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Post by pieter on Sept 27, 2023 10:49:08 GMT -7
People,
It is very important that we today avoid genocides, new Holocausts and mass murders, wether it is in Ukraine, Russia, Sudan, Nagorno Karabach in Azerbajian, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China or in Burma against ehtnic Rohingya people in Rakhine State, Myanmar, whom are ethnic cleansed by a Asian Burmese Buddhist majoroity.
Cheers,
Pieter
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Post by Jaga on Sept 27, 2023 19:33:53 GMT -7
Pieter, sorry, this is too difficult for me to watch.
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Post by pieter on Sept 28, 2023 6:06:59 GMT -7
Pieter, sorry, this is too difficult for me to watch.
In understand you. I had to watch it and it left me in a somber mood after I watched it. But it also told me a lesson about common people, ordinary people who can become ruthless killers under circumstances that they are forced to or willing to do awful acts of inhumanity volunteerly.
Pieter |
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Post by pieter on Sept 28, 2023 10:58:34 GMT -7
Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101 Reserve Police Battalion 101 (German: Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101) was in Nazi Germany a paramilitary formation of the uniformed police force known as the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police, "Orpo"), the overall organization formed by the Nazi unification of all previously-civilian police forces in the country in 1936, placed under the leadership of the SS, and grouped into battalions in 1939. One of many such Nazi German Order Police battalions, 101 was formed in Hamburg, and was deployed in September 1939 along with the Wehrmacht army in the invasion of Poland. Initially, Police Battalion 101 guarded Polish prisoners of war behind German lines, and carried out expulsion of Poles, called "resettlement actions", in the new Warthegau territory around Poznań and Łódź. Following a personnel change and retraining from May 1941 until June 1942, it became a major perpetrator of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. The battalion gained attention from the wider public due to the work of historians Christopher R. Browning and Daniel Goldhagen.  "Aktion Reinhardt": Hamburger Polizei verübt Massaker von JózefówHistoryBetween 1939 and 1945, the Ordnungspolizei maintained battalion formations, trained and outfitted by their main police offices within Germany. Specific duties varied widely from unit to unit and from one year to another, but one task was that of controlling civilian populations of the conquered or colonized countries. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa of 1941, the Order Police joined the SS Einsatzgruppen in the massacres of Jews behind the German lines. The first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by the German police occurred in Białystok on 12 July 1941, followed by the Bloody Sunday massacre of 10,000-12,000 Jews by the Reserve Police Battalion 133, perpetrated in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) on 12 October 1941 with the aid of SiPo (Sicherheits Polizei; Security Police) and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
Young men of the Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101
The shootings in USSR-proper culminated in the Battalion 45 massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar. The Order Police battalions became indispensable in the implementation of the Final Solution (Endlosung) after the Wannsee Conference of 1942. They rounded up tens of thousands of Nazi ghetto inmates for deportations to extermination camps during the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland, but also participated themselves in the murder of Polish Jews along with the Holocaust executioners known as Trawnikis.
During World War II, Trawniki men ([travˈniki]; German: Trawnikimänner) were Central and Eastern European Nazi collaborators, consisting of either volunteers or recruits from prisoner-of-war camps set up by Nazi Germany for Soviet Red Army soldiers captured in the border regions during Operation Barbarossa launched in June 1941. Thousands of these volunteers served in the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland until the end of World War II. Trawnikis belonged to a category of Hiwis (German abbreviation for Hilfswilliger, literally "those willing to help"), Nazi auxiliary forces recruited from native subjects serving in various jobs such as concentration camp guards.
The conscripted civilians and former Soviet POWs included Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Belarusians, Estonians, Georgians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians, Tatars, and Ukrainians. The Trawnikis took a major part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews. They also served at extermination camps and played an important role in the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, among others.
During Operation Reinhard mass murders were committed by Battalion 101 against women, children and the elderly in various locations including forced-labour camps and subcamps, most notably during the Aktion Erntefest of 1943, the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war, with 42,000 victims shot in the execution pits over the bodies of others.Battalion 101 operationsA total of 17 Orpo battalions were deployed during the invasion of Poland in 1939. Battalion 101 was one of three from the city of Hamburg. After a few months of active duty the battalion was transported from Kielce, Poland, back to Germany on 17 December 1939 to undergo a major expansion after Christmas. Servicemen were tasked with organizing additional ground units. The already enlarged battalion was deployed to Poland again in May 1940, and for the next five months, conducted mass expulsions of Poles to make room for the German colonists brought in Heim ins Reich from the areas invaded by their Moscow ally as well as from Nazi Germany. Expulsion from Warthegau. Poles led to cattle trains as part of the ethnic cleansing of western Poland, utilizing Battalion 101The expulsions of Poles, along with kidnappings of Polish children for the purpose of Germanization, were managed by two German institutions, VoMi, and RKFDV under Heinrich Himmler. In settlements already cleared of their native Polish inhabitants, the new Volksdeutsche from Bessarabia, Romania and the Baltics were put, under the banner of Lebensraum. Battalion 101 "evacuated" 36,972 Poles in one action, over half of the targeted number of 58,628 in the new German district of Warthegau (the total was 630,000 by the war's end, with two-thirds of the victims being murdered), but also committed murders among civilians according to postwar testimonies of at least one of its former members.During the early period we endeavored to fetch all people out of the houses, without regard for whether they were old, sick, or small children. The commission quickly found fault with our procedures. They objected that we struggled under the burden of the old and sick. To be precise, they did not initially give us the order to shoot them on the spot, rather they contented themselves with making it clear to us that nothing could be done with such people. — Bruno ProbstFor the next half-year, beginning 28 November 1940, Police Battalion 101 guarded the new ghetto in Łódź, eventually crammed with 160,000 Jews. The Łódź Ghetto was the second-largest Jewish ghetto of World War II after the Warsaw Ghetto where the policemen from Battalion 61 held victory parties on the days when a large number of desperate prisoners were shot at the ghetto fence. Battalion 101, commanded by career policeman Major Wilhelm Trapp, returned to Hamburg in May 1941 and again the more experienced servicemen were dispatched to organize more units. New battalions, numbered 102, 103, and 104, were formed by them and prepared for duty. Training of new reservists included escort duty of 3,740 Hamburg and Bremen Jews deported to the East to be murdered. Meanwhile, the murder of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto using gas vans began at Chełmno in December 1941. Burned-out Magirus-Deutz furniture mover van near Chełmno extermination camp, type used by the Nazis for suffocation, with the exhaust fumes diverted into the sealed rear compartment where the victims were locked in. This particular van had not been modified, as explained by Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality (1946),[1] nevertheless, it gives a good idea about the process. Nazi Gas Van used for the Euthanasia Program and Aktion T4 to kill disabled people and psychiatric patients Reserve Police Battalion 101 conducting a "liquidation" in the ghetto of Biała PodlaskaReturn to Poland, June 1942 – November 1943The Reserve Battalion 101 composed of 500 men in their thirties, who were too old for the regular army, returned to occupied Poland with three heavy machine-gun detachments in June 1942. By that time, the first two extermination camps of Operation Reinhard in General Government – Bełżec and Sobibor – were already gassing trainloads of Jews from all over Europe. The most deadly of them, Treblinka, was about to start operations. Globocnik gave Battalion 101 the task of deporting Jews from across Lublin reservation. Between mid-March and mid-April 1942, about 90% of the 40,000 prisoners of the Lublin Ghetto were loaded by Order Police and Schupo onto Holocaust trains destined for Bełżec extermination camp. Additional 11,000–12,000 Jews were deported from ghettos in Izbica, Piaski, in Lubartów, Zamość and Kraśnik with the aid one of Trawnikis battalions of Karl Streibel. Offiziere des berüchtigen Hamburger Reserve-Polizei-Bataillons 101 während einer Mittagspause in der polnischen Stadt Radzyn rund 60 Kilometer nördlich von Lublin.The first mass murder known to have been committed entirely by Reserve Police Battalion 101 was the most "messy" for lack of training; uniforms dripping wet with brain matter and blood. The murder of 1,500 Jews from Józefów ghetto, approximately 100 kilometers south of Lublin in southeastern Poland, on 13 July 1942 was performed mostly by the three platoons of the Second Company. Prior to departure from Biłgoraj, they were given large amounts of extra ammunition and therefore claiming to have had no idea what the purpose of the mission was would have been a lie. A generous supply of alcohol was procured. Twelve out of 500 policemen opted out when allowed to leave freely. Those of them who felt unable to continue shooting at point-blank range of prisoners begging for mercy, were asked to wait at the marketplace where the trucks were loaded. Luxembourgish police trainees in RPB 101 escorted young Jewish prisoners from Józefów to the local railway station in Zwierzyniec selected for slave work in KL Lublin. The action was finished in seventeen hours. The bodies of their victims carpeting the forest floor at the Winiarczykowa Góra hill (about 2 km from the village, pictured) were left unburied. Watches, jewelry and money were taken. The battalion left for Biłgoraj at 9 pm. Only a dozen Jews are known to have survived the slaughter. Two members of the Mart family from the German minority residing in Józefów were shot by Polish underground thereafter for cooperation with the enemy.
The next ghetto liquidation action took place less than a month later in Łomazy lacking a rail line. The infants, the old, and the infirm were shot by Battalion 101 during the early morning roundups on 17 August 1942. Later that day, the Hiwi shooters arrived at the main square, and some 1,700 ghetto prisoners were marched on foot to the Hały forest outside the town, where the stronger Jewish men prepared a trench with entrance on one side. The murder of stripped naked Jews lasted till 7 pm. The Ukrainian Trawnikis got so drunk that the policemen from the First, Second and Third Platoon under Lieutenant Hartwig Gnade had to continue shooting by themselves in half a metre of groundwater and blood.More deportationsIn the following weeks, Police Battalion 101 was active in towns with direct lines to Treblinka and therefore mass shootings were not used. On 19 August 1942 – only two days after Łomazy – 3,000 Jews were deported from Parczew (2,000 more several days later); from Międzyrzec 11,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka on 25–26 August amid gunfire and screams. From Radzyń 6,000 prisoners, then from Łuków (7,000), Końskowola (2,000 coupled with the massacre at the hospital), Komarówka, Tomaszów; all those unable to move or attempting to flee were shot on the spot. At the end of August death transports were temporarily halted. After a brief respite, shootings of Jews resumed on 22 September in Serokomla, then in Talczyn and in the Kock ghetto four days later, by the Second Company.[43] The treatment of condemned prisoners was getting increasingly more terrifying as the time went on. In Izbica, the makeshift ghetto reached a breaking point packed by Gnade with Jewish inhabitants of Biała Podlaska, Komarówka, Wohyń, and Czemierniki. The October and November deportations to Bełżec and Sobibór led to a week of mass killings at the cemetery, beginning on 2 November 1942. Several thousand Jews (estimated at 4,500) from the transit ghetto were massacred by the Sonderdienst battalion of Ukrainian Trawnikis under police control in an assembly-line manner and dumped in hastily excavated mass graves. All men drank heavily.
In Międzyrzec the "strip-search" of young Jewish women was introduced by Gnade before executions dubbed "mopping up" actions by the Germans. Gnade's first sergeant later said: "I must say that First Lieutenant Gnade gave me the impression that the entire business afforded him a great deal of pleasure."[46] By the spring of 1943 most towns of the Lublin reservation were Judenfrei therefore the battalion was tasked with "Jew hunts" in the deep local forests, or in the potato fields and around distant farmlands. Thousands of Jews were shot at point-blank range.
The participation of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the Final Solution culminated in the Aktion Erntefest massacres of Jews imprisoned at the Trawniki, Poniatowa and Majdanek concentration camps with subcamps in Budzyn, Kraśnik, Puławy, Lipowa and other slave-labor projects of the Ostindustrie (Osti). Approximately 43,000 Jews were killed. It was the largest single-day massacre of the Holocaust under direct German occupation, committed on 3 November 1943 on the orders of Christian Wirth. Trawniki men provided the necessary manpower.At the conclusion of the Erntefest massacres, the district of Lublin was for all practical purposes judenfrei. The murderous participation of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the Final Solution came to an end... For a battalion of less than 500 men, the ultimate body count was at least 83,000 Jews.
Postwar historySoon after the war ended, Major Wilhelm Trapp was captured by the British authorities and placed at the Neuengamme Internment Camp. After questioning by the Polish Military Mission for the Investigations of War Crimes in October 1946,[ he was extradited to Poland along with Drewes, Bumann and Kadler. Subsequently, Trapp was charged with war crimes by the Siedlce District Court, sentenced to death on 6 July 1948 and executed on 18 December 1948 along with Gustav Drewes. However, with the onset of the Cold War, West Germany did not pursue any war criminals at all for the next twenty years. In 1964 several men were arrested. For the first time, the involvement of German police from Hamburg in wartime massacres was investigated by the West German prosecutors. In 1968 after a two-year trial 3 men were sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, one to 6 years, and one to 5 years. Six other policemen – all lower ranks – were found guilty but not sentenced. The rest lived their normal lives.CommandersUpon its return to occupied Poland, on 12 June 1942 the Reserve Police Battalion 101 had the following command structure:
- 1st Company: Captain, Hauptsturmführer Julius Wohlauf (until October 1942, then Captain Steidtmann)
- 1st Platoon: Second Lieutenant Boysen
- 2nd Platoon: Reserve Second Lieutenant Bumann
- 3rd Platoon: Zugwachmeister Junge
- 2nd Company: Oberleutnant Hartwig Gnade (until May 1943, then Lieutenant Dreyer)
- 1st Platoon: Second Lieutenant Schürer
- 2nd Platoon: Reserve Second Lieutenant Kurt Dreyer
- 3rd Platoon: Hauptwachmeister Starke
- 3rd Company: Captain Wolfgang Hoffmann (until November 1942)
- 1st Platoon: Second Lieutenant Pauly
- 2nd Platoon: Second Lieutenant Hachmeister
- 3rd Platoon: Hauptwachmeister JückmannSource: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Police_Battalion_101
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Post by karl on Sept 28, 2023 15:40:38 GMT -7
Pieter
It was good to present this series of video reports of such situations as depicted of the Einsatzgruppen and such. For with the passage of time, people forget and the young never knew for the reason of: "Never Again".
These videos are a warning sign of a future that is never lost, but stays in the background until the correct time with the right people, to become the new master of brutality. For these situations do not just pop up by opening a tin, add water and shake, but gradually to first lull people with their ideas that are for the people and their welfare. But first must gradually take over the peoples will with passage of laws that are for the sake of public safety, then to create laws that will insure the people are unarmed so a resurrection is not possible against the Government. To train the young people to work together and think together for the common good and not for themselves, for they are special and above others that are lesser in status, social acceptance and considered not favourable for the new State they are part of.
For as above, be very diligent at the voting poles and understand each candidate carefully, for that person may in future be your master of your personal decisions and of your will.
The old saying of: If forgotten, history will repeat its self, is very very true.
Karl
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Post by pieter on Sept 29, 2023 8:20:33 GMT -7
Karl,
This is about history and we should be aware of the history, present and future. I want to say that co-perpetrators of the Holocaust were Austrians, Dutch people, Danes, French Vichey people, some Poles (although I am not allowed to say that from the Polish government; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom ), Hungarians, Slowaks, Croats, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Serbs, Slovenes, Italians and others.
Lesson of this Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101 is that any police force under the wrong leadership, ideology and political movement can become a killing machine.
Pieter
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