1917 he was a founding member of the Unabhängige Sozialistischepartei Deutschlands; co-founder of the Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, and, as a representative of the latter party, he attended the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow, and the third World Congress of the Communist International. He left the KAPD on his return to Berlin and joined the SPD in the beginning of 1925. He continued his activities as a journalist for a number of left-wing periodicals whilst working as a company secretary for a weaving business in Krefeld. After the Nazis came to power he could no longer continue working as a journalist, and after pressure from the police he emigrated to Great Britain.
In 1935 he joined the Labour Party. He was interned on the Isle of Man, 1940-1941, and after his release worked in the field of political instruction of German POWs. From 1944-1948 he edited the British government periodical for German POWs in Great Britain, Die Wochenpost.
He was a member of Club 1943. He became the London correspondent of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk and Westfälische Rundschau. He also worked on Contemporary Review and Socialist Commentary and Welt der Arbeit. He was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1958.
This collection was apparently created by George Burger whilst living in Austria and Hungary.
Ruth Balint (née Neumann) was born in Berlin in 1926. She was sent to school in Schöneiche, Brandenburg, where she was one of very few Jewish children. In 1938 she was sent to a Jewish school in Berlin. Shortly after her father's return from 3 months in a concentration camp, in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, he wrote to a relative in Newcastle, Kurt Banski, a furniture maker, with regard to looking after Ruth. Ruth came to England circa July 1939 on the Kindertransport. She spent the following 5 years with an English Methodist family in Kendall, Lake District. She remained in contact with the family for the rest of their lives. Ruth died in 2000.
During the war years Ruth received the letters in this collection from her parents, who were eventually deported to Warsaw, then Treblinka in 1942 and grandparents to Theresienstadt in the same year. The only indication of concern about their predicament, which Ruth discerned in the letters after a re-reading of them many years later, was the occasional enquiry regarding news of relatives who had managed to flee to South America, and who had promised to help them also to emigrate.
The donor, A Dunitz, was instrumental in bringing about the creation of a memorial to the Jews who were deported by the Nazis, by persuading the various Greek authoritities to cooperate. He was also responsible for finding all the names of the individuals. The names on this list correspond with those on the memorial. The memorial was erected in 2001.
Isidore Kirchner was Jewish; born in 1856 in Loslau, Upper Silesia; attended school in Pless and became a licensed medical practitioner in Berlin 1883.
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund was born 17 November 1900 in Frankfurt am Main and was professor of comparative law, University of Oxford. He was born in Frankfurt am Main of Jewish parents and educated at the Goethe-Gymnasium there and Frankfurt University. He became judge of the Berlin labour court, 1929. Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, he fled to London and became a student at the London School of Economics. He became an assistant lecturer in law there in 1936 and Professor in 1951. He was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in 1936. He became a British citizen in 1940.
He was appointed Professor of Comparative Law, University of Oxford, and fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1964 and elected FBA in 1965. He became an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple in 1969 and a QC in 1972. He was knighted in 1976.
He played an important part in the establishment of labour law as an independent area of legal study, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Reform of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, 1965. Kahn-Freund died in 1979.
The Trade Union Centre for German Workers in Great Britain (TUCGWGB) was founded just before the outbreak of the Second World War, but did not begin its work in earnest until the release of many of the German exiles, who were interned at the outbreak of war. The chairman of the TUCGWGB, Hans Gottfurcht, had for many years been an active trade unionist in Germany, where he helped establish a number of illegal trade unions under the Nazis. The establishment of the TUCGWGB was regarded as necessary because of the particular situation brought about by the large influx of refugees and exiles. Whereas it would normally have been expected for these new arrivals to join existing British trade unions (which they did as well), there was always a sense that their stay in Great Britain would only ever be temporary, and that they needed a representative organisation that would reflect their particular interests. After the war and the demise of the TUCGWGB, Hans Gottfurcht went on to become a pivotal figure as liaison between the newly formed Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund and the occupying British authorities.
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.
The Centro di Documentazione sui Bibelforscher, Centre for the Documentaion of Jehovah's Witnesses, is based in Italy and has no affiliation to any religious denomination.
A handwritten comment on the third page indicates that the leaflet was dropped by the RAF in 1943 or 1944.
World Media Forum is a platform for the discussion of a variety of international news topics attended by members of the world's media and held (annually ?) in different parts of the world. This particular event was held in Zurich in 1999.
Unknown
Juedische Winterhilfe (Jewish winter aid) was a Jewish organisation activated in the autumn of 1935 by the National Representation (Reichsvertretung) and the Central Committee of German Jews for Relief and Reconstruction to help needy Jews get through the winter, by providing food, medicines, and heating assistance. Winter Aid had been a general German enterprise during the winter of 1931/32, but Jews were excluded after the Nuremberg Laws, prompting Jewish organisations to establish the Jewish equivalent. Juedische Winterhilfe funded its activities by means of donations from Jews in Germany and elsewhere.
This notebook had been the property of Kitty Fehr, sister of the depositor, who collected it and smuggled it to Great Britain as a 15 year old girl in 1939. She added a few more during the war in England.
Unzer Styme (Our Voice) was a monthly paper written in Yiddish and published by the Central Committee for Liberated Jews in the British Zone betwen 1945 and 1947. The articles covered here are contained in issues held at the Wiener Library.
Esther Brunstein, the author is a survivor of Bergen Belsen.
Joyce Rozendaal Haldinstein, born in Norfolk, the daughter of a Jewish businessman, met and married a Dutch national and was caught up in the turmoil visited upon the Netherlands when the Germans invaded during World War Two.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.