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Through the Looking-Glass
@ramonfliek.bsky.social
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"Let the WARNING ride forth once more: Tyranny is at our door”

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December 24, 1944: The Bande massacre. A total of 34 men between the ages of 17 and 32 were executed by the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst near Bande, Belgium in retaliation for the killing of three German soldiers.

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Photo: Father Musty in front of the remains of the 34 civilians.
December 24, 2025 at 9:08 PM
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December 23, 1925: Italy's parliament, dominated by the Fascist Party, passed a Law, declaring that the decisions of Benito Mussolini and his government were not subject to legislative review, and that Mussolini could only be overruled by order of the King.

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December 23, 1925: Italy's parliament, dominated by the Fascist Party, passed Law No. 2263, "Decree on powers of the head of government", declaring that the decisions of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and his government were not subject to legislative review, and that Mussolini — whose title was changed from "Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri" ("President of the Council of Ministers") to "Capo del Governo" ("Head of the Government") — could only be overruled by order of the King, Victor Emmanuel III. Photo: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Venice during Hitler's first visit to Italy 1934
December 23, 2025 at 4:19 PM
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December 22, 1942: 11 members of the "Rote Kapelle” were executed at #Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, Nazi Germany. 5 were hanged (from meat hooks by piano wire, a method designed to prolong their suffering) and 6 were beheaded by guillotine.

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from 7:00 p.m. to 7:20 pm, the following German resistance members were hanged every four minutes (from meat hooks by piano wire, a method designed to prolong their suffering): Rudolf von Scheliha (45) Harro Schulze-Boysen (33) Arvid Harnack (41) Kurt Schumacher (37) John Graudenz (58) From 20:18 to 20:33 o'clock, every three minutes the following resistance members were beheaded: Horst Heilmann (19) Hans Coppi (26) Kurt Schulze (48) Ilse Stöbe (31) Libertas Schulze-Boysen (29) Elisabeth Schumacher (38) They were all members of a Berlin-based anti-fascist (Antifa) resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) by the Abwehr (German military-intelligence service) and Gestapo. The Rote Kapelle included groups of friends (centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen, Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others) who held discussions. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance workers to escape the regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. Although the monitoring of the radios' transmissions by the Funkabwehr (German radio counterintelligence organisation) would eventually lead to the arrest of the resistance members, the sophisticated use of the technology enabled the Rote Kapelle to behave as a network, with the ability to achieve tactical surprise and deliver high-quality intelligence, including the warning of Operation Barbarossa. Photo: Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen in 1935.
December 23, 2025 at 1:03 AM
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December 21, 1941: Romanian and German units began murdering the inmates of the Bogdanovka concentration camp. By the end of the year over 40,000 Jews would be killed.

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“It happened, therefore it can happen again. it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi).
In December 1941, a few cases of typhus, which is a disease spread by lice and fleas, broke out in the Bogdanovka concentration camp. A decision was made by the German adviser to the Romanian administration of the district, and the Romanian District Commissioner to murder all the inmates. The Aktion began on 21 December, and was carried out by Romanian soldiers, gendarmes, Ukrainian police, civilians from Golta, and local ethnic Germans under the commander of the Ukrainian regular police, Kazachievici. Thousands of disabled and ill inmates were forced into two locked stables, which were doused with kerosene and set ablaze, burning alive all those inside. Other inmates were led in groups to a ravine in a nearby forest and shot in their necks. The remaining Jews dug pits with their bare hands in the bitter cold, and packed them with frozen corpses. Thousands of Jews froze to death. A break was made for Christmas, but the killing resumed on 28 December. By 31 December, over 40,000 Jews had been killed. Overall, at least 40,000-48,000, and perhaps as many as 54,000, Jews were killed in the Bogdanovka concentration camp. A large majority of the Jews who were killed were originally from Transnistria, but 7,000 or more were from Bessarabia. Perhaps only 50 Jews who burned the bodies of the massacred Jews survived. Photo: Bogdanovka massacre site in today’s Ukraine, under Romanian control during the Holocaust.
December 21, 2025 at 5:59 PM
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December 20, 1924: Adolf Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners, after having served 13 months of a five-year prison sentence. He returned to his small Munich apartment where his friends threw him a party.

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In 1923, Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazi Party used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922 by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of Staatskommissar (State Commissioner) Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler. On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr's speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. Retiring to a back room, Hitler, with his pistol drawn, demanded and subsequently received the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow. Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the Army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler. The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them. In the failed coup, 16 Nazi Party members and four police officers were killed. Photo: Adolf Hitler in front of the Bayertor gate across the Lech river after his release from Landsberg fortress prison.
December 21, 2025 at 12:21 AM
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December 19, 1938: Herschel Grynszpan appeared before a magistrate in Paris and explained why he shot Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan said he did not intend to kill vom Rath but only wanted to shoot him as a protest against the Nazi treatment of Jews.

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Herschel Feibel Grynszpan was a Polish-Jewish expatriate born and raised in Weimar Germany who shot and killed the Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on 7 November 1938 in Paris. The Nazis used this assassination as a pretext to launch Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass", the pogrom of 9–10 November 1938. Grynszpan was seized by the Gestapo after the Fall of France and brought to Germany; his further fate remains unknown. It is generally assumed that Grynszpan did not survive World War II, and he was declared dead in absentia by the West German government in 1960. Photo: Herschel Grynszpan at his arrest.
December 20, 2025 at 12:10 AM
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December 18, 1943: German SS soldiers from the "4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division" carried out the Drakeia massacre in Greece, executing 118 men as part of so-called anti-partisan reprisals.

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photo: German SS soldiers from the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division in front of buildings set ablaze in Distomo, 1944.
December 19, 2025 at 1:54 AM
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December 17, 1933: Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, the leader of the Reich Church, ordered that the 700,000 youth, who had been part of the church's Evangelical Youth Movement, be placed under the control of the Hitler Youth and its leader, Baldur von Schirach.

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Ludwig Müller remained committed to Nazism to the end. He died of suicide in Berlin in 1945, soon after the Nazi defeat. Schirach was one of the major Nazis put on trial at Nuremberg by the International Military Tribunal. At the trial, Schirach was one of only a few defendants (along with Albert Speer and Hans Frank) to denounce Hitler. Schirach's strategy was very different from other defendants such as Göring, who didn't want any of the defendants to say anything against Hitler. Like Speer, Schirach rejected legal responsibility for the Holocaust. Schirach admitted to being a former anti-Semite, but attributed these views to his reading of the American Henry Ford's The International Jew: "I read it and became anti-Semitic." He was also influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Adolf Bartels, who was Schirach's private tutor. One of the biggest problems for the prosecution was lack of evidence. The trial was taking place so soon after the war that comprehensive evidence had not yet been assembled. The inexperienced prosecutor Dodd was not able to penetrate Schirach's defence strategy. The Soviet prosecution also had problems with translation, and a witness statement of a massacre by the Hitler Youth in Lviv in 1941 that was submitted too late. Schirach was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau Prison, Berlin. Photo: Baldur von Schirach (center) with Adolf Hitler visiting a youth hostel in Struberberg.
December 18, 2025 at 1:46 AM
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December 16, 1943: Elfriede Scholz, sister of Erich Remarque (the German-born author of All Quiet on the Western Front’'), was beheaded after being convicted in the German "People's Court" of "undermining the war effort" and by failing to denounce her famous brother.

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After two women reported to the Nazi regime that they overheard Elfriede as she was scolding the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler, she was arrested in Dresden on August 18, 1943, and imprisoned in the prison in Moabit, Berlin. She was indicted by the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) on October 26, 1943, on charges of Wehrkraftzersetzung (undermining the war effort), specifically by "continuing and publicly undermining the military strength of the German people and aiding and abetting the enemy". On October 29, Elfriede was sentenced to death by the court's presiding judge Roland Freisler, who declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt – Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – You, however, will not escape us.") She was directed for execution to Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, but authorities unexpectedly cancelled the execution, because the execution paper was burnt during an Allied air raid, and after a week in the Plötzensee Prison she was directed to the Barnimstrasse women's prison, then a month later she was directed back to Plötzensee and guillotined on December 16, 1943. Her body was handed over to Center for Anatomy of the Charité for medical experiments, while authorities told Elfriede's sister, Erna, that Elfriede's body was properly buried and demanded that the sister pay the expenses of the execution procedures. Erich Maria Remarque, who had resided in the United States during the Nazi reign, only learned about the execution of his sister in 1946. He hired a lawyer, Robert Kempner, to find and charge those guilty of his sister's death, but the case was dismissed by the Berlin Court of Appeal in 1970, with Remarque dying shortly afterwards. Erich Maria Remarque dedicated the novel Spark of Life (1952) to his sister Elfriede Scholz. Photo: Elfriede Maria Remark (Scholz) ca. 1920
December 17, 2025 at 12:05 AM
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December 15, 1943: The first war crimes trial of World War II began at Kharkov in the Soviet Union, 3 German officers and a Russian collaborator were tried for "crimes and atrocities”. Mikhail Petrovich Bulanov, Hans Ritz, Reinhard Retzlaff, and Wilhelm Langheld.

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The first war crimes trial of World War II began at Kharkov in the Soviet Union, when three German officers and a Russian collaborator were tried for "crimes and atrocities [that are] ... links in a long chain of crimes which have been, and are still being, committed by the German invaders on the direct instructions of the German Government and of the Supreme Command of the German Army." The four men (Abwehr Captain Wilhelm Langheld, SS Lieutenant Hans Ritz, Corporal Reinhard Retzlaff of the Secret Field Police, and Mikhail Bulanov of Kharkov) would be found guilty on December 18 and hanged the next morning, in public, in front of tens of thousands of spectators at Kharkov's main square. Photo: The defendants in the Karkov Trial. From left to right: Mikhail Petrovich Bulanov, Hans Ritz, Reinhard Retzlaff, and Wilhelm Langheld.
December 16, 2025 at 3:03 AM
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December 14, 1942: Sarita Carry (Rita) Mullem dies in a hospital in Amsterdam. Rita was born in Hamburg and in March 1942 she was forced to leave her home and business and move to Amsterdam. On December 12 she attempted to take her life. She passed away on the 14th.

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Rita was born in Hamburg Germany on October 3rd 1911. By 1938 Rita has a thriving dog grooming business. In March 1942 she was forced to leave her home and business and move to Amsterdam where she tried to restart her business. A police report of December 12 1942 stated that "Jew" Sarita Mullem had attempted to take her life by laying down in her bathtub and running hot water over herself. Rita was taken to a hospital unconscious and with burn wounds. She passed away on the 14th. Rita was not the only Jewish person that took her own life that month in Amsterdam out of fear for the Nazis. For many years after the war people did not speak of those who had taken their own lives, sometimes whole families, out of fear for the Nazis. We now finally recognize all those as victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi terror. Photo: Jewish quarter at Waterlooplein Amsterdam 1943.
December 14, 2025 at 11:53 PM
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December 13, 1945: 11 former SS camp personnel (8 men and 3 women) that were sentenced to death in the first Belsen trial were executed by hanging at Hamelin Prison.

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Johanna Bormann, 52, German SS concentration camp guard (hanged for crimes against humanity); Irma Grese, 22, German SS concentration camp guard (hanged for crimes against humanity); Fritz Klein, 57, German Nazi physician (hanged for crimes against humanity); Josef Kramer, 39, German Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (hanged for crimes against humanity); Elisabeth Volkenrath, 26, German concentration camp supervisor (hanged for crimes against humanity) Photo: Aufseherin Irma Grese (No.9) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer (No.1) at the trial. Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was for the deaths of thousands of people. Irma Ilse Ida Grese was a Nazi concentration camp Helferin at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen. She has been widely known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz" and the "Beast of Belsen" for the atrocities she committed in Birkenau. Johanna Bormann, 52, German SS concentration camp guard (hanged for crimes against humanity); Irma Grese, 22, German SS concentration camp guard (hanged for crimes against humanity); Fritz Klein, 57, German Nazi physician (hanged for crimes against humanity); Josef Kramer, 39, German Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (hanged for crimes against humanity); Elisabeth Volkenrath, 26, German concentration camp supervisor (hanged for crimes against humanity) Photo: Aufseherin Irma Grese (No.9) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer (No.1) at the trial. Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was for the deaths of thousands of people. Irma Ilse Ida Grese was a Nazi concentration camp Helferin at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen. She has been widely known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz" and the "Beast of Belsen" for the atrocities she committed in Birkenau.
December 14, 2025 at 12:17 AM
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December 12, 1942: The 42th transport left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. After this there was a pause in the deportations due to the allocation of German trains for soldiers returning home from the frontlines to celebrate Christmas. No one from this transport would survive.
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The train comprised 10 cars and carried 757 deportees, including 95 children. The youngest was a boy born on October 21, 1942. Based on the transport list of the Liro (the local branch of the aryanized Lippmann, Rosenthal and Co. bank in Westerbork that robbed Jews of their last possessions before they were deported) there was an unusual large number of 200 Häftlinge (convicts) on this transport. Convicts were Jews who for various reasons were separated from the regular deportees. They may have been caught hiding, or trying to escape, or they may have been suspected of participation in resistance activities. No one from this transport would survive. One of the "Häftlinge" was Rita Barmé. Rita was born in Küllenhahn, Germany in 1923 to a wealthy family. When the Nazis came to power they were forced to leave everything behind a move to the Netherlands. During the early years of the war Rita and her brother Richard joined the resistance. Richard was able to go to England traveling via Switzerland and Spain. He joined the Special Operations Executive (secret service) and was send back to the Netherlands as a spy. He was arrested by the Germans when they traced his radio signal to England and was executed, together with 263 other resistance members, a month before the end of the war as a reprisal for the attack on SS-Obergruppenführer Hanns Albin Rauter. Rita was a courier and helped other jewish families hide or flee the country. On Nov 25, 1942 Rita was escorting a Jewish family by train to the Swiss border when she was arrested by the Nazis after she had been betrayed. She was transferred to the Orange Hotel, a notorious prison and on to Westerbork. She arrived at Westerbork on Dec 12 and was immediately send onto the transport to Auschwitz, were she was murdered on arrival. Rita's parents, who were in hiding, were betrayed in 1943 and were transported to #Theresiënstadt via Westerbork. They were able to survive. Photo: Rita Barmé
December 13, 2025 at 1:05 AM
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December 11, 1941: Germany declared war on the United States. Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag announcing the declaration of war.

Italy also declared war on the United States.

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Hitler giving a speech to the Reichstag announcing the declaration of war against the USA.
December 11, 2025 at 10:49 PM
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December 10, 1939: The 1939 Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm. The Peace Prize was not awarded.
Erik Brandt, a Swedish Social Democratic politician, had mockingly nominated Adolf Hitler for the Peace prize, he withdrew his nomination after a short time.

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Photo: Ernest Orlando Lawrence giving Nobel Prize talk 1939 December 10, 1939: The 1939 Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm. The Peace Prize was not awarded. The recipients were Ernest Lawrence of the United States for Physics, Adolf Butenandt (Germany) and Leopold Ružička (Switzerland) for Chemistry, Gerhard Domagk (Germany) for Physiology or Medicine and Frans Eemil Sillanpää of Finland for Literature. Nazi Germany forced Butenandt and Domagk to refuse their awards at the time, but they accepted them after the war. Lawrence did not travel to Europe because of the war but accepted his prize on February 29, 1940 at the University of California, Berkeley. Erik Brandt, a Swedish Social Democratic politician, had mockingly nominated Adolf Hitler for the Peace prize. Brandt nominated Adolf Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize on the eve of World War II. The nomination was quickly withdrawn as Brandt, who was a fierce antifascist, never intended for it to be a serious proposal and instead saw it only as a "satiric criticism" on another concurrent nomination, namely that of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Brandt firmly opposed Nazi Germany's policies during World War II.
December 10, 2025 at 11:07 PM
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December 9, 1946: The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial opened with 23 defendants, only 16 of them would be convicted. 9 were convicted to prison sentences but all were released by 1955.
7 were sentenced to death.

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Oberheuser during sentencing at The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. 9 were convicted to prison sentences of 10 year to Life in prison but all were released by 1955 despite the fact that most of them had participated in gruesome medical experiments. For instance: Herta Oberheuser, a German Nazi physician who performed medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. she was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the Doctors' Trial, but served only five years of her sentence. A survivor of Ravensbrück called Oberheuser "a beast masquerading as a human". Oberheuser and Karl Gebhardt were posted to Ravensbrück in 1942 in order to conduct experiments on its prisoners. They conducted gruesome medical experiments, without anaesthetic, such as infecting wounds with rusty nails, broken shards of glass, dirt or sawdust; treating purposely infected wounds with sulphonamide and removing or amputating bone, muscle, and nerve tissue to study regeneration. The prisoners in these experiments were cruelly referred to not as human beings but as "guinea pigs" or "rabbits". 7 were convicted to death: SS-Gruppenführer Karl Brandt (Personal physician to Adolf Hitler and organizer of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program) SS-Gruppenführer Karl Gebhardt (personal physician to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler and physician at concentration camps #Ravensbrück and #Auschwitz) SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Brandt (Personal Administrative Officer to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and coordination of the experiments at the camps) SS-Oberführer Joachim Mrugowsky (physician at #Sachsenhausen concentration camp) SS-Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers (Reich Manager of the Ahnenerbe Society and coordination medical experiments at #Dachau and #Natzweiler) SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack (prominent organizer of the Aktion T4 (Child) euthanasia program) SS-Hauptsturmführer Waldemar Hoven (physician at #Buchenwald concentration camp and prominent organizer of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program) The Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, Nazi doctors and officials accused of performing heinous medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. SS General Dr. Karl Brandt is at lower left. Karl Gebhardt front row middle with glasses. Herta Oberheuser served only 5 years, a German Nazi physician who performed medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. she was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the Doctors' Trial, but served only five years of her sentence. A survivor of Ravensbrück called Oberheuser "a beast masquerading as a human". Oberheuser and Karl Gebhardt were posted to Ravensbrück in 1942 in order to conduct experiments on its prisoners. They conducted gruesome medical experiments, without anaesthetic, such as infecting wounds with rusty nails, broken shards of glass, dirt or sawdust; treating purposely infected wounds with sulphonamide and removing or amputating bone, muscle, and nerve tissue to study regeneration. The prisoners in these experiments were cruelly referred to not as human beings but as "guinea pigs" or "rabbits". 7 were convicted to death: SS-Gruppenführer Karl Brandt (Personal physician to Adolf Hitler and organizer of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program) SS-Gruppenführer Karl Gebhardt (personal physician to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler and physician at concentration camps #Ravensbrück and #Auschwitz) SS-Standartenführer Rudolf Brandt (Personal Administrative Officer to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and coordination of the experiments at the camps) SS-Oberführer Joachim Mrugowsky (physician at #Sachsenhausen concentration camp) SS-Standartenführer Wolfram Sievers (Reich Manager of the Ahnenerbe Society and coordination medical experiments at #Dachau and #Natzweiler) SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack (prominent organizer of the Aktion T4 (Child) euthanasia program) SS-Hauptsturmführer Waldemar Hoven (physician at #Buchenwald concentration camp and prominent organizer of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program)
December 10, 2025 at 12:58 AM
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December 8, 1942: The 41th transport left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. The train carried 927 deportees of which 131 were children. Most of the deportees were send to the gas chambers on arrival and within 6 months all but a few men were murdered. Only two people survived.

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Photo: A transport leaving concentration camp Westerbork
December 9, 2025 at 12:39 AM
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December 7, 1941: Hitler issued the Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog") decree, targeting political dissidents for disappearances.

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“It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).
Political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany were imprisoned, executed, or made to disappear into the "night and fog" of the Reich. The family and the population remained uncertain as to the fate or whereabouts of the alleged offender against the Nazi occupation power. Victims who disappeared in these clandestine actions were often never heard from again. Photo: SS officers at a construction site in the Hinzert political prisoners concentration camp
December 7, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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December 6, 1938: Von Ribbentrop and Georges Bonnet signed a treaty by which Germany and France guaranteed the inviolability of one another's borders and agreed to engage in mutual consultation to resolve all disputes peacefully. Germany invaded France 10 May 1940.

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Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Georges Bonnet signed a treaty in Paris by which Germany and France guaranteed the inviolability of one another's borders and agreed to engage in mutual consultation to resolve all disputes peacefully. Germany invaded France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourger 10 May 1940. Ribbentrop was convicted on four counts at the Nuremberg trials.: crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the judgment, Ribbentrop was actively involved in planning the Anschluss, as well as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was also deeply involved in the "final solution"; as early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east. He supported the lynching of Allied airmen shot down over Germany, and helped to cover up the 1945 murder of Major-General Gustave Mesny, a French officer being held as a prisoner-of-war. He was held directly responsible for atrocities which took place in Denmark and Vichy France Even in prison, Ribbentrop remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'do this!', I would still do it." On 16 October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged. Photo: Joachim von Ribbentrop (l) and Georges Bonnet (r) signed the treaty in Paris, 1938.
December 6, 2025 at 7:41 PM
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December 5, 1924: Benito Mussolini introduced a bill enforcing widespread press censorship.

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Photo: Benito Mussolini goes for a drive with his pet lion cub, named Ras, in 1924
December 5, 2025 at 10:58 PM
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December 4, 1942: On this Friday, the first day of Hanukah, the Jewish feast of lights, the 40th mass transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz. Nobody from this transport would survive.

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r. They were forced to work in one of the camps in Upper Silesia. Nobody from this transport would survive.
December 5, 2025 at 2:45 AM
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December 3, 1938: Nazi Germany had a nationwide "day of solidarity" collecting street donations for the Winterhilfswerk fund. Jews were ordered to stay off the streets. According to the order by Heinrich Himmler, they had "no share in the solidarity of the German nation."

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Photo: Magda Goebbels collects donations for the Winter Relief with a collecting box on the ‘Day of National Solidarity’ on 3 December 1938. Here she takes a donation from Adolf Hitler. A 1938 Nazi propaganda leaflet claimed that the Winterhilfswerk had collected nearly a billion Reichsmarks from 1933 to 1937 as well as half a billion in goods and two million kilograms of coal. However, in 1937 a group of exiled German economists writing under the pseudonym 'Germanicus' produced figures comparing the Winterhilfswerk of 1933 with the pre-existing Reich Winter Help of 1931. The figures showed that the Winterhilfswerk provided slightly more coal and potatoes to the needy, but dramatically less bread and meat. They also pointed out that the Reich Winter Help was supplemented by the relief efforts of the states and private organizations, but this help had ceased under the Nazis. American diplomat William Russell's eyewitness book Berlin Embassy pointed out that no account was ever made of where the huge amounts raised by Winterhilfswerk were spent. His contention was not only that the program was a sham and that all the proceeds were used to produce armaments.
December 3, 2025 at 9:41 PM
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December 2, 1938: The first 200 Jewish children of the Kindertransport program arrived in England.

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The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organized rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–39 during the nine months prior to the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The program was supported, publicized, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfill. The British government placed no numerical limit on the program; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the program by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The term "Kindertransport" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Chateau de La Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organized program of the United Kingdom. Photo: Young refugees of the first Kindertransport after their arrival at Harwich, Essex, in the early morning of 2 December 1938.
December 2, 2025 at 8:51 PM
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December 1, 1936: Nazi Germany passed several new laws. Membership in the Hitler Youth was made mandatory and the death penalty was introduced for those who hoarded their wealth abroad.

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Photo: Accompanied by their parents, ten-year-olds are forcibly enrolled into the Hitler Youth.
December 2, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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November 30, 1942: The 39th mass transport from the Netherlands left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. Mostly former employees of the Hollandia-Kattenburg company and their families. There were 104 children on this transport. Only 9 men survived.

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9 of the 170 men taken at Cosel for slave labor survived the war: - Siegfried Parsser survived his wife, Rachel Lea Parsser-Duijts, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. - Samuel Jas survived, his mother and one of his sisters were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. His sister was married to Jacob de Boers who also survived. - Jacob de Boers survived, his wife, Josephine de Boers-Jas, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz together with her mother and mother in-law. - Jacob Nunes Vas survived, his wife, Rebecca, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. - Maurits Pim Pimentel survived, his parents survived Theresiënstadt. - Hessel Goldberg survived, his parents and brother would die in Sobibor and another brother in Auschwitz. - Erwin Hirschberg survived, his father died in Camp Blechhammer. - Mozes Engelsman survived, his mother and two younger bothers and sister were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. His father died in Auschwitz a year later. - Alexander Pais survived, his little sister Rachel and his parents Israël and Schoontje were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. his brother Abraham died in Gross-Rosen and 4 others siblings would all end up in Auschwitz and perish. Alexander's sister Elisabeth, her husband Elias Abraham and 9 y/o son Gerrit committed suicide together with Elias's brother Pinas out of fear of deportation. Photo: Train bound for Auschwitz at Camp Westerbork.
November 30, 2025 at 9:01 PM