In this photo of a bunch of Nazis is Franz Josef Huber—a Nazi commander who led Hitler’s secret police in Austria and deported tens of thousands of Jews to concentration and extermination camps—who was later used by U.S. and German intelligence agencies as a Cold War spy.
During WWII, Huber led one of largest sections of Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, and was responsible for the deportations and deaths of countless Jewish people during the Nazi takeover of Vienna.
While Huber was initially designated a war criminal by U.S. intelligence and was arrested in 1945, he was released 3 years later. Newly disclosed records also reveal that he was given immunity for his war crimes as he proved to be a valuable asset as a Cold War spy.
Huber was employed by West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, now known as the BND, which frequently hired former Nazis for their intelligence skills and anti-communist stances.
While the BND let Huber go in 1964, he was granted paid leave and continued to live in Munich with his family until he passed away. He never faced prosecution for his crimes.
(Photo via National Archives of Slovenia: Huber pictured front row center and holding gloves)
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Prince Philip has passed away at the age of 99. While world leaders mourn him, we recall his racist, classist, misogynistic and ableist legacy with some quotes from the past:
"It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons," (While being shown Ethiopian art)
“If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed” (To a group of British exchange students studying in China)
“So who's on drugs here?... He looks as if he's on drugs” (To a group of boys at a Bangladeshi youth club)
An update on the latest of Germany's far-right problem:
- Forces of the Hessian police arrested a 21-years-old Bundeswehr (special forces) soldier Tim F., and secured rifles, pistols and explosives from his family house; ...
...his father was also arrested and his brother appeared voluntarily in front of the police. Allegedly a right-wing manifesto was also found in the raid.
- Since 2017 about 50 soldiers from the Bundeswehr secret service have been checked by the Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) on suspicion of right-wing extremist activities. Reportedly 5 soldiers have been separated from the Bundeswehr, and 16 others have been transferred.
On this day in 1971, the brutal right-wing Bolivian colonel Roberto Quintanilla, the man responsible for ordering the execution of Che Guevara & allegedly cut off his hands, was killed by German socialist revolutionary & guerrilla fighter Monika Ertl, dubbed "the avenger of Che".
Ertl, the daughter of a Nazi propagandist who fled to Bolivia, in early life worked with her father and learned how to use a camera and weapons. The family's close friends were other Nazi fugitives such as Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo leader known as "the Butcher of Lyon".
She rejected her father's ideology and grew closer to the socialist cause, admiring the Cuban Revolution and especially the Argentinian doctor and commander Che Guevara.
Meet Kenya Cuevas, one of the most prominent trans, sex worker and human rights activists in Mexico.
At the age of 9 Cuevas left her house due to the violence. At that age and living in the streets, she was forced into sexual labor, became addicted to drugs and at age 13 contracted HIV. She also spent almost 11 years in prison for allegedly having selling and distributing drugs.
In 2016 she was one of the witnesses of the killing of her friend Paola Buenrostro, a trans sex worker and she also saw how her murderer was released 2 days later for an alleged lack of witnesses.
On International Transgender Day of Visibility, we remember the revolutionary transgender communist, activist and writer, Leslie Feinberg.
Feinberg was an active anti-war and anti-racist activist who helped organize several campaigns following attacks against African-Americans by the KKK. She organized pro-choice protests and defended LGBT bars and clubs from right-wing attacks.
She was a fervent believer in the power of organization to fight back against all kinds of oppression.
Colorized photos of the #Nakba ("Catastrophe"), when between 750,000 and 1 million Palestinians were displaced from their land and homes in historical Palestine during Israel's creation in 1948.
As thousands of their fellow Palestinians were slaughtered by Israel forces around them, Palestinian families fled in terror to neighbouring countries and to the West Bank and Gaza.
Today there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees and displaced people, including Nakba survivors and their descendants. Israel still refuses to allow them to return to the land they were forced from, despite the internationally-recognized legal right of return.