Cowboy Tcherno Bill Profile picture
May 17, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Rescue In A Circus

Adolf and Maria Althoff
#Righteous during World War Two
1/n
Darmstadt, Germany… Summer 1941 – Adolf Althoff and his wife, Maria, directed the well-known Althoff circus during World War II. The circus, which included ImageImage
2/n approximately 90 performers, traveled throughout Europe and spent the summer of 1941 near Darmstadt. At one particular show, Irene Danner, a young Jewish acrobat from Darmstadt, was among the visitors. She was a descendant of a German-Jewish circus family. Although Adolf knew Image
3/n that including a Jew in the circus was prohibited, he offered Irene a position, provided her with a pseudonym and false identity papers, and essentially disguised her Jewish identity for the duration of the war. During her time in the circus, Irene fell in love with another
4/n acrobat, Peter Storm-Bento. When she later became pregnant, Adolf and Maria ensured that she received adequate medical care. On March 20, 1942, deportations from Darmstadt began, followed by additional deportations in September 1942 and February 1943.

Photos: Irene Danner ImageImage
5/n Though Irene’s grandmother was deported, her mother, Alice, and her sister, Gerda, escaped to the safety of the Althoff circus. The Althoffs agreed to provide refuge for Alice and Gerda as well. Adolf and Maria were fully aware of the dangers associated with hiding Jews.
6/n They knew that the circus could be searched at any moment and that their employees could betray them. Fortunately, Adolf had contacts in nearly every city who usually warned him of pending searches. Despite a few close calls, Irene, Alice, and Gerda all survived the war. Image
7/n Adolf Althoff died in 1998 at the age of 85.

Adolf Althoff:
jfr.org/rescuer-storie…

Maria and Adolf Althoff Image

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Jul 25
Gerhard Kretschmar, baby victim of the T4 Nazi euthanasia program
Murdered #OTD July 25, 1939

1/n
On July 14, 1933, the Nazi government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases". People with disabilities were sterilised from this point on. Image
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2/n In the autumn of 1939, things changed dramatically: 'Operation T4' started. From now on, murder through euthanasia became commonplace.
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Jul 24
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The #Righteous during World War Two
Lorenzo Perrone
The mason who saved Primo Levi
1/n
Born in 1904 in Fossano, in the province of Cuneo, Lorenzo Perrone saved the life of the famous writer Primo Levi when the two men found themselves in Auschwitz. Image
2/n Levi, who lived in Turin, worked as a chemist specializing in paints and varnishes. In 1943, in the early days of the occupation of Italy by the Germans, he joined a group of partisans in his native Piedmont. Arrested during a raid by the Fascist Republican militia
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Jul 24
Janusz Korczak
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The man who set an example for educators

1/n
Born in Poland as Henryk Goldszmit, Korczak was a paediatrician, author of children’s books and pedagogue. During the Holocaust, he refused sanctuary multiple times in order to stay with the Image
2/n children of an orphanage he was director and founder of, Dom Sierot.
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Jul 22
How French notaries benefited from Jewish property in the Holocaust

1/n
After 10 September 1940 the Vichy government allowed the appointment of administrators to manage Jewish enterprises.
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Image
2/n the Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC), a French public sector financial institution. The economic ‘aryanization’ was gradual and had both French and German elements. The initial discriminatory ‘statute of the Jews’ was an initiative and decision of Vichy.
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Jul 20
The heroines of Ravensbrück

How four fearless young women who survived a Nazi death camp exposed the horrific experiments they were subjected to in coded letters using urine as invisible ink
🧵 1/n
However, the sordid details of the experiments were Image
Image
2/n broadcast to the world after the women sent coded letters to their families in which they described their horrific treatment in invisible ink concocted from their own urine. One of these heroines was a Polish woman called Krystyna Czyz whose hometown of Lublin was invaded by
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Karl Gebhardt Image
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16 JULY 1942: Paris

THE VEL D’HIVER ROUND UP STARTED
1/n
On 16 and 17 July 1942, a raid and mass arrest was carried out in Paris by French police. 13,152 Jewish men, women and children were detained. Most of the Image
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3/n The Vel d’Hiv round up was part of a series of raids in 1942 to arrest Jews across the country, under the codename ‘Operation Spring Wind’ (Operation Vent printanier). This operation focused on ‘foreign or stateless Jews’, meaning the French Jewish population were initially Image
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