Seldom heard stories and pictures of WWII

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When the Germans and their allies invaded Southeastern Europe, a large number of civilians (over 40,000) escaped from their homelands. Many fled all the way across the Mediterranean, hopping from island to island in search of shelter and safety.

The British came up with the idea of settling hundreds of thousands of refugees, mainly women and children, from Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The program was called the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration (MERRA).

 

Some camps even had opportunities for refugees to receive vocational training. At El Shatt and Moses Wells, hospital staff was in such short supply that the refugee camps doubled as nursing training programs for Yugoslavian and Greek refugees and locals alike.

 

 

More than 30,000 people lived in the El Shatt camp for a total of 18 months. During their time in the camp, there were 300 marriages. Additionally 650 children were born. They returned home at the beginning of 1946 when the war was over and a more stable political situation in Europe was established.

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Polish refugees in Iran, 1942-1945

 

Forming the new Polish Army was not easy, however. Many Polish prisoners of war had died in the labor camps in the Soviet Union. Many of those who survived were very weak from the conditions in the camps and from malnourishment. Because the Soviets were at war with Germany, there was little food or provisions available for the Polish Army.

 

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A Polish boy carries loaves of bread provided by the Red Cross

 

In November of that year, the leaders of Russia, Britain, and the USA met in the Iranian capital to decide the fate of Post-war Europe. During their discussions (which were held in secret), it was decided to assign Poland to the zone of influence of the Soviet Union after the war.

[Fog]

59 minutes ago, pipedreams said:

A Polish boy carries loaves of bread provided by the Red Cross

 

In November of that year, the leaders of Russia, Britain, and the USA met in the Iranian capital to decide the fate of Post-war Europe. During their discussions (which were held in secret), it was decided to assign Poland to the zone of influence of the Soviet Union after the war.

Poor Poland

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The last days of the Nazi Germany, 1945

These German soldiers stand in the debris strewn street of Bastogne, Belgium, on January 9, 1945, after they were captured by the U.S. 4th Armored Division which helped break the German siege of the city.

 

By March, Western Allied forces were crossing the Rhine River, capturing hundreds of thousands of troops from Germany’s Army Group B. The Red Army had meanwhile entered Austria, and both fronts quickly approached Berlin. Strategic bombing campaigns by Allied aircraft were pounding German territory, sometimes destroying entire cities in a night.

In the first several months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but rapidly lost territory, ran out of supplies, and exhausted its options. In April, Allied forces pushed through the German defensive line in Italy. East met West on the River Elbe on April 25, 1945, when Soviet and American troops met near Torgau, Germany.

 

 

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A heavily armed German soldier carries ammunition boxes forward during the German counter-offensive in the

Belgium-Luxembourg salient, on January 2, 1945.

 

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A Soviet machine gun crew crosses a river along the second Baltic front, in January of 1945. The soldier on the left is holding his rifle overhead while his comrades push a floating device with a Maxim machine gun, followed by two men with several supply boxes.

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Refugees stand in a group in a street in La Gleize, Belgium on January 2, 1945, waiting to be transported from the

war-torn town after its recapture by American Forces.

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A party sets out to repair telephone lines on the main road in Kranenburg on February 22, 1945, amid four-foot deep floods

caused by the bursting of Dikes by the retreating Germans.

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A sixteen-year old German soldier, Hans-Georg Henke, cries being captured by

the US 9th Army in Germany on April 3, 1945

 

 

His father died in 1938 but when his mother died in 1944 leaving the family destitute, Hans-Georg had to find

work in order to support the family. At 15 years of age, he joined the Luftwaffe.

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Goebbels congratulates a young recruit after

receiving the Iron Cross II, 1945

Joseph Goebbels awards the 16-year old Hitler Youth member Willi Hübner the Iron Cross for the defense of Lauban, photo taken on March 1945. Despite the extremely limited nature of the victory, the recapture of Lauban was presented as a great success by German propaganda, with Joseph Goebbels visiting the town on 9 March to give a speech on the battle. The counter-attack operation at Lauban has generally been considered the last German victory of World War II.

 

As Germany suffered more casualties, more teenagers volunteered and were accepted, initially as reserve troops but then as regulars. Their Soviet foes, who had marched over the corpses of 27 million Russians from Stalingrad to reach Germany, had little mercy for their opponents – and even less if they were dressed in SS uniforms. The children were slaughtered in thousands.

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Battles of The Eastern Front, 1942-1943

The crew of a German anti-tank gun, ready for action at the Russian front in late 1942.

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This photo, taken in the winter months of 1942, shows citizens of Leningrad as they dip for water from a broken main, during the nearly 900-day siege of the Russian city by German invaders. Unable to capture the Leningrad (today known as Saint Petersburg), the Germans cut it off from the world, disrupting utilities and shelling the city heavily for more than two years.

 

A farewell in Leningrad, in the spring of 1942. The German Siege of Leningrad caused widespread starvation among citizens, and lack of medical supplies and facilities made illnesses and injuries far more deadly. Some 1.5 million soldiers and civilians died in Leningrad during the siege – nearly the same number were evacuated, and many of them did not survive the trip due to starvation, illness, or bombing.

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War orphans stand amid the remains of what was once their home, in late 1942. After German forces destroyed the family’s house, they took the parents as prisoners, leaving the children abandoned.

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A German motorized artillery column crossing the Don river by means of a pontoon bridge on July 31, 1942. Wrecked equipment and materiel of all kinds lies strewn around as the crossing is made.

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A Russian woman watches building burn sometime in 1942.

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A man walking in winter in the ruins of the synagogue on Wolborska street (destroyed by Germans in 1939). 1940.

 

A group of women with sacks and pails, walking past synagogue ruins heading for deportation.

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A boy walks among a crowd of people being deported in winter. 1944.

 

A mass deportation of ghetto residents. 1944.

 

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Food pails and dishes left behind by ghetto residents who had been deported to death camps. 1944.

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A destitute elderly woman begging in the street.

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A Jewish woman who is concealing her face sits on a park bench marked "Only for Jews", 1938

The Holocaust was a gradual process. The Nazis didn’t start mass extermination when they got into power. But gradually prepared the population by dehumanizing the Jewish people. Segregation, as shown in this photo, was part of this.

The point was not to provide a bench for Jews, it was to segregate the benches so that non-Jewish Germans would not have to sit on a “contaminated” bench.

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Camp Commandant Amon Goeth, infamous from the movie “Schindler’s List”,

standing on his balcony preparing to shoot prisoners, 1943

 

Amon Leopold Goeth (German: Amon Göth) the villain of the movie Schindler’s List, was born in 1908 in Vienna, Austria. At the age of 24, he joined the Nazi party. In 1940, Amon Goeth became a member of the Waffen-SS. He was assigned to the SS headquarters for Operation Reinhard in Lublin in German-occupied Poland in 1942. Operation Reinhard was the plan to evacuate the Jews from the Ghettos in Poland to three death camps: Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, all of which were in eastern Poland.

In February 1943, Goeth received a promotion and became the third SS officer to hold the job of Commandant of the Plaszow labor camp. While he was the Commandant of Plaszow, Goeth was assigned to supervise the liquidation of the Podgorze ghetto on March 13, 1943, and later the labor camp at Szebnie. The liquidation of the Podgorze ghetto in Krakow is shown in the movie, Schindler’s List.

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Barbed wire his victims once knew confined Eichmann’s walks.

 

Following the end of World War II, U.S. troops captured Eichmann, but in 1946 he managed to escape from a prison camp. After living in Germany under a false identity for several years, Eichmann made his way via Austria and Italy to Argentina, where he settled in 1958. He was arrested by Israeli secret service agents near Buenos Aires, Argentina, on May 11, 1960; nine days later they smuggled him out of the country and took him to Israel.

 

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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.

 

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Victor Kugler was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank’s posthumously published diary, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” he was referred to under the name Mr. Kraler.

 

Miep Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and several family friends in an attic annex above Anne’s father’s place of business. This was intended to keep the Germans from finding them during World War II. “I am not a hero. I just did what any decent person would have done.”