Share this page!

Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
Twitter logo
8 Dec, 10 tweets, 3 min read
#OnThisDay Nazis began using mobile gas chambers at Chelmno.
SS officer Walter Rauff was in charge of producing the gas trucks, in which half a million or more Jews were murdered...
Walter Rauff, SS technical officer who produced the mobile gas chambers, was later put in command of the Einsatzkommando assigned to Erwin Rommel's army. Rauff was to carry out murder of Jews of Egypt & Middle East...
What prevented Rauff's Einsatzkommando from reaching Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus & Baghdad? British Eighth Army - incl soldiers from N. Zealand, Australia, India & more - drew line in the sand at El Alamein...
@crusaderproject @deborahlipstadt @DanielSeidemann @AnshelPfeffer
Later in 1942, after Allied invasion of Morocco & Algeria, Germany occupied Vichy Tunisia. SS immediately sent same Walter Rauff to Tunisia to carry out genocide of Jews in N. Africa...
Rauff began classic SS steps against Jews of Tunisia, incl forced labor. Plan was to ship Jews to camps in Europe. By then, though, Allied victories denied Germans & Italians control of Med, and Germans lacked shipping for genocide plan...
Rauff - creator of mobile gas vans, intended murderer of Jews of Middle East - escaped Tunisia before German defeat, escaped Germany before end of war, and lived out his life in Chile...
It's truly unfortunate that no English-language publisher has brought out Martin Cüppers's German biography of SS war criminal Walther Rauff. It's an essential work of Holocaust history.
SS officer Walther Rauff's failure in Tunisia, unfortunately, was not complete. Hundreds of Tunisian Jews died in Holocaust; others survived labor camps. They should be part of our memory of the genocide...
And British (Indian, South African, Australian, New Zealand) victory at El Alamein is likewise essential part of Holocaust history, and of the debt of the living to those who fought there.
More on the Nazi plans for the Middle East, and the tangle of espionage that defeated those plans, in #War_of_Shadows.
publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/gershom…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @GershomG

Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
9 Dec
Everyone who writes politics in Israel is writing about how Gideon Saar will or will not affect Netanyahu & the whole political scene.
Pro tip: No one has a clue. Nothing that happens here is expected.
This country exists to make fools of would-be prophets....
@kampeas @lrozen
Go back to the days after the first election in 2019. Find me a pundit who expected that at the last minute Netanyahu would fail to form a coalition & we'd have not 1 but 2 more elections.
Total shocker...
For that matter, find me someone who predicted that Gantz would suddenly decide to run for Knesset speaker last year, split his party, join Netanyahu.
Too absurd to even consider forecasting...
Read 6 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
26 Sep
A pre-Yom Kippur note re Yitzhak Rabin & @AOC -
Every chapter of a book changes the meaning of all the chapters before.
Every day each of us writes a new chapter of our book.
Rabin's bio includes harsh chapters.
In the final chapter…

@Yair_Rosenberg @AllisonKSommer @lrozen
In the final chapter of his life, Rabin broke the mainstream Israeli taboo, recognized Palestinian nationalism, and determinedly pursued peace with the Palestinians…
In the final chapter of his life, Rabin also broke the Israeli taboo on a political alliance with the parties representing Arab citizens of Israel…

@TheRaDR @LaraFriedmanDC
Read 8 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
21 Sep
#OnThisDay (yesterday, actually, but I don't tweet on Rosh Hashanah): Sept. 20, 1940: Genevieve Grotjan, mathematician in US Army's Signal Intelligence Service, makes crucial break in Japan's Purple diplomatic cipher:
#War_of_Shadows
@sheeraf @SpitfireFilly @ShiraOvide Image
Gene Grotjan was 26. She'd entered civil service b/c she hadn't been able to get a college teaching job, apparently b/c colleges wouldn't hire women.
The only law always followed in war is the Law of Unintended Consequences. Grotjan's rejection by universities led to her career in codebreaking - and to the discovery that allowed U.S. to read Japan's most secret diplomatic cipher.
@sarahposner @danephron Image
Read 12 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
17 Sep
#OnThisDay Sept. 17, 1939: Soviet Union invades Poland, in accordance with the secret provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact….
Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski, the man who broke the Nazis' "unbreakable" Enigma cipher, had fled Warsaw & found refuge in Eastern Poland. When the Soviets invade, he & 2 young colleages flee again, this time to Romania…
@OrenNahari @MilHistNow
#War_Of_Shadows
Exploiting the chaos at the border, master codebreaker Rejewski & his colleagues evade internment by the Romanians & reach Bucharest.
There they ask the British embassy for help…

@calder_walton @SarahAWildman
Read 10 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
16 Sep
UAE-Israel accord named after Biblical Abraham
What would Abraham, who walked before God and was pure, think of the sham of a "peace agreement" b/w countries that weren't at war? Image
Normalizing relations b/w Israel & other countries is a good thing. The benefits, however, are overshadowed by the tremendous hyping, aided by uncritical reporting.
Benefits are also thrown into question by lack of transparency - Netanyahu reaching agreements w/out any consultation w/cabinet, which in Israel holds collective responsibility for executive actions. Made worse by Netanyahu's outright lying on F-35 issue.
Read 7 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg Profile picture
15 Sep
#OTD 15 September 1939: Charles Lindbergh, famous aviator & leading isolationist, gives national radio speech against American involvement in two-week-old war in Europe.
@AdamSerwer @AddieStan @KevinMKruse @MilHistNow @danephron @sarahposner @SarahAWildman
#War_of_Shadows
President Roosevelt is about to ask Congress to repeal Neutrality Act, which blocks U.S. from selling arms to Britain and France.
Lindbergh's speech is preemptive bid to prevent repeal.
The only kind of war that America in which America should take sides, Charles Lindbergh says on 15 Sept 1939, would be one to preserve white supremacy.
#War_of_Shadows
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @GershomG has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @GershomG!

Read all threads by @GershomG