Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Top Stories by Holocaust Research Project

New Page 1   Hershl Sperling Personal Testimony of the Treblinka Death Camp   Hershl Sperling and his family lived in the Czestochowa ghetto on Wilsona Street near the ghetto wall. What follows below is his account of the deportation and incarceration in the Treblinka death camp       Czestochowa Wartime Town Map showing Wilsona Street (click text to enlarge) In September 1942, the deportation of the Jews of Czestochowa began. We had already sensed it coming weeks before. The town was surrounded by SS units. We are all woken from sleep before daybreak by the noise of wild shooting, vehicles and people screaming and wailing.   We look out into the street and see the SS men savagely bursting into people’s houses and driving the occupants out into the street with blows from their rifle-butts. We watch them arbitrarily dividing up people after a superficial glance... (more)

SS Statment on Chelmno

  Fritz Hensen Report of My Activity by the SS Special Detachment in Kulmhof (Chelmno) [photos added to enhance the text]       Rheinberg the 13.7.1945   SS and German workmen at Chelmno Name: Fritz Hensen   Nationality: German   Date of Birth: 29.11.1920   Profession: Police File Sergeant   From 25.4.1940 to 2.7.1940 Police Training Battalion in Pohrlitz   2.7.1940 to March 1941 SS Police Division at Katscher Oberschl.   25.3.1941 to January 1945 Police administration in Litzmannstadt   From the Police administration I was assigned in July 1942 to December 1943 to... (more)

The Holocaust in the East!

New Page 1 The Holocaust in the Soviet Union and Baltic States Eyewitness Statements - 1941 -1943       Tadeusz Zaderecki a Polish writer who lived in Lvov recalled:   A Jewish woman is terrorized and beaten in Lvov A rabble of drunken farmers flowed in from the countryside in Lvov. Something was about to happen and it was planned. The prisons that the Soviets left behind opened and dozens, hundreds of mutilated bodies of political prisoners were revealed.   Who carried out the murders? The Jews! The fact that the murdered included Jews made no difference to anyone. In front... (more)

Letters to London - Life and Death in the Kovno Ghetto

Dr Elchanan Elkes chairman of the Kovno Judenrat Letters to London 1943 - the chairman writes to his children about life in the Kovno ghetto Dr Elchanan Elkes of the Kovno Judenrat My beloved son and daughter! I am writing these lines, my dear children, in the vale of tears of Vilijampole, Kovno Ghetto, where we have been for over two years. We have now heard that in a few days our fate is to be sealed. The Ghetto is to be crushed and torn asunder. Whether we are all to perish, or whether a few of us are to survive, is in God’s hands, we fear that only those capable of slave l... (more)

Thomas Blatt takes on Karl Frenzel

New Page 1 Sobibor survivor Thomas Tovi Blatt confronts Death Camp Commandant Karl Frenzel (forced labour section) in 1983 Thomas Tovi Blatt (left) and Karl Frenzel meet in a hotel room in Hagen Germany in 1983 Thomas Blatt: Here you are drinking beer. With that smile on your face you could be anybody’s neighbour, anybody’s fellow sporting club member. But you are not anybody. You are Karl Frenzel, the SS commandant. You ranked third in the chain of command at the extermination camp of Sobibor. You were the commandant of Lager 1. Do you remember me?   Karl Frenzel: Not exactly ... (more)