Birds of Prey Blood, Philip W
2021, 20210921, 2021-09-21
eBook
‘This is the smoking gun of all your research.’
Professor Richard E. Holmes (18 February 2001).
Birds of Prey is a microhistory of the Nazi occupation of Białowieźa Forest, Poland’s national park. ...The narrative stretches from Göring’s palatial lifestyle to the common soldier on the ground killing Jews, partisans, and civilians. Based entirely on previously unpublished sources, the book is the synthesis of six areas of research: Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the hunt and environmental history, military geography, Colonialism and Nazi Lebensraum, the Holocaust, and the war in the East. By weaving together a narrative about Hermann Göring, his inner circle, and ordinary soldiers, the book reveals the Nazi ambition to draw together East Prussia, the Bialystok region, and Ukraine into a common eastern frontier of the Greater German state, revealing how the Luftwaffe, the German hunt, and the state forestry were institutional perpetrators of Lebensraum and genocide. Up until now the Luftwaffe had not been identified in specific acts of genocide or placed at large scale killings of Jews, civilians, and partisans. This gap in the historical record had been facilitated by the destruction of the Luftwaffe’s records in 1945. Through a forensic and painstaking process of piecing together scraps of evidence over two decades, and utilizing Geographical Information System software, Philip W. Blood managed to decipher previously obscure reports and expose patterns of Nazi atrocities.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it aimed to
destroy Polish national consciousness. As a symbol of Polish
national identity and the religious faith of approximately
two-thirds of Poland's ...population, the Roman Catholic Church was an
obvious target of the Nazi regime's policies of ethnic, racial, and
cultural Germanization.
Jonathan Huener reveals in The Polish Catholic Church under
German Occupation that the persecution of the church was most
severe in the Reichsgau Wartheland, a region of Poland annexed to
Nazi Germany. Here Catholics witnessed the execution of priests,
the incarceration of hundreds of clergymen and nuns in prisons and
concentration camps, the closure of churches, the destruction and
confiscation of church property, and countless restrictions on
public expression of the Catholic faith. Huener also illustrates
how some among the Nazi elite viewed this area as a testing ground
for anti-church policies to be launched in the Reich after the
successful completion of the war. Based on largely untapped sources
from state and church archives, punctuated by vivid archival
photographs, and marked by nuance and balance, The Polish
Catholic Church under German Occupation exposes both the
brutalities and the limitations of Nazi church policy.
The first English-language investigation of German policy toward
the Catholic Church in occupied Poland, this compelling story also
offers insight into the varied ways in which Catholics-from Pope
Pius XII, to members of the Polish episcopate, to the Polish laity
at the parish level-responded to the Nazi regime's repressive
measures.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed a staggering number of political prisoners in Western Ukraine-somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000-in the ...space of eight days, in one of the greatest atrocities perpetrated by the Soviet state. Yet the Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941 is largely unknown. This sourcebook aims to change that, offering detailed scholarly analysis, eyewitness testimonies and profiles of known victims, and a selection of fiction, memoirs, and poetry that testifies to the lasting impact of the massacre in the collective memory of Ukrainians.
In Poland during the Second World War, the German judicial system was part of the National Socialist occupation machine from the outset and became a key element in the policy of Germanization, ...Germany`s principal objective for the annexed portions of Poland. The courts systematically discriminated against Poles, and between September 1939 and the beginning of 1945, imposed thousands of death sentences.
This invaluable work traces the role of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, the core group of Himmler’s murder units involved in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” during and ...immediately after the German campaign in Poland in 1939. In addition to relevant Einsatzgruppen reports, the book includes key documents from other sources, especially eyewitness accounts from victims or onlookers. Such accounts provide an alternative, often much more realistic, perspective on the nature and consequences of the actions previously known only through documentation generated by the perpetrators. With carefully selected primary sources contextualized by the authors’ clear narrative, this work fills an important gap in our understanding of a crucial period in the evolution of policies directed against Jews, Poles, and others deemed dangerous or inferior by the Third Reich. Supplemented by maps and photographs, this book will be an essential reference and research tool.
The labyrinth of dangerous hours Trzcinska-Croydon, Lilka
The labyrinth of dangerous hours,
c2004, 20041028, 2004, 2000, 2004-01-01
eBook
Lilka Trzcinska was fourteen years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. The daughter of an architect, Lilka was a high school student at the time. When schools were closed by the occupier, she, ...along with her siblings, continued their education in secret classes, and joined the Polish Home Army– the secret resistance force.
Lilka and her family were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sent to the political prison Pawiak, then to Auschwitz. There, Lilka's mother died and her younger sister was sent off to another camp. The rest of the family was put to work in the camp building offices. After being transported to a number of other camps (in one instance by a way of a three-day march), the three sisters were reunited in 1945, and shortly thereafter liberated by the British. Lilka later went to Italy to continue her education, moving to Canada in 1948.
The Labyrinth of Dangerous Hoursis the memoir of a survivor. Lilka Trzcinska-Croydon narrates her adolescence and that of her sisters and brother in a way that binds poetry and history together seamlessly. It describes the strength of the family ties and solidarity that help them emerge from their horrific ordeal with their dignity intact.
As many as 150,000 Polish political prisoners were taken during the war, half of whom died in the camps. This memoir is a testament to their struggle.
PDF
