Explore

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 22, 2026, 1:08 AM

September 21, 1943: A transport departed #Westerbork to #Auschwitz carrying 979 deportees. After selection, 303 men and 288 women were led into the camp. 100 women were chosen for Block 10 (experiments). only 14 men and 44 women survived this transport.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

The transport reached Auschwitz on September 23, 1943, with 979 Jews - 60 children, 384 men and 394 women aged 50 and below, and 141 persons aged 51 and above. The deportees were required to remove their luggage from the train by themselves and were told that they would receive it later. Most of the survivors remember the first time they saw Jewish prisoners in “striped suits” and SS men with dogs clutching whips behind them.
After selection, 303 men and 288 women were led into the camp. The men were tattooed with the serial numbers 151852–152154, and the women received the numbers 62984–63271. The other deportees were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after reaching the camp.
One hundred of the women who had passed the selection process were chosen for Block 10 - the barracks at Auschwitz where experiments were conducted. Out of the 2,685 Jews who had been deported in this transport and in the transports that had set out from Westerbork to Auschwitz on August 24 and September 14, 1943, 244 women were assigned to this block. After being threatened with death, 240 of them agreed to undergo the surgical procedures and 110 survived the war. Theresia van Praag was selected for medical experiments and survived the war.
In their testimonies, the Dutch women survivors from this transport describe the humiliation that they felt as male prisoners shaved their body hair, given that their block was part of the men’s camp. Only married women were placed in this block. Theresia managed to see her husband from a distance but was not allowed to speak with him; about two months later, he died.
Of the 979 deportees in the transport that left Westerbork for Auschwitz on September 21, 1943, only 14 men and 44 women are known to have survived.
Photo: The Black Wall (execution wall), between Block 10 (left) and Block 11 (right) in Auschwitz.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 21, 2026, 4:39 AM

September 20, 1933: Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was summarily shot by several Nazi SA members while on a transport in-between prisons. He was convicted of manslaughter (the murder of Horst Wessel) and sentenced to six years and one month imprisonment.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

Höhler was convicted of manslaughter (the murder of Horst Wessel) and sentenced to six years and one month imprisonment at Wohlau Prison in Lower Silesia.
On 11 August 1933, Höhler was transferred to Berlin by the new Nazi administration for interrogation at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. On 20 September 1933, the RSHA stated that Höhler had been sent back to Lower Silesia, allegedly to be returned to prison. In reality, the transport had been rerouted under orders of SA-Gruppenführer Karl Ernst. Besides the three prison officers in charge of the transfer, also involved were two SS officers, Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels and Richard Fiedler, and three SA men, Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, Walter von Mohrenschildt [de], Willi Schmidt [de], and Willi Markus [de]. He was transferred from the police prison at Alexanderplatz on the basis of a Gestapo-signed delivery order. Near Potsdamer Platz, several more vehicles approached the prisoner van. The vehicle column drove towards Frankfurt an der Oder.
About 12 km from Frankfurt, the column stopped on the Berlin-Frankfurt Chaussee, Höhler was ordered to leave the transport and was led by a group of at least eight people away from the road to a nearby forest. There, Gruppenführer Ernst gave a short speech, in which he condemned Höhler to death as the murderer of Horst Wessel. Höhler was then shot by several of those present. The body was buried on the spot in a shallow grave; the remains were found in August 1934.
Photo: Mugshot of Höhler in 1930

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 20, 2026, 5:41 AM

September 19, 1936: Nazi authorities ordered all German churches to eliminate the word "Hallelujah" from prayers because it was "Hebrew and alien."

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, 1939

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 19, 2026, 12:34 AM

September 18, 1942: The 20th transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were 1004 men, women and children on board and after selection 829 people were send straight to the gas chambers. Only 2 people of this transport would survive the war.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

One of the survivors was Leendert Van Sister, his wife and two children were killed in the gas chambers on arrival at #Auschwitz. His parents would be murdered in #Sobibor in 1943. Leendert passed away in Amsterdam on March 08, 1996 at the age of 81.
Photo: Westerbork transit camp

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 18, 2026, 1:01 AM

September 17, 1941: Listening to foreign radio in the German Reich became punishable by death.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

“It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).

In the 1930s Joseph Goebbels had introduced the Volksempfänger (people’s receiver). Its purpose was to make radio reception technology affordable to the general public. Goebbels realized the great propaganda potential of this relatively new medium and thus considered the widespread availability of receivers highly important.
The Volksempfänger was designed to be produced as cheaply as possible and as a consequence they generally lacked shortwave bands and did not follow the practice, common at the time, of marking the approximate dial positions of major European stations on its tuning scale. Only German and (after the 1938 annexation) Austrian stations were marked, and cheaper models listed only arbitrary numbers.
Sensitivity to receive weak signals was limited, to reduce production costs further; so long as the set could receive Deutschlandsender and the local Reichssender (the German national station and local government station), it was considered sensitive enough. However, foreign stations could be received after dark with an external (home-made) antenna, particularly as stations, such as the BBC European service, increased their transmission power over the course of the war.
Listening to foreign stations became a criminal offense in Nazi Germany when the war began. In contrast, in some occupied territories, such as Poland, all radio listening by non-German citizens was outlawed (later in the war this prohibition was extended to most other occupied countries coupled with mass seizures of radio sets). Penalties ranged from fines and confiscation of radios to sentencing to a concentration camp and starting September 17 1941, capital punishment.
German family listening to a Volksempfänger.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 12:51 AM

September 16, 1945: Theresia Wagner, 17, waits alone on The Hague's Veenkade for her family. They were all taken in May 1944 by a Nazi raid on Sinti/Roma. Deported to #Auschwitz where she last saw any of them, she survived - the only one of her family who did.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

Theresia "Crasa" Wagner, a 17-year-old Sinti girl, has become a familiar sight along The Hague's Veenkade canal, walking back and forth as if searching for someone. Her neighbors have taken her in, and the reason for her wandering has become clear: she is waiting for her parents, brother, and four sisters, hoping they will return to the spot where the family agreed to reunite once the war ended. So far, she is the only one who has come back.

The Wagner family left Germany for the Netherlands in 1938, at a time when Sinti and Roma communities there, especially in The Hague, were generally well regarded — admired for their musical talent, so much so that Sinti and Roma musicians were even permitted membership in the Dutch Culture Chamber, an institution otherwise closed to Jews. That relative safety ended with an order from Heinrich Himmler in late 1942, setting in motion the persecution of Sinti and Roma across Germany and then the occupied territories.

In the Netherlands, this culminated in a coordinated raid on May 16, 1944. Starting at 4 a.m., Dutch police, acting on German orders, rounded up anyone deemed "gypsies" by appearance or way of life. The Wagners were seized from home, given no time to dress or pack, and told varying stories about medical checks, resettlement, or labor in Germany.

At Westerbork, the family realized the truth: watchtowers, barbed wire, and Jewish prisoners marked with stars. After degrading "medical" processing, 245 Roma and Sinti, including 110 children, were deported to Auschwitz on May 19. Theresia recalls arriving to music but immediate violence and corpses in view. She was separated from her mother and siblings, saw her father sent to Buchenwald, and was sent herself to Ravensbrück, reportedly under Dr. Mengele's orders, before ending up in Dachau, liberated in April.

Back in The Hague as promised, Theresia waits, fearing she is the sole survivor of her family.
Photo: Sinti and Roma camp in Haarlem, 1940

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 16, 2026, 3:27 AM

September 15, 1935: In Nuremberg, the Reichstag convened for a special session and passed the Nuremberg Laws. Marriage between Jews and Aryans was forbidden and three new classes of German citizenship were created that excluded Jews.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

The two Nuremberg Laws were unanimously passed by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans, and forbade the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. The wording in the Citizenship Law that a person must prove "by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich" meant that political opponents could also be stripped of their German citizenship. This law was effectively a means of stripping Jews, Roma, and other "undesirables" of their legal rights and their citizenship.
Over the coming years, an additional 13 supplementary laws were promulgated that further marginalized the Jewish community in Germany. For example, Jewish families were not permitted to submit claims for subsidies for large families and were forbidden to transact business with Aryans.
Photo: Members of the SA picketing in front of a Jewish place of business with placards saying "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, 1 April 1933

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 3:11 AM

September 14, 1944: A transport left #Westerbork to #Auschwitz-Birkenau, The train arrived on September 16. After selection 626 people, including 4-year old Elly Frank, were murdered in the gas chambers that day.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social @kampwesterbork.bsky.social

Maurits Broeks and his wife were arrested in their home and transported to Westerbork.
In the camp Broeks was asked by Kurt Schlesinger, the German Jewish Oberdienstleiter to take a 4 year old girl named Elly Frank under his wing: Elly’s parents had gone into hiding but, under the assumption that young children would not be hurt, they left Elly in the care of her non-Jewish babysitter. The mayor of Lienden, Cornelis Kamp, notified the German authorities about the Jewish girl and they ordered her immediate transfer to The Hague from where she was sent to Westerbork. Since Maurits Broeks was together with his wife, Schlesinger thought it better to hand the little girl over to them to look after during the transport on September 14 to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The train, that contained 902 deportees, halted on a dead-end siding near Cosel for a day. There, a selection of able-bodied men was carried out for slave labour and they were forced off the train while being beaten and whipped. About 200 men including Maurits had to squat until the train left. They were then loaded onto 2 trucks with trailers and were taken to Gogolin, a slave labour camp located in Upper Silesia. After a stay of almost three weeks in Gogolin all the inhabitants of the camp were transferred to Johannsdorf, another forced labour camp in the area.
Mozes Koster recounted later that the guards took great pleasure in telling the men who had left the train in Cosel that all those who had continued onward were to be murdered in gas chambers in Auschwitz, and that they, the able-bodied men, would be put to work until they too dropped dead.
The train arrived on September 16 in Auschwitz. 47 men and 29 women were admitted to the camp. The remaining 626 people, including 4-year old Elly Frank, were murdered in the gas chambers that day.
Only 8 men, who had disembarked in Cosel, survived this transport. Non of the people that were send on to Auschwitz survived.
Photo: Esther (Elly) Frank on the right.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 3:46 AM

September 13, 1944: The final deportation train left #Westerbork on this Wednesday. It carried two transports: one to #Bergen-Belsen with 268 deportees and another to #Auschwitz, carrying 11 passengers.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday @belsenmemorial.bsky.social @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

aboard this transport, Mary Andriaansz-Groen, related that she had been deported with a group of children on a train consisting of freight cars. To provide for the youngsters, straw had been placed on the floors as mattresses and makeshift tables and small benches had been provided. “We received milk bottles that contained water and milk from the Dutch,” as well as an “old-fashioned” laundry basket filled with sandwiches. However, she continued, the Germans advised the deportees to throw these provisions out because they were told: “You’re going to a camp where you’ll have everything better.” They did not know the journey would be so lengthy and regretted having done so. Aboard the train, Andriaansz-Groen continued, the passengers sang songs and told stories. The children were tired and ill; several had not yet learned to control their bodily functions. Thus, the situation was dire.
“The important people who dealt in diamonds,” in contrast, sat in a passenger compartment. It was impossible to see out of the sealed freight cars because the only light that entered came through slots in the roof. The passengers had no idea where they were going. When the doors were opened on the only one occasion after the train had stood for hours under a sizzling sun the adults tried to protect the children and conceal them from the Germans who had promised them fresh water and were actually keeping their word. The water that they had brought, however, was of no use to the infant Henriëtte Delia (Jetje) Hamburger (b. December 24, 1943), who died mid-journey, probably of dehydration. “I couldn’t give her a thing,” Andriaansz-Groen explained. “The milk we’d received from Westerbork went bad after only one day.”

Apart from the baby, whose place of burial is unknown, at least 4 children from this transport died by the middle of June 1945.
Photo: Henriëtte Delia (Jetje) Hamburger.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 12, 2026, 3:06 PM

September 12, 1924: In Italy, Armando Casalini, a Fascist Party member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was assassinated by Communist activist Giovanni Corvi to avenge the killing of Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

In Italy, Armando Casalini, a Fascist Party member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, was assassinated by Communist activist Giovanni Corvi to avenge the June 12 assassination of Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti. The shooting, combined with the June 26 walkout of opposition deputies, would serve as a pretext for a Fascist position.
Already a volunteer in the 1915-18 war despite a physical handicap that would have exempted him from conscription, Casalini was a trade unionist and founder of the Republican Party.
In 1922, after embracing Mussolini’s ideas, he founded the pro-fascist Unione Mazziniana Nazionale with other former republicans. In 1924, as a candidate on the fascist ticket, he was elected to Parliament.
On September 12 of the same year, Casalini was assassinated on a tram in Rome, shot with a revolver in front of his daughter Lidia. The murderer, communist Giovanni Corvi, attacked him shouting, “Revenge for Matteotti!”
Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti battered body was found buried in a wood on the outskirts of Rome on August 16, 1924. He had been missing since June 10, when a group of fascists assaulted and kidnapped him. At the end of May, Giacomo Matteotti, an early opponent of Mussolini’s Fascist Party, denounced the violence and irregularities that took place during the national elections that led to the establishment of the first fascist government. While Giacomo Matteotti’s assassination initially threatened to overthrow Mussolini, the Duce overcame the crisis using the killing of Armando Casalini.
Photo: #Matteotti with fellow supporters during 1920s.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 12, 2026, 5:27 AM

September 11, 1942: On this Friday the 18th transport of Jews from the Netherlands left #Westerbork transit camp for #Auschwitz-Birkenau with 874 Jewish men, women and children on it. Only 10 men survived this transport.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

The train halted in Cosel on September 12 at about 14.00 and approximately 200 able-bodied men under the age of 50 had to get off the train. From Cosel they were taken by three or four trucks to forced labour camps in Upper Silesia: Niederkirch, Gogolin or Annaberg and would be transferred to other work camps.
There they were awaited by “a bunch of brown shirts with swastikas” according to Jonas Pampel, one of the survivors who was deported together with his wife and 2 daughters (13 and 15 y/o). He added that the train travelled straight from Westerbork to Cosel and that when the men had left the train and it resumed its journey, there was terrible wailing and crying. The train with the remaining deportees arrived in Auschwitz later that day.
Pampel's wife and children were murdered on arrival.
According to Guus Luijters, the author of ‘In Memoriam’ where he documents the deportation and murder of children from the Netherlands, there were 175 children on this transport. The youngest was Willy Henny Scheffer, 5 months old. He was gassed on arrival together with his mother. His father died two years later in Auschwitz sub(work)-camp Blechhammer.
As with all these transports, whole families were take and murdered. Barend Buitenkant (9 years old) was send on this transport together with his two brothers of 11 and 13 and their parents. Barend ,his brothers and his mother were gassed on arrival and their father died in Seibersdorf concentration camp in 1943.
When the 18th transport from Westerbork arrived at Auschwitz at selection, 26 men and 34 women were admitted into the camp. The other deportees were murdered within hours in the gas chambers.
10 people survived this transport.
Photo: Meijer Buitenkant and his wife Susanna Buitenkant-Coster with their children, Abraham, Barend and Maurits

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 3:56 AM

September 10, 1943: The "Solf Circle", a gathering of more than 75 Berlin citizens who were opposed to the Nazi German government, was betrayed by Dr. Paul Reckzeh.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

Photo: Hanna Solf as a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials (1947).

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 10, 2026, 1:50 AM

September 9, 1942: This Wednesday was the deportation date for the children and elderly who had been arrested since the September 5 Gehsperre (a week-long general curfew). Jews from the Łódź ghetto would be transported to, and murdered in #Chełmno extermination camp.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

On September 9, Leon Dafner, a ghetto resident, recorded the tragic events that led to the death of his daughter Mary (Mari), nicknamed Mucha:
"Yesterday, I lost my sweet little daughter. I lost her through my own fault, cowardice, stupidity, and passivity. I gave her up defenseless. I deserted her, I left the five year old child, did not save her, and I could have done it so easily.… The Germans were deporting, it was chaotic…I walked off with Anya, but left Mucha behind. Instead of hiding with her in the cellar or in the toilet, I put her in a clothes basket and she gave herself away with crying. Naked, barefoot, miserable, my dear child, it's me, your father who betrayed you…. After an hour they were no longer in the hospital…they left as soon as they arrived.… "

There are no known survivors from this deportation.
Photo: Family members say goodbye to a child through a fence at the ghetto's central prison where children, the sick, and the elderly were held before deportation to the Chełmno killing center. Łódź, Poland, September 1942

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 9, 2026, 3:22 AM

September 8, 1939: German Wehrmacht soldiers massacred some 300 Polish prisoners of war near the village of #Ciepielów (Ciepielów massacre).
One of the largest and most documented war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

One of the largest and most documented war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, the forest near Ciepielów was the site of a mass murder of Polish prisoners of war from the Polish Upper Silesian 74th Infantry Regiment. The massacre was carried out by soldiers from the German Army's 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, under the command of Colonel Walter Wessel.
This event has been described as the "most infamous" war crime committed by Germans during their invasion of Poland.
The massacre was documented in photos and memoirs of an anonymous German soldier, who witnessed an engagement in which Polish soldiers ambushed and killed over a dozen German soldiers from the 11th Company of the 15th Regiment, including the company's commander, Captain Lewinsky. A number of Polish soldiers were then captured, and Oberst (Colonel) Walter Wessel, commander of the German 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, 29th Motorized Infantry Division, ordered them stripped of their uniforms and declared partisans and had them taken to a secluded location near the village of Dąbrowa (itself near a larger village of Ciepielów), where they were shot. The anonymous author of the memoirs arrived at that location after hearing gunfire, and counted approximately 300 bodies in a roadside ditch. Those documents were received by the Polish Military Mission in Germany in West Berlin in 1950.
Photo: Polish POWs and German soldiers shortly before the massacre.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 8, 2026, 5:00 AM

September 7, 1943: On Tuesday, the 75th transport from the Netherlands departed from #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. The train comprised 27 cattle cars and carried 987 deportees. There were 96 children on this transport. The youngest was born in Westerbork on August 8.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

Every transport has its special tragic cases. The latest transport saw the disappearance of a young and gifted pianist called Mischa Hillesum.

Photo: Mischa Hillesum at the piano (I talked about his sister Etty on August 24).

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 12:19 AM

September 6, 1930: The editor of the German newspaper Morgenpost was sentenced to 3 months in prison for libeling ex-kaiser Wilhelm. The paper claimed that he enriched himself before the war by investing in armament firms which gained monopolies through his influence.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

The editor of the German newspaper Morgenpost was fined and sentenced to three months in prison for libeling ex-kaiser Wilhelm II. The paper had published a statement claiming that the kaiser enriched himself before the war by investing his private fortune in armament firms which gained monopolies through his influence.
Photo: Kaiser Wilhelm II and his dog in exile. Doorn The Netherlands, 1938.

@ramonfliek.bsky.social Sep 5, 2026, 9:58 PM

September 5, 1941: The Pavoloch massacre occurred when the Einsatzgruppen shot 1,500 Jews in the Ukrainian shtetl of Pavoloch.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday