Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Friday, October 27, 2017
Top 10 Nazi Collaborators Who Were Jews
When
we talk of Nazi Collaborators we are not usually referring to Jews. When we
think of the Holocaust, we often imagine that the Germans were solely
responsible for the identification and deportation of Jews and others to the
death camps. The truth, however, is that a number of Jews worked under the
Nazis and helped to identify thousands of their fellow men for deportation to
the death camps.
The
Nazi collaborators on this list either volunteered to help the Nazis or were
forced to trade the lives of hundreds or thousands of their fellow Jews for their
own lives and the lives of their families. Greed, self-preservation, and hate
are the main reasons for the actions these individuals took.
10Nazi Collaborators: Calel Perechodnik
Calel
Perechodnik is the author of Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto
Policeman, which is from his memoirs about his life after joining the
ghetto police in Otwock. He may seem like a victim of circumstances, but that
does not change the fact that he worked on orders of the Nazis and contributed
to the deaths of
fellow Jews and even his wife.
Perechodnik
joined the ghetto police because he thought it would save him and his family
from the death camps. It was also a way to provide food for his family.
But
according to his memoirs, he developed a hatred for the Jews and himself,
blaming them for the way they were treated. He said that other nations hated
the Jews because they claimed to be a chosen race. When Perechodnik deserted
the Ghetto Police, the Nazis captured and executed him.
9Jozef Andrzej Szerynski
Jozef
Szerynski did not like being a Jew. After fighting in the Russian army during
World War I, he tried to distance himself from the Jews by changing his birth
name from Josef Szynkman to Jozef Andrzej Szerynski.
During
World War II, he was appointed the head of the police in the Jewish Ghetto of
Warsaw. The Gestapo charged him with identifying Jews for deportation to the
death camps.
Szerynski
executed his duty without any hesitation, leading thousands of men, women, and
children to the Treblinka extermination camp. In August 1942, just a month
after he had begun his assignment, an attempt was made on his life by a member
of the Jewish underground. But Szerynski survived.
After
overseeing two mass deportations that caused the deaths of 254,000
Jews, Szerynski committed suicide using cyanide in January 1943.
8Adam Czerniakow
Adam
Czerniakow was born in Poland and worked as an engineer for most of his life.
When the Nazis took over Poland, he was appointed head of the Warsaw Jewish
Ghetto. Czerniakow headed the 24-man Warsaw council that was charged with the
identification and capture of Jews for deportation.
Czerniakow
also recommended the appointment of Jozef Andrzej Szerynski as head of the
ghetto police. Under direct orders from Nazi bosses, Czerniakow oversaw the
daily deportation of 6,000 Jews.
According
to The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, he tried his best to plead
for the exemption of orphans but to no avail. It is said that his wife and
thousands more were held hostage to ensure that he executed his duty.
Overwhelmed by the pressure, he committed suicide using cyanide. Czerniakow left a
note to his family saying that suicide was the right thing to do.
7Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski
Chaim
Mordechai Rumkowski was a Polish Jew appointed by the Nazis as the head of the
Jewish Council of Elders in Lodz Ghetto. There, he was the most influential and
powerful man. He even made his own currency called Chaimki with his face on it.
Referred
to by some people as “King Chaim the Terrible,” Rumkowski personally oversaw
the handover of more than 20,000 children, elderly, and sick Jews to the Nazis
for deportation to the extermination camps. He is remembered for his speech,
infamously named “Give Me Your Children.”
Rumkowski,
however, did not survive the Holocaust. In August 1944, he and his family ended
up in Auschwitz. There, he was beaten to death by fellow Jewish inmates for the
role he played in the deaths of thousands of children and elderly.
6Alfred Nossig
In
his biography, Alfred Nossig is described as a man with a brilliant mind who
studied law, science, and art. He encouraged Jews to try to assimilate as
Polish citizens. But when he discovered that the Poles did not want to accept
the Jews as Polish, Nossig became a Zionist.
Later,
when the Germans invaded Poland during World War II, Nossig became an
undercover agent for the Gestapo and produced regular reports about activities
of the Jewish underground which he delivered to the Gestapo. The Jewish
underground later found out about his activities and executed him.
Among
the documents found at his home after the execution were a Gestapo identity card and a list of Jews engaged in
anti-Nazi activities. It is believed that the identity card made it easy for
him to get access to his Nazi bosses without being arrested and deported. At
the time of his death, he was 78 years old.
5Abraham Gancwajch
Abraham
Gancwajch was an all-out supporter of the Nazis. He believed they would win
World War II, so he encouraged his fellow Jews to join the Nazis as a survival
tactic. A member of the Warsaw Ghetto Council, he tried to take over from Adam
Czerniakow but failed.
Gancwajch
formed a notorious gang called Group 13, also referred to as the Jewish Gestapo. The things they did
are so despicable that even fellow Nazi Jews like Czerniakow described
Gancwajch as an evil, ugly man who would do anything for a life of luxury.
Gancwajch
was known for engaging in smuggling activities and other illegal businesses
that helped him live like a king within the Jewish Ghetto. The Nazis let this
go on as long as he continued to fight the Jewish resistance for them.
The
Underground Jews sentenced Gancwajch to death but were never able to execute
him. It is not clear how he met his death, though it is believed that he died
in 1943.
4Ans van Dijk
The
Nazi collaborators weren’t always men. Ans van Dijk was born to Jewish parents
in the Netherlands. There, she lived a fairly normal life until the invasion by
the German forces. At the height of the Nazi operations, she was arrested. But
she was released on the condition that she would help the Nazi Intelligence
find other Jews in hiding.
Van
Dijk infiltrated the Jewish resistance and pretended to help families and
individuals escape or obtain false papers. In reality, she would just deliver
them to the Nazis for deportation. She executed this duty without any favor,
going as far as trapping her brother and his family.
At
the end of the war, van Dijk was arrested in The Hague, where she had moved and
was involved in a lesbian relationship. In June 1945, she was charged with 23
counts of treason. She pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to
death.
Van
Dijk tried her best to avoid the execution. She appealed the sentence and
converted to Christianity, but all that failed. In January 1948, van Dijk
was executed by firing squad. She is believed to be responsible for
the deaths of 85 Jews and the arrests of 145. Some scholars still regard her as
a victim.
3Stella Goldschlag
Stella
Goldschlag was a paid “catcher” for the Nazis. She had studied in a Jewish
school and lived in the Jewish ghetto. Therefore, she knew a number of fellow
Jews who were hiding underground in Germany.
Peter
Wayden, her biographer, describes her as charming and beautiful. With her
blonde hair and blue eyes, she hardly looked like a Jew. According to her
biography, Goldschlag was arrested with her parents as they tried to leave
Germany. She was tortured until she agreed to help catch fellow Jews in hiding.
The
Nazis knew how much she loved her parents and that she would do anything to
keep them alive. But it is also recorded that she was offered 300 reichsmarks
as payment for every Jew she caught. Even after her parents were sent to a
concentration camp, she continued to catch Jews for the Nazis.
Goldschlag
used her good looks to gain people’s trust. She would offer them food and
accommodations, only to hand them over to the Nazis for deportation. It is
estimated that she helped to catch close to 3,000 Jews.
The
Germans named her “blonde poison.” After the war, she served 10 years
in prison, converted to Christianity, and became an outspoken anti-Semite.
Goldschlag committed suicide in 1994 by jumping out a window.
2Rolf Isaaksohn
Rolf
Isaaksohn offered to work as a catcher for the Gestapo. He bragged that he
could fill a whole train with Jews for deportation. After he married fellow
catcher Stella Goldschlag, they were even more effective together than the
Gestapo at arresting Jews in hiding.
Isaaksohn
had a talent for forging documents. This brought many Jews to him for
assistance, and he would easily hand them over. This is a man who actually
loved betraying his own people, and many Jews lived in fear of Mr. and Mrs.
Isaaksohn.
According
to Peter Wayden, who wrote about the couple, the Isaaksohns were very
innovative in the way they would get Jews in hiding. It didn’t even matter if
these people were childhood
friends.
All told, Isaaksohn caused the deaths of over 2,000 Jews.
1Moshe Merin
Sosnowiec Council with Moszek Merin (centre) fifth from the right, middle row.
In
his book Nightmares: Memoirs of the Years of Horror Under Nazi Rule in
Europe, Konrad Charmatz described Moshe Merin as impulsive and unstable.
Merin volunteered himself to the Nazis when they invaded Poland and presented
himself as the leader of the Sosnowiec Community Council.
The
Nazis installed Merin as the leader of the Central Office of the Jewish council
in East Upper Silesia, which put as many as 100,000 Jews under him. Merin
believed that he could save the lives of other Jews by following the orders of
the Nazis. When he was asked to choose 25,000 Jews for deportation, he gladly
did, arguing that at least he had saved a greater percentage.
Working
with the Jewish Ghetto Police, Merin fought the underground
resistance and personally signed the execution warrants of
those arrested. His actions, however, did not save him. Merin died in 1943 in
Auschwitz, where he had sent fellow Jews to be killed.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
THE TREBLINKA GOLD RUSH
After World War II, Polish peasants hunted for jewels and gold amid the human remains at former Nazi death camps
By Jan
T. Gross
Tablet
Magazine
May 21, 2012 • 7:00 AM
May 21, 2012 • 7:00 AM
(Muzeum
Walki i Męczeństwa Treblinka copyright Agencja Gazeta)
It is a familiar image, one people have seen in countless
variations: a group of peasants at harvest time after work, resting contentedly
with their tools behind a pile of crops. Some may have taken a snapshot of this
kind on summer vacations, while visiting with distant relatives in the
countryside; others might carry it as a souvenir of their days as a student
volunteer, when they helped farmers in the back country in their work. It was
the kind of image featured every summer on the front pages of newspapers in
communist countries half the world over, and visitors could find more or less
artistically refined renditions in art galleries and museums.Yet despite the bucolic setting, this particular photograph is
disquieting—and not just because it’s out of focus. Something feels off-kilter
about the landscape, which cannot be pegged easily to a geographical location.
Were palm trees rather than conifers protruding from behind the group, one
might place the setting of the photograph in a desert. And when one notes what
is scattered in front of the group the mystery deepens.
Where are we? Who are the people in the photograph?
We are in the middle of Europe right after World War II. The
peasants in the photograph are standing atop the ashes of 800,000 Jews gassed
and cremated in the Treblinka extermination camp between July 1942 and October
1943. The peasants have been digging through remains of Holocaust victims,
hoping to find gold and precious stones that their Nazi executioners may have
overlooked.
This innocent-looking image links two central events of the
Holocaust—the mass murder of European Jews and the accompanying looting of
their property. The writer Rachela Auerbach visited Treblinka on Nov. 7, 1945,
as part of an official delegation organized by the Main Commission for the
Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes. She called one of the chapters of a small
book she subsequently wrote about the Treblinka extermination camp “The Polish
Colorado or About the Gold Rush in Treblinka.” She also described how plunderers
with shovels were everywhere. “They dig, they search, pulling out bones and
body parts. Maybe something could still be found,” she writes, “maybe a golden
tooth?”
***
Dominik Kucharek, a gleaner from Treblinka who had been served
with an indictment for violating foreign-exchange laws—he tried to sell in
Warsaw a diamond he found at Treblinka and purchase gold coins on a black
market—explained in his deposition that “everybody” from his village went to
dig there. “I didn’t know that looking for gold and valuables at the site of
the former camp at Treblinka was forbidden, because Soviet soldiers also went
there with us to search. And they detonated explosives in places where they
expected to find something.” There could be several hundred diggers working the
camp at any one time. Given the size of the site, approximating that of a
sports stadium, it must have looked like a busy anthill. And these digs went on
for decades.
Testimonies from Bełżec tell a similar story. The main
difference was that digging there had already begun during the war. Like
Treblinka, Bełżec was dismantled by the Germans, and the camp’s terrain was
plowed over, and trees and grass were planted to cover mass graves. Bełżec was
the first death camp to close—in mid-1943. When the Germans got wind of what
the Polish locals were doing, they chased them away and installed a permanent
guard to make sure that no evidence of their own murderous activity would be
unearthed. As soon as the guard fled before the approaching Red Army, the local
people resumed their excavations.
“According to information provided by policemen stationed in
Bełżec,” states a report prepared by a commission visiting Bełżec on Oct. 10,
1945, “the area of the camp has been dug up by local people looking for gold
and precious stones left by murdered Jews. All over the dug-up terrain one
finds scattered human bones: skulls, vertebrae, ribs, femurs, jaws, women’s
hair, often in braids, also fragments of rotting human flesh, such as hands or
lower limbs of small children.” After the Germans fled from Bełżec the local
police tried to inhibit digging in the camp area, “but it is difficult to do
anything,” explained the town’s police precinct commander, Mieczysław Niedużak,
“because as soon as one group of people is chased away, another group appears.”
The commission worked conscientiously, and in addition to
talking to scores of witnesses the authors of the report also surveyed the
camp. Nine separate sites in the death camp were probed for depth, in one
instance the bottom of the grave was over 20 feet down. “When digging the
probes it was ascertained that camp graves have been previously dug up,” and
also “that at the present time the entire camp area is being dug up by the
local population looking for valuables.”
Death-camp harvesters usually worked alone, lest a lucky find
provoke envy from a neighbor (in the vicinity of Treblinka, diggers were robbed
and tortured one another). Both in Bełżec and in Treblinka it was common
practice to take skulls home in order to check them out later, and “in peace.”
There were also a few entrepreneurs who hired small crews to dig
for them, such as a man known as the “banker of Bełżec,” who owned a
brick factory in town and staked a claim to an area where a latrine had been
previously situated in the camp. It was the most fertile spot, presumably
because desperate Jews who figured out at last what awaited them threw therein
valuables instead of surrendering them to camp officials. After the Red Army
liberated the area near Sobibór, Soviet soldiers scooped the former camp
latrine by buckets hauling loads of wristwatches. The latrine area in Bełżec
yielded also small skeletons—most likely of Jewish children who had been
drowned there by camp guards.
The area surrounding the death camps was indeed, as Rachela
Auerbach suggested, a Polish Colorado—not just on account of what happened
there after the war, but mainly during the war. Villages in the vicinities of
camps prospered materially as a result of trade between camp guards and the
local people, trade which according to one observer brought a “material and
economic revolution” into this area. A landlord whose property was not far from
Treblinka put it thus: “thatched roofs were gone, replaced by sheet metal, and
the entire village seemed like a piece of Europe suddenly moved into the center
of Podlasie.”
What lay behind this perceptive observation? In addition to a
small staff of SS men, Treblinka’s personnel was made up of released Soviet
POWs, mostly Ukrainians, trained by the SS to serve as guards. Those young men,
about a hundred of them altogether, treated with contempt by their German
superiors, were called Wachmanor,
alternatively, “Blacks,” from the color of their uniforms. They easily
communicated in pidgin Polish-Ukrainian with the local people and were welcome
guests in their homes, as bearers of looted money and valuables. Treblinka
guards traded with the locals, buying alcohol, tasty food, and sex, and the
inflow of capital into the area was beyond anything that had happened there
before or has happened since.
In Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór over a million and a half Jews
were murdered, including the Jewish population of several large cities. And
monies as well as valuables, which Jews took on their final journey, hoping
against hope that they might survive, in some small part trickled into the
hands of the locals. Warsaw native and engineer Jerzy Królikowski, who lived in
the village of Treblinka while supervising construction of a railroad bridge
nearby, recalled how “wrist watches were sold by the dozens, for pennies, and
local peasants carried them in egg baskets offering them to whomever was
interested.”
Villages around extermination camps were swept up in a gold rush
akin to that in the Wild West: “Prostitutes from a nearby town, or even from
Warsaw, showed up, eager to get golden coins, while vodka and food could be
purchased in numerous houses. In villages close to the camp, Ukrainians, during
their spare time from ‘work,’ were heartily welcomed by some peasants.
Daughters in such households, people were saying, provided company to these
murderers and eagerly benefited from their largesse.”
The local population was determined not to be outdone by
outsiders in the provision of desired services. Camp guards paid for food and
vodka “without counting the change,” and only by the time Treblinka was about
to close did they start “selling diamonds by carats and not by piece.” A local
informant whom we have already quoted (a well-educated prewar supporter of the
National-Democratic Party and a landowner from Ceranów) described the
circumstances in even more derisive terms: “The village Wólka Okrąglik is
situated near Treblinka. Peasants from there used to send their wives and
daughters to meet with Ukrainian guards employed at the camp. They were beside
themselves if the women did not bring, in exchange for personal services,
enough jewelry and valuables that belonged to the Jews. Theirs was a very
profitable business.”
Mieczysław Chodźko, a Treblinka survivor, reveals in his
reminiscences another interesting detail. “Guards,” he writes, “had cameras and
took pornographic pictures, which they very much liked to show to each other.”
This may help explain some of the mystery of the photograph. Just as it is
unknown who took the picture or why, it was puzzling how a camera made it into
Podlasie countryside shortly after the war in the first place. Now we know that
both during and after the war it was possible to find virtually anything in the
vicinity of Treblinka.
The inhabitants of Treblinka and its surroundings did not draw
their income exclusively from the dead Jews. Their business activities started
the moment trains filled with living Jews destined for gas chambers stopped at
the Treblinka train station. Huge, 60-wagon-long trains arriving from Warsaw
were filled with the condemned, who could not be disposed of at once because of
the limited capacity of the gas chambers. These trains had to be split into
smaller sections and rolled into the camp sequentially. Even when everything
went smoothly, freight cars filled with victims awaiting their turn to be
killed were parked in the station for hours. It also happened that two or three
trains might reach Treblinka at the same time. And whenever a train arrived at
dusk it would be kept in the station till the next morning.
After a train arrived, writes Królikowski, people from
neighboring villages would come over to the station.
When I
saw people near the train for the first time I thought that they came out with
a noble intent to feed the hungry and bring water to the thirsty. But I was
quickly told by the workers [on the construction project, which Królikowski
supervised] with whom I spoke that this was regular commercial activity,
selling water and food at very profitable prices. And indeed this is what it
was, as I later found out. When transports were not guarded by German
gendarmerie, which didn’t allow anybody to approach the trains, but by one of
the auxiliary police formations [occasionally, even by the Polish police]
crowds would assemble, bringing pails of water and bottles of moonshine. Water
was for the people locked up in freight cars, while liquor was used to bribe
the convoy guards, so they would allow the locals to approach the train. When
there was no liquor, or convoy guards would not be satisfied with this form of
payment, girls would come forward, put arms around their necks and cover them
with kisses – anything in order to be able to come close to the wagons.
After permission was granted, trade with unfortunate prisoners
dying of thirst and willing to pay 100 zlotys for a cup of water began.
Income from the “trading” with the Jews, alongside profits from
selling food, alcohol, and sex to camp guards, revolutionized the local
economy. A resident of Bełżec opined after the war that it had been very
difficult for people in her area to “keep their decency” during the German
occupation.
The killing fields of Sobibór, Bełżec, and Treblinka were
neglected by the Polish authorities for decades. No attempts were made to
commemorate the dead or even protect mass graves from continuous desecration.
“First clean-up and inventory activities at the site of the former camp began
in the Spring of 1958,” wrote a contemporary historian of Treblinka, Martyna
Rusiniak. “During the initial cleaning it wasn’t uncommon for the workers and
the police to join occasionally with the diggers.” Only since the mid-1960s had
camp areas been marked as sites of mass murder, still neglecting to specify
that the victims who had been killed there were Jewish.
More than 200,000 Jews were killed, directly or indirectly, by Poles in World War II, says historian Jan Grabowski, who studied the brutal persecution of the victims. His conclusion: There were no bystanders in the Holocaust.
More than 200,000 Jews were killed, directly or indirectly, by Poles in World War II, says historian Jan Grabowski, who studied the brutal persecution of the victims. His conclusion: There were no bystanders in the Holocaust.
German and Polish police, Poland, 1943. Yulia Krasnodembsky, from 'Hunt for the Jews.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
Myth: Israel Is the Largest Beneficiary of US Military Aid
Myth: Israel Is the Largest Beneficiary of US Military Aid
US-Israel 'Austere Challenge' Exercise, IDF Blog, Flickr
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 410, February 10, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many American detractors of Israel begin by citing that Israel receives the lion’s share of US military aid. The very suggestion conjures the demon of an all-powerful Israel lobby that has turned the US Congress into its pawn. But these figures, while reflecting official direct US military aid, are almost meaningless in comparison to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – above all, American boots on the ground. In reality, Israel receives only a small fraction of American military aid, and most of that was spent in the US to the benefit of the American economy.
Countless articles discrediting Israel (as well as many other better-intentioned articles) ask how it is that a country as small as Israel receives the bulk of US military aid. Israel receives 55%, or $US3.1 billion per year, followed by Egypt, which receives 23%. This largesse comes at the expense, so it is claimed, of other equal or more important allies, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The complaint conjures the specter of an all-powerful Israel lobby that has turned the US Congress into its pawn.
The response to the charge is simple: Israel is not even a major beneficiary of American military aid. The numerical figure reflects official direct US military aid, but is almost meaningless compared to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – which include, above all, American boots on the ground in the host states.
There are 150,500 American troops stationed in seventy countries around the globe. This costs the American taxpayer an annual $US85-100 billion, according to David Vine, a professor at American University and author of a book on the subject. In other words, 800-1,000 American soldiers stationed abroad represent US$565-665 million of aid to the country in which they are located...
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
A History of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era. Paperback – June 12, 2017
WHAT'S THE SECRET BEHIND THE AMAZON BESTSELLER ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE PALESTINIANS?
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Whats-the-secret-behind-the-Amazon-bestseller-about-the-history-of-the-Palestinians-497483
in amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/History-Palestinian-People-Ancient-Modern/dp/154683124X/
- sorry, article is deleted from amazons page. obviously somebody was pissed off.
“The joke’s run its course,” Voll told Israel Today after Amazon yanked the book only two days after it was published. A copy of the letter from Amazon sent to us by Voll states the reason for removing the book: “We found that your book(s) are resulting in a disappointing customer experience.”
in FB
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Ausgewählt und ausgeschlossen - Jude Hass in Europa, BILD zeigt die Doku, die ARTE nicht zeigen will
http://www.jpost.com/BDS-THREAT/German-paper-screens-nixed-film-on-antisemitism-for-24-hours-only-496709
The film, on antisemitism in Europe commissioned and then nixed by German-Franco TV outlet ARTE, "Chosen and Excluded – Jew Hatred in Europe," is streamed throughout the day on 13.06.2017 on the official website of BILD
The film, on antisemitism in Europe commissioned and then nixed by German-Franco TV outlet ARTE, "Chosen and Excluded – Jew Hatred in Europe," is streamed throughout the day on 13.06.2017 on the official website of BILD
http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/bild/zeigt-die-doku-die-arte-nicht-zeigen-will-52155394.bild.html
for awhile its on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fzoE12Bg7o
checked on 07 jul. 2017 seen this:
for awhile its on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fzoE12Bg7o
checked on 07 jul. 2017 seen this:
August Babel said that "anti-Semitism is socialism of fools." In 2018 anti-Semitism is anti-racism of fools, the anti-imperialism of fools, the anti-colonialism of fools. (Susan Stein -Forward 12.07/18)
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