Video - Secrets Of War, Shadows Of The Third Reich: 'The Holocaust Secret'.

On coming to power during 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of camps. These were initially concentration camps due to the fact that they were used to concentrate enemies and certain groups of people in one place.

Local SS and police forces set up these first camps. However, very soon the Nazi leadership began to develop a systematic and centrally controlled system of camps. Later, as the Nazi regime imposed their influence over countries they occupied, they developed a range of different types of camps. These were concentration camps, transit camps, forced-labour or work camps and extermination camps.

A concentration camp is a place where people are detained or confined without trial. Prisoners were kept in extremely harsh conditions and without any rights. In Nazi Germany after 1933, and across Nazi controlled Europe between 1938 and 1945, concentration camps became a major way in which the Nazis imposed their control. The first concentration camps in Germany were set up as detention centres to stop any opposition to the Nazis by so called ‘enemies of the state’. These people included communists, socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma, and so called ‘asocials’.

However, after March 1938, when the Germans annexed Austria into German territory, many thousands of German Jews were arrested and detained in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps.

After Kristallnacht (the ‘Night of broken glass’) in November 1938, the Nazis and their supporters arrested many thousands of male Jews above the age of 14 years. They imprisoned them in camps for days or sometimes weeks. They were kept in poor conditions, given little food or water and subjected to brutal treatment and torture. When the German army invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the SS set up many concentration camps to house Polish political prisoners and many thousands of Polish Jews. Many of the inmates of these camps were subjected to increasingly poor conditions. In addition they were subjected to forced labour, the result of which was often death.

During the German invasion of the Soviet Union the Nazis began the first mass killings of Jews. Between June and September 1941, the Einsatzgruppen supported by local collaborators murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews across Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the Soviet Union. Having observed the killings, Adolf Eichmann ordered a more efficient method of killing the Jews of Europe be developed.

The Nazis established six extermination camps on Polish soil. These were Chelmno (December 1941-January 1945), Belzec (March-December 1942), Sobibor (May-July 1942 and October 1942-October 1943), Treblinka (July 1942-August 1943), Majdanek (September 1941-July 1944) and Auschwitz-Birkenau (March 1942-January 1945).

The first of these camps, Chelmno, was established to exterminate the Jews of the Lodz ghetto and the surrounding area, and 5,000 Roma. The facility contained three gas vans in which victims were murdered. Only two Jews survived the camp.

After the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Germans established death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Their sole purpose was murder. They were set up near railway lines to make transportation of the victims easy. As they were purely killing centres, there were no selections. The victims were sent directly to the gas chambers.

A concentration camp to house Soviet prisoners of war and Poles had been established at Majdanek, close to the Polish city of Lublin, during 1941. In the spring of 1942 gas chambers and crematoria were added, turning Majdanek into an extermination camp that would murder 78,000 people. Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps, was a massive concentration, forced labour and extermination camp at the centre of a network of more than 40 satellite camps. Upwards of 80 per cent of those Jews transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau were selected for immediate death.

Those who were selected for work were set on a whole range of tasks. These included sorting and processing the possessions of everyone who arrived at the camp and heavy manual work. Some Jewish prisoners were put into units called Sonderkommandos, whose role was to work in the gas chambers and crematorium. They were kept apart from the rest of the camp prisoners, but were also sent to their deaths in the gas chambers after a few weeks or months of work.

The majority of those selected for any kind of work would die within weeks or months of their arrival from lack of food, disease or overwork.

The Nazis set up a number of transit camps in occupied lands. After being rounded up, Jews were imprisoned in transit camps before being deported to a concentration camp, labour camp or one of the six Nazi extermination camps in Poland.

Examples of transit camps include Drancy in France, Mechelen in Belgium, and Vught and Westerbork in the Netherlands.

More on the camps can be read here.

More info on the Holocaust and the concentration camps can be found here.

Video - Obama's new BFF Khamenei Releases Holocaust Denial Video on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Video - Obama's new BFF Khamenei Releases Holocaust Denial Video on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Khamenei Releases Holocaust Denial Video on International Holocaust Remembrance Day A video titled “Are The Dark Ages Over?” was posted on the official website of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on January 27, 2016.

As emphasized on the Facebook page of Iran's military, which ran the story, the video was released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Against the backdrop of images of the Auschwitz death camp, the English subtitles of the Farsi video state that “speaking about the Holocaust and expressing doubts about it is considered to be a great sin,” but that “it is not clear whether the core of this matter is a reality or not.” More here from Memri.

Hmmm........General Dwight Eisenhower was right that some Bastard would show up.

Holocaust: Night Will Fall (2014) - Full length.

Video - The Holocaust as History and Warning.

Quote: "We are very good at murdering, but even better at lying".

A dispatch to Moscow with bone-chilling description of #Auschwitz sent by the Soviet Army upon its liberation pic.twitter.com/cFjzG8qvez

— Yury Barmin (@yurybarmin) January 27, 2015

Video - Francine Christophe on her deportation with her mother at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944

Born in 1933, Francine Christophe was deported with her mother at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Released the following year, she continues to share her experience and memories, particularly with the younger generations.

I had 3 relatives who were deported during WWII......It DID happen. 

'EUrabia' - Dutch Muslim Students Resist Holocaust Education.

'EUrabia' - Dutch Muslim Students Resist Holocaust Education. (FW).

A number of Dutch schools refrain from teaching about the Holocaust because of resistance from Muslim pupils, teachers told lawmakers.

The centrist Christian Union party held a roundtable discussion about Holocaust education with teachers and other professionals Wednesday in parliament in The Hague, The Algemeen Dagblad daily reported.

“Holocaust survivor Bloeme Evers does not dare give guest lessons in some schools,” Arie Slob, the party’s parliamentary leader and a former history teacher, told the daily , describing the discussion. “I am horrified by this. It is unacceptable that 70 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism in the Netherlands is growing.”

Among the teachers in attendance was Wissam Feriani, a social studies teacher who works at a vocational high school in Amsterdam where approximately half of the students are Muslim.

“The teacher says Jews, the pupils say Gaza,” said Feriani, who is Muslim.

“The teacher says Holocaust, the pupils say it’s all bullshit.” In class, he adds, “It’s always the Jews’ fault. Some pupils say they [Jews] don’t belong. It’s difficult.” There are no available figures on the difficulties examined, the report said.

Separately, Dutch police in the North Holland district are investigating a collector of World War II-era memorabilia who advertised on a Dutch website bars of soap that the seller said were made of human fat that Nazis had extracted from Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Forensic scientists sent the soap to be tested for human remains, the De Telegraaf daily reported on Wednesday.

Stories about the mass production of human soap, popular and believed to be credible in the years immediately after the Holocaust, were later debunked by Raul Hilberg, an Austrian historian and expert on the Holocaust, who traced the myth to rumors that circulated among Polish Jews in 1942.

Video - Being A Jew: The Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen Holocaust Survivor Tibi Ram, Who Fought in Every Israeli War

He perfectly symbolizes “Shoah ve Tkuma”- Holocaust and rebirth. As a holocaust survivor, and one of only two people who participated in all of Israel’s wars, Ze’ev Tibi Ram understands better than anyone the importance of protecting the Jewish state. HT: IDFBlog

Video - Night Will Fall (2014) - An Alfred Hitchcock film - André Singer (Trailer) | BFI release (Full Length).

A dispatch to Moscow with bone-chilling description of #Auschwitz sent by the Soviet Army upon its liberation pic.twitter.com/cFjzG8qvez

— Yury Barmin (@yurybarmin) January 27, 2015

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Launches Virtual Tour of NAZI Death Camp.

Auschwitz virtual tour

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Launches Virtual Tour of NAZI Death Camp.(Algemeiner).

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum this week launched a virtual tour on its website, where visitors can wander around the former death camp and view high-quality, panoramic images of the booths and camp exhibits, Israel’s NRG News said Wednesday.

The virtual tour project was under development in recent years, and was completed in time for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp complex by the Red Army, which will be commemorated this coming January.

Auschwitz served the Nazis as an extermination camp, from June 1940 to January 1945, and held some 150,000 inmates at any given time.

“Historians and analysts estimate the number of people murdered at Auschwitz somewhere between 2.1 million to 4 million, of whom the vast majority were Jews.

The majority of prisoners held at Auschwitz were killed in the various gas chambers though many died from starvation, forced labor, disease, shooting squads, and heinous medical experiments,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Read the full story here.

Video - EU walks out on anti-Israel UN debate * Arab states outraged.

HT: IsraelMatzav.

Video - British Islamist Abu Rumaysah: Hitler Acted to Stop the Evil Doctrine of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

Historic Holocaust Film 'Night Will Fall' Debuts at Last — Had Help From Hitchcock.

Historic Holocaust Film 'Night Will Fall' Debuts at Last — Had Help From Hitchcock. (Forward).

A new film about a forgotten, long-shelved documentary chronicling the Allies’ discovery and liberation of the Nazi concentration camps is offering viewers a restored contemporaneous account of that seminal moment in history.

The original, unfinished documentary has now, 70 years later, been reproduced and completed by the British Imperial War Museums. Titled “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” the film was finished based on the shot sheets, script and rushes of the original filmmakers, who were forced by geo-political considerations to stop their work. “Night Will Fall,” the new film about the film, combines raw archive footage from the 1945 documentary — which counted Alfred Hitchcock among its treatment advisers — and contemporary interviews with the now elderly veteran soldiers, former film cameramen, film editors, and Holocaust historians and survivors.

The original work began in the waning days of World War II. British producer Sidney Bernstein, chief of the film section at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, had instructed his cameramen to film everything in order to provide undeniable proof of Nazi atrocities.

What is apparent is how unprepared the soldiers were for the horrors that awaited them. For some, the experience has been a lifelong trauma. Many found it difficult to later articulate to the makers of “Night Will Fall” what they saw and what they remembered.

The story behind the initial, incomplete making of the original documentary includes its suppression by the British and American governments as they shifted away from exposing Nazi atrocities and toward restoring and reconstructing West Germany as a bulwark against the perceived new threat from the Soviet Union.

Director André Singer has referred to the making of “Night Will Fall” as an all-consuming journey, an exploration of the role of the moving image, both then and now.

Singer has termed it “an enormous privilege” to interview “the soldiers who first entered the camps, the cameramen who lifted their cameras and filmed, the editors who viewed the footage, and the victims who suffered there and who were recorded on film in the first, unbelievable moments when rescue finally came.”

“Night Will Fall” opened in British cinemas in September after premiering in the United States at the Telluride Film Festival in August. The film’s American producer, Marie Therese Guirgis, has said that it will be released here in 2015, but no date has been confirmed.

It was as the war was drawing to an end that Britain and the United States set up a joint film department. Its mandate was to produce short propaganda films to support the war effort, and later to assist in the task of dealing with a defeated Germany. Headed by Bernstein, the new unit recorded the atrocities that the soldiers — many of whom were newly trained as cameramen — encountered at the point of liberation.

In 1945, as the numerous reels arrived in London, and editors faced the momentous task of processing the material, Bernstein began to plan a full-length documentary. Speaking in 1984, he explained that his instructions had been to film everything, providing undeniable proof of what had happened. He wanted the film to serve as “a lesson to all mankind.”

For the material to be used as evidence in war crimes trials, the project required filming in a very specific way. According to historian Toby Haggith, one of the difficulties of filming the atrocities as evidence was the need to get close to victims. This contrasted with the tradition of previous combat cameramen, Haggith explained, who had shied away from representing or recording scenes of people who had been brutalized or killed.

As he saw the scope of the task grow, Bernstein decided to approach his friend Alfred Hitchcock for ideas. Credited as treatment adviser, the legendary director’s brief input was to be his only foray into documentary filmmaking.

It took 70 years, but as Bernstein’s last recorded note to his editor, Peter Tanner, predicted, “One day you will realize that it has been worthwhile.” Hmmm....sadly 'Never again' has been empty words and Jew hatred is seen flourishing all over the world again....fanned by Islamic extremism

Video - Never Forget the Holocaust - Itzhac Perlman 'Shindler's list'.

Video - Belgium - witness of Antisemitism: "Why we leave Belgium"

Video - Belgium - witness of Antisemitism: "Why we leave Belgium" HT: IsraelFlash.

Here is a poignant audio of a Belgian family who leave their country because of anti-Semitism, for our children, before it is too late ...
See also -

Belgium: priority target islamonazis - Video

They said! Belgium first is easiest, then France. The method is simple,

Video - Holocaust Survivor Breaks 70-Year Silence to Tell of Young Friend Experimented Upon by Mengele at Auschwitz

Holocaust Survivor Breaks 70-Year Silence to Tell of Young Friend Experimented Upon by Mengele at Auschwitz. HT: Matzav.

Auschwitz survivor Iby Knill, 90, ended 70 years of silence to keep a promise she made on the first night she spent at the death camp, in July 1944, when a frail teenage twin crawled over to her and begged, “if you live, please tell our story,” the UK Daily Mail reported on Friday.

Knill had repressed the awful memories of the camp her whole life until four years ago, when she enrolled in a university course in theology, in Leeds, UK, where she now lives. The class was discussing whether the Holocaust was a result of evil or sin, and the professor said that “only a person who was there could answer that question,” to which Knill responded simply, “I was there.”

The admission opened the floodgates and, fulfilling her promise to the unknown girl, she decided to write her memoirs.

Remembering her first night at Auschwitz, she said: “The girl told me that her and her sister were going to be experimented on. She said they were then going to be gassed and therefore exterminated.”

“She made me promise to tell the story of the camps, if I were to live. Of course I said yes, but after the war was over it didn’t seem right to talk about what had happened,” she told the Daily Mail. “There, you were one of a number, and it came down to how long you could survive.”

A documentary was made from her memoirs, ‘The Woman Without a Number,’ by film and television student Robin Pepper, 22, at Teesside University. Pepper and fellow students Mark Oxley, 26, and Ian Orwin, 22, made the documentary after reading her book in just one day.

About the film, ‘Iby Knill: An Auschwitz Promise,’ Knill said: “Robin has done a marvelous job, and I am very happy with the film. It goes some way towards fulfilling the promise I made to the twin all those years ago.”

Pepper said, “It was an honor to work with Iby. She is an amazing lady, and we are really pleased we have helped her keep that promise she made so long ago.”

Knill was born in Czechoslovakia but escaped to Hungary in 1942 when the SS began rounding up Jews. Two years later, when Knill was 20, Hungary was occupied and she was transported to Auschwitz.

The Auschwitz death camps also played host to some of the most gruesome Nazi medical experiments, from which few survived, the Daily Mail reported upon, citing Auschwitz.org.

“Nazi Professor Carl Clauberg oversaw the mass sterilization of hundreds of Jewish prisoners by putting chemicals in their Fallopian tubes and exposing their [private areas] to X-rays. The procedures were brutal, often causing infections and radiation burns,” the Daily Mail said.

Some “patients” were used for human medical trials of the drugs Rutenol and Periston, reacting with bloody vomiting and painful diarrhea, while others were experimented on with “no apparent purpose” done “merely for practice - or pleasure,” the newspaper wrote. Doctors deliberately made the lungs of tuberculosis patients collapse and killed others by injecting lethal phenol into their hearts.

One of the most infamous doctors, Josef Mengele experimented on twins and people of different races, even infecting them with contagious diseases to see how their survival rates compared.

Knill spent six weeks in Auschwitz before being transferred to the German labor camp Kaunitz, which was eventually liberated. She later moved to Britain, married British Army major Herbert Knill, and had two children, Christopher Knill, a psychiatrist, 65, and Pauline Kilch, 58, a teacher.Hmmm......Among countless others was my Uncle Jacob Slap and his whole family, only he , his mother and older sister were among the lucky ones to survive.

"NEVER AGAIN" - Anti-Semitism Definition Under Threat.

"NEVER AGAIN" - Anti-Semitism Definition Under Threat.HT: HonestReporting.

Only a few months ago, HonestReporting launched a petition calling on the mainstream media to adopt recognized and considered definitions of anti-Semitism as accepted by both the U.S. State Department and the European Union.

The petition is still live and we intend to send your 30,000+ signatures to the media. Before we do so, however, a disturbing development has come to light that threatens not only the validity of our petition but the very fight against anti-Semitism itself, particularly in Europe – the EU Working Definition of Anti-Semitism has been effectively removed as an official document giving an opening for anti-Semites and enemies of Israel to discredit and delegitimize the fight against anti-Semitism.

The European definition was originally published in 2005 by the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which has since been replaced by its successor organization, the Fundamental Rights Agency. The anti-Semitism definition is, pointedly, not included on the FRA’s website.

Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center explains in The Times of Israel:

On 6 November, I protested to EU High Representative forForeign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, the current disappearance of the “Working Definition” from the FRA website, requesting it be immediately reuploaded

The 29 November response from the European Commission Directorate-General Justice, with responsibility for Fundamental Rights, was astounding in insisting “at the outset, that neither the Commission in particular, nor the Union have an established definition of antisemitism and that there is no policy to create one. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the FRA is an independent agency.”

The letter explained that “in 2005, the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) had placed online a document entitled Working Definition of Antisemitism… Since then, various actors, mainly NGOs, have referred to this document as the EU’s definition of antisemitism… In all autonomy, the FRA retained this document online until recently, when it was removed together with other non-official documents.”

Indeed, HonestReporting has also referred to the definition as the EU’s. The disappearance and disavowal of the definition will remove a vital tool in the fight against anti-Semitism and gives the European media a ready-made excuse not to endorse the definition. At this point in time, this has not affected the U.S. State Department definition, which is based on the European one.

Nonetheless, we agree with Shimon Samuels:

Its removal can only comfort and encourage antisemites. Its return to the FRA website would be appreciated as the first step for European endorsement of what has become a vital arm in the arsenal against hate.


Thousands of you signed our petition calling for the media’s endorsement of the definitions. We ask you now to support the European definition by emailing the Fundamental Rights Agency - information@fra.europa.eu – to ask that the definition be restored to the FRA’s website as a first step in ensuring the definition’s continued validity and credibility.

Knesset to hold historic gathering at Auschwitz-Birkenau on combating anti-Semitism.

Knesset to hold historic gathering at Auschwitz-Birkenau on combating anti-Semitism.(TOI).

On January 27, 2014, the largest ever delegation of Knesset members will convene overseas, on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau, together with Holocaust survivors, for a historic gathering on combating anti-Semitism and preservation of death camps. 

The symbolism could not be any more striking — mere meters away from the gas chambers where millions of Jews were once murdered, the representatives of the parliament of the Jewish state will meet.

The event will be held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a memorial day in honor of the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. 2014 will also mark the 69^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet Army and Allied troops in 1945.

Asked why not wait another year for the 70^th Anniversary to hold such a symbolic commemoration, Daniels says, “There is never the right time to hold an event like this,” adding “there is no shortage of symbolic events that happened over the years, that any given day is a special anniversary.”

According to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, at least one survivor in Israel dies every hour. 

Daniels warns “there is no time to wait as we are getting very close to the point where there will be no more first-hand accounts left. The onus falls on us, not just as Jews and Israelis, but humanity as a whole, is to learn, to be with the survivors and to really understand what happened and to ensure it never repeats again.”

The Israeli delegation will include over half the Knesset, with at least 60 MKs from all the major parties, and will be led by Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein. Each MK will be accompanying a Holocaust survivor, with a specially chartered plane flying the group from Israel.

In addition, the delegation will include senior representatives of the Israel Defense Forces, both Chief Rabbis of the State of Israel and former Chief Rabbi Meir Lau (a Holocaust survivor himself). Representatives of various student groups will also attend, signifying the living link between the past and the future.

According to Edelstein, the dramatic rise of anti-Semitism in Europe is “very worrying.” He says it has reached a level “unprecedented since the end of the Holocaust.”

Edelstein notes: “The Holocaust did not start with Auschwitz-Birkenau, but with boycotts, words and throwing stones at Jewish shop windows.” He is also particularly concerned about some of the “openly anti-Semitic” parties and politicians around the world today, especially in Europe.

The primary objective of the mission, according to Edelstein, is to highlight the importance of remembering the Holocaust and to “have a conversation with elected officials from around the world about what needs to be done to make sure nothing of the kind ever happens again, anywhere in the world, especially as far as Jews are concerned.”

Edelstein warns that anti-Semitism “is not just a Jewish or Israeli problem alone” and that while “it starts with the Jews, it doesn’t end with the Jews.”

Video - Tell Your Children, Because it Returns.

Film shows Generation Z oblivious of the Holocaust

Film shows Generation Z oblivious of the Holocaust.HT: RBTH.By Vasiliy Gerosin,

One of the most resonating premieres at the Moscow International Film Festival was the documentary by Mumin Shakirov, entitled “The Holocaust – Glue for Wallpaper?”

The reason for its creation was an event that caused a lot of fuss on the Russian blogosphere two years ago. 
The 21-year-old twins Ksenia and Evgenia Karatigina, while participating on the trivia show “Crazy Beautiful” (MusTV, December 2011), when asked the question "What is the Holocaust?" replied: "Isn't it glue for wallpaper?"
The clip immediately appeared online, gaining a huge number of views and thousands of comments that mainly discussed and made fun of the girls’ lack of education. The sisters got their minute of fame, becoming more popular than they were counting on by participating on the TV show.
It was then that the journalist of Svoboda (“Freedom”) radio, Mumin Shakirov, had an idea to take the sisters to the memorial museum located on the grounds of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. 
Shakirov told journalists that he did not know how the young women would react, and he did not plan anything in advance.
“I was ready for any reaction. It was possible they wouldn't react at all — that they would just have a look and then go off shopping. If the girls had had a different reaction, well, it would have been a completely different story,” said Shakirov.
After the visit, one of the girls genuinely cried for a long time. As one of the journalists aptly put it, after visiting Auschwitz, “the girls became older by 70 years.”
 The overly positive ending disappointed older viewers, who expected a more critical tone to be taken toward the younger generation.
Shakirov, however, had not planned to make a publicity movie; instead he took a detached and neutral position, trying not to pass judgment on the younger generation and being more interested in finding the causes for the depressing lack of knowledge. 
As the director said, it was not easy to convince the young women to go on the trip and to take part in the filming: “More than anything, they were afraid that they would be portrayed as being stupid.” They agreed mainly because it was an opportunity for them to go overseas for the first time.
Shakirov traveled to the girls’ home—the village Krasnaya Gorbatka in Vladimir Oblast—and spoke to their mother and their history teacher at school (the girls are both currently studying in Moscow at the University of Design).
The girls are not what people tend to call disadvantaged children: They are quite well-socialized, mobile and active, and they speak proper Russian. This makes it all the more incredible that they had never heard of the Holocaust.
And they are not alone, which is clearly shown in the documentary. Their history teacher admits feeling responsible for not telling her students about the Holocaust. She says that she does not feel ready to breach this topic; she will talk about it when she “finds the right approach.”
The girls’ mother, even though she is critical of her daughters, presents this argument to justify what happened: “I asked all my neighbors, friends and colleagues—none of them could tell me what the Holocaust was.”

The girls’ story in this film becomes a portrait of their generation, which has no idea about the crimes committed by the Nazis. We are faced with a phenomenon that is much more complex than “Holocaust denial”: an absence of knowledge about it.

Shakirov does admit that this problem is present not only in Russia. In Europe, the United States and even Israel, many members of the younger generation prefer not to learn about this topic.Hmmm........'Never Again'...is becoming What's Never Again.Read the full story here.

Germany.......Finally ‘tracks down 50 suspected Auschwitz guards’

Germany.......Finally ‘tracks down 50 suspected Auschwitz guards’.(RT).The former Auschwitz guards, who’ve never faced prosecution for their posts, were tracked down by the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg.

The suspects may be charged with accessory to murder. The investigators possess the names and location details of the suspects, men in their 90s, who originate from all over Germany, the chief prosecutor Kurt Schrimm confirmed to WAZ-Mediengruppe on Friday.

He did not specify where the suspects are, but said some possibly moved to South America with the help of the Catholic Church. The federal law enforcement body is set to launch a preliminary investigation into the issue in the coming weeks.

The sentencing in 2011 of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at Sobibor concentration camp, set a precedent that allows authorities to bring proceedings against former concentration camp guards, even if the investigators cannot prove their direct involvement in the crime due to lack of witnesses, Schrimm told Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

"From now on, any activity in a concentration camp is enough to stand trial for complicity in murder," the chief prosecutor said.

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, lived in the United States after the war, but was stripped of citizenship and deported to Germany, where he was convicted of accessory to murder of about 28,000 people who died at Sobibor concentration camp based in occupied Poland. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison in May 2011.

The Munich Court then held that, although Demjanjuk cannot be imputed to any specific criminal acts, he “was part of the machine of destruction,” according to the verdict. He died in March last year in before the ruling came into effect.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp operated by the Third Reich in occupied Poland was the largest Nazi concentration camp during WWII. It was established by Third Reich's Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler as the place of the "final solution” in the policy to annihilate the Jewish people in Europe.

There the Nazis killed about 1.3 million people of diverse nationalities, around 90 percent of whom were Jewish, according to data given by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments.

The center for solving crimes of National Socialism in Ludwigsburg was founded in 1958. Since then it has tracked down a total of 7,485 Nazi criminals, according to Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.Hmmmm......May God give them a swift and fitting eternal punishment.Read the full story here.