MARY BURKETT ART

The Armistice of June 22, 1940, divided France into Vichy France under German control, and the remainder the so-called Free Zone. The Free Zone, however, turned out to be less than free. By 1942, Jewish families were hiding and desperately fleeing. The Archbishop of Toulouse, Jules Gerald Saliege, publicly defied the Nazis and wrote the following, “In our diocese, children, women, men, fathers, and mothers are treated like a lowly herd. The Jews are men and women. They are pa

“What now?” That was the question for Vitka Kempner, a 19-year-old Polish girl who had escaped the invading Nazis and found her way safely to Vilna in Lithuania. “Run? Hide? Go into the ghetto with everyone else?” Or do what seemed impossible… fight? Girls in 1940 weren’t supposed to be fighters; in fact, they weren’t even allowed to join many resistance groups. But Vitka wasn’t just any girl – she was a quiet girl, reserved, and well-mannered, but she had other qualities as

The German idea of racial purity in the 1930s was incredibly far-reaching both geographically and in scope. I thought we’d spend a little time exploring this… Let’s begin with the story of 800 Romani children, gassed at Auschwitz on January 29, 1944. We don’t know their names or their families, but we do know how and why they arrived at that fateful day, and theirs is a tale worthy of consideration. The roundup of Gypsies had begun in Germany in 1937, supposedly for purposes

Tadeusz Pankiewicz was a pharmacist in Krakow in the fateful year of 1939 when the Nazis arrived. Unfortunately for him, the family shop, named Under the Eagle, was located in the section of the city that the Nazis designated as the Jewish Ghetto in 1941. All Gentile businesses were ordered to relocate to non-Jewish sectors of the city, but somehow Tadeusz was able to convince the Nazis to allow him to stay. He promptly became friendly with the German officers as he and his e

A major goal of the Nazi philosophy was to erase the boundary between healing and killing for physicians. Both political leaders and doctors were heavily influenced by the work of Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche entitled The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life . The case was made that killing was an allowable act for “empty shells of human beings”, those with psychiatric problems, brain injury, low IQ, etc., and as we saw last week with Luise, once that threshold was cr

In Part One, we discussed the radical shift that occurred in the early 1930s in medical training in Germany. Undoubtedly there were many physicians who rejected the new philosophy, but there was also “great enthusiasm” on the part of physicians. Doctors had one of the highest ratios of Nazi party membership by profession, and there were seven times more physicians in the SS than teachers. In 1933, 13% of German doctors were Jewish and in large cities they comprised up to 50%

People write to me very frequently, asking,  “How could the Holocaust have happened?” The answer is extremely complex and involved reshaping long-held social and moral beliefs. I was asked to repost this three-part series on the practice of medicine in the Third Reich, which provides a great deal of insight. Part One – No government can simply say, “We are going to kill everyone that is Jewish, that is Roma or Sinti, that is mentally or physically handicapped, that has a here

Franz Stangl was a regular guy. He was a weaver in Altmunster, Austria, the son of a night-watchman. Altmunster is a lovely little town on the shores of Taunsee Lake in the alpine region of Austria, and one can easily imagine a childhood of swimming and hiking and adventuring for young Franz. But in 1931, at the age of 23, young Franz developed a fascination with the Nazi Party. It was still illegal to affiliate with the Nazis in Austria, but that carried little weight it see

In the Netherlands, deportations began in 1942. Non-Jewish citizens were not left unscathed however. In addition to the 100,000 Jews who were deported, 550,000 young Dutch men were shipped to Germany to work, 50,000 Dutch people died due to inadequate health care, and 23,000 civilians were killed in air raids – all of this in a nation of 8.8 million people. And so as we arrive at 1944, Dutch society has been trampled, and the worst was yet to come. As war losses mounted, the

Shimshon Kruger was a little boy, 10 or 11, when the Nazis invaded Poland. He and his family lived in the small town of Oswiecim, home to a majority Jewish population and ten synagogues. The Krugers lived in a small house next to the Chevra Lomedi Mishnayot Synagogue where Shimshon’s grandfather was rabbi. Oswiecim is a Polish name, but the German version is much more familiar to us – Auschwitz. Yes, the infamous concentration camp was built right on the outskirts of town and

To remember or not… that is the question. As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this week, the children have been heavily on my mind. Can we gloss over their fates because it is just too painful for us to remember? Forgetting, after all, would be so much easier. But I’ve carried them all week, struggling to write this post, and I know in my heart that I can’t ignore them. On January 25, 1945, when Auschwitz was liberated, 700 children were foun

Last week we discussed public opposition to anti-Jewish measures in The Netherlands in late 1940. Three months later, in February 1941, a general strike occurred in Amsterdam. It had become obvious that Holland was not going to behave as a sister Germanic nation. A fiercely anti-Semitic Austrian Nazi and lawyer, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was appointed by Hitler to head the occupying regime. His was a civil regime meant to run the government, but separate from the German police. I