D-Day– 6 June 1944, when Allied forces stormed into Hitler’s Fortress Europa in Normandy – is rightly celebrated for the valor of the American and British citizen soldiers who scaled the fearsome cliffs of Pointe-du-Hoc and other dug-in Wehrmacht concrete bunkers on Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno beaches. Most of us have seen… Read more »

Ilse Koch born Margarete Ilse Köhler 22 September 1906 was the wife of Karl Otto Koch,      commandant of the Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald (1937–1941) and Majdanek (1941–1943). She was one of the first prominent Nazi’s to be tried by the U.S military. After the trial received worldwide media attention, survivor accounts of her actions resulted in other authors describing her abuse of prisoners as… Read more »

  A nice introduction to the SS. The SS (Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler) was a number of things–Hitler’s body guard, law enforcement duties, concentration camp controllers, and soldiers (the Waffen-SS). This volume examines the work of the SS from 1939-1945. Early on, there was competition between the SA and the SS (to be devoted to Hitler,… Read more »

Schleifstein was born 1941, Josef (Janek) Szlajfsztajn to Israel and Esther Szlajfsztajn (born Shvitzman) in the Jewish ghetto outside Sandomierz, Poland during the German occupation. Schleifstein and his parents lived in the Sandomierz ghetto until it was evacuated in June 1942, after which they were moved to the Czestochowa Ghetto, where his parents were likely put to work in the Hasag factory . Schleifstein’s parents kept him… Read more »

Rochus Misch was the last survivor from Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. The former SS man had operated the telephones in the bunker and had proudly reminisced about his wartime duties for the “boss”. He worked as a bodyguard, a courier and a telephone operator.   He had called Hitler “a very normal man… he was no brute, he… Read more »

The Goebbels children were the five daughters and one son born to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda Goebbels. The children, born between 1932 and 1940, were murdered by their parents in Berlin on 1 May 1945, the day both parents committed suicide. Magda Goebbels had an older son, Harald Quandt,  from a previous… Read more »

Karl Brandt was Adolf Hitler’s personal physician. As such, Brandt  was very much part of Hitler’s inner circle . Brandt was involved in the euthanasia programme in Nazi Germany and in Occupied Europe. After World War II ended Brandt was arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity.   Karl Brandt was born on January 8th 1904 in… Read more »

Josef Dietrich, by-name “Sepp”, born May 28, 1892, Hawangen, died  April 21, 1966, Ludwigsburg, West Germany, German SS officer who commanded Adolf Hitler‘s (did you know) bodyguard and later led an SS Panzer Army in World War II. A butcher’s apprentice still an animal lover, Dietrich joined the German army in 1911 and rose to the rank of sergeant during World War I. An early acquaintance… Read more »

A man, a rabbi, lived in Philadelphia after the war, accused  Adolf Eichmann   of a personal murder of a seven-month baby. This rabbi, a former member of the Central Jewish Committee, whose identity was kept secret, had to report to Eichmann’s room. A room with huge dimensions was Eichmann’s office.. He was sitting behind a… Read more »

Salon Kitty was a high-class Berlin brothel used by the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), for espionage purposes during World War II. Created in the early 1930s, the salon was taken over by SS General Reinhard Heydrich  and his subordinate SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg    in 1939. The brothel was managed by Kitty Schmidt throughout its entire existence who was the original owner. The plan… Read more »