On October 14, 1943, an armed uprising of Sonderkommando prisoners took place in the German death camp in Sobibor. The goal was to escape from the camp and save themselves from death. In the extermination camps, apart from SS supervisors and Ukrainian watchmen, a small number of prisoners were selected from transports to serve the "extermination machine".

The “Wachmannschaften des SS- und Polizeiführers in Distrikt Lublin”, informally called Trawnikimänner (as well as Askarysi, Hiwis), was a collaborative formation from World War II. It included Soviet prisoners of war and civilians who had been transferred to the German army and underwent training in the SS camp in Trawniki.

KL Gross-Rosen was located in the administrative area of the German state (Third Reich), near the present-day village of Rogoźnica (post-war name) in the Dolnośląskie Voivodeship. It operated in the years 1940-1945. 125,000 prisoners passed through the camp over the period of 5 years. 40,000 are estimated to have died. The camp had about 120 sub-camps. A large quarry operated in the vicinity of the camp, in which prisoners worked in inhuman conditions.

On April 16, 1947, Rudolf Höss, the first commandant and founder of the Auschwitz camp, was executed.

Stanisława Leszczyńska (born on May 8, 1896 in Łódź, died on March 11, 1974 in Łódź) – a Polish midwife imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, a volunteer called "Mother" and the Handmaid of the Catholic Church.

55 years ago, on April 11, 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem. He was the head of the Jewish department at the Reich Main Security Office, "the murderer from behind the desk," responsible for the death of millions of Jews.

Josef Mengele (born on March 16, 1911 in Günzburg, deceased on February 7, 1979 in Bertioga, Brazil), a German scientist and doctor, an SS officer. He is best known for his service in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp as the "Angel of Death".

Yesterday we were in the vicinity of the highest wooden broadcasting tower in the world, located in Gliwice and being a witness to an important historical event, the Gleiwitz incident.

Rudolf Höß (Höss, Hoess) - German Nazi in the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer, the first commandant and founder of the Auschwitz camp. Member of the NSDAP, SS and Totenkopfverband.

With great sadness, I hereby publish the information that on Wednesday a former prisoner of Auschwitz, Dario Gabbai, passed away at the age of 97. He was probably the last of the living members of the Sonderkommando.

Judenrampe – the place where trains with deported prisoners destined for Auschwitz stopped, active in the years 1942-1944. Although the ramp was quite an important place for the extermination machine, it is a "forgotten" and rarely visited place.

Odilo Lotario Globocnik (born 21.04.1904, died 31.05.1945) – an Austrian Nazi, high rank SS and NSDAP officer. A war criminal, one of the main organizers and executors of the extermination of Jews as part of the Reinhardt opetation.

Szymon Srebrnik, Mordechaj Żurawski, and Mordechaj Podchlebnik were three prisoners of the German extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem who survived the camp.The estimated number of victims is around 200,000  people died in the camp and only 6 survived!

Read More

“Lazaret”, a fake infirmary, was a place of execution in the Treblinka II extermination camp, which at first glance looked like a field hospital on the outside. People who could not reach the gas chambers on their own, as well as prisoners unable to work or sentenced to death for various offenses, were directed to the so-called "Lazaret", which literally means “infirmary”.

I. G. Farbenindustrie - a German chemical company founded in 1925, dissolved in 2012. During World War II, it was notorious because of its close cooperation with the SS, as well as the production of cyclone B and other chemicals.

The Thule Society was a secret racist and occult organization that was founded in Munich at the turn of 1917 and 1918. Its members, Karl Harrer and Anton Drexler, founded the German Workers' Party, later renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

Adolf Eichmann (born March 19, 1906 in Solingen, died May 31, 1962 in Ramla) - SS officer in the rank of lieutenant colonel of Austrian origin, one of the key figures of the "Final Solution" and one of the main coordinators of Operation Reinhardt.

The Dachau camp was the first concentration camp established by the Germans after Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP rose to power. It was founded by order of H. Himmler in the spring of 1933, in Dachau near Munich. The main purpose of the camp was to isolate political opponents of the Nazi regime, clergy and Jews. It became a "model" for all other camps. From 1938, the camp was a kind of "training ground" for managers and watchmen of other facilities of this kind founded later.

Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie (born on 25.10.1913, deceased on 25.09.1991) – also known as the “Butcher of Lyon”, head of the Gestapo in Lyon and officer in the SS-Hauptsturmführer rank, responsible for deportation of 7,500 Jews to extermination camps and directly responsible for about 4,300 deaths.

Irma Grese (born on October 7, 1923 in Wrechen, Mecklenburg, died on December 13, 1945 in Hamelin), best known as a supervisor (SS-Aufseherin) in German concentration camps and a member of the SS support staff. One of the most cruel, ruthless and bestial overseers in the camps.

Block 11 is one of the buildings located at the Auschwitz I camp. It is referred to as the "death block". First, it was marked as block number 13, later renamed to 11. The building housed the camp Gestapo headquarters and the arrest for prisoners suspected of, among others, activity in the resistance movement, contacts with civilians or an attempt to escape.

Action 1005 – code name of the action carried out by the Germans during World War II, aimed at blurring the crimes committed by SS/WH/SD units, including the Einsatzgruppen mainly in eastern and central-eastern Europe. After the mass crimes, the bodies of the victims were buried in the ground. A decision was made to exhumate and cremate the bodies in the field crematoria, grates for burning the corpses, and in pits and furnace piles. The operation covered both the sites of mass executions and the sites of already liquidated concentration and extermination camps.

A question may arise: why were extermination camps created? What forced Nazi authorities to take action in order to create mass extermination centers? One of the reasons was, among others, the activity of Einsatzgruppen (units separated from SIPO and SD), i.e. special operational groups moving behind the front line.

Franz Stangl (born on March 26, 1908 in Altmünster, died on June 28, 1971 in Düsseldorf) – SS man with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer of Austrian origin. Commander of the death camps in Sobibór and Treblinka. "White Death", as prisoners called him, was also a veteran of Action T4 mentioned in previous posts.

I recommend the movie "The Grey Zone". It tells the story of the armed uprising of the twelfth Sonderkomando in the Fourth Crematorium which took place on October 7, 1944 (exactly on H. Himmler's birthday). I will not summarize it, paying more attention to two important people who appear in this film, namely: Erich Muhsfeldt and Miklós Nyiszli.

Below I would like to show you a unique photo from the so-called "Höcker's album", in which we see Richard Baer (the first on the left), ​​the last commandant of Auschwitz.The photo was taken shortly after he took up this position.

Before the Germans began the extermination with the agent known as Zyklon B, they used gas chambers powered by carbon monoxide from the exhaust of a diesel / petrol engine. The procedure took place as part of the "Einsatz Reinhardt" campaign and the resolutions that were made at the Wansee conference.

Reinhard Heydrich (born March 7, 1904 in Halle, died June 4, 1942 in Prague) - Obergruppenführer SS, one of Adolf Hitler’s most trusted and ruthless people. Founder of SD (SS intelligence) and Einsatzgruppen.