Płaszów or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted for destruction by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Many prisoners died because of executions, forced labor, and the poor conditions in the camp. The camp was evacuated in January 1945, before the Red Army's liberation of the area on 20 January.
On 19 April 1943, members of the Belgian Resistance stopped a Holocaust train and freed a number of Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium, on the twentieth convoy from the camp. In the aftermath of the attack, a number of others were able to jump from the train too. In all, 233 people managed to escape, of whom 118 ultimately survived. The remainder were either killed during the escape or were recaptured soon afterwards. The attack was unusual as an attempt by the resistance to free Jewish deportees and marks the only mass breakout by deportees on a Holocaust train.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Rudolf Vrba was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. The report, distributed by George Mantello in Switzerland, is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a 2006 historical novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. The plot concerns a German boy named Bruno whose father is the commandant of Auschwitz and Bruno's friendship with a Jewish detainee named Shmuel.
Leo Bretholz was a Holocaust survivor who, in 1942, escaped from a train heading for Auschwitz. He has also written a book on his experiences, titled Leap into Darkness.
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is a German-British cellist, and a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz.
On three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust which helped the Jews escape some concentration camps.
The Mechelen transit camp, officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, also known as the Dossin barracks, was a detention and deportation camp established in a former army barracks at Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. It served as a point to gather Belgian Jews and Romani ahead of their deportation to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
Baron Jean Michel P.M.G. de Selys Longchamps DFC was a Belgian aristocrat and RAF fighter pilot during World War II. He is chiefly known for his single-handed attack on the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels in German-occupied Belgium.
This is a timeline of deportations of French Jews to Nazi extermination camps in German-occupied Europe during World War II. The overall total of Jews deported from France is a minimum of 75,721.
The FN Model 1905 or FN Model 1906 was a pistol manufactured by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal from 1906 to 1959.
The Holocaust in Belgium was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Out of about 66,000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.
This article describes all Stolpersteine that have been placed in Charleroi, Belgium. Stolpersteine is the German word for stumbling blocks placed all over Europe by German artist Gunter Demnig. They remember the fates of people who were murdered, deported, exiled or driven to suicide by the Nazis.
Paul Sobol was a Belgian survivor of the Holocaust who was active in Holocaust education in Belgium. He was widely known as one of the country's foremost "passeurs de mémoire" who spoke widely at schools. Born into a family of Polish-Jewish origin, Sobol spent several years in hiding with his family during the German occupation in Belgium before being denounced and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 31 July 1944 in the final convoy to leave the country. He was subsequently involved in the death marches to Gross-Rosen concentration camp and escaped on 25 April 1945 during a transfer to another camp. His parents and younger brother were killed during the same period.
The rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup was a Nazi raid and mass arrest of Jews in Lyon's Sainte-Catherine street by the Gestapo. The raid, ordered and personally overseen by Klaus Barbie, took place on 9 February 1943 at the Fédération des sociétés juives de France, then located at the number 12 of this street. To catch as many people as possible, the Nazis not only chose the day the Federation normally gave free medical treatment and food to poor Jewish refugees, but they also set up a trap by forcing arrested Federation employees to encourage further people to come to the 12 rue Sainte Catherine.
Henri Kichka was a Belgian writer and Holocaust survivor who was one of the leading figures in Holocaust education in Belgium. Kichka was the only member of his family to have survived the deportation of Belgian Jews to camps in Central and Eastern Europe. He began speaking on the importance of the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis in the 1980s and spoke widely on his experiences to school audience. In 2005, published his autobiography, Une adolescence perdue dans la nuit des camps with a preface by the French historian Serge Klarsfeld. He is the father of cartoonist Michel Kichka.
PUSH is an English-language opera in one act, with libretto and music by Howard Moody.
Sarah Goldberg was a Polish resistance fighter and human rights activist. Goldberg became part of a Soviet espionage group that operated in Europe in World War II that would later be identified by the Abwehr as the Red Orchestra.
