Warsaw Ghetto

Warsaw is the capital of Poland. Before World War 2, it had 1.3 million inhabitants (more than 350,000 of them Jews). Germans entered Warsaw on September 29th 1939, shortly after its surrender.

Less than a week after they entered, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish council. They had to administer the soon-to-be ghetto and implement German orders. On October 12 1939, the Germans passed an offical order stating that all Jewish residents of Warsaw were to move into a designated area of the city, in which German authorities sealed them off from the rest of the city.

The boundaries of the ghetto were walls that were more than 10 feet high and topped with barbed wires. These walls were closely guarded to prevent movement and communication between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. The population of the ghetto was estimated to contain about 400,000 jews.

Conditions in the ghetto were tough. According to https://www.ushmm.org,’German authorities forced ghetto residents to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.’ The population of the ghetto consumed an estimated amount 1,125 calories a day. It is thought that between 1940 and mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and disease. Smuggling of food and medicine into the ghetto kept the death rate from further increasing.

From July 22 until September 12 1942, German SS and police units carried out mass deportations to the Treblinka killing center. ‘During this period, the Germans deported about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka; they killed approximately 35,000 Jews inside the ghetto during the operation.’ (according to https://www.ushmm.org).

On April 19th, 1943, an uprising in the ghetto began. Fighters armed with pistols and homemade weapons ambushed the SS guards and forced them outside the ghetto walls.German commander SS General Jürgen Stroop reported losing 12 men, killed and wounded, during the first assault on the ghetto.

On the third day of the uprising, the SS and other forces began to reduce the ghetto to rubble to force all of the occupants out of hiding. Even thought the main resistance movent lasted for a couple of days, small groups of resistors continued to fight the SS for almost a month.

It is recorded that Stroop captured 56,065 Jews and destroyed 631 bunkers. He estimated that his units killed up to 7,000 Jews during the uprising. As a result of the uprising,The German authorities deported approximately another 7,000 Warsaw Jews to the Treblinka killing center, where almost all were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival.

Most of the remaining Jews (approximately 42,000) were sent to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp, and to the Poniatowa, Trawniki, Budzyn, and Krasnik forced-labor camps. With the exception of a few thousand forced laborers at Budzyn and Krasnik, German SS and police units later murdered almost all of the Warsaw Jews deported to Lublin/Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki in November 1943.

 

Eye Witness account on Edith Cavell

Here is part of an article that I found on a fellow bloggers website:

Then I said “Good-by,” and she smiled and said, “We shall meet again.”   The German military chaplain was with her at the end and afterwards gave her Christian burial. He told me: “She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith and that she was glad to die for her country.” “She died like a heroine.”

This blog post is about the last few days of Edith Cavell’s life according to a journalist that was with her at the time.

Edith Cavell was part of the SOE resistance that helped the allies. To learn more about Edith and her life, visit my Edith Cavell Blog post.

To read the full article, featuring an eye witness accound of the last few days of her life, click here

Hitler Facts:

Here are some facts that I found on a website called Fact Slides and they are about Adolf Hitler:

1. Hitler never visited a single concentration camp
2. Hitlers first love was Jewish
3. Hitler suffered from chronic flatulence and took 28 different drugs to aid him.
4. Hitler led the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history
5. During WW1, a British soldier save the life of a wounded enemy. That enemy was Adolf Hitler
6. Hitler bombed his nephew’s house in Liverpool, so he joined the US navy to fight his uncle
7. Hitler was a vegetarian
8. Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1939
9. Hitler was afraid of cats
10. When the D-Day forces landed, Hitler was asleep. His general were not allowed to sent re-reinforcements without Hitler’s permission but no-one dared to wake him

Treblinka Thoughts

Treblinka was a concentration camp that was separated into 2 parts. The first part of the camp, known as Treblinka I, was a forced labour camp for Jews and Poles who had disobeyed the orders of the Nazis. Both Polish and Jewish inmates, imprisoned in separate compounds of the labour camp, were sent to a grave pit to undertake many hours of harsh labour. Imagine throwing bodies of friends, family and even aquaintances into a pit. It would be heart-breaking. Later on in July 1942, the Operation Reinhard authorities completed the construction of a killing center, known as Treblinka II, approximately 1 mile from the labour camp. Treblinka II was camouflaged by trees and wood and SS guards told Jews that they were at a transit camp and they were going to the ‘showers’. The saddest thing for me is it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in the Treblinka II gas chambers. I can understand that Hitler saw Jews as ‘imperfect’ but to try and kill them all of is inhumane. Living in Australia, we don’t have sites that we can go and visit to remember the atrocities of the Nazis but so many people share stories about what happened so that the younger generation, such as myself, can remember the past. Here is a part of an eye-witness account from a man who was transported to Treblinka:

“One of the most efficient systems in the world is the German system. There are authorities upon authorities, departments and sub-departments. And, what is most important, there is always the right man in the right place…. Men can always be found who are ready to destroy and kill their fellow men. I never saw them show any compassion or regret. They never evinced any pity over the fate of innocent victims. They were automatons who perform their tasks as soon as some higher-up presses a button.

Another amazing characteristic of the Germans is their ability to discover, among other peoples, hundreds of depraved types like themselves, and to use them for their own ends. In camps for Jews, there is a need for Jewish executioners, spies, stool pigeons. The Germans managed to find them.”

In conclusion, Treblinka was a mass killing center where over 700,000 jews were exterminated.

To read more of the eye-witness account click here.

Facts about War

Here are some sites that have some interesting facts:

Holocaust: http://www.factslides.com/s-Holocaust 

World War 1: http://www.factslides.com/s-WWI

World War 2: http://www.factslides.com/s-WWII 

Auschwitz: http://www.factslides.com/s-Auschwitz

Anne Frank: http://www.factslides.com/s-Anne-Frank

Adolf Hitler: http://www.factslides.com/s-Hitler

Treblinka

In November 1941, under the auspices of the SS and Police Leader for District Warsaw in the Generalgouvernement, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews, known as Treblinka, later as Treblinka I. The camp also served the SS and police authorities as a so-called Labor Education Camp for non-Jewish Poles whom the Germans perceived to have violated labor discipline. Both Polish and Jewish inmates, imprisoned in separate compounds of the labor camp, were deployed at forced labor. The majority of the forced laborers worked in a nearby gravel pit.In July 1942, the Operation Reinhard authorities completed the construction of a killing center, known as Treblinka II, approximately a mile from the labor camp. When Treblinka II commenced operations, two other Operation Reinhard camps, Belzec and Sobibor, were already in operation. The Treblinka II killing center was located near the Polish village of Wolka Okraglik along the Malkinia-Siedlce railway line. The Germans built a rail spur that led from the labor camp, Treblinka I, to the killing center, Treblinka II, and that connected as well to the Malkinia station. The site of the killing center was heavily wooded and hidden from view.The camp was laid out in a trapezoid of 1,312 by 1,968 feet. Branches woven into the barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage, blocking any view into the camp from the outside. Watchtowers 26 feet high were placed along the fence and at each of the four corners.

Incoming trains of about 50 or 60 cars bound for the killing center first stopped at the Malkinia station. Twenty cars at a time were detached from the train and brought into the killing center. The guards ordered the victims to disembark in the reception area, which contained the railway siding and platform. German SS and police personnel announced that the deportees had arrived at a transit camp and were to hand over all valuables. The reception area also contained a fenced-in “deportation square” with two barracks in which deportees — men separated from women and children — had to undress. It also contained large storerooms, where the possessions that the victims had had to relinquish upon arrival were sorted and stored prior to shipment via Lublin to Germany. A camouflaged, fenced-in path, known as the “tube,” led from the reception area to the gas chamber entrance, located in the killing area. Victims were forced to run naked along this path to the gas chambers, deceptively labeled as showers. Once the chamber doors were sealed, an engine installed outside the building pumped carbon monoxide into the gas chambers, killing those inside. Members of the Sonderkommando (special detachment) — a group of Jewish prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers — worked in the killing area. They removed bodies from the gas chambers and initially buried them in mass graves. In late 1942 and 1943, the Jewish forced laborers had to exhume the already buried bodies and burn them in huge trenches on makeshift “ovens” made of rail track. Other prisoners selected for temporary survival worked in the administration-reception area, facilitating detraining, disrobing, relinquishment of valuables, and movement into the “tube” of new arrivals. They also sorted the possessions of the murdered victims in preparation for transport to Germany, and were responsible for cleaning out freight cars for the next deportation.

Information found at: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005193

Adolf Hitler Quotes:

“Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.”

“Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.”

“Germany will either be a world power or will not be at all.”

“Our strategy is to destroy the enemy from within, to conquer him through himself.”

“We will not capitulate – no, never! We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us – a world in flames.”

Poem #2

In this little room,

We have no choice

No freedom, no rights

Not even a voice

Hiding from the Nazis

Always being alert

It was lucky

That we were unhurt

Then they came

Pulled us from our homes

Put us in Auschwitz

Everyone was skin and bones

On our arrival

We had to get in a line

If you were not deemed fit enough

They would give you a sign

March to a building

Holding your breath

Many didn’t know

That this meant imminent death.

They would use this as torture

Make others stand and look

Many people

Are too scared to put this in history books.

I was one of those people

Not deemed fit

Sent to death

I lost my spirit

My story of death

Of the atrocities of war

This is what happened

And of what I should not have saw.

The Dresden Bombing

From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45), Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians—estimated at somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000–were dead. By February 1945, the jaws of the Allied vise were closing shut on Nazi Germany. In the west, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) desperate counteroffensive against the Allies in Belgium’s Ardennes forest had ended in total failure. In the east, the Red army had captured East Prussia and reached the Oder River, less than 50 miles from Berlin. The once-proud Luftwaffe was a skeleton of an air fleet, and the Allies ruled the skies over Europe, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Germany every day. From February 4 to February 11, the “Big Three” Allied leaders–U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)–met at Yalta in the USSR and compromised on their visions of the postwar world. Other than deciding on what German territory would be conquered by which power, little time was given to military considerations in the war against the Third Reich. However, Churchill and Roosevelt did promise Stalin to continue their bombing campaign against eastern Germany in preparation for the advancing Soviet forces. Germany was the first to employ area bombing tactics during its assault on Poland in September 1939. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to its knees by targeting London and other heavily populated areas with area bombing attacks. Stung but unbowed, the Royal Air Force (RAF) avenged the bombings of London and Coventry in 1942 when it launched the first of many saturation bombing attacks against Germany. In 1944, Hitler named the world’s first long-range offensive missile V-1, after “vergeltung,” the German word for “vengeance” and an expression of his desire to repay Britain for its devastating bombardment of Germany.The Allies never overtly admitted that they were engaged in saturation bombing; specific military targets were announced in relation to every attack. However, it was but a veneer, and few mourned the destruction of German cities that built the weapons and bred the soldiers that by 1945 had killed more than 10 million Allied soldiers and even more civilians. The firebombing of Dresden would prove the exception to this rule.

BOMBING OF DRESDEN: FEBRUARY 1945

Before World War II, Dresden was called “the Florence of the Elbe” and was regarded as one the world’s most beautiful cities for its architecture and museums. Although no German city remained isolated from Hitler’s war machine, Dresden’s contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other German cities. In February 1945, refugees fleeing the Russian advance in the east took refuge there. As Hitler had thrown much of his surviving forces into a defense of Berlin in the north, city defenses were minimal, and the Russians would have had little trouble capturing Dresden. It seemed an unlikely target for a major Allied air attack. On the night of February 13, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on Dresden in two waves, dropping their lethal cargo indiscriminately over the city. The city’s air defenses were so weak that only six Lancaster bombers were shot down. By the morning, some 800 British bombers had dropped more than 1,400 tons of high-explosive bombs and more than 1,100 tons of incendiaries on Dresden, creating a great firestorm that destroyed most of the city and killed numerous civilians. Later that day, as survivors made their way out of the smoldering city, more than 300 U.S. bombers began bombing Dresden’s railways, bridges and transportation facilities, killing thousands more. On February 15, another 200 U.S. bombers continued their assault on the city’s infrastructure. All told, the bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped more than 950 tons of high-explosive bombs and more than 290 tons of incendiaries on Dresden. Later, the Eighth Air Force would drop 2,800 more tons of bombs on Dresden in three other attacks before the war’s end. The Allies claimed that by bombing Dresden, they were disrupting important lines of communication that would have hindered the Soviet offensive. This may be true, but there is no disputing that the British incendiary attack on the night of February 13 to February 14 was conducted also, if not primarily, for the purpose of terrorizing the German population and forcing an early surrender. It should be noted that Germany, unlike Japan later in the year, did not surrender until nearly the last possible moment, when its capital had fallen and Hitler was dead. Because there were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the Allied attack, it is impossible to know exactly how many civilians perished. After the war, investigators from various countries, and with varying political motives, calculated the number of civilians killed to be as little as 8,000 to more than 200,000. Estimates today range from 35,000 to 135,000. Looking at photographs of Dresden after the attack, in which the few buildings still standing are completely gutted, it seems improbable that only 35,000 of the million or so people in Dresden at the time were killed. Cellars and other shelters would have been meager protection against a firestorm that blew poisonous air heated to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit across the city at hurricane-like speeds. At the end of the war, Dresden was so badly damaged that the city was basically leveled. A handful of historic buildings–the Zwinger Palace, the Dresden State Opera House and several fine churches–were carefully reconstructed out of the rubble, but the rest of the city was rebuilt with plain modern buildings. American author Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), who was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the Allied attack and tackled the controversial event in his book “Slaughterhouse-Five,” said of postwar Dresden, “It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.”

The Dresden bombing was something that I had never really heard of. It was one of my classmates who said that she would like me to do an article on this, so I researched it. I knew about the Luftwaffe and how the blitzkrieg worked but I didn’t know about the Allied planes. The main plane that was used in this bombing was the Lancaster. My father plays a game on the PlayStation called “War Thunder” and you use a variety of planes to destroy cities or army bases (just like in WWII). I remember him saying something about how important these planes where but at the time, I thought all planes were important. Now, being able to research this event and learn more about the Lancaster, I can understand and relate to what he said. Bombings are something that I do not approve of but they were bombing raids from both sides. The Germans were the first to start using bombs so the allies retaliated, repeating what they did to us.

Lancaster Bomber

Private Robert Phillips

Robert signed up as a fresh faced 21-year-old in August 1914 he was sent to the Western Front with the Welsh Regiment in early 1915. Here he had to endure the horrors of trench warfare alongside thousands of other British troops. They were forced to live in atrocious conditions while constantly fearing death from German snipers. Tommies like Private Phillips would often have to fight alongside the rotting corpses of their fallen comrades often knee deep in mud and filth. But things were only about to get worse for young Robert after his platoon were gassed by the Germans during the Second Battle of Ypres in May 1915. The town was a strategically important spot on the frontline in western Belgium and marked the first mass use by Germany of deadly poison gas on the Western Front. Incredibly Robert managed to survive the attack by holding a wet handkerchief to his face and lived to fight another day. In total over 59,000 Brits died during the battle but Robert was one of the lucky ones. He was eventually wounded and captured by the Germans while fighting in Vermelles a short time later. The small Belgian village was made famous by writer Robert Graves in his classic book ‘Goodbye to All That’. In it he infamously described the folly of the war by explaining how the village was “taken and retaken eight times” by both sides in just one month. Robert Phillips who escaped from a German POW camp during the first World war and after five months on the run eventually made it home to CardiffBrave: Robert Phillips. After being captured Robert was shipped to Germany as a prisoner of war and was passed between camps in Munster and Mettingen before finally being dumped at a camp in Homsburg in western Germany. He was held there for 15 months alongside 40 other Brits as well as hundreds of French and Russian allies who had also been captured in battle. In documents uncovered by his granddaughter Lynda Robert described the hellish conditions in the camp and the sadistic regime run by the German commanders. He explained how the prisoners were regularly beaten by guards with the butts of their rifles and were forced to work gruelling shifts lasting 14 days straight – no matter how tired or ill they became. All the Germans gave them to eat was one small loaf bread divided amongst ten men. A miner by trade Robert kept his spirits up by refusing to dig coal for the German Navy. He defiantly hid his skills from his captors by pretending he was a simple musician. But he was caught out talking to another prisoner about his job in Wales and was immediately forced to work in backbreaking conditions in a nearby mine. Prisoners in the mine were often forced to work in freezing conditions in nothing more than shirts and trousers and if they complained they would be brutally beaten by guards with the sheath of their bayonets. They were watched by wounded German soldiers back from the frontline who were more than keen to seek revenge on the enemy that injured them. Robert wrote in one letter: “We had the worst treatment from wounded German soldiers who were on either furlough or unfit for military service. “About a dozen of them would get onto one man, take him to a disused part of the pit and knock him about with their picks and kick him. “On the whole I had a miserable time. No justice, one long weary record of brutal ill-treatment for 15 months.” The conditions grew so bad in the camp Robert decided to do the only thing he could – escape. Various plans were hatched by Robert and his fellow prisoners but they thought they were all too risky so brave Robert decided to make a break for it himself. He realised the camp was vulnerable during the changing of the guard each day. So he watched and waited, learning the routines of the guards, until he knew them so well he audaciously walked out of the front gate during one late night shift change and fled to a nearby forest for safety. Alone and hunted in enemy territory Robert relied on the simple survival skills taught to him as a rookie soldier in the British Army. He travelled by night, navigating northward by the stars, and staying off the roads in the hope he could get to Holland where he might get help from families who hated the Germans.He survived by raiding homes for food during the night or killing chickens and stealing eggs from farms he came across along the way. But his epic journey of over 200 miles was not without danger and he came close to capture on many occasions but quick thinking often saved him from revealing his true identity. He wrote: “I travelled as far as I could and got into difficulties once by taking the wrong direction.

“I found I was walking up a private drive and I hurriedly retraced my steps, passing several Germans on the way. “I continued my journey that night, avoiding all intercourse with passers-by, and to disarm suspicion began to whistle some German airs which I had learnt.” After months on the road sleeping in holes he dug for himself Robert eventually came to the border with Holland. But he had one more heart-stopping encounter before he could flee the German homeland. He said: “At length I found I was approaching the frontier. “Ahead of me I could see a German soldier patrolling, and with my heart in my mouth, I crawled on my stomach within ten yards of the soldier and over the border.” His faithful granddaughter Lynda believes Robert then found help with a family in Holland who took him in and either returned him to British forces or arranged for passage back to England smuggled aboard a ship.

I was in an English class about a month ago and we were told that we had to choose someone who showed ‘heroic’ characteristics. Being the war geek that I am, I started to research some soldiers and I came across him. His story is truly amazing and no matter how much I try, I can never quite understand what it would be like fighting in a war, getting captured by the Germans and then escaping without getting caught. The conditions that they had to live with were horrible. Being starved and beaten, what were the Germans thinking?