Children of Holocaust: Survivors and their stories from Nazi concentration camps.
Latest hand-picked WWII news.
Frank Hill, reportedly the first American pilot to shoot down a Nazi plane, passes away at 92
Frank A. Hill, a World War II ace enshrined in the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey and reportedly the first American flier to shoot down a Nazi plane, has passed away at the age of 92. Hill worked as a plumber's helper before enlisting in 1939 in the U.S. Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the U.S. Army Air Forces. He had taught himself to fly in a glider that he and his friends rebuilt. Hill flew 166 combat missions over Europe and Africa and downed 7 Axis planes.
(northjersey.com)
Son of Holocaust Survivors had nothing but hatred for Germany, until he paid a visit
Lev Raphael, a New York-born author and the son of Holocaust survivors, had nothing but hate for Germany, until he paid a visit. He has written a memoir ("My Germany") about his change of view, and now he returns to Germany for a book tour. --- "Nazi occupation soldiers confined my mother to the Vilna Ghetto, and moved her to concentration camps near Riga and Danzig until she was sent to a slave labor camp in Magdeburg. My father was persecuted by Hungarian fascists as a slave laborer before being sent to Bergen-Belsen. I grew up with this image of Germany as the ultimate source of evil. We never bought German products..."
(spiegel.de)
From young Holocaust survivor to judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague
Before Thomas Buergenthal turned his childhood experiences in Nazi camps into a book, he made them the basis of a life's work in human rights: He is a judge at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. In "A Lucky Child" he recalls slipping away and hide in the Auschwitz barracks between the head count and the selection: "I had to disappear without being seen by the SS or the barrack boss." When he was selected, his liquidation was delayed because the SS said the group was too small to fire up the crematoriums. One morning he woke up to find that the SS had taken all the others to the ovens. A Polish doctor, who liked him, had altered his paperwork.
(dailymail.co.uk)
The last train to leave Belsen: The Cossacks told us to go and ransack German villages
Rudi Oppenheimers was born in Berlin in 1931 and in 1936 his Jewish family fled to Amsterdam. But in 1940 Wehrmacht marched over the Dutch border: "We were back where we didn't want to be." In 1945, with the British Army 20 miles away, the Nazis put Rudi on the last train to leave Belsen: "We passed through Berlin on 19 April 1945... We saw schoolboys dressed in military uniforms, ready to defend the German capital. We woke up one morning and noticed that the SS guards had disappeared... we could see... Russian Cossacks from the Red Army. The Cossacks told us to go and ransack German villages to get food. We put on Russian uniforms so we would look scarier."
(bbc.co.uk)
Film review - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: A child's-eye view of the Holocaust
The basis of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" is as grim as it gets: Bruno is the 8-year-old son of a Nazi officer, who is promoted from behind a desk to commanding a death camp in the middle of nowhere. Bruno can't understand the sudden tension between his parents, or why he is not allowed to visit the strange "farm" with the electric fences. There's a innocence about Bruno's attempts to unlock these mysteries that cuts both ways. His secret friendship with a friendly and starving Jewish boy Shmuel on the other side of the wire has the rhythm of a children's adventure, spiked by unspeakable adult truths.
(timesonline.co.uk)
In photos: Holocaust Memory Train
Candles are placed outside the Bahn tower to commemorate victims of the nazi regime in Berlin. Demonstrators marched to the headquarters of Deutsche Bahn after a movable exhibition, the 'Zug der Erinnerung' (Memory Train) on the transportation of children during the Holocaust has been refused permission to stop in Berlin's central station.
(monstersandcritics.com)