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.
This letter is from a former friend of Philip Manes and his wife, addressed to Eva Manes and written in 1957. For the main Manes collection see WL document collection 1346.
Eleanor Hess was born in Munich on 20 December 1923 into a middle class Jewish family. Her father, Julius, was a cavalry officer in the First World War. He died in 1932. Eleanor came to Great Britain with her mother, Trude, in 1939. Her brother, Herbert, emigrated to Brazil where he spent the rest of his life. For a brief period Eleanor went to live with her brother in the early 1950s. She died in London c1999.
This collection of family papers consists primarily of letters from the Jewish parents, Franz and Hertha Kuhn in Berlin, to their daughter, Hannele or Hannah, who had managed to find refuge in Great Britain, having come out on one of the Kindertransporte in 1939. The letters give a very moving account of the trials and tribulations of a very close-knit, loving family split asunder by the Nazis and ultimately condemned to death.
Lodz ghetto or the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was the second-largest ghetto established for Jews and Roma in German-occupied Poland. It was originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews but the ghetto became a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany. Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944, when the remaining population was transported to Auschwitz. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated.
Heinz and Lucie Frank were the parents of the depositor's husband. Heinz Frank was a lawyer and the family lived in Cologne. The family was affected by the rise of the Nazis. The Frank family had originated in Holland where there remained some distant cousins. So Heinz and Lucie Frank, with their sons, Hermann and Hans (now John), transferred to Amsterdam. Hermann had just received his doctorate in dentistry. Despite all his efforts the best he could achieve was to work clandestinely in a friendly dental practice. In 1936 he came to England. Hans left Holland only after the occupation, and with the help of the underground, made his way to Portugal and then, via a year or more in Cuba, to the USA.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
The Volksbund für Frieden und Freiheit e.V. was an anti DDR propaganda and news organisation. It was founded under secret circumstances on 29 August 1950 in Gasthof 'Zum Patzenhofer' in Hamburg. The initiative came from Franz Wilhelm Paulus (publisher of the Hamburger Allgemeine Zeitung) and the journalist 'Dr. Erwin Kohl' (cover name of the former Goebbels' assistant Dr Eberhard Taubert). A number of former functionaries in the Nazi propaganda apparatus were involved from the outset. The foundation of the organisation was also supported by the US secret service, CIC. The presidents of the VFF were from 1950 to 1951 Jürgen Hahn-Butry and from 1951 to 1966 Fritz Cramer.
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Einsatzgruppen (Special task forces) were paramilitary groups formed by Heinrich Himmler and operated by the SS before and during World War Two. They operated in the territories captured by the German armies during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their principal task was to implement Hitler's 'final solution of the Jewish question' in the conquered territories.
Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich in southern Germany.
Opened on 22 March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of National Socialist (Nazi) NSDAP party and the Catholic Zentrum party (dissolved at 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, in his capacity as police president of Munich, officially described the camp as 'the first concentration camp for political prisoners.'
Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Its basic organisation, camp layout as well as the plan for the buildings were developed by Kommandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. He had a separate secure camp near the command centre, which consisted of living quarters, administration, and army camps. Eicke himself became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for establishing the others according to his model.
In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau of which nearly one-third were Jews. 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide.
Eric Walters was an inmate of Dachau and Buchenwald until March 1939.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War Two. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Dr Bela Berend was born in Budapest, 12 January 1911, the son of Adolf Presser and Regina Máriás. As a young Rabbi he was regarded as a non-conformist, anti-assimilationist, Zionist who, later with the threat of deportations, advocated emigration as the way to save the Hungarian Jewish population.
His role on the Hungarian Jewish Council brought him into contact with elements of the extreme, anti-Semitic Hungarian Right, in particular Zoltán Boznyák, who, paradoxically, shared the same desire to remove Hungary's Jewish population. This association resulted in his becoming one of the most controversial figures in the Hungarian Holocaust.
In 1946 he was tried for war crimes by the newly installed communist government, where he faced accusations of collusion with the Gestapo, stealing Jewish property and collaborating with the extreme right. After appeals he was finally exonerated and settled in the United States, where he changed his name to Albert B Belton. However, despite the court's final ruling he faced numerous accusations and libels over the course of the next few decades.
He was also a witness in war crimes trials and referred to in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, 1961. He was an ardent Zionist and defender of the state of Israel.
The Laterndl theatre opened on 21 June 1939 at the address of the Austrian Centre, 126 Westbourne Terrace. It was conceived of as a Kleinkunstbühne. Kleinkunst was a term created in the 1930s for a type of anti-Nazi cabaret. It is described as being at the serious end of the comic market, and whilst it included many of the elements common to cabaret, it didn't include the more frivolous and bohemian.
Martin Miller was responsible for production as well as being one of the main character actors. The writers were Franz Hartl, Hugo Königsgarten, Rudolf Spitz, and Hans Weigel. Kurt Manschinger dealt with the music, décor was by Carl Josefovics and costumes by Käthe Berl. The actors were Lona Cross, Greta Hartwig, Willy Kennedy, Jaro Klüger, Fritz Schrecker, Sylvia Steiner and Marianne Walla.
The theatre moved to 153 Finchley Road and then to 69 Eton Avenue by November 1941. One of the most famous achievements associated with 'das Laterndl' was the Martin Miller's spoof Hitler broadcast on April Fools' Day, 1940, in which Hitler claimed that Columbus had discovered America with the aid of German science, giving Germany territorial claim. A text of the speech is included in this collection.
The Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland was founded in 1933 and became the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden in 1935, and later the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland in 1939. It came into being shortly after the Nazi seizure of power as the successor to the Reichsvertretung der jüdischen Landesverbände, a loose federation of Jewish organisations in Germany. Its main objective was to deal with the serious problems facing German Jewry from the new, antisemitic regime.
Rabbi Leo Baeck was elected president, and the driving force in the organisation was its chief executive officer, Otto Hirsch. The organisation's activities were to include all aspects of the internal life of the Jews of Germany, and it was to act as their representative before the authorities as well as Jewish organisations abroad. Its main spheres of operation, conducted through the Zentralausschuss der Deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau (Central Committee of German Jews for aid and reconstruction) were education, vocational training, support for the needy, economic assistance, and emigration.
Fritz Gross was born in Vienna in 1897, the son of a Jewish dealer in precious stones, Herman Gross; fought in World War One, where he lost some of his closest friends, after which he moved to Germany where he worked at a variety of jobs in different places; joined the German Communist Party (KPD)in 1919 and was also an activist in various other left wing groups such as the 'Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe', of which he was the general secretary in 1923.
He married Babette Thüring, also an activist, in 1920 and they had a son in 1923; in 1929, after their separation he moved to Hamburg, and stayed in the house of Magda Hoppstock-Huth; after Adolf Hitler came to power he moved to England, eventually setting up home in Regent Square, London, where he built up a lending library for other refugees and the house became a meeting place. He spent much of his time working in the British Library where he produced most of his writing, without being able to publish much; died 1946.
In May 1960 Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and handed over to the police authorities in Israel. The police investigation was put into the hands of a special unit (Bureau 6) which took 9 months to complete its task. The resulting indictment comprised 15 counts of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership of a hostile organisation.
The trial commenced on 10 April 1961 and Eichmann pleaded not guilty on all counts. Supported by more than 100 witnesses and 1600 documents the prosecution presented its case. The defence made no attempt to challenge the facts of the Holocaust or the authenticity of the documents that were evidence of it. The defence played down Eichmann's involvement and stressed the need to obey orders. The court found Eichmann guilty on all counts and sentenced him to death on 15 December 1961. Eichmann's lawyers lodged an appeal against the verdict and on 29 May 1962 the Israel Supreme Court rejected the appeal. Eichmann was executed on 31 May 1962.
George Brody and Irma, née Pauncz, and their children were a well-to-do, assimilated Jewish Hungarian family who were living in Budapest when the Nazis began to transport the Hungarian Jewish population to death camps in 1944. They survived the war and stayed on in Hungary until shortly after the Russian invasion in 1956 when George and Irma successfully attained refugee status in Switzerland and Judit came to England. Livia, the other daughter died in 1947.
This collection of documents and images came about as the consequence of an appeal made in the May 1962 issue of the AJR Information, by the Council for Jews from Germany, for memorabilia and documents of Germany Jewry, of historical and artistic value, for the Memorial Hall to German Jewry at the Wiener Library.
Walter Rosenberger was a judge in the Berlin civil court, 1 Oct 1929-1 Apr 1933, when, along with other 'non-aryan' judges he was relieved of his duties. He died in May 1980.
Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklarung nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen (Central Office of the Provincial Justice Authorities to Resolve National Socialist Violent Crime) in Ludwigsburg, Germany, was initially set up to investigate only those Nazi crimes committed outside the territory of the Federal Republic; in later years it assumed responsibility for investigating all Nazi crimes.
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Thomas Cook (Thomas Cook and Son Ltd) ran a freight forwarding and storage business in Lisbon. During World War Two Portugal was neutral and Jews and others escaped there (often through Spain) en route to the USA and other places of refuge. Jews in Europe, intending to leave would have sent their belongings to Thomas Cook, Lisbon, as it was an internationally trusted firm, with offices around the world. In 1940 it was owned by Companie de Wagons-Lits, based in Brussels, but was later sequestrated by the British Government.
These three unrelated documents are evidence of anti-Semitic measures taken by the Nazis.
Nothing is known of the provenance or authorship of this report, which is a digest of details about an international anti-Jewish congress which took place in Belgium.
Delegacíon de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, originally called the Comite contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo de la Argentina, was an umbrella organisation was founded in July 1935 for all important Jewish bodies in Argentina apart from the communists.
Hilfsverein Deutschsprechender Juden was founded by seven members of the German Jewish immigrant community of Buenos Aires who had been ostracized by Buenos Aires' non-Jewish 'German Colony'. The organisation assisted German Jewish immigrants who could no longer rely on the support of the German non-Jewish institutions many of which had succumbed to Nazi antisemitic propaganda.
Comite contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo de la Argentina was founded by Argentine Jews in December 1934, comprising delegates from the major Jewish organisations and supported by the Jewish Colonization Association.
Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie was a German conglomerate of companies formed in 1925 - many produced dyes, but soon later turning to advanced chemistry. IG Farben was founded as a reaction to Germany's defeat in World War One and held a monopoly on chemical production. During the National Socialist regime, it manufactured Zyklon B, a poison used for delousing, and later used as the lethal agent in the gas chambers of the death camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek. The company was a major user of slave labour and as a result 13 directors of IG Farben were sentenced to prison terms between one and eight years before a US military tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials, following the IG Farben Trial (1947-1948). As a result, in 1951, the company was split up into the original constituent companies.
Little is known about the author save for that which is contained in the letter itself, namely that Emmerich Menzner was a rank and file member of an SS cavalry regiment in an unidentified part of Poland in 1942, and that he hailed from Litzmannstadt (Lodz).
The Deutscher Fichte-Bund was a German, nationalist, antisemitic organisation, founded in Hamburg in 1914, the objective of which seemed to be the dissemination of propaganda both in Germany and abroad.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish community.
The Aliens Committee was formed by the Board in 1905 (the year the first Aliens Restrictions Act was passed) to ensure that Jewish immigrants received considerate treatment and to provide help with naturalisation problems.
Rosa and Hedwig Seelig owned and ran a hotel for a relatively affluent clientele in Bad Kissingen, Bavaria. After the hotel was plundered during Kristallnacht, the two sisters went to live at a Jewish home for the aged in Frankfurt. They perished in Auschwitz during World War Two.
HMT Dunera was a British passenger ship built as a troop transport in the late 1930s. On 10 Jul 1940 The Duneraleft Liverpool with men classed as enemy aliens, who were considered a risk to British security. Although many of the internees had in fact fled Europe to escape Nazi persecution, they were considered to have been German agents, potentially helping to plan the invasion of Britain. Included were 2,036 Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany, 451 German and Italian prisoners of war and others including the survivors of the Arandora Star disaster. They were taken to Australia for internment in the rural towns of Hay, New South Wales and Tatura, Victoria Australia. The ship had a maximum capacity of 1,500 - including crew - however on this voyage there were 2,542 transportees. The resultant condition has been described as 'inhumane', the transportees were also subjected to ill-treatment and theft by the 309 poorly trained British guards on board. On arrival in Sydney, the first Australian on board was medical army officer Alan Frost. He was appalled and his subsequent report led to the court martial of the army officer-in-charge, Lieutenant-Colonel William Scott.
Herbert Goldsmith (formerly Goldschmidt), was one of the internees on the HMT Dunera and subsequently a detainee at 'Camp 8', Hay Internment camp for refugees, New South Wales, Australia.
Erwin Kallir, was the canteen manager at 'Camp 8', Hay Internment camp for refugees, New South Wales, Australia.
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The League of Old Judeans had been brought together by Louis Sarna, who organised the annual wreath laying at the Cenotaph, which continued until 1928. In that year he was instrumental in founding the Jewish Ex-Servicemens Legion which eleven years later was to become AJEX - The Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. AJEX had its beginnings at a Meeting in London in 1928. One of a series of Meetings held throughout Britain to protest at Arab anti-Jewish riots in Palestine. Louis Sarna was Honorary Secretary until his retirement in 1952.
The Waffen-SS was the combat arm of the Schutzstaffel or SS. In contrast to the Wehrmacht, Germany's regular army, the Waffen-SS was an elite combat unit composed of volunteer troops with particularly strong personal commitments to Nazi ideology.