Witold Pilecki

During World War II, Pilecki became the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp. While there, he organized the resistance movement in the camp, and as early as 1940, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped from the camp in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Pilecki was executed in 1948 by the communists. (....) On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859. (....) beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. By 1943, Pilecki decided to break out of the camp. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.

Bush steals all his good ideas from the Nazis

"The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan." (.....)

"The very phrase used by president Bush to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death." Read arguments here...

Google teams up with Holocaust museum to bring attention to the genocide in Sudan

Previously there used to be some information in Google Earth on the destruction and genocide in Darfur, but now the coverage has greatly expanded.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has joined with Google in an unprecedented online mapping initiative. Crisis in Darfur enables more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide to visualize and better understand the genocide currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum has assembled content—photographs, data, and eyewitness testimony—from a number of sources that are brought together for the first time in Google Earth.

Download *.kmz file here.

74th Birthday of concentrationcamp Dachau

This morning I stumbled upon this on Wikipedia, apparently today it's exactly 74 years ago that the construction of concentration camp Dachau was completed (21-3-1933) it drew my attention because I didn't know that these camps were all ready under construction before 1933. I began reading the article regarding the camp itself and (like every Nazi concentration camp) it discussed me jet again. But the story of Dachau doesn't end at the disturbing truth of Nazi concentration camps. The discovery of the camp and the following events did turn my stomach upside down once again. A brief summary (full article linked): By the time (27-4-1945, liberated on the 29th) the camp was discovered over 32.000 people were imprisoned in the camp. It was the second camp to be discovered by the Allies, the news about the other camp didn't reach the troops before first contact therefor they didn't what it was and what was happening. Somewhat like in Band of Brothers. The only difference is that Dachau was still guarded by SS troops while in Band of Brothers the camp was abandoned. The first to enter the camp were Red Cross representatives on the 27th to distribute food and water, that evening a transport from an evacuated camp arrived with +/- 4500 people on board, yet only 800 had survived the transit, over 2300 corpses were let lie in and around the train. On the 29th the SS officially surrendered while U.S. troops were still not fully aware of what was going on inside. Upon entering the camp (particularly the train mentioned earlier) the GI's formed the slogan "we will not take prisoners here". What followed was an onsite execution of +/- 35 SS troops. When the news of the execution reached the Allied commanding officer he ran in to stop the massacre. By this time at least 12 SS were machine-gunned down, the wounded were given razor blades to "finish themselves off". When the U.S. soldiers left the location the left numerous handguns behind for the inmates in order to finish the executions, 40 more SS soldiers were tortured and killed by inmates. In total 200.000 people were imprisoned, 31.591 deaths have been recorded. Annom edit: Relevant documentary torrents: BBC - Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution PBS- Memory of the Camps (Very graphic images made by the American Army)

Wir haben es nicht gewusst!

Germans knew of Holocaust horror about death camps.

Details of deaths of Jews and other groups in concentration camps were well publicised.
The mass of ordinary Germans did know about the evolving terror of Hitler's Holocaust, according to a new research study. They knew concentration camps were full of Jewish people who were stigmatised as sub-human and race-defilers. They knew that these, like other groups and minorities, were being killed out of hand.

They knew that Adolf Hitler had repeatedly forecast the extermination of every Jew on German soil. They knew these details because they had read about them. They knew because the camps and the measures which led up to them had been prominently and proudly reported step by step in thousands of officially-inspired German media articles and posters according to the study, which is due to be published simultaneously in Britain and the US early next month and which was described as ground-breaking by Oxford University Press yesterday and already hailed by other historians.
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