Free Republic

Eighty years after Auschwitz was liberated from the Nazis, Jews who make a pilgrimage there can eat kosher food. A mile from the concentration camp, visitors will be able to buy packaged, shelf-stable kosher meals for the first time at the Auschwitz Jewish Center — now a museum and the only surviving synagogue in Oświęcim, the Polish town renamed Auschwitz by the Nazis. The kosher concession will open in time for Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, beginning on the night of April 23. The day is marked in Poland with the March of the Living, in which thousands of...

Holocaust survivor Marian Turski reflects on the dangers of bystanding in this speech excerpt. This is an excerpt from the speech by Holocaust survivor Marian Turski, which he gave at the memorial ceremony on 27 January 2020 in Auschwitz. I shall not be telling you about my sufferings, about my two death marches, about how I experienced the end of the war, when I weighed just 32 kilos, verging on the edge of exhaustion and life itself. I shall not be telling you about the very worst experience, the tragedy of being separated from my nearest loved ones and sensing...

(JTA) — Days after stoking controversy by delivering what some believed to be a Nazi salute and making Holocaust jokes, Elon Musk appeared at a campaign rally for a far-right German political party to tell supporters to be proud of their heritage. Musk’s appearance Saturday at the rally for Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, was unadvertised and came by video. It was the second time in as many weeks that the world’s richest man and close ally of new U.S. President Donald Trump has appeared alongside Alice Weidel, the party’s candidate for chancellor in Germany’s Feb. 23 election. During...

Survivors of Auschwitz leave the concentration camp at the end of World War II in February 1945. Above them is the German slogan "Arbeit macht frei," which translates to "Work sets you free."

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has assured that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have safe passage and will not face arrest if he attends the 80th-anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz later this month, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. The assurance follows a call by Polish President Andrzej Duda for the government to guarantee Netanyahu's security. In a letter obtained by Bloomberg News, Duda cited the "absolutely exceptional circumstances" surrounding the event. Netanyahu is currently under an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Gaza. “Anyone who wishes to attend the Auschwitz...

Polish officials said they will arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in compliance with a warrant from the International Criminal Court if he attends the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. "We are obliged to respect the provisions of the International Criminal Court," Władysław Bartoszewski, Poland’s deputy foreign minister, told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Friday. Dozens of world leaders are expected to attend the anniversary event on January 27, which will honor the estimated 1 million Jews who died in the Nazi genocide. Netanyahu is not due to attend the ceremony, according to Rzeczpospolita. The ICC issued an arrest...

A Holocaust survivor has denounced Vice President Kamala Harris in a Trump campaign video for endorsing claims that former President Donald Trump is a “fascist” akin to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. “Adolf Hitler invaded Poland when I was 9 years old. He murdered my parents and most of my family,” 94-year-old Jerry Wartski says in the clip exclusively obtained by The Post and set to be released Friday. “I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes,” adds Wartski, rolling up his shirtsleeves to reveal his Auschwitz prisoner number. “For her to accuse President Trump...

Auschwitz survivor Jerry Warstki, 94, denounces Kamala Harris in a new Trump campaign video for endorsing claims that former president is a “fascist” akin to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. “I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes,” he says.

A 94-year-old survivor of Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler’s prison camp at Auschwitz denounced Vice President Kamala Harris in a campaign ad for Trump released Friday for calling former President Donald Trump a fascist akin to Hitler. Jerry Wartski, showing his prisoner number tattooed on his arm, says in the ad: Adolf Hitler invaded Poland when I was nine years old. He murdered my parents and most of our family. I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes. For her to accuse President Trump of being like Hitler is the worst thing I ever heard...

The Population Council, the eugenics organization credited with bringing the abortion pill (RU-486) to the United States, turns 65 this month — but it is nothing to celebrate. In 1952, John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council and served as the organization’s first president. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Population Council, Inc., was incorporated following Rockefeller’s Conference on Population Problems, “…to stimulate, encourage, promote, conduct and support significant activities in the broad field of population.” Like its founder, the Population Council’s other members were concerned about population issues — and, like other population organizations such as Planned Parenthood,...

As the sun set on a shattered Europe in the aftermath of the First World War, the birth pangs of a nightmarish reality were felt across Germany. From these turbulent times emerged the National Socialist German Workers' Party, colloquially known as the Nazis. Rising to full power in 1933 under the malevolent leadership of Adolf Hitler and his cadre of ruthless lieutenants like Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany erected an edifice of tyranny, intolerance, and unparalleled cruelty. Picture this: the year is 1939, and you are a resident of Berlin. Kristallnacht, the infamous "Night of Broken Glass," occurred...

April 16, 1947, was the hanging-date of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. Not to be confused with the Rudolf Hess, the Nazi party defector held by the British in lonely confinement in Spandau until 1987, Höss was true to the swastika from beginning to end. A World War I survivor, our guy joined the right-wing Freikorps paramilitaries and scored NSDAP party number no. 3240 in 1922 — soon thereafter proving a willingness to shed blood for the cause by murdering a teacher suspected of betraying to the French the Nazi martyr figure Albert Leo Schlageter. Höss served only a year in...

Biography of Mengele from family background and childhood, education, eventual affiliation with Nazi Party, through his career on the Eastern Front and crimes at Auschwitz, and flight, aliases, up to his death.

Elon Musk went on a private tour of Auschwitz ahead of a day of engagement with European Jewish leaders. A delegation from the European Jewish Association conference in Krakow, where Musk is a featured speaker, is scheduled to visit the Nazi concentration camp on Tuesday. But the tech magnate — who has received criticism for allowing and abetting antisemitism on X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform he owns — instead visited on Monday “due to schedule concerns,” conference participants were told. Musk traveled with Ben Shapiro, the Jewish right-wing pundit; EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who is affiliated with...

Red Cross in 1944: “We found no trace of installations for exterminating civilian prisoners in Auschwitz” 👇 Red Cross in 2023: “We found no evidence of weapons or hostages being kept in hospitals in Gaza”

“Why would anyone want to go, of their own free will, to a hell on earth that every prisoner wanted to escape from? Witold Pilecki was an absolute exception, but the mission that he was to perform at Auschwitz was also exceptional.” Tadeusz Marek Płużański, historian, journalist, and author of the book Rotmistrz Pilecki i jego oprawcy (“Cavalry Captain Pilecki and His Tormentors”) spoke to Piotr Włoczyk for Sovereignty.pl. How common was it during World War II for people to actually try to get imprisoned at Auschwitz in September 1940? History does not record any other such case. Why would...

A mikveh is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion to achieve ritual purity in Judaism. The traditional rules regarding the construction of a mikveh are based on those specified in regulations laid down in the Torah and in classical rabbinical literature.The text describes how a mikveh must be connected to a natural spring or well of naturally occurring water, and thus can be supplied by rivers and lakes which have natural springs as their source. A cistern filled by rainwater is also permitted to act as a mikveh’s water supply, so long as the water is never...

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland was published by Harper in 2022. It is 376 pages and it includes twelve pages of black-and-white photographs and maps, as well as an index, end notes, and a bibliography.In The Escape Artist, Jonathan Freedland, a British journalist, tells the story of Rudolf Vrba (1924-2006), who, the book claims, was “the first Jew ever known to break out of Auschwitz and make his way to freedom – one of only four who pulled off that near-impossible feat.”The Escape Artist is one of the...

(Last Updated On: January 25, 2023) HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust Holocaust Remembrance Day – Each year on January 27th, the world remembers one of the most horrific events in modern history. This tragic event is known as the Holocaust. The holocaust occurred during WWII when Nazi Germany killed millions of innocent victims. The day is also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day. #HolocaustRemembranceDay Nazi Germany is one of the evilest regimes that ever existed. They persecuted and killed millions of people in just under four years. One group in particular...

“In December 1944,” begins Sim Kessel’s Holocaust memoir, “I was hanged at Auschwitz.” He was twenty-five years old and had been caught attempting to escape. Sim Kessel (called “Sam” in some accounts), a French Jew who boxed professionally, had been at Auschwitz for two years — a staggering period of time where the normal lifespan of a prisoner was at most three months — and had already escaped the gas chambers on two occasions. The first time, he was in the infirmary recuperating from a severe beating and torture at the hands of the SS (one of his fingers had...