Those who complain that they've read too much about the Holocaust might like to think about reading a bit more. In case they do, here are some additions to this series.
40. Hanna Nadel:
The sister of a Belgian Nazi leader hid three Jews in her home near Brussels during the Holocaust, according to one of the survivors.
Hanna Nadel, now 86, said she, her mother and her niece were rescued by M. Cornet, the sister of Leon Degrelle, who, as leader of the Belgian Nazi Rexen movement, was responsible for deporting Jews to their deaths during the German occupation of Belgium.
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The three, having escaped deportation orders, wandered with their suitcases around the town of Sint-Genesius Rode, where they happened upon a help-wanted sign on Cornet's door.The mother rang the doorbell and Cornet, without asking many question[s], hired the mother as cook and Nadel and her niece to work as chambermaids.
Cornet knew the three women were Jewish and promised them they would survive. Visitors associated with the Flemish Nazi movement would routinely dine at the house, while the three Jewish women hid in the basement.
41. The parents of a group of young Czech Jews:
In the fall of 1939, a group of 150 Czech Jewish teenagers said goodbye to their families and friends, and boarded a train to Denmark. For many, it was the last time they'd see or hug their parents - because their families, the ones who stayed behind in then-Czechoslovakia, for the most part, perished.
At the ages of 14 to 16, the youngsters had started a new life. Their escape was planned by the youth division of the Jewish Agency (Aliyat Hanoar, or Jugend Aliyah) in affiliation with Zionist youth groups like Maccabi Hatzair as well as a Danish peace league and several Jewish communities.
They were taken in by ordinary Danish families; they lived in foster homes and worked on farms.
42. Ariel Blumental:
Miron Blumental never knew his older half-brother. This brother, named Ariel, was 3½ years old when he was murdered by the Nazis in his Galician hometown at 11:40 on the morning of June 7, 1943. Miron was not born until many years later...
Ariel's remains are interred in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. His name is being engraved on a memorial in Winnipeg.
43. The figures 50,000 and 7,000:
In 1944, the Nazis released a propaganda film entitled The Führer Gives the Jews a City. Terezin, in north-west Bohemia, was the place in question: it had been turned into, supposedly, a show-camp, a smokescreen to blind the world to what was really going on in other concentration camps. The film – an elaborate hoax – showed artistic individuals within Terezin engaging in creative activities, giving concerts and even putting on their own operas. It did not disclose the grimmer reality that more than 50,000 people were crammed into living quarters designed for 7,000, where thousands were dying from starvation and disease.
44. The figure half a million:
Germany remembered the Holocaust's forgotten victims on Wednesday by opening a memorial in the heart of Berlin to the half a million ethnic Sinti and Roma murdered by the Nazis.
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"This memorial commemorates a group of victims who, for far too long, received far too little public recognition - the many hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma who were persecuted by the Nazis as so-called gypsies," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel."The destiny of every single person murdered in this genocide is one of unspeakable suffering. Every single destiny, fills us, fills me, with sadness and shame."
Discrimination against Sinti and Roma increased at alarming levels once Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. They were sent to forced labour camps and, from 1934, subjected to forced sterilisation as a result of the Nazis' "racial purity" laws.
By the start of World War Two, the Nazis' genocidal intent became clear as Sinti and Roma were deported to death camps, where they wore uniforms bearing a "Z" for "Zigeuner" (gypsy).
(For an index to the whole series, see here)