Brodsky, Isaak

Isaak Brodsky was a Ukrainian Jew who claims to have been taken by German units in June 1943 to Babi Yar, a place where tens of thousands of Jews are said to have been shot and buried by the Germans in mass graves in late September 1941 (see the entry on Babi Yar). In an…

Bronnaya Gora

Bronnaya Gora is a Belorussian town located on the railway line from Brest to Minsk, some 110 km northeast of Brest. In mid-October 1942, the Brest Ghetto was evacuated and the roughly 17,000 Jews residing in it were officially resettled elsewhere according to German wartime documents. A Soviet investigative commission report, later published in the…

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Buchenwald

No historian has ever claimed or is currently claiming that any kind of systematic extermination of inmates by any technical means occurred at the Buchenwald Camp. Therefore, this camp would not have a place in an encyclopedia on the Holocaust, if it weren’t for some witnesses having made claims to the contrary, and if the…

Buchholcowa, Janina

Janina Buchholcowa was a Polish Jewess who signed a deposition sometime in 1945, where she asserted to have been deported to the Treblinka Camp. She claimed that, at the beginning of the camp’s existence (at the end of July 1942), the gas chambers were not yet ready. Therefore, arriving deportees were killed with machine-gun fire…

Budnik, David

David Budnik was a Ukrainian Jew interned in the Syretsky Camp, 5 km from Kiev. On 18 August 1943, he was taken from there to Babi Yar, a place where tens of thousands of Jews are said to have been shot and buried by the Germans in mass graves in late September 1941 (see the…

Buki, Milton

Milton Buki (or Michal Majlech) was a former Auschwitz inmate. He signed two English-language depositions on 4 and 7 January 1945 while in Linz, Austria. In the first deposition, which is geared toward framing SS man Josef Erber, he did not mention any homicidal gassings. His second statement is geared toward framing Gestapo man Maximilian…

Bulgaria

Although Bulgaria was Allied with wartime Germany, no Jews were deported from that country or murdered there. Since Bulgaria was known as a relatively safe haven, several thousand Jews actually sought and found refuge there. (See the entry on Jewish demography for a broader perspective.)

BUNA

BUNA is an acronym formed from the two words BUtadiene and NAtrium (for sodium), denoting a method of polymerizing the chemical butadiene with the catalytic assistance of sodium to form artificial rubber. It was one of the methods used in wartime Germany to alleviate the rubber shortage due to the Allies’ blockade of continental Europe….

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Bunkers

Terms Similar to the English term bunker, the German term Bunker can refer to three things: A shelter facility protecting from projectiles, bombs, shrapnel or noxious gases in times of armed conflicts. Bulk-item storage facilities, such as potatoes, coal or coke. The German language even has a verb for this: einbunkern, to store in bulk….

Burmeister, Walter

Walter Burmeister (14 Nov. 1894 – 23 Feb. 1980), SS Oberscharführer, is said to have served as a driver of one of the gas vans at the Chełmno Camp. Interrogated by Investigating Judge Władysław Bednarz after the war in Poland, he describes the vans as they appear in the extant authentic correspondence between Germany’s Department…

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