The #Righteous during World War Two
Egyptan Dr. Mohammed Helmy saved a Jewish family in Berlin from death in the Holocaust 1/n Mohamed Helmy was an Egyptian doctor who lived in Berlin and hid several Jews during the Holocaust. He was honoured by Israel's Yad Vashem
2/n Holocaust memorial as "Righteous Among the Nations" – the highest honor given to a non-Jew for risking great personal dangers to rescue Jews from the Nazis' gas chambers.
Helmy was born in 1901 in Khartoum, in what was then Egypt and is now Sudan, to an Egyptian father and a
3/n German mother. He came to Berlin in 1922 to study medicine and worked as a urologist until 1938, when Germany banned him from the public health system because he was not considered Aryan, said Martina Voigt, the German historian, who conducted research on Helmy.
4/n When the Nazis began deporting Jews, he hid 21-year-old Anna Boros, a family friend, at a cabin on the outskirts of the city, and provided her relatives with medical care. After Boros' relatives admitted to Nazi interrogators that he was hiding her, he arranged for her
5/n to hide at an acquaintance's house before authorities could inspect the cabin. The four family members survived the war and immigrated to the U.S. Letters expressing their gratitude to their rescuer were uncovered in the Berlin archives, and were submitted to Yad Vashem
6/6 After the war, Helmy picked up his work as a physician again and married Emmi. The couple had been unable to marry during the Nazi era because of the race laws in place. Helmy stayed in West Berlin where he worked as a doctor until his death in 1982. en.qantara.de/content/mohamm…
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Christmas eve in KL Auschitz 1940
Paweł Krupiński. 1/n On December 24, 1940, the first Christmas Eve took place in the German Nazi concentration camp KL Auschwitz. On the assembly square, there was a Christmas tree illuminated by electric lamps, and the bodies of prisoners who
2/n died while working or froze to death during the assembly were placed under the tree.
These were the "gifts", as the camp supervisor, Karl Fritzsch, described according to the testimony of witnesses. It was also forbidden to sing Christmas carols in Polish in the camp.
3/n Before Christmas, there was a meeting between the commandant Rudolf Hoess and two priests from the Oświęcim parish. They were seeking the possibility of holding a holy mass for prisoners on the occasion of the upcoming Christmas. However, the permit was not granted, referring
The Hunger Winter of 1944-1945:
Hunger and cold in the Netherlands 1/n The liberation of the southern part of the Netherlands in the autumn of 1944 has dire consequences for the occupied western part of the Netherlands. The Dutch government in London calls for a major strike in
2/n rail transport to support Operation Market Garden on 17 September 1944. 30,000 railway employees are on strike. The trains don't run anymore until the end of the war. But as a punitive measure, the German occupiers blocked food transports to the provinces of North and South
3/n Holland for six weeks. With their own trains, the Germans take care of their own supplies. Supply of coal has become impossible, because it is located behind the front line between Germany and the Allies. In December 1944, the rivers and the IJsselmeer also freeze over.
December 17th, 1943
Convoy 63 from Drancy, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, occupied Poland 1/n On December 11, 1943, Obersturmführer Dr. Heinz Röthke requested authorization to form a convoy of 800 to 1,000 Jews. In the end, 848 people would be
2/n deported.
Boarding at Bobigny station was carried out in the presence of Brunner, who himself searched certain luggage.
Serge Smulevic, survivor and post-war chronicler, then 22 years old, recounts a particularly cruel scene on the platform:
“Brunner gives us a speech,
3/n translated instantly by a civilian, warning us that if anyone tried to escape, all the other occupants of the car would be executed. Likewise, he warned us that it was forbidden to carry in their luggage any knife or other sharp object, possibly allowing to attack the floor
Kiel - Germany, 1931 1/n For the Hanukkah festival in 1931, Rahel, the wife of Rabbi Dr. Akiba Posner, the family's Hanukkah candlestick against the backdrop of the building opposite, which was decorated with Nazi flags.
2/n On the back of the photo, Rahel Posner wrote:
Hanukkah 5692 (1932)
"Judah perish"
The flag speaks –
"Judah Lives Forever"
Returns the light
Rabbi Dr. Akiba Posner, Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, was the last rabbi in Kiel before the Holocaust.
3/n An open letter from the rabbi in the local newspaper protesting against the first posters in the city saying “Jews are not allowed in” led to a public debate with the chairman of the local NSDAP group. It took place under heavy police protection and was publicized by
1/n Élise Rivet,
who became Mother Marie Elisabeth of the Eucharist, (1890 – 1945) was a Catholic nun, member of the resistance during the Second World War. She's a righteous among the nations.
2/n Mother Marie Elisabeth of the Eucharist
Élise Rivet was born on January 19, 1890 in Draria, Algeria. When she was twenty, she came to France. In 1913, at the age of 23, she joined the community of nursing sisters of Notre-Dame de Compassion in Lyon, a convent of which she
3/n became mother superior in 1933. She then took the name of Mother Marie Elisabeth of the Eucharist.
After the rapid defeat of France during the Second World War, Elisabeth very quickly entered the resistance. She hid refugees, Jews, weapons, ammunition in her convent and
#OTD, 16 December 1942, the last transport of Jews from the Plonsk ghetto left for Auschwitz. 1/n This transport contained young people, professionals, and those considered "privileged" by the Judenrat. They included the Judenrat chairman Yaakov Ramek, his wife and two children,
2/n as well as 340 children from the children's home in the Plonsk ghetto, accompanied by their teacher, Ms. Grünberg:
"At 4 am, we all stood in the square fully dressed, with our packages in our arms… we were placed in rows, and between 5-6 am we left in a long line towards the
3/n train station. The non-Jews watching us bowed their heads and crossed themselves. Immediately, the Germans began screaming, and then there was pushing accompanied by whips. We were barbarically forced into an ordinary passenger train… we used our elbows to get in faster,