Posted on 07/06/2017 12:20:27 AM PDT by beaversmom
Swiss journalist Sacha Batthyany knew he belonged to an aristocratic family, centered around his respected aunt. He didn’t know about the murderous ball held in 1945, that led to a personal quest, threats from relatives and a book
One morning in April 2007 journalist Sacha Batthyany was approached by an elderly colleague at the Swiss daily where they both worked at the time. The colleague waved a newspaper clipping in front of him. It was an investigative report entitled, “The Hostess from Hell,” published by a German daily.
Glancing at the headline, Batthyany didn’t understand why he was being shown this article, but then he looked at the picture of the hostess and recognized it immediately. It was Margit, his father’s aunt —someone to whom the family demonstrated the utmost respect and also around whom they tended to tread carefully. So he started to read the piece.
In March 1945, it said, just before the end of World War II, Margit held a large party in the town of Rechnitz on the Austrian-Hungarian border to fete her Nazi friends. She, the daughter and heiress of European baron and tycoon Heinrich Thyssen, and her friends drank and danced the night away.
At the height of the evening, just for fun, 12 of the guests boarded trucks or walked to a nearby field, where 180 Jewish slave laborers who had been building fortifications were assembled. They had already been forced to dig a large pit, strip, and get down on their knees. The guests took turns shooting them to death before returning to the party. The organizer of this operation was Margit’s lover Hans Joachim Oldenberg. Margit’s husband, Count Ivan Batthyany, Sacha’s grandfather’s brother, was also at the party.
It was the first time that Batthyany, then 34, had heard about this...
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
These days she’s probably The Hostess in Hell.
[Rechnitz]
I had to look it up. 133 km south of Vienna by toll-roads.
If my math is correct, almost 82.5 miles.
March 1945. The victims had nearly survived the war. 180 human beings, shot for amusement.
That was an oddly fascinating article. I cannot imagine discovering something so horrible in my family’s history. Devastating.
I’ll bet the man’s book is a good read. I’m glad he plowed ahead and wrote it, given the threats he faced. Brave man.
Another article from 2007 about the woman:
The killer countess: The dark past of Baron Heinrich Thyssen’s daughter
She was born into one of Europe’s most powerful dynasties. And involved in a wartime atrocity so shocking that it remains shrouded in secrecy to this day. David Litchfield investigates the dark past of Baron Heinrich Thyssen’s daughter Margit
Compartmentalizations and willful ignorance... The keys to Europe”s edistence
Truly shocking. I have the impression that most of those people faced no consequences, in this world, and went on without remorse.
Six hundred Jews, assigned to strengthen the Rechnitz defences, were housed in the cellars of the castle, living in appalling conditions. Many were arbitrarily beaten and shot, particularly by Podezin, while local people reported the countess derived obvious sadistic pleasure from observing these barbaric acts: "She always stood right at the front when anything like that was going on," said one witness.
I really can’t believe that. Wow. What a way for that guy to find out, too.
#6 for later
I’m sure you are right, unfortunately. But sadly for them, they went on to face the justice after their deaths that they were able to escape on this earth. What a tragic waste of life.
What is remarkable about Margit's complicity in the Rechnitz massacre, is the fact that Germany, despite claims to the contrary, still suffers from a selective memory: only publishing carefully edited versions of the history of the Thyssens, which avoid reference to the family's anti-Semitism.
One of his ancestors was a psychopath. Not much he can do about that.
She sounds familiar but then “what difference at this point does it make?”
What difference does any history, micro or macro, make? There’s nothing that can be done about any of it, but I think this kind of savagery needs to be acknowledged. It seems that people in Europe, to this day, are happy to forget about it and try to cover it up if anyone tries to find the truth. It’s owed to the victims, even if their names will never be known, to remember how they died.
May she spit-roast til Judgement Say
Woe to those who would persecute the seed of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
That said, I’m a Gentile believer with a grafted-on-branch kind of attitude lol.
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