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Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of #Auschwitz I, Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; #Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, #Auschwitz III, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a Arbeitslager, labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and List of subcamps of Auschwitz, dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany Causes of World War II#Invasion of Poland, initiated World War II by Invasion of Poland, invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. The report, distributed by George Mantello in Switzerland, is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada. Vrba and his fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces Hungary during World War II, invaded Hungary and shortly before the Schutzstaffel, SS began mass deportations of Hungary's Jewish population to the camp. The information the men dictated to Jewish officials when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extermination Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site. Additionally, camps operated by Nazi allies have also been described as extermination or death camps, most notably the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. The National Socialists made no secret of the existence of concentration camps as early as 1933, as they serv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IG Farben
I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German Chemical industry, chemical and Pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was formed on December 2, 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies: Agfa-Gevaert, Agfa, BASF, Bayer, :de:Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, Griesheim-Elektron, Hoechst AG, Hoechst, and Weiler-ter-Meer. It was seized by the Allies of World War II, Allies after World War II and split into its constituent companies; parts in East Germany were nationalized. IG Farben was once the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world. IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937, and three company scientists became List of Nobel laureates, Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski (; 8 April 191717 April 1991) was a Polish boxer, Polish Armed Forces soldier, and a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme concentration camps run by the German Nazis during World War II. He was part of the first mass transport to Auschwitz in June 1940, and was transferred to Neuengamme in 1943. He is remembered as the boxing champion of Auschwitz. Pietrzykowski's life story has been the subject of several books and movies. Early life Pietrzykowski was born on 8 April 1917 in Warsaw to father Tadeusz, an engineer, and mother Sylwina (''née'' Bieńkowska), a teacher, both members of the Polish intelligentsia. In his youth he joined the boxing section of the Legia Warsaw club, where he trained under Feliks Stamm. He received a number of positive write-ups in the interwar Polish sports press, and was nicknamed "Teddy" or "Teddi". He was at the height of his sports career in the years 1936 and 1937; in 1935 his boxing section advanced to the A- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Władysław Bartoszewski
Władysław Bartoszewski (; 19 February 1922 – 24 April 2015) was a Polish politician, social activist, journalist, writer and historian. A former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner, he was a World War II resistance fighter as part of the Polish underground and participated in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he was persecuted and imprisoned by the communist Polish People's Republic due to his membership in the Home Army (''Armia Krajowa'', AK) and opposition activity. After the collapse of the communist regime, Bartoszewski served twice as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from March through December 1995 and again from 2000 to 2001. He was also an ambassador and a member of the Polish Senate. Bartoszewski was a close ally and friend of Polish anti-Communist activist and later president Lech Wałęsa. Bartoszewski was a chevalier of the Order of the White Eagle, an honorary citizen of Israel, and a member of the International Honorary Council of the European Academ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz concentration camp#Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Belzec extermination camp, Belzec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor, and Chełmno extermination camp, Chełmno in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of Victims of Nazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the ''Saal-Schutz'' ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe. The two main constituent groups were the '' Allgemeine SS'' (General SS) and ''Waffen-SS'' (Armed SS). The ''Allgemeine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Maria Kolbe (born Raymund Kolbe; ; 8 January 1894 – 14 August 1941) was a Polish Roman Catholic priest, Conventual Franciscan friar, missionary, saint, martyr, and a Nazi concentration camp victim, who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications. On 10 October 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "the patron of our difficult century". His feast day is 14 August, the da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates#1980, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel bibliography, 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including ''Night (memoir), Night'', which is based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camp, Buchenwald during the Holocaust. As a political activist, Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime, advocating for justice in numerous causes around the globe, including that of Refusenik, Soviet Jews and Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews, Apartheid, South African apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian genocide, the War in Darfur, the Kurdish independence movement, the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Enforced disappearance#Argentina, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky (; born Irina Lvovna Nemirovskaya; 11 February 1903 – 17 August 1942) was a novelist of Ukrainian Jewish origin who was born in Kiev, then in the Russian Empire. She lived more than half her life in France and wrote in French, but was denied French nationality. Arrested as a Jew under the racial lawswhich did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicismshe died in Auschwitz at the age of 39. Némirovsky is best known for the posthumously published '' Suite française''. Life and career Irina Lvovna Nemirovskaya was born in 1903 in Kiev, then Russian Empire, the daughter of a wealthy banker, Lev (later Léon) Borisovich Nemirovsky. Her volatile and unhappy relationship with her mother Fanni Yonovna Margolis Nemirovskya became the heart of many of her novels. Her family fled the Russian Empire at the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, spent 1918 in Finland, and then settled in Paris, where Némirovsky attended the Sorbonne and began writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simone Veil
Simone Veil (; ; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate, Holocaust survivor, and politician who served as health minister in several governments and was President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. As health minister, she is best remembered for advancing women's rights in France, in particular for the 1975 law that legalized abortion, today known as the '' Veil Act'' (). From 1998 to 2007, she was a member of the Constitutional Council, France's highest legal authority. A Holocaust survivor of both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, she was a firm believer in European integration as a way of guaranteeing peace. She served as president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2000 to 2007, and then as its honorary president. Among many honours, she was made a British honorary dame in 1998, was elected to the Académie Française in 2008, and in 2012 received the grand cross of the Légion d’honn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Burger
Adolf Burger (12 August 1917 – 6 December 2016) was a Slovak Jewish typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. The film ''The Counterfeiters'', based largely on his memoirs, won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Life Adolf Burger was born to a Jewish family in Gross Lomnitz, then a mostly ethnic German village in the High Tatras region, Spiš County. His father died when Adolf was 4½, after which his mother, four siblings, and two grandparents moved to the nearby town of Poprad. He entered apprenticeship with a local printer and typesetter at the age of fourteen. His mother remarried a Christian, which gave her the status of a non-Jew in Slovakia after the introduction of anti-Jewish laws by the beginning of World War II. The organization Hashomer Hatzair helped Burger's siblings to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine before Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews materialized. Adolf Burger did n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
