Hans Kammler: A Forgotten Nazi Henchman

Hans Kammler was a high-ranking SS officer who by the end of the Second World War had elevated to the highest ranks of Hitler’s Third Reich. Unlike most of his peers the war crimes he committed were unmentioned in the trials that followed the war, but he played a significant role in the running of the Nazi war effort and in facilitating the final solution.

Kammler was equally as ruthless as his other Nazi peers. He was a driven, ambitious career Nazi and ranks amongst one of the worst of Hitlers henchmen. Kammler’s committed suicide in 1945 which meant he avoided capture and justice.

Steve Prout explains.

A 1930s photo of Hans Kammler.

Who was Hans Kammler?

Hans Kammler was born in 1901 in Stettin, Germany. He was too young to serve during World War One but shortly after the war he saw limited action serving in the Rossbach Freikorps in 1919 during the post war chaos that spread in Germany. This was an extreme right wing anti-communist organisation led by Gerhard Rossbach which was active in the Baltic. Between 1919 and 1923, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule der Freien Stadt in Danzig and Munich. In November 1932 he was awarded a doctorate in engineering (Dr. Ing.). It was his association with the Nazis would take his career down a dark path and earn him a more dubious notoriety.

Joining the Nazi Party and Military Career

Kammler joined the Nazi Party in its initial stages in 1931 already being a firm believer in Nazi ideology and its doctrines. He saw the party as a vehicle to further his career which eventually elevated him to the very top of the Third Reich hierarchy. He started in a position as head of the Aviation Ministry's building department where he oversaw construction projects.

A year later, in 1933, he joined the SS, and his first assignment was to lead an innocuous department titledReichsbund der Kleingärtner und Kleinsiedler (The Third Reich's federation of allotment gardeners and small homeowners). He would be trusted with other roles later in same that year when he was also appointed to the Board of Directors for Homeland Building and Housing Co-operative and simultaneously serving as an advisor in SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA), where is role was to act as a consultant for the SS Race and Settlement Office. The later position was a strange fit for a civil engineer, but it was ideologically compatible for Kammler.

In 1941 Kammler was moved the Waffen SS after being identified by Henrich Himmler as the driving force to implement the ambitious construction plans of the SS. His role involved the construction and design of the concentration camps to facilitate the Nazi’s extermination program for their policy of racial cleansing. Kammler was unperturbed by his new role and in fact applied himself with his blend of cruelty, barbarity, and lack of empathy when he applied these to his assignments. These were character traits that made some the most prominent and notorious Nazi’s wary if not frightened of him. By his own admission Albert Speer who was Hitler’s alleged closest confidant was one of those senior party members wary of Kammler and his ambition. Speer himself was no innocent party in utilizing slave labour for his own and his party’s needs.

The Concentration Camps and the Final Solution

Although Hans Kammler was not the architect of the final solution, he was according to historian Nikolaus Wachsmann "intimately involved in all the major building projects in Auschwitz". He was as equally culpable as his peers for the war crimes and assisting the mass exterminations in those camps. In September 1941 Kammler oversaw the expansion of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He had in recent months built a similar facility at Majdanek which eventually morphed from a labour camp to an extermination camp much like others. It is estimated eighty thousand people were murdered there at Majdanek but far worse was to come at Auschwitz.

Kammler’s redesign of the camps crematoriums made it possible to dispose of one hundred and twenty thousand bodies a month enabling the Nazi’s to accelerate their genocidal policies and in vain attempts later to try and disguise their war crimes. Over one million people would be exterminated in Auschwitz alone and doubt Kammler was undeniably complicit in all of this if only as a cold Nazi facilitator.

He would participate in further atrocities when in 1943 he was assigned the task of building the Warschau concentration camp after the Warsaw Ghetto was demolished. The Ghetto was an area that the Nazi’s designated to contain over four hundred thousand Polish Jews under crowded and insanitary conditions. The Germans planned to liquidate this area but the inhabitants, after learning of these plans, began an unsuccessful uprising. The Polish inhabitants were poorly equipped and no match for the opposing German forces and they were spared no mercy as the army crushed the small resistance.

Himmler then instructed that the territory had to be raised and flattened. The entire Jewish presence was to be erased as Himmler wanted to conceal the atrocities the Germans committed during the massacre and plunder the valuables he believed that the Jewish population kept concealed. The operation was expedited with ruthless zeal for Kammler’s to then clear the ghetto, flatten the former part of the city and construct a new prison camp where the Ghetto once existed. Although this new facility was not on the same scale as Auschwitz, nevertheless over twenty-five thousand people would die there before the war ended.

Kammler also constructed the prison camp at Mittelbau-Dora which supplied him with the slave labour resources that he required for his assignments. It is estimated that twenty thousand inmates from this camp met their deaths due to the conditions Kammler forced them to work under. Kammler's attitude towards the prisoners was one of utter indifference and cruel expediency. In one instance he once said, "Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible". His contribution to the murderous Nazi death toll certainly ranks one of the worst and cruelest. The claims that “the Holocaust would not been as efficient were it not for Kammler “and that he was “integral to the evolution of mass murder” seem fair assessments. As stated he was not the architect of the Holocaust he did play an undeniably significant role in the in the brutality of the Nazi regime.

Another reference to Kammler perfectly summed him up was that he recognized “no contradiction between notions of blood and soil and the methods of modern organization and technology.”  Or to put it another way, human life was cheap, expedient and its only value was to serve the interests of himself and the Third Reich.

The Secret Weapons Projects

Kammler was assigned later the task of overseeing the Germans special weapons project. This was primarily focused on the construction and development of the V1, V2 and ME-262 jet aircraft. This was Hitlers last hope as the tide of the war was turning against the Germans and the allied air force was dominating the Nazi occupied airspace. The frequency and intensity of the Allied bombings were severely disrupting German war production. Albert Speer suggested that German production be moved to safe underground facilities over Europe. This task was given to Kammler, and he achieved this using slave labour from the concentration camps. Over twenty thousand slaves would work and die in the most horrific of conditions.

The Myths

There have been many outlandish stories concerning the activities about the Nazi regime that were cultivated in the post-war period. Kammler’s involvement in the special weapons projects attracts its own bizarre tales, although most are implausible, taking his role in the special weapons project and blowing it out of all proportion. These stories, that are far from historical fact, have been repeated in various horror and science fiction films, yet some take them seriously. Such examples are outlandish stories related to a captured UFO that was reverse engineered to create a gravity defying atomic weapon known as the Glocke (otherwise known as the Bell). Naturally, this unlikely device also came complete with a Secret Nazi Society that protected its existence. This article will not be distracted by such inanities, but any reader can explore this the two books found in the sources (hopefully just for amusement only). The real horror story lies in the truth not fiction and that can be measured in the number of prison inmates who died because of Kammler.

Kammler’s Fate

We can be certain that Kammler died by committing suicide in May 1945 despite what alternative and tenuous theories suggest. There are slight variations to the exact date and place from the few witnesses, but they do not vary significantly and only by a few days, but this appears to have created the uncertainty as to his true fate. These slight variations would be easily explained by the panic and confusion caused during the Nazi retreat from the advancing allied armies. There are, however, other fanciful theories.

There are some accounts that claim Kammler did not commit suicide and survived. In this version of events, he was identified as an important asset purposefully sought by the Americans, then to be located and transported back to the United States where he could trade his knowledge concerning the special weapons facilities in return for a new identity and immunity from prosecution. Two historians in a documentary on this story both use unverified secondhand sources. One of these sources is an account from the son of a Donald Richardson who was a counterintelligence officer and close confident of President Eisenhower. What he had to offer exactly or what was the extent and value of his technological knowledge was unclear.

Other versions of this story get vague and veer off into conspiracy theory circles which this article will not get wrapped up in. Operation Paperclip as we know was the extraction of selected German scientists who could promote the USA efforts in technology and weapons advancement. Kammler was no physicist and nor was he a scientist. To lend weight to this a British Intelligence report compiled at the time the allies were identifying Nazi assets recognized that Kammler’s knowledge was secondhand and of limited value unlike the other scientists that they extracted. This statement makes more sense and makes this alternative version of events implausible.

His involvement in the development of modern technology however would have been limited to no more than his construction projects, supply of slave labour and administrative supervision. Had he have been captured he would have more likely been interrogated and handed over for trial which would have made more sense.

Conclusion

Kammler had all the prerequisites and mindset required to climb the Nazi ranks successfully. His cold impassionate attitude was perfectly summed up in the following quote in that he recognized “no contradiction between notions of blood and soil and the methods of modern organization and technology.” In other words, he regarded human life as cheap and expendable in serving the interests of himself and the Third Reich.

As a Civil Engineer Kammler was no more exceptional than any other within his profession. The only thing that was exceptional was his cruelty and his fanatical dedication to Nazi ideals. He knew his criminal deeds would catch up with him as the Third Reich’s control on the continent was disintegrating. The Allies were closing in on all fronts and he knew that he could not escape justice so rather than face the justice he deserved he committed suicide. In Nuremburg he was barely referenced; however thanks to the efforts of a few investigators his murderous role in the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust will never be entirely forgotten or lost.

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Sources

Brotherhood of the Bell – Joesph P Farrell – Adventures Unlimited Press 2006

Reich of The Black Sun - Joesph P Farrell – Adventures Unlimited Press 2004

The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil (World War II Collection) – Dean Reuter, Colm Lowry, and Keith Chester - Regnery History; Reprint edition (25 Nov. 2021)

Satan’s Henchmen: Whatever became of SS General Hans Kammler 0- Robert Huddleston – self-published.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume I

IBM and the Holocaust: That's How the Trains to Auschwitz Ran on Time

World War Two was full of very terrible atrocities, foremost among them being the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. In this article, Felix Debieux looks at how the sheer number of people murdered during the Holocaust was possible, with a particular focus on the role of the company IBM.

Edwin Black, author of the book IBM and the Holocaust. Source: Juda Engelmayer, available here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, better known as the Genocide Convention, represents a landmark in the field of international law. It was the first human rights treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly, and the first legal apparatus used to codify genocide as a crime. Since 1948, it has signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War.

Ensuring that genocide is never repeated means providing the crime with a tight, verifiable definition. The treaty has this covered. “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”:

• Killing members of a group.

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group.

• Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group.

• Forcibly transferring children of a group to another group.

A legal framework for genocide, however, has not prevented the murder of countless innocents since the end of the Second World War. From Rwanda to Cambodia, history is littered with appalling episodes of human-inflicted suffering which meet the technical threshold for genocide. Each episode is unique in its origins and execution. Also unique are the experiences of those who have survived genocide, each group having fought for justice with varying degrees of success.

Anyone who has read even a little into the subject of genocide is very likely to have stumbled into the, at times, vociferous debate surrounding the uniqueness of one genocide in particular: the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. This article isn’t about to intervene in the debate; a morbid contest of ‘who-suffered-the-most' is neither enlightening nor sensitive to the victims of genocide. It will, however, agree with those who attest to the uniqueness of the Holocaust on one thing: that the sheer number of people murdered would not have been possible were it not for the unprecedented application by the Nazis of advanced industrial, scientific and technological capabilities.

Where did the Nazis obtain these capabilities, the logistical capacity to manage the identification, transportation, ghettoization and extermination of so many? A full answer to this question means looking beyond the Nazi government itself, and considering the partnerships the regime forged with private companies. Indeed, companies implicated in the Holocaust range from Audi and BMW - who maximised the opportunities afforded by slave labour - to Deutsche Bank, who provided loans for the construction of Auschwitz. One company which perhaps contributed more than any other was the US multinational company IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), whose tabulation technology was used to track individuals, monitor their movements, and ultimately facilitate their transportation across a network of prison, labour and extermination camps. IBM technology, quite literally, ensured that the trains to Auschwitz ran on time. How did the company become involved in the Holocaust, how much deniability can it claim, and what does this tell us about corporate complicity in human rights abuses?

IBM’s origins

To understand IBM’s part in the Holocaust, we first need to take a look at the company’s roots in early data processing and the US census. This is not as dull is it might sound. Back in the 1880s, the US Census Bureau employed a young German-American statistician named Herman Hollerith. Hollerith would go on to make a name for himself as a seminal figure in the development of data processing, eventually founding a company that in 1911 was amalgamated to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) - renamed in 1924 as IBM. The young statistician’s role in this story is critical.

While working for the US Census Bureau, Hollerith conceived the idea that would make his company rich: readable cards with standardised perforations, each representing individual traits such as nationality, sex, and occupation. When produced in their millions, these punch cards could be counted in the national census and tabulated based on the specific information they contained about each citizen. This innovation promised the US government a quantified snapshot of its population, filterable using demographic characteristics such as sex or occupation. One of CTR’s first customers was the US Census Bureau, which contracted the company to tabulate the 1890 census.

Fast forward to the 1930s, and IBM had established itself as a major player in the global computing industry with a number of offices across Europe. Chief among them was Dehomag, IBM’s German subsidiary, headed by Chief Executive and enthusiastic Hitler supporter Willy Heidinger. The ability to quantify and analyse entire populations like never before would, naturally, greatly interest a regime hellbent on purifying its citizenry of undesirables. But how did the latest tools and techniques in data processing fall into Nazi hands? For a second time, we find that a national census provided the opportunity for IBM to showcase its technology.

A lucrative partnership

Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 was met with a spectrum of reactions. Where some saw a threat to peace, others quickly grasped at the business opportunities presented by regime change. Among those who sought to capitalise was IBM president Thomas J. Watson, who from the very first days of the Nazi government manoeuvred to form a partnership. Despite widespread international calls to boycott the new regime, Watson inserted himself extremely closely into the management of IBM’s German operation. Indeed, between 1933 and 1939, Watson travelled to Berlin at least twice annually to personally supervise Dehomag’s work. In this period, the Nazi government would become one of IBM’s most important overseas clients.

On April 12, 1933, Dehomag was presented with a huge opportunity to cement the partnership. This was the date on which the Nazis announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census, a project which would enable identification of Jews, Roma and other minority groups deemed subhuman by the new order. First in line to offer their services was Dehomag, backed at every step by IBM’s US headquarters. Indeed, Watson personally travelled to Germany in October that year, and drastically expanded investment in Dehomag from 400,000 Reichsmarks to a staggering 7,000,000. This injection of capital gave Dehomag the means to purchase land in Berlin, and to start construction of IBM’s first German factory. The scaling up of operations in Germany would prepare IBM to take on a bigger role in Nazi atrocities. Indeed, it was tabulated census data that enabled the Nazis to expand their estimate of 400,000 to 600,000 Jews living in Germany to 2,000,000.

Some part of Watson must have known that his company's partnership with the Third Reich was immoral, if not embarrassing. Tellingly, he took great pains to ensure deniability through his continued insistence on direct verbal instructions to his German staff. Nothing was written down, even in the case of high-value contracts. And yet there was no denying the tight leash with which Watson directed business. For instance, correspondence written in German was translated by the IBM New York office for Watson’s personal comment. In one anecdote, German staff recalled having to wait for Watson’s express permission before they were allowed to paint a corridor. Watson’s tenure as CEO would see IBM’s partnership with the Nazis grow more intimate still.

Business gets intimate

Writing at a time in which multinational corporations are heavily scrutinised in the public eye for any role – no matter how small – in human rights abuses, we might be forgiven for assuming that IBM maintained at least some semblance of distance from the atrocities taking place across Nazi-occupied Europe. The reality, however, is much more disturbing. As the regime’s sole supplier of punch cards and spare parts, IBM trainees (or sometimes authorised dealers) were required to be physically present when servicing their tabulation machines – even those located at infamous sites like Dachau. More chilling still, each IBM machine was tailor-made to not only tabulate inputted information, but also to produce data which the Nazis were interested in analysing. There were no universal punch cards, and so IBM’s role in servicing the machines ensured that they continued to operate at maximum efficiency.

To give a sense of how it worked, it might be helpful to describe an application of IBM tabulation technology in action. One set of punch cards, for example, recorded religion, nationality and mother tongue. By creating additional columns and rows for ‘Jew’, ‘Polish language’, ‘Polish nationality’, ‘Berlin’, and ‘fur trade’, the Nazis were able to cross-tabulate at a rate of 25,000 cards per hour to identify precisely how many Berlin furriers were Jews of Polish origin. Train cars, which previously would have taken two weeks to mobilise, could be quickly dispatched in just two days by means of an immense network of IBM punch card machines. This same technology was also put to use in concentration camps. Each camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through the use of IBM's punch cards. The machines were so sophisticated that they were even capable of matching the skills of prisoners with projects that needed slave labour. Chillingly, IBM’s code for a Jewish inmate was “6” and the code it used for gas chamber was “8”.

While Nazi Germany extended its domination across Europe, there is no evidence to suggest that IBM paused at any point to reflect on its role in facilitating industrial-scale murder. On the contrary, each nation that fell to the Nazi war machine was subjected to a census, which relied on the machinery and punch cards supplied by IBM. At the same time as Europe’s Jews were murdered in their millions, IBM decision-makers in New York were gleefully carving up sales territories. Edwin Black, who's 2001 book first bought to light the company’s instrumental role in the Holocaust, warns us not to think of IBM’s partnership with the Nazis as some rogue corporate element operating out of a basement.  Far from it. This was a carefully micro-managed alliance spanning twelve years, which generated profit up until the last gasp of Hitler’s monstrous regime.

Legacy: IBM’s reaction and the role of big tech in genocide today

Revisiting his book twenty years later, Edwin Black makes the point that – with or without IBM – there would always have been a Holocaust. ‘Einsatzgruppen murder squads and their militia cohorts would still have heinously murdered East European Jews bullet by bullet in pits, ravines, and isolated clearings in the woods’. The question, however, is would the Nazis have been able to annihilate as many victims as they did without the data processing power offered by IBM technology? For Edwin, the answer to that question is never in doubt. IBM is responsible for facilitating the ‘industrial, high-speed, six-million-person Holocaust, metering ghetto residents out to trains, then carefully scheduling those trains to concentration camps for murder and cremation within hours, thus clearing the way for the next shipment of victims—day and night’. Put it another way: without IBM, the death toll of the Holocaust would be measured in the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions.

To date, IBM has never directly denied any of the evidence of its role in the Holocaust. The company has previously insisted that most of its records from Europe were lost or destroyed during the war, and that it has no other information it can share about its operations during that time. It would seem IBM sees little benefit in attempting to refute or downplay its part in the Holocaust. Indeed, in the twenty years since Black published his book, he reminds us that ‘IBM has never requested a correction or denied any facts’. Since 2001, each edition of the book has provided further evidence of the company’s guilt.

Are there any lessons that we can draw from IBM’s role in the Holocaust? Importantly, the company’s facilitation of mass murder is a stark reminder of the power of data in the wrong hands. Indeed, we do not have to look too hard to find examples of authoritarian regimes using data to perpetuate genocide even today. From China's use of facial recognition technology to monitor and persecute its Uighur population, to Myanmar's use of social media to incite violence against Rohingya Muslims, we are bearing witness to new and alarming ways in which data is weaponised to inflict human rights abuses. While we do of course need to be vigilant about the ways in which governments – our own or further afield – might use data, we also need to remain extremely wary of non-governmental actors. Indeed, if IBM’s story shows us anything, it is that large multinational corporations are adept at evading accountability and continuing to function with impunity. Despite the millions that such organisations spend on PR management and glossy marketing campaigns, it is critical that we remain suspicious of what big tech can do to surveil, censor and unduly influence our lives.

What do you think of the role IBM in the Holocaust? Let us know below.

Now read Felix’s article on Henry Ford’s calamitous utopia in Brazil: Fordlandia Here.

References

Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation (2001)

IBM and the Holocaust -- 20 Years of Corporate Denial | Edwin Black | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)

Lessons from IBM in Nazi Germany (hbr.org)

IBM and the Holocaust - Wikipedia

United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect

Doc.1_Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.pdf

The Nazi Holocaust: The Importance of Survivor Testimonies in Remembering and Understanding

The Nazi Holocaust is one of the most dreadful and infamous events in history – and of the most important ways to remember it is through survivor testimonies. Here, Amy Kim discusses the importance of survivor testimony of genocide in the context of the Holocaust and her own experience of meeting a former Korean comfort woman from the time of the Japanese invasion of Korea.

Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz concentration camp in summer 1944. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0827-318 / CC-BY-SA 3., available here.

The dread in my heart when I listened to Holocaust survivor HannsLoewenbach recountbeing identified on the streets of Berlin byan SS officer (and formerclassmate) is a feeling no history textbook can induce. The uniqueness of each survivor’s testimony allows us to present the tragedy of the Nazi Holocaust in the most compelling and lasting way, allowing readers to attempt to conceptualize its historical singularity and unthinkable horrors.Survivor testimonies provide painful but historically essential information no other sources could ever reveal. Though rightly considered “singular,” there is nevertheless an increasingly terrifying danger of a recurrence of genocidal ethnic violence, making it crucial to teach and learn the Holocaust through survivors’ accounts.

Loewenbach’s testimony

In his testimony, Loewenbachdescribes the discriminationthat began long before Hitler’s rule:he remembers being beaten upin publicby 10 classmates just for being Jewishwhilethe rest of the student body looked on passively. After Hitler took power and began stripping Jews of rights and then deporting them to concentration camps, Loewenbach made the desperate decision to swim across the icy Baltic waters to Denmark to plead for protection. As soon as he reached these shores, however, a Danish officer confronted him and told him to swim back to Berlin, threatening that he would otherwise be turned over to German officers - a fate that meant certain death. 

Though pedagogically, and therefore politically, indispensable, the powerful effects of survivor testimony by no means exclusively serve students. If Loewenbach had not decided to speak up, historians themselves might never have known this specific detail about life in Nazi Germany and its surrounding polities. Neither could historians have otherwise divined Loewenbach’s incredulity when a German officer asked him, “Aren’t you happy?” when offered a spot in the German Army, or similar surprise when his former classmate-turned SS officer offered to forge a passport for him instead of turning him in.

Survivor Testimonies

The accumulation of Holocaust survivor testimony not only fills an objective lacunae in the historical record, but also helps preserve politically necessary examples of this atrocity in order to prevent its recurrence. If revisionist historians value “official” records and secondary sources shorn of emotion over primary sources because they presume that survivor testimonies are “unreliable” and “trauma-based,” they are failing to employ the most vivid and effective method to record the Holocaust, a catastrophe whose memory must be preserved to ensure a brighter future. In addition, especially because survivors often recount feeling fearful of revealing their histories, we must be especially proactive in seeking out and preserving their testimonies. Loewenbach famously said “Evil does not need your hate, just your indifference” after first encountering Elie Wiesel, a fellow Holocaust survivor and acclaimed author of Night. In turn, Wiesel told Loewenbach that they must speak out about the Holocaust for those whose lives were taken and could not speak for themselves. 

I vividly remember therainy day in May of 2017 when I had the privilege of interviewing a former Korean comfort woman, who had beenforced into sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation of Koreaduring the Second World War. Her name was Yi Ok-Seon. Yi had also initially hidden her past, avoidingpersonal shame (and blame)by concealingher victimizationby Japanese military officers. Like Loewenbach, however, she could not endure the possibility that victimslike her might be erased fromhistory, ultimately inspiringher to speak out at countless conferences and commemorations, in addition to me, a high schoolerworking on a humbledocumentary. I still remember the atmosphere in the room weighingdown on me and the angst in her voice as she said, “We are all over the age of 90, and all we want is for the Japanese to listen and apologize.”

In studying historical events, students often empathize with past plights using relatable personal experience, but this is rarely the case for genocide or the Holocaust. For the average student, it is difficult to understand the unique horrors of the Holocaust when our access is primarily through secondary sources - including competing popular media narratives. Only survivor testimonies capture emotions and humanity of the very people who endured those horrors and thereby facilitate an unmediated, empathetic response from students. It is time for us to realize that in considering the pedagogical and political reasons for preserving primary source testimony, we must not overlook the psychological imperativeto hear the voices of the tortured and the dead. The preservation ofsurvivor testimonynot only enriches the learningof history throughoriginal accounts that offer a genuine connection across generations, but also preserve the voices of past martyrs providing, a priceless tool for building a better future.

What do you think of the importance of survivor testimonies of genocides? Let us know below.

The Real Love story between a Nazi SS guard and Jewish prisoner at Auschw

The Holocaust has left its mark as one of the darkest moments in history. However, even during the darkest of times, there was still love. Here, we tell you about a love story between a Nazi concentration camp prisoner and an SS Guard at Auschwitz.

Helena Citronova (left) and Franz Wunsch (right) fell in love at Auschwitz.

In September 1935, the Reichstag (the parliament during the Third Reich) voted unanimously to for the passing of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, otherwise known as the Nuremberg Laws that not only excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship but from marrying or having sexual relations with people of “German or related blood.”

Persons accused of having sexual relations with non-Aryans faced public humiliation and those convicted were “typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps.”

Even with the punishments for forbidden affection severe, especially for Nazi soldiers, that was not enough to stop Auschwitz SS officer Franz Wunsch from falling in love with a Jewish Slovakian prisoner named Helena Citronova. Across the world, Auschwitz concentration camp has become a symbol of genocide, terror, war, and the Holocaust.

However, after 70 years, PBS in America as well as an Israeli television brought to life the forbidden romance story between an SS guard and a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz that highlighted the complexity of human relationships in the most horrifying of world events.

In 1942, Franz Wunsch was serving as a 20-year old SS guard in charge of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. On his birthday, March 21, his Nazi comrades brought in a Jewish girl, Helena Citronova, to sing him birthday songs. Helena was imprisoned at Auschwitz from Slovakia and was forced to sort all of the incoming prisoners’ belongings before they were shipped to Berlin to fuel the Nazi war efforts.

Helena and her sister Rozinka had both been sentenced to die in the gas chambers earlier that very day so Helena attempted to sing the very best she could, melting the heart of the SS guard. When Wunsch realized she wouldn’t be alive the next day, he hurried and managed to postpone the execution of both sisters.

Helena would say years later in Israel, “When he came into the barracks where I was working, he threw me that note. I destroyed it right there and then, but I did see the word "love" — "I fell in love with you". I thought I'd rather be dead than be involved with an SS man. For a long time afterwards there was just hatred. I couldn't even look at him.”

Over time, though unclear of exactly when, Helena succumbed to her feelings for Franz, especially after her SS devotee rushed to prevent her sister and her sister’s children from being sent to the gas chambers.

“'So he said to me, "Tell me quickly what your sister's name is before I'm too late." So I said, "You won't be able to. She came with two little children." Helena later recalled.

'He replied, "Children, that's different. Children can't live here." So he ran to the crematorium and found my sister.'

Helena admitted she had slept with her rescuer and at times had even forgotten who he was and came to terms with the romance. Wunsch would provide Helena with food, clothing, and protection. Though their relationship would not develop any further, Helena would repay him years later for risking his life to protect a Jewish prisoner on the pain of death.

When the war ended, the SS guards fled the Allied advance, even destroying parts of the concentration camps to cover their war crimes. Helena and her sister Rozinka attempted to return home with other displaced people through an Eastern Europe that contained violent and raping Soviet soldiers. Both sisters avoided being raped when Rozinka claimed to be Helena’s mother and defended her. Following the founding of Israel in 1948, Helena moved there while Franz returned to Austria.

Thirty years following Nazi Germany’s defeat and the end of World War II, in 1972, Wunsch was put on trial in Vienna, accused of being cruel towards prisoners by beating men and women alike and operated at the gas chambers to insert the lethal gas. Testimonies include camp survivors describing Wunsch as a “natural Jew hater” and sometimes participated in the selection of inmates all over occupied Europe to live or die. With more than enough evidence for the guilty verdict, life imprisonment and death most likely would have awaited him.

In a twist of events, Helena and her sister defended Wunsch at his trial. Even with ‘an overwhelming evidence of guilt’ as the judge commented in Wunsch’s participation in the Nazi’s largest concentration camp’s mass murder, Wunsch was acquitted of all charges due to the statute of limitations over war crimes in Austria.

“Desire changed my brutal behavior,” Wunsch said. “I fell in love with Helena Citronova and that changed me. I changed into another person because of her influence.”

Citronova died in 2005. Wunsch died in 2009.

Share your thoughts on this article below…

Sources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193520/Read-real-life-story-Auschwitz-prisoner-Helena-Citronova-falling-love-SS-guard-Franz-Wunsch-amid-controversy-Kate-Breslin-novel-Time.html

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/auschwitz-love-story.html

https://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00090219-forbidden-love-saved-their-lives.html

http://ww2awartobewon.com/wwii-articles/auschwitz-forbidden-romance-story/

Anne Frank – Image of the week

Our image of the week is of Anne Frank, who was born on June 12, 1929.

Most of us know Anne Frank, the girl who hid with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam for two years in an attic during World War II. Ultimately she was betrayed and sent to a concentration camp where she died. She is one of the better-known of the approximately six million victims of the Holocaust. Anne’s diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, was published after the war – and that in large part explains why she is so well known.

Anne is the image of the week in recognition that she was born on June 12 1929 – she would have been 85 today. Our image shows a smiling Anne standing against a wall with her shadow in the background. A warm but also incredibly poignant photo.

You can read an article from the blog entitled ‘The Face of Anne Frank and the Holocaust’ by clicking here.

Image source: http://www.annefrank.org/en/Anne-Frank/All-people/Anne-Frank

The Face Of Anne Frank and the Holocaust

Samantha Jones presents a very personal view of the Holocaust and discusses the tragic story of Anne Frank.

My best friend and I have a strong interest in the Holocaust. Nothing macabre or flippant, but we cannot rid this disbelief that something like that could happen. For my friend`s Creative Arts Major work she focused upon survivors of the death camps, interviewing migrants at the Jewish Museum in Sydney. Aside from this, when I was much younger my mother surprised me with a trip to Amsterdam just to visit Anne Frank’s house, and on another trip while my friend and I were visiting Dachau, we heard on the radio that Miep Gies had passed away. Needless to say, we felt a small personal connection to the event, as ignorant as that may be. 

Anne Frank in 1942.

At the time, for us 18-year-old girls, Anne Frank was the face of the Holocaust. Her writing, so innocent and beautiful, was what we strived for and it mesmerized our minds throughout our adolescence. We were barely able to stomach the tragedy behind her story, always staring in disbelief at our own lives and our similarity in age. One day at the Jewish Museum, we met a survivor who shared barracks with Anne Frank at the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Naturally, we were amazed that we were standing in front of someone who knew her. I mean imagine. The lady named Helen, calmly laughed and then said through her thick Austrian accent, “Yes girls, but there were others…”

For those of you who don’t know, Anne Frank and her family were Jews who hid from the Nazi persecution in Amsterdam. From 1942 to 1944 the Franks, with another family of three and a family friend, hid in an attic belonging to Anne’s father, Otto. For two years, the hiders never left the attic, never stepped outside, never felt fresh sunlight or breathed crisp air, instead watching the barbaric chaos unfold upon the streets they looked helplessly down on. Family and work friends, including Miep Gies, supplied the hiders with the things they needed; however someone found out and the hiders were arrested.

Anne entered the ‘Secret Annex’ when she was thirteen and began writing a diary during her confinement. When she was fifteen, Anne was taken with her family and sent to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, where she eventually died with her sister Margot.

Out of the eight hiders, only Anne’s father Otto survived, returning from Auschwitz to the lonely attic and Anne’s diary. Otto Frank published the diary in 1947, and Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl was eventually published in over 60 languages. Now the attic has been transformed into a museum, where tourists can go inside to see where the Franks hid, Margot and Anne’s growth marks on the wall, Anne’s bedroom and the diary itself, which surprisingly resembles a scrapbook. If you get anything out of this article, let it be this. Just go and read the diary.

A SYMBOL

Despite Anne’s diary becoming a piece of classic literature, she has also become one of the most notable faces that represent the millions upon millions of lives lost under Nazi persecution. Miep Gies, the secretary who denied she was a hero, resembles the perspective of Helen, the Austrian survivor in the Jewish museum. Anne was a remarkable writer certainly, but still an ordinary girl. What about the faces that have been forgotten? What about everyone else?

The idea of Anne Frank and Miep Gies being so ‘ordinary’, can be taken as a positive or negative. Ordinary people can change the world everyday. As Gies teaches us: “But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.” When we all see the world falling apart, we need inspiration like this to keep going. To stop and really think long and hard about every face, every family, every marriage, every child that had their lives robbed, we would not be able to get through the day. So maybe it is easier for us to idolize one face instead of millions. But as those that were there remind us, to forget others can be as dangerous and devastating as the tragedy itself.

History is biased and picky. It remembers what the writers of history want to remember, and remembering Anne Frank is no different. I mean no disrespect to her legacy by any means, she has inspired me in so many ways I cannot name them all. But does this come at a cost? I think we need to educate ourselves, listen to stories and dig deeper to fully understand something from the past. Otherwise, our understanding, and the idea of justice and truth is distorted, much like the events we study in the first place. Anne Frank leaves an amazing legacy. But as my Austrian teacher tells me, there were others too.

You can read an article related to Alice Herz-Somme, an incredible Holocaust survivor, by clicking here.

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The story of the Oldest Living Pianist and Holocaust Survivor, Alice Herz-Somme

We thought that this review should be about something really special, and then somebody suggested this amazing film.

Alice Herz-Somme is the oldest Holocaust survivor and an amazing pianist. The film, The Lady in Number 6, tells her story. But here, we’ll briefly explain her life.

Having been born in Prague in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1903, Alice went on to live an inspiring life – but not before her troubles. In the years before World War II, she gained a reputation as being a world-class pianist, and played with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. And that helped to save her and her son when they were sent to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp by the Nazis. Alice’s husband and mother were killed in Auschwitz; however, Alice’s music allowed her to play in concerts in the Concentration Camp.

After the war, Anna went back to a changed Prague. The Nazis had moved other people into her apartment and so she decided to move to the new country of Israel. She continued to play the piano, while her son became a cellist.

Later in life, at nearly 100, Alice moved to London in order to be close to her son. Alas tragedy struck again, but Alice has an incredible spirit. This film tells the story of her views on life, a woman that has suffered hardships that most of us can’t possibly imagine, but still has a very positive outlook. Here is an extended clip:

You can find out more about the film by clicking here.

And there is another of our reviews available here.  It's on Germany, Poland and the USSR.