Propagandist/Chronicler

  • Czech, Danuta

    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…

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    Karski, Jan

    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…

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    Kraus, Ota

    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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    Kulka, Erich

    Erich Kulka (aka Schön, 18 Dec. 1911 – 13 July 1995) was a Czech Jew who was arrested due to his communist resistance activities, and spent time at the Theresienstadt Ghetto and in the camps at Dachau, Neuengamme and Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, he headed the inmate metalworking shop together with the Czech Jew Ota Kraus….

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    Langbein, Hermann

    Hermann Langbein (18 May 1912 – 24 Oct. 1995) was an Austrian communist who fought during the Spanish Civil War with the Stalin-supported International Brigade. Due to his opposition to the National-Socialist regime, he was incarcerated at the Dachau, Auschwitz (from 21 August 1941 until 25 August 1944) and Neuengamme Camps. At Dachau and Auschwitz,…

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    Marsalek, Hans

    Johann Karl (aka Hans) Maršálek (19 July 1914 – 9 Dec. 2011) was an Austrian communist of Bohemian descent. He got caught in 1941 organizing acts of sabotage, for which he ended up incarcerated at the Mauthausen Camp. He was deployed there as a clerk, and used his position to organize the camp’s inmate resistance…

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    Mermelstein, Mel

    Melvin Mermelstein (25 Sept. 1926 – 28 Jan. 2022) was a former Auschwitz inmate who tried to take advantage of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), located in California. This organization had had offered a reward of $50,000 to anyone who could present “provable physical evidence for the extermination of Jews in gas chambers.” Mermelstein…

  • Polevoy, Boris

    Boris Nikolaevich Pole­voy (aka Kampov; 17 March 1908 – 12 July 1981) was a Soviet journalist writing primarily for Soviet Russia’s leading newspaper Pravda. His métier was similar to Ilya Ehrenburg’s: glorifying communism and the Soviet Union, and as Pravda’s official war correspondent during the war, exaggerating and inventing atrocity tales about the enemy and…

  • Ringelblum, Emanuel

    Emanuel Ringelblum (21 Nov. 1900 – 10? March 1944) was a Polish Jew who was forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. He organized an intelligence-gathering organization in the Ghetto named “Oneg Szabat.” It gathered documents and recorded witness testimonies, among them some from individuals who claimed to have escaped from…

  • Silberschein, Abraham

    Abraham Silberschein was a member of the Polish parliament, a delegate of the World Jewish Congress and a member of the Committee for Assistance to the Suffering Jews in the Occupied Countries. As such, he collected witness testimonies about the alleged extermination of Jews in occupied Poland, which he published in Geneva in 1944 in…

  • Szende, Stefan

    Stefan (István) Szende (10 April 1901 – 5 May 1985) was a bilingual Austro-Hungarian Jew who started a moderate political career in Berlin as a Socialist just prior to Hitler’s ascension to power. He was eventually arrested in late 1933 for continuing a socialist party, then tried and sentenced to two years imprisonment for this…

  • Weissmandel, Dov

    Michael Dov Weissmand(e)l (25 Oct. 1903 – 29 Nov. 1957) was a Slovakian Rabbi who was summoned to meet the Slovakian Jews Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler after their escape from Birkenau. Weissmandel was either hoodwinked by Vrba and Wetzler to believe their mendacious propaganda story about Auschwitz, or else he even helped create its…

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