I now have a fifth item to add to my list of gruesome things/situations I've encountered in my research. A book I recently read, Four Girls from Berlin, by Marianne Meyerhoff, is the story of four friends in Berlin during the 30's and 40's. One of the girls (the author's mother) is Jewish, the other three are are Christian. The young Jewish girl and her Jewish boyfriend married and the boy left for Cuba immediately. The plan was for his bride to follow in a few months and eventually the entire family would immigrate from Germany to Cuba. Needless, to say it didn't happen this way... ultimately only the bride made it to Cuba (on the ill-fated St. Louis), was turned back (as the story goes) and ended up in a work camp in Holland.
Through a long series of events the girl was rescued and eventually made her way to California. The rest of their family perished at the hands of the Nazis. The young man made it to Callifornia and enlisted in the U.S. Army and went back to Europe to fight the Nazis. During the five years he was in Europe he continually made inquiries into the fate of their combined families. Unfortunately he found out his elder sister was sent to a factory in Poland that made leather goods and soap out of human beings. I was speechless when I read that. I had no idea they made leather and soap out of human beings. That paragraph took my breath away.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The four most gruesome situations I have encountered in my research:
#1 During the French and Indian War, in the Ohio territory, an English officer was captured by the local Native American tribe (Shawnee?), just because he was in the "wrong place at the wrong time". He was tortured in unspeakable ways, the most vivid in my memory being his intestines were cut from his body and slowly unraveled and rewound on a pole as he was forced to walk through a huge bonfire.
#2 An American hospital ship during WWII, housing both British and American nurses, was torpedoed and the British side of the ship was burning uncontrollably while simultaneously taking on water. A British nurse broke through an interior wall enough to stick her head through and scream for help. There was no help. A 14 year old British "cabin boy" could do nothing to help her or her comrades, so to put her out of her misery he beat her to death with a large piece of wood he found in the wreckage.
#3 In Russia, Polish refugees were originally happy to see the Russians because it meant the German occupation was over. A mother and daughter duo (they were the final survivors from a family of eight)had made it this far but now the mother was lying on the floor of an abandoned and burned out shell of a barn dying of typhoid fever. The daughter, 11 years old at the time, watched as marauding Russian soldiers took turns raping her mother as she lay dying from typhoid.
#4 A 17 year old Belgian girl was active in the local resistance movement and had never had a serious encounter with the Germans. Her parents and brother were active as well. The family was betrayed and the mother, father and daughter were arrested and sent to three different concentration camps. The son was never caught. The good news is all four were reunited after the war. The bad news is the young girl was a victim of Mengele but survived. Mengele, and his band of goons, tried to sterilize her using x-rays (although she was badly burned it didn't work and had a healthy baby boy some 15 years later) and the worst part was one of her thighs was injected with the gangrene germ and her entire leg turned black. Her infected leg was then cut open to the bone and packed with gauze to soak up the infection. This so-called "care" lasted for months and the miracle is this young woman survived and her leg healed but she walked with a limp.
#2 An American hospital ship during WWII, housing both British and American nurses, was torpedoed and the British side of the ship was burning uncontrollably while simultaneously taking on water. A British nurse broke through an interior wall enough to stick her head through and scream for help. There was no help. A 14 year old British "cabin boy" could do nothing to help her or her comrades, so to put her out of her misery he beat her to death with a large piece of wood he found in the wreckage.
#3 In Russia, Polish refugees were originally happy to see the Russians because it meant the German occupation was over. A mother and daughter duo (they were the final survivors from a family of eight)had made it this far but now the mother was lying on the floor of an abandoned and burned out shell of a barn dying of typhoid fever. The daughter, 11 years old at the time, watched as marauding Russian soldiers took turns raping her mother as she lay dying from typhoid.
#4 A 17 year old Belgian girl was active in the local resistance movement and had never had a serious encounter with the Germans. Her parents and brother were active as well. The family was betrayed and the mother, father and daughter were arrested and sent to three different concentration camps. The son was never caught. The good news is all four were reunited after the war. The bad news is the young girl was a victim of Mengele but survived. Mengele, and his band of goons, tried to sterilize her using x-rays (although she was badly burned it didn't work and had a healthy baby boy some 15 years later) and the worst part was one of her thighs was injected with the gangrene germ and her entire leg turned black. Her infected leg was then cut open to the bone and packed with gauze to soak up the infection. This so-called "care" lasted for months and the miracle is this young woman survived and her leg healed but she walked with a limp.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
From Code Name Christine Clouet... p. 39
Some definitions:
Offlag- an officers camp
Stalag- a camp for enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers
Offlag- an officers camp
Stalag- a camp for enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers
From Code Name Christine Clouet... p. 33
The Vichy regime defined a Jew as any person with three Jewish grandparents or two grandparents and a Jewish spouse. Jews were forbidden to hold or run for elective office; work in the civil service; the judiciary or as officers in the army. Jews were not permitted to teach school; work in publishing; films or the theatre.
Continued from Code Name Christine Clouet...p. 26
#3. Italian Occupied Zone: including Savoy, Nice & Corsica. "...The Italian occupation was much milder than the German."
#4. & 5. Forbidden Zones: the coast along the English Channel and the Atlantic ocean and an area in the NE abutting the Occupied Zone. These zones were under German battlefield command and fortified against attack.
#6. Alsace and part of Lorraine were immediately annexed by the Reich, which tried to "Germanize" the population by expelling all those who wouldn't or couldn't assimilate. The tens of thousands of people expelled were given the choice of moving to Germany or the Free Zone. Most chose the Free Zone.
#7. The French POW camps in Germany: approximately 1.8 million men behind the barbed wire.
Along the seven zones, all civilian traffic, all telegraph and telephone communication were prohibited. To cross a frontier you had to have a Ausweis, a pass, from the German command.
Mail was forbidden as well except for specially prepared postal cards.
#4. & 5. Forbidden Zones: the coast along the English Channel and the Atlantic ocean and an area in the NE abutting the Occupied Zone. These zones were under German battlefield command and fortified against attack.
#6. Alsace and part of Lorraine were immediately annexed by the Reich, which tried to "Germanize" the population by expelling all those who wouldn't or couldn't assimilate. The tens of thousands of people expelled were given the choice of moving to Germany or the Free Zone. Most chose the Free Zone.
#7. The French POW camps in Germany: approximately 1.8 million men behind the barbed wire.
Along the seven zones, all civilian traffic, all telegraph and telephone communication were prohibited. To cross a frontier you had to have a Ausweis, a pass, from the German command.
Mail was forbidden as well except for specially prepared postal cards.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Excerpt from Safe Passage by Ida Cook
..."In November, 1938, the first great concerted drive against the Jews began. This was sparked off by an event in Paris: a young German Jew shot an official at the German embassy. It was said that his parents had been ill-treated by the Geastapo, that his mind became unhinged and that he had shot the first German official he saw. Another story, told to us in Germany, was that the whole thing was a put-up job to inflame feelings against the Jews....True or false, this incident signalled the launching of the greatest pogroms in history. From that day, and for years to come, wave after wave of murder washed in a ghastly tide tide across Europe, until something like six million unfortunates had perished."
From Safe Passage, p. 115, by Ida Cook
From Safe Passage, p. 115, by Ida Cook
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Code Name Christine Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance
From p. 24:
"...Massive aerial bombardment of English cities began, in an attempt to break the morale of the civilian population. To everyone's surprise, Goering's enormous bombers were intercepted by nimble Spitfires, guided by a secret device, microwave radar, that we only learned about later. Unprecedented battles erupted in the sky; cities burned; German losses grew heavier; and Churchill's words expressed the anger and courage of the british people and their fierce pride at being the only country to stand up against Nazism."
From p. 26:
"...The armistice had partioned France into seven zones... They were:
#1 "Free Zone" (1940) in the south governed by Petain at Vichy. They in turn were governed by the Germans although there were no Germans in this zone until 1942 when the Allies invaded North Africa.
#2 "Occupied Zone" in the north, susposedly governed by Vichy but with Germans holding all the important offices. The demarcation line between zones one and two ran from Lake Geneva to the Spanish border cutting France in half."
"...Massive aerial bombardment of English cities began, in an attempt to break the morale of the civilian population. To everyone's surprise, Goering's enormous bombers were intercepted by nimble Spitfires, guided by a secret device, microwave radar, that we only learned about later. Unprecedented battles erupted in the sky; cities burned; German losses grew heavier; and Churchill's words expressed the anger and courage of the british people and their fierce pride at being the only country to stand up against Nazism."
From p. 26:
"...The armistice had partioned France into seven zones... They were:
#1 "Free Zone" (1940) in the south governed by Petain at Vichy. They in turn were governed by the Germans although there were no Germans in this zone until 1942 when the Allies invaded North Africa.
#2 "Occupied Zone" in the north, susposedly governed by Vichy but with Germans holding all the important offices. The demarcation line between zones one and two ran from Lake Geneva to the Spanish border cutting France in half."
Code Name Christine Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance
From page 19:
"...Hitler was preparing to invade England and his soldiers in Brittany readied themselves for the undertaking. Their ignorance surprised us (the local residents). One day a friend was looking through binoculars at the horizon. A German officier came up to her and asked to borrow the glasses- to see the English coast, he said."
"Rowboats from the port were requisitioned for exercises, but the Germans didn't know how to handle them. Under the amused eyes of the local people, they turned round and round, letting the oars drop into the water. The Ile du Chateau was chosen for landing maneuvers, and dummies were set up as targets representing the British. We watched all this through binoculors and enjoyed it enormously."
"...Hitler was preparing to invade England and his soldiers in Brittany readied themselves for the undertaking. Their ignorance surprised us (the local residents). One day a friend was looking through binoculars at the horizon. A German officier came up to her and asked to borrow the glasses- to see the English coast, he said."
"Rowboats from the port were requisitioned for exercises, but the Germans didn't know how to handle them. Under the amused eyes of the local people, they turned round and round, letting the oars drop into the water. The Ile du Chateau was chosen for landing maneuvers, and dummies were set up as targets representing the British. We watched all this through binoculors and enjoyed it enormously."
Code Name Christine Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance
p. 18: The following are examples of posted German propaganda against England throughout Brittany:
"...The Germans did everything they could to stir up hatred against England: "treacherous ex-ally"..."hereditary enemy", ..."perfidious Albion".
"...The Germans did everything they could to stir up hatred against England: "treacherous ex-ally"..."hereditary enemy", ..."perfidious Albion".
Code Name Christine Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance
From page 11:
"It was an unbelievable sight, a long, slow, jostling river of trucks and wagons, sleek cars and jalopies, all piled high with furniture and cherished possessions, from a bird cage to a grandmother clock to a statue of the Virgin Mary. There were stalled cars surrounded by distraught families, cars turned over in ditches. There were soldiers who had thrown away their weapons as they trudged along...there was a cyclist with his dog bound to the luggage rack like a parcel...we spent as much time stopped as moving... (the people said) they had been in bomb attacks and seen terrible slaughter. German Stukas would dive down, their sirens shreiking, drop their bombs and disappear...the Italians had also started bombing refugee columns and defensless towns. Italy entered the war June 10, 1940."
"It was an unbelievable sight, a long, slow, jostling river of trucks and wagons, sleek cars and jalopies, all piled high with furniture and cherished possessions, from a bird cage to a grandmother clock to a statue of the Virgin Mary. There were stalled cars surrounded by distraught families, cars turned over in ditches. There were soldiers who had thrown away their weapons as they trudged along...there was a cyclist with his dog bound to the luggage rack like a parcel...we spent as much time stopped as moving... (the people said) they had been in bomb attacks and seen terrible slaughter. German Stukas would dive down, their sirens shreiking, drop their bombs and disappear...the Italians had also started bombing refugee columns and defensless towns. Italy entered the war June 10, 1940."
Code Name Christine Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance
Translated by Jane Kielty Stott, p. 10
"...Thus I became part of the general flight southward- the Exodus, as it came to be called, an estimated 10 million refugees on the roads of France that June (1940)...in our minds at that time the biggest fear was that the pattern of (the) WWI would be repeated; the German Army would cut northern France off from the rest of the country and subject it to a brutal occupation. Until mid-June of 1940, no one- not even the most pessimistic person thought that the whole of France would surrender, and so we fled south to avoid the fate of those who had stayed home in the last war."
"...Thus I became part of the general flight southward- the Exodus, as it came to be called, an estimated 10 million refugees on the roads of France that June (1940)...in our minds at that time the biggest fear was that the pattern of (the) WWI would be repeated; the German Army would cut northern France off from the rest of the country and subject it to a brutal occupation. Until mid-June of 1940, no one- not even the most pessimistic person thought that the whole of France would surrender, and so we fled south to avoid the fate of those who had stayed home in the last war."
Keeping Mum: A Wartime Childhood
By Brian Thompson, 2006. The following quote is from p. 32:
"...But war had brought out the animal in children."
"...But war had brought out the animal in children."
A Chance to Live: A Family's Journey to Freedom
"...The next morning I walked up to the imposing entrance tower (at Chateau de Valencay) at the appointed time... My new friend was waiting for me at the agte and took me inside. As we entered the main ballroom I could hardly believe my eyes. It was filled with hundreds of sculptures. Some were still in their crates, others had been partially unpacked, and still others were completely out in the open, as if on display. My friend explained that I was looking at art treasures from the Louvre Museum in Paris that had been evacuated before the Nazi invasion to safe locations throughout the French countryside. The Chateau de Vanencay sheltered the sculpture collection. Here it was safe and protected from bombardment, fire, vandalism and theft by Nazi scavengers. My friend was the curator in charge."
The above quote was from Kohnstam's book page 135.
The above quote was from Kohnstam's book page 135.
A Chance to Live: A Family's Journey to Freedom
"...The five of us survivors proceeded to shake the hands of the heroes who had worked together to bring us to safety...It was admirable how these French Resistance fighters had planned, organized and improvised our escape. They had risked their lives, their families, and their livlihoods for us. It moved me deeply that, in a time of betrayal and selfishness, there were still decent, courageous human beings who fought dictatorship and persecution in the best way they could- by helping others reach freedom."
From Pieter Kohnstam's book, A Chance to Live: A Family's Journey to Freedom. Above quote from page 108.
From Pieter Kohnstam's book, A Chance to Live: A Family's Journey to Freedom. Above quote from page 108.
The following excerpt from Pieter Kohnstam's book A Chance to Live: A Family's Journey to Freedom. "...I have survived. And as a survivor I am a witness. If this survival of the horrors that are summoned up today in the term Holocaust, is to have any purpose, then it is above all that of keeping awake the memory of the unimaginable, to prevent forgetting and repression andto build all this into the vision of a better future, where such things or anything like them can never happen agaon anywhere in this world." Simon Wiesenthal
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Vichy, France
Excerpt from Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945 by Weitz:
p. 28
"...Petain instituted a series of statutes and decrees aimed at strengthening the French state...Petain's government made overtures to the Third Reich, suggesting a policy of "faithful collaboration"...It was in Germany's interest for France to contribute to the Reich's extensive needs. Petain replaced the republican motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" with "Work, Family, Country" and changed the name of the French Republic to that of "l'Etat Francais", the French state, making it more consistent with Germany and Italy's status and underscoring the break with the Third Republic and republican traditions. The nation was to be purified and its moral tone strengthened; harmful individualism would be suppressed.
p. 28
"...Petain instituted a series of statutes and decrees aimed at strengthening the French state...Petain's government made overtures to the Third Reich, suggesting a policy of "faithful collaboration"...It was in Germany's interest for France to contribute to the Reich's extensive needs. Petain replaced the republican motto of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" with "Work, Family, Country" and changed the name of the French Republic to that of "l'Etat Francais", the French state, making it more consistent with Germany and Italy's status and underscoring the break with the Third Republic and republican traditions. The nation was to be purified and its moral tone strengthened; harmful individualism would be suppressed.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Glossary from Binney continued, V-Z
Volksdeutsche- Communities of German minorities in occupied countries who were often suspected of acting for the Nazis.
WAAF- Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
Wehrmacht- A blanket term- literary "defence force"- embracing all of Germany's armed forces.
Welbike- A portable and collapsible mini-bike.
W/T- Wireless telegraphy.
All glossary entries are from The Women who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive by Marcus Binney, William Morrow, 2002
WAAF- Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
Wehrmacht- A blanket term- literary "defence force"- embracing all of Germany's armed forces.
Welbike- A portable and collapsible mini-bike.
W/T- Wireless telegraphy.
All glossary entries are from The Women who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive by Marcus Binney, William Morrow, 2002
Sunday, January 17, 2010
More Glossary terms from Binney; R-T...
Rebecca- The instrument on board a plane that was able to receive signals from an eureka.
Reception Committee- A group of Resistance members who would set up lights to guide planes carrying agents to the landing or dropping ground, help them on their arrival and carry away any containers or packages dropped with them.
Re'seau- Resistance circuit or network.
R F Section- DeGaulle's parallel French department to F section.
SD- Sicherheritsdienst, Himmler's security force.
Section D- A special unit within the SIS for carrying out dirty tricks against the enemy.
SHAEF- Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force
SIS- Secret Intelligence Service
SNCF- Socie'te' Nationale des Chemins de F- Francais- the French state railway authority.
SOE- Special Operations Executive, formed in 1940.
S-Phone- A device that allowed pilots to talk directly to the agents on the ground.
STO- Service du Travil Obligatoire (forced labor for French men in Germany).
Time Pencil- A form of explosive that could be carefully pre-set, allowing agents time to get away, it was activated when an agent pressed a ridge on the pencil, allowing the release of acid that at a pre-determined rate through a wire attached to a detonator.
Todt Organization- The organization Todt (OT) was named after Pritz Todt, Hitler's young engineer and chief architect, and mustered huge numbers of men for the Nazi building and production program, using both forced labor and prisoners of war as well as some volunteers lured in by propaganda.
23-land- SOE code for Spain.
27-land- SOE code for France.
Reception Committee- A group of Resistance members who would set up lights to guide planes carrying agents to the landing or dropping ground, help them on their arrival and carry away any containers or packages dropped with them.
Re'seau- Resistance circuit or network.
R F Section- DeGaulle's parallel French department to F section.
SD- Sicherheritsdienst, Himmler's security force.
Section D- A special unit within the SIS for carrying out dirty tricks against the enemy.
SHAEF- Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force
SIS- Secret Intelligence Service
SNCF- Socie'te' Nationale des Chemins de F- Francais- the French state railway authority.
SOE- Special Operations Executive, formed in 1940.
S-Phone- A device that allowed pilots to talk directly to the agents on the ground.
STO- Service du Travil Obligatoire (forced labor for French men in Germany).
Time Pencil- A form of explosive that could be carefully pre-set, allowing agents time to get away, it was activated when an agent pressed a ridge on the pencil, allowing the release of acid that at a pre-determined rate through a wire attached to a detonator.
Todt Organization- The organization Todt (OT) was named after Pritz Todt, Hitler's young engineer and chief architect, and mustered huge numbers of men for the Nazi building and production program, using both forced labor and prisoners of war as well as some volunteers lured in by propaganda.
23-land- SOE code for Spain.
27-land- SOE code for France.
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