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World War II: The Holocaust - Alan Taylor - In Focus

World War II: The Holocaust - Alan Taylor - In Focus
One of the most horrific terms in history was used by Nazi Germany to designate human beings whose lives were unimportant, or those who should be killed outright: Lebensunwertes Leben, or "life unworthy of life". The phrase was applied to the mentally impaired and later to the "racially inferior," or "sexually deviant," as well as to "enemies of the state" both internal and external. From very early in the war, part of Nazi policy was to murder civilians en masse, especially targeting Jews. Later in the war, this policy grew into Hitler's "final solution", the complete extermination of the Jews. It began with Einsatzgruppen death squads in the East, which killed some 1,000,000 people in numerous massacres, and continued in concentration camps where prisoners were actively denied proper food and health care. It culminated in the construction of extermination camps -- government facilities whose entire purpose was the systematic murder and disposal of massive numbers of people. Lt.

News Desk: A Reporter’s Lawyer My lawyer died last week. His name was Michael Nussbaum, of Washington, D.C. He was seventy-six years old and Stage 4 lung cancer got him after a brave two-year struggle. He was survived by his wife, Gloria Weissberg, and her two daughters. What’s harder to put into words is the relationship of a trusted lawyer and an investigative reporter. Lots of words, but what do they mean in practice? Michael, whom I had initially befriended in 1958, when we were classmates at the University of Chicago law school (I bailed out; he was the class whiz), had been defending conscientious objectors and others opposed to the war in Vietnam. In early October of 1969, I picked up the first hint of what would become known as the My Lai massacre. It was more than a little distressing; it was frightening. He was then living in a small house in Georgetown and, luckily for me, answered my stricken telephone call one night in early November. So I did. Latimer had one more inducement. Michael Nussbaum in 1986.

World War II: The Battle of Britain - In Focus In the summer and autumn of 1940, Germany's Luftwaffe conducted thousands of bombing runs, attacking military and civilian targets across the United Kingdom. Hitler's forces, in an attempt to achieve air superiority, were preparing for an invasion of Britain code-named "Operation Sea Lion." At first, they bombed only military and industrial targets. But after the Royal Air Force hit Berlin with retaliatory strikes in September, the Germans began bombing British civilian centers. Some 23,000 British civilians were killed between July and December 1940. Thousands of pilots and air crews engaged in battle in the skies above Britain, Germany, and the English Channel, each side losing more than 1,500 aircraft by the end of the year. Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: The dome of St. A formation of low-flying German Heinkel He 111 bombers flies over the waves of the English Channel in 1940. The Palace of Westminster in London, silhouetted against light from fires caused by bombings. Mrs.

Concentration Camp - Magazine In Germany the words 'protective custody' have a double meaning. Originally the term meant the incarceration of people who were threatened by others and who were guarded for their own safety so that they might be protected from their enemies. Now, however, men in protective custody are mostly those who are brought, for the 'protection of the people and the State,' into a concentration camp without hearing, without court sentence, without the possibility of redress, and for an indefinite time. Frequently people sentenced by a court are taken into protective custody by the Gestapo after serving their prison sentence, often directly from the prison gate. I was taken into protective custody in connection with the murder of the German attaché in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by the seventeen-year-old Polish subject, Grynszpan, who had been expelled from Germany first and then had been ordered to leave France. I do not understand, however, the attitude of Hitler and his followers in this matter.

Reinhard Heydrich Biography: The First In-depth Look at a Nazi 'God of Death' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International The site for the assassination was carefully chosen at a point where a steeply sloping street in Prague's Libe district made a hairpin turn, forcing approaching cars to slow down considerably. This is precisely what the driver of a heavy convertible Mercedes did as his vehicle climbed toward the curve at approximately 10:30 a.m. on May 27, 1942. Dieser Artikel ist aus dem SPIEGEL Hier geht es zum digitalen Heft Neu:Lesen Sie den vollständigen SPIEGEL auf Tablets, Smartphones oder am PC/MACMit vielen zusätzlichen Videos, interaktiven Grafiken und BildernLesbar über Apps oder Browser Behind the driver sat his boss, one of Adolf Hitler's most devoted followers. That man was none other than Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), the body charged with fighting all "enemies of the Reich" within and outside German borders, and one of the principle organizers of the Holocaust. This and similar orders were what motivated the assassins lying in wait at the curve ahead.

The bombers looked so majestic... then death rained from the sky: 70 years after the Blitz, the heart-stopping accounts of courageous survivors By Juliet Gardiner Updated: 23:16 GMT, 27 August 2010 The familiar wail of the air raid siren had sent porter Robert Baltrop clambering on to the roof of a Sainsbury's store in East London on that never-to-be-forgotten warm and cloudless late summer afternoon of September 7, 1940. 'It wasn't bad doing lookout duty during these daytime warnings,' he recalled, looking back on events that happened 70 years ago, 'sitting up there in the sunshine, smoking and looking down at the people going about their business as usual in the streets below. I wasn't even really sure what I was watching for.' World War II was by this time officially more than a year old. Carnage: A bus lies inside a huge bomb crater after heavy German air raid attacks during the Blitz The declaration of war had been followed by a long autumn and winter of terrified anticipation, but little sign of the Armageddon that had been feared. Within minutes, the huge warehouses and factories on both sides of the Thames were ablaze.

From Dictatorship to Democracy: The Role Ex-Nazis Played in Early West Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International Ten days before Christmas, the German Interior Ministry acquitted itself of an embarrassing duty. It published a list of all former members of the German government with a Nazi past. The Left Party's parliamentary group had forced the government to come clean about Germany's past by submitting a parliamentary inquiry. The document revealed that Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who governed Germany from 1966 to 1969, had been a member of the Nazi Party ever since Adolf Hitler seized power. The list names ministers of all political stripes and from a wide range of social backgrounds. According to the government list, former SPD Finance Minister Karl Schiller was in the SA, while his fellow cabinet minister Horst Ehmke was a Nazi Party member, as were ("presumably," the list notes) former SPD Labor Minister Herbert Ehrenberg and Hans Leussink, a former education minister with no party affiliation. Germany's Dark Past

China 1911: The Birth of China's Tragedy Jonathan Fenby argues that the failings of China's 1911 revolution heralded decades of civil conflict, occupation and suffering for the Chinese people. Chinese rebel leaders Liu Fuji (left) and Peng Chufan were arrested and beheaded early on October 10th. The Chinese displayed their heads as a warning, ‘killing the chicken to scare the monkeys’, but the Republican government honoured them as martyrs. The London Blitz, 1940 The London Blitz, 1940 The appearance of German bombers in the skies over London during the afternoon of September 7, 1940 heralded a tactical shift in Hitler's attempt to subdue Great Britain. During the previous two months, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields and radar stations for destruction in preparation for the German invasion of the island. With invasion plans put on hold and eventually scrapped, Hitler turned his attention to destroying London in an attempt to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms. At around 4:00 PM on that September day, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning. This was the beginning of the Blitz - a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. St.

The Food Timeline A PRIEST BEARS WITNESS Father Patrick Desbois is on a mission to uncover the mass graves of nearly two million Jews. Sixty years after the Holocaust, time is running out. by Sarah Breger Father Patrick Desbois seldom smiles. The diminutive 56-year-old has spent the last eight years on what some have called a “holy mission,” traveling across Eastern Europe—mostly in Ukraine—to identify the unmarked and sometimes previously unknown graves of the more than 1.5 million Jews murdered there during World War II. His work is bringing to light an often-neglected chapter of Holocaust history—that of entire Jewish communities massacred where they lived. Desbois was born in a farmhouse in peaceful Burgundy, France in 1955, after the war. As a mathematics student at Dijon University in eastern France, Desbois found himself attracted to theology and religious studies. In 2002, while traveling in Ukraine, he visited the site of his grandfather’s imprisonment, Rawa-Ruska. Documenting the massacres is only the first step.

Primary History - World War 2 - The war effort EuroDocs 1911, The Other Revolution | Online Only Photo by Gregory Jordan. Beijing’s underground system, hastily expanded for the 2008 Olympics, is spacious and modern. Its trains move so quietly that the ringing of mobile phones and the shouted conversations that ensue almost drown them out. Peremptory public announcements order passengers to Stand Back! Board the Train! On 1 July, every screen in the underground was tuned to the Chinese Communist Party’s celebration of its own ninetieth birthday: a cast of several hundred waving gigantic red flags on the gargantuan stage of the Great Hall of People, the main theatre of government ritual in Tiananmen Square into which the people, in fact, are rarely invited. There were two historic anniversaries this year in China. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in a small building in the then French Concession in Shanghai in 1921. The Qing Dynasty was overthrown ten years before the Party came into existence. Official references to 1911, so far, have been perfunctory.

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