« Previous Entries

Nazi documents found in attic near Auschwitz

300 documents relating to the daily lives of Nazi officials at Auschwitz have been found in the attic of a house near the death camp.

Some sugar coupons bear the names of Horst Fischer and Fritz Klein, doctors who were executed for their crimes after the war, Adam Cyra, a historian at the Auschwitz memorial museum who is looking through the documents, said Monday.

“The sensational value of this discovery is in the fact that these original documents, bearing the names of main murderers from Auschwitz, were found so many years after the war,” Cyra said.

Cyra said he believes a June 1943 coupon for a small amount of sugar probably was assigned to Dr. Joseph Mengele, who was infamous for his sadistic experiments, but the writing is unclear.

A February 1944 coupon for 0.28 kilograms of butter is made out for a Dr. Mergerle. There was no SS doctor by that name at camp, so Cyra believes a clerk misspelled Mengele’s name.

Doctors and pharmacists at the camp conducted pseudo-medical experiments on the inmates and helped select Jews arriving at the camp for either labor or death. Mengele escaped after World War II and evaded capture for the rest of his life.

The documents — almost 300 in total — were found in the attic of a house being renovated in the town of Oswiecim, where the Nazis built the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

[Full story]

Tags: , , , | 3 Comments »>

 

Nazis exaggerated Dresden bombing death toll

Nazis claimed that as many as 500,000 people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden, but German historians have found that the actual number was actually closer to 25,000.

Allied critics have claimed that the attack constituted a war crime which had no strategic aim since Germany was already close to defeat and the targets were civilian rather than military.

Now, five years of research by a team of historians from the Dresden Historians’ Commission has confirmed that 25,000 died in the celebrated Baroque city.

The team reviewed records from city archives, cemeteries, official registries and courts and compared them to published reports and witness accounts.

Their study also shows fewer refugees fleeing the Eastern Front were killed in the bombing than previously thought, and dismissed claims that many of the victims’ bodies were never recovered.

The historians said their findings would have far-reaching implications for how people saw the final chapter of the war and the role of the Germans.

But some were quick to condemn the findings. Within an hour of their publication, 150 protesters had marched on Dresden town hall and Ralf Lunau, the city’s cultural commissioner, announced that: “This has not ended the debate at all.”

[Full story]

Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »>

 

Nazi board game taught Hitler youth military tactics

This would be an interesting board game to play. Apparently Hitler youth under the Third Reich would play a board game invented to teach them military tactics against the British.

Specifically designed in 1941 to prepare young members of the Hitler Youth ‘for an attack on the Fatherland’, the box illustration shows a British plane being shot down by a German gunner – indicating exactly where the manufacturers thought such an attack might come from.
Players take turns to roll a die with six symbols on it to decide the success or failure of each military move with points awarded for each successful military move.
A roll of a red cross means ‘damage to people’ – the highest scoring type of damage in the game.
As well as the die, the game comes with little model airplanes to symbolise aerial attacks.
Various positions on the board represent valuable bombing targets, in a similar way to Battleships, a game familiar to many British children.
Barrage balloons and flak guns helped defend the positions and the game was like a smaller version of the popular pastime of Risk.
The object of Eagle Air Defence was to attack airfields, barracks, gas and electricity works, iron works and radio stations.
And the instruction booklet included with the board and pieces explain that the game was ‘developed by an officer of the Luftwaffe with the aim of the defence of our airspace.’
[Full story]

Specifically designed in 1941 to prepare young members of the Hitler Youth ‘for an attack on the Fatherland’, the box illustration shows a British plane being shot down by a German gunner – indicating exactly where the manufacturers thought such an attack might come from.

Players take turns to roll a die with six symbols on it to decide the success or failure of each military move with points awarded for each successful military move.

A roll of a red cross means ‘damage to people’ – the highest scoring type of damage in the game.

As well as the die, the game comes with little model airplanes to symbolise aerial attacks.

Various positions on the board represent valuable bombing targets, in a similar way to Battleships, a game familiar to many British children.

Barrage balloons and flak guns helped defend the positions and the game was like a smaller version of the popular pastime of Risk.

The object of Eagle Air Defence was to attack airfields, barracks, gas and electricity works, iron works and radio stations.

And the instruction booklet included with the board and pieces explain that the game was ‘developed by an officer of the Luftwaffe with the aim of the defence of our airspace.’

[Full story]

Tags: , , , | 2 Comments »>

 

Hitler was a fan of Irish folk music

Newly released photographs reveal that Sean Dempsey, a famous Irish musician, played for Adolf Hitler in 1936.

Dempsey, an uileann piper, was invited to play for Hitler and propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels during a visit to Berlin in 1936 after being told that Hitler was an Irish folk music fan.

When he arrived to play however, there was no room for him to sit, which he needed to do to play, and it looked like it would be canceled.

however, Hitler jumped up and demanded that an S.S. member get down on his hands and knees and that Dempsey sit astride him while he played.

Dempsey played what was described as a ‘haunting air’ as Hitler listened with rapt attention. After he performed, Hitler presented him with a gold fountain pen while Goebbels clapped wildly.

[Full story] [Photo source]

Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »>

 

Josef Mengele’s diaries up for auction

The diaries of Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’, are expected to fetch over $60,000 at auction.

Known as the ‘Angel of Death’, he consigned arrivals to the gas chambers and carried out appalling medical experiments on Jews, most of whom died in agony without anaesthetic.

He escaped to Brazil at the end of the war and began his memoir in May 1960, musing on eugenics, art, religion, women’s rights and predictions for the future of mankind.

Auctioneer Alexander Autographs of Connecticut refused to identify the seller who acquired the diary after Mengele died in 1979 but said the source was ‘close’ to the Mengele family, and still lives in Germany.

Auction house president Bill Panagopulos said: ‘Make no mistake about it – I have no sympathy for these monsters. My father’s home town was wiped out by the Nazis in a reprisal action.

‘But it is of vital importance that such documents remain available as tangible evidence of the evil deeds of the past, as well as to provide further pieces of history’s puzzle.’

[Full story]

Tags: , , , , | No Comments »>

 

« Previous Entries