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Seldom heard stories and pictures of WWII


pipedreams
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6 hours ago, pipedreams said:

An image of a Red Cross Travel Document created for one Ricardo Klement, an alias of Adolf Eichmann. This document enabled Eichmann to leave Europe via Italy and travel to Argentina.

 

 

I think he has at least one child still alive.

The story of how Israel found and captured him is in the book, "Eichhmann in my hands."

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This is a picture of Karl Silberbauer. He was the officer that found and captured Anne Frank and her friends

in the Secret Annex. He was a member of the SS.

74621915_anne_frank_pictures(29).jpg.49e4eec5a2d4bc382bc9d1fbae48fa1c.jpg

The story of Silberbauer is important. Some might think that he was a cruel and inhuman monster who should have been hung outright as soon as he was identified as the man who arrested Anne Frank. That is an understandable feeling, based on the injustices of the world and the barbarity of the system in which he served.

Simon Wiesenthal, the famed war criminal hunter, went to great lengths to find Silberbauer. He finally did. Silberbauer had returned to Austria and, after a jail sentence by the Russians due to his brutal interrogations of Communists, had been released.

After many years of working to infiltrate possible terrorist groups for the government (basically as a continuation of his sentence), Silberbauer was rehabilitated and set free. He rejoined the Viennese police force, which is where Wiesenthal found him many years after the war.

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2 hours ago, Historian said:

She was such a perfect child.  If war must be waged...let it be to save someone like this.

We saved a good many of them that time. 

Many more out there waiting for us. It's a burden that hangs heavy on those that have seen the need. We are but mere mortals.

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1 hour ago, Fog said:

We saved a good many of them that time. 

Many more out there waiting for us. It's a burden that hangs heavy on those that have seen the need. We are but mere mortals.

That generation leaves me in awe.  And we still find young people to fill their boots.

Somethings are still right in America.

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Auschwitz Guards: The faces that oversaw a genocide, 1940-1945

auschwitz-guards-mugshots.jpg.22db56fe97df82755204e9f6860bc41e.jpg

When they first joined do you think their intentions were to do what happened?

Auschwitz—which was not a single camp, but a network of camps that both enslaved and killed Jews, Poles, political prisoners, Roma people, homosexuals, the mentally ill and disabled, and others.

Various estimates indicate that the Auschwitz Auschwitz was garrisoned by 700 commanders and guards in 1941, about 2 thousand in June 1942, about 3 thousand in April 1944, and about 3,300 SS men and female overseers in August 1944.

The peak figure came in mid-January 1945, in connection with the final evacuation of the camp, when there were 4,480 SS men and 71 female SS supervisors there. Throughout the entire period that the camp was in existence, a total of some 8,000 to 8,200 SS men and some 200 female guards served in the garrison.

The records on the education of 1,209 Auschwitz SS guards indicate that they had received relatively little schooling. 70% of them had elementary education, 21,5% secondary, and 5.5% higher education. Among those with higher education, the majority were doctors or architects working in the SS construction offices.

More members of the Auschwitz SS garrison stood trial in Poland than anywhere else. From 1946 to 1949, about 1 thousand people suspected of committing war crimes at Auschwitz were extradited to Poland, mostly from the American occupation zone in Germany. Charges were brought against 673 people, including 21 women.

The most common sentences for lower-ranking members of the Auschwitz garrison were three years in prison (203 times, for 31.9% of all the sentences) and 4 years (111 times, 17.5%). Death and life sentences were relatively rare (41 times, 6.1%).

At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, and at least 1.1 million died. Overall 400,207 prisoners were registered in the camp: 268,657 male and 131,560 female.

 

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A group photo of the mass murderers of Auschwitz: Josef Kramer, Josef Mengele, Richard Baer, Karl Höcker

(from left; the man at right unidentified).

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A large group of SS officers visit a coal mine near Auschwitz.

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Karl Hoecker (right) with Richard Baer and Rudolf Hoess.

Karl-Hoecker-album-Laughing-at-Auschwitz-(1)f.jpg.ab8bbe05f04d5a14966d9ca0ad264168.jpg

 

When that camp was liberated by American troops, in April, Hoecker and Baer followed the advice of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, which was that SS officers insinuate themselves among the troops, in the hope of being taken for ordinary soldiers.

Hoecker joined a fighting unit that was captured by the British in northern Germany. He spent a year and a half in a POW camp, and was released, apparently because no one recognized him”.

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When New Yorkers heard about the D-Day invasion, 1944

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By the time the sun rose in New York City on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first and second waves of American troops had come ashore under heavy German fire on the beaches of Normandy.

Working under the command of General Eisenhower, an armada of 5,000 ships brought troops to the beaches of Normandy, one of the largest in military history. Almost 150,000 troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on that summer day, and approximately 20,000 of those by parachute.

 

new-york-city-d-day (4).jpg

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July of 1943, Allied Forces’ troops, guns and transport are rushed ashore, ready for action, at the opening of the

Allied invasion of the Italian island of Sicily.

Allied_invasion_of_Europe%2B%25282%2529.jpg

 

During the invasion of Sicily by Allied forces, an American cargo ship, loaded with ammunition, explodes after being hit by a bomb from a German plane off Gela, on the southern coast of Sicily, on July 31, 1943

Allied_invasion_of_Europe%2B%25283%2529.jpg

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Korean soldier fighting at D-Day in the Wehrmacht.  
 

He was conscripted into the imperial Japanese Army. Got captured by the Soviets and put in a gulags.  Volunteered in the Red Army to get out of the gulags.  Got captured by the Germans and volunteered…

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/koreans-captured-at-d-day.html/amp

 

E18D5FB7-A559-4986-99E3-189081D6AED4.jpeg

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