t1703 One of the most notorious concentration camps established within the borders of Nazi Germany has once again become the focus of historical scrutiny as newly compiled documentation and survivor testimony shed fresh light on the systematic brutality that claimed the lives of more than 56,000 people at Buchenwald between 1937 and 1945. The camp, established … Read more
OSWIECIM, Poland — A brick building tucked inside the main Auschwitz compound served as the Nazi regime’s most feared instrument of interrogation and punishment, where prisoners were tortured with iron swings, suffocated in standing cells barely a square yard wide, and shot by the thousands against a concrete wall that still stands today. Block 11, … Read more
BUDAPEST — A haunting photograph from the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War has resurfaced, capturing the final moments of an elderly Hungarian woman, identified only as Mária or Margit Nagy, as she was led to her death by pole hanging in the heart of the Hungarian capital. The image, which shows the grey-haired … Read more
Pendant quarante ans, j’ai rendu service. À la mairie, à mon fils, à tout le monde. J’ai commencé comme secrétaire à dix-neuf ans et j’ai terminé à soixante, toujours la même femme, toujours disponible. Puis j’ai pris ma retraite et j’ai vendu mon âme à la campagne. J’ai dit à tout le monde que je … Read more
Dieses Jahr haben sie mir gesagt, ich solle nicht kommen, weil ich die Stimmung nur verderben würde. Stattdessen begann mein Urlaub mit einer Nachricht, die sich anfühlte wie eine Ohrfeige. Du machst es deinem Bruder nur unangenehm, nur Familie. Die Nachricht kam, während ich noch in meinem kleinen Büro über einem belebten Café in der … Read more
The wives of Nazi Germany’s most powerful men lived at the center of a regime built on terror, and when the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, their privilege curdled into punishment, isolation, and in some cases, acts of horror that still shock historians today. From Magda Goebbels’ murder of her six children in Hitler’s bunker … Read more
KRAKOW, Poland — Erich Muhsfeldt, the notorious SS officer who supervised the crematoria at Auschwitz and Majdanek and personally burned prisoners alive, was executed by hanging at Montelupich prison on January 24, 1948, bringing an end to one of the most sadistic careers in the Nazi extermination machine. Muhsfeldt was 34 years old when the … Read more
Allied soldiers advancing into the heart of Nazi Germany during the final, chaotic months of World War II made a grim and fateful decision that would stain the record of the victors even as it satisfied a deep and burning hunger for justice: when SS troops raised their hands in surrender, many were shot on … Read more
BUDAPEST — In the shattered aftermath of World War II, across the ruins of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, a brutal and deliberately humiliating form of public execution was resurrected to punish those accused of betraying their nations — and among the condemned, women were marched before enormous crowds to die on wooden posts in spectacles designed … Read more
A convicted Nazi concentration camp guard who brutalized prisoners with a whip, kicked dying women in the face, and coerced young female inmates into sexual relationships in exchange for food and medicine died alone and forgotten in a West Berlin hospital kitchen — her name barely a footnote in the annals of Holocaust justice. Anneliese … Read more