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Władysław Bednarz was a Polish investigative judge who, after the war, led the Polish judiciary’s investigations into what transpired at the Chełmno Camp. He interrogated witnesses and supervised forensic excavations and sample-takings on the former campgrounds. He also investigated the wreck of a moving truck on the Ostrowski factory grounds, which some witnesses had claimed…
Isai Davidovich Berg (1905 – 1939), a Russian Jew and head of the economic department of the NKVD for the Moscow region, invented an actual method of executing people while being transported in prison vans. For this purpose, the highly lethal exhaust gases of Soviet-made, gasoline-engine vans were ducted into the rear cargo hold, where…
Ludwig Bock (born 1942) is a German defense lawyer. During the West-German Majdanek Trial (1975-1981), he defended Hildegard Lächert, a former inmate supervisor at the Ravensbrück and Majdanek camps. While preparing the case for his client, Bock rightfully received access to the files of the prosecution, where he found the names and residential addresses of…
Danuta Czech (1922 – 4 April 2002) was a Polish historian and deputy director of the Polish Auschwitz Museum. She was the lead historian of the Auschwitz Museum’s project to write a day-by-day chronology of the Auschwitz Camp. This project got initiated when West Germany started its investigation against former members of the Auschwitz Camp’s…
Kurt Daluege (15 Sept. 1897 – 24 Oct. 1946) was the chief of the uniformed police in National-Socialist Germany. After Heinrich Himmler issued an order on 23 October 1941 stating “effective immediately, the emigration of Jews has to be prevented,” Daluege issued a directive the next day, according to which “Jews shall be evacuated to…
Irmfried Eberl (8 Sept. 1910 – 16 Feb. 1948), SS Obersturmführer at war’s end, was an Austrian-German physician who worked as medical director at two euthanasia institutes from February 1940 until late 1941. After this, he was transferred to Aktion Reinhardt. He served as the first commandant of the Treblinka Camp since 11 July 1942,…
Ilya Ehrenburg (26 Jan. 1891 – 31 Aug. 1967) was a Soviet-Jewish journalist and the Soviet Union’s main war propagandist. He was put in charge of submitting daily articles to the Western Allies in order to foment “hate, hate, and more hate” against everything German, as Stalin put it. In fact, Ehrenburg ended up writing…
Dov Eitan was an Israeli defense lawyer who led the successful defense team of John Demjanjuk during his show trial in Jerusalem in 1987. The day before Demjanjuk’s appeal trial before the Jerusalem Court of Appeals was to start, Eitan jumped – or fell, or was thrown – to his death from the 20th floor…
Hermann Florstedt (18 Feb. 1895 – 5 April 1945), SS Standartenführer since 1938, served in the Sachsenhausen Camp from 1940 until 1942, when he was transferred to the Majdanek Camp, becoming its third commandant. Florstedt was soon investigated by the SS-internal court system for suspicion of embezzling inmate property and murdering inmates to cover up…
Hans Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 Oct. 1946) was governor of occupied Poland (called General Government) during the war. Four of the so-called extermination camps – Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka – were on the territory he governed. (The territories where Auschwitz and Chełmno were located had been annexed by the Third Reich). Therefore,…
Karl Fritzsch Karl Fritzsch (10 July 1903 – 2 May 1945), SS Hauptsturmführer, was the head of the Protective-Custody Camp at the Auschwitz Main Camp from 14 June 1940 until 1 February 1942. Later he had that same role at the Flossenbürg Camp. According to the demonstrably false postwar confessions of former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf…
Joseph Goebbels (29 Oct. 1897 – 1 May 1945) was the National-Socialist leader of the Berlin district as well as the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda from its very beginning to the bitter end, when he committed suicide. Goebbels was meticulous in keeping a diary with almost daily entries. In addition, his list of speeches…
Amon Göth (11 Dec. 1908 – 13 Sept. 1946), SS Hauptsturmführer, was in charge of constructing and then heading the Płaszów Camp near Krakow. As such, he ended up getting prosecuted by the SS-internal court system for looting inmate property and selling it on the black market. He was arrested in early 1945, but due…
After Ilya Ehrenburg, the Jewish journalist Vasily Grossman (12 Dec. 1905 – 14 Sept. 1964) was probably the second most-impactful Soviet atrocity propagandist of the Stalinist era. His two most-important works of propaganda are his booklet on the Treblinka Camp, titled The Hell of Treblinka, and the collection of Soviet atrocity stories on claimed German…
Himmler’s service calendar proves that he visited Auschwitz on 17 and 18 July 1942, in order to follow up on the implementation of plans to expand the Birkenau Camp. The orthodoxy claims that, on this occasion, Himmler attended the gassing of a transport of Jews. However, Himmler’s service calendar, showing that he was busy doing…
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) is the central figure in the Holocaust narrative. Considering the monolithic nature of Hitler’s dictatorship, his decisions, orders and decrees are what should have caused, started and shaped the progress of the Holocaust. Yet when we look at the historical records, all we have are some…
Hans Höfle (19 June 1911 – 21 Aug. 1962), SS Sturmbannführer, was Odilo Globocnik’s deputy chief of staff. As delegate for Jewish resettlement in the Lublin District, he was deeply involved within the Aktion Reinhardt in organizing the deportation of Jews from German-occupied Poland to the Majdanek Camp and through the camps at Belzec, Sobibór,…
Franz Hössler (4 Feb. 1906 – 13 Dec. 1945), SS Obersturmführer, started his career at the SS as a cook at the Dachau Camp. He assumed that same role when transferred to Auschwitz in June 1940, then became Labor Service Leader in early 1941 at the Auschwitz Main Camp, and eventually leader of the women’s…
Hans Kammler (26 August 1901 – unknown), SS Obergruppenführer, was deputy chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungs-Hauptamt) directly under Oswald Pohl. Kammler was in charge of Office C, overseeing all construction efforts at all the Third Reich’s camps. After the Auschwitz Camps’ newly appointed garrison physician Eduard Wirths had…
Jan Karski (aka Jan Kozielewski, 24 April 1914 – 13 July 2000) was an agent of the Polish government in exile, whose task was to invent and spread “black propaganda” – meaning atrocity lies – in German-occupied Poland (Laqueur 1998, p. 230). During World War Two, the Polish government in exile maintained close relations with…
Ilse Koch (22 Sept. 1906 – 1 Sept. 1967) was the widow of former Buchenwald commandant Karl-Otto Koch, who had been executed by the SS for murdering inmates and embezzling inmate property at the Buchenwald Camp. Ilse Koch was the only civilian indicted by U.S. troops during the infamous Dachau Trials, in preparation of which…
Karl-Otto Koch (2 Aug. 1897 – 5 April 1945), SS Standartenführer, first headed the Esterwegen Camp in 1936, then became the first commandant of the Sachsenhausen Camp. In 1937, he was put in charge of the Buchenwald Camp, and in 1941 of the Majdanek Camp. In August 1942, Koch was arrested by the SS-internal police…
Dr. Richard Korherr (30 Oct. 1903 – 24 Nov. 1989) was a statistician, and from late 1940, the head of the SS’s statistical office. In early 1943, Himmler ordered him to compile a report on the trends of European Jewish population developments since the National Socialists’ rise to power. After several discussions and some correspondence…
Ota Kraus (7 Sept. 1909 – 10 July 2010) was a Czech Jew who was arrested in 1940 for distributing resistance magazines. He was interned at Auschwitz from November 1942 until October 1944, when he was transferred to Sachsenhausen Camp. In Auschwitz, he headed the inmate metalworking shop together with the Czech Jew Erich Kulka….
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