On This Day

On This Day - 1944 - Polish insurgents liberated a German labour camp in Warsaw. 348 Jewish prisoners were freed.

On This Day

On This Day - 1944 - Nazi police raided a house in Amsterdam and arrested 8 people. Anne Frank, a teenager at the time, was one of the people arrested. Her dairy would be published after her death. The last entry in the dairy was on this day.

On This Day

On This Day - 1941 - German troops do a house to house search in Paris, France looking for Jews hiding from being captured.

On This Day

On This Day - 1938 - Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

South Africa vs Germany

As my viewers will notice, I am a WW2 history fanatic and therefor my "On This Day" daily post what happened during that time.

It may anger the German people because of what took place during WW2, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, and that is a part of history that they would rather forget.

As a South African, being part of the "Appartheid" era, it's not something that we can wish away as the same for the German people.

I visited Germany during September 2011 and experienced for myself the new Germany and was so amazed with the country, its people and general way of living. I witnessed honesty amongst the people and the manner that the country is being managed by the government.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my country after we in South Africa became a democracy. We, as Germany, have a beautiful country with the best weather in the world, wildlife in abundance, diverse cultures, and many more.

Here is the difference - In Germany, after WW2, the government of the day up to now have rebuilt the country for it's people and all that live in it, Germans, Jews etc. All with the hope and vision of a better Germany irrespective of race and origin.

In South Africa, after the newly elected ANC government took control, all we have noticed for the past 18 years, that a reverse form of "Appartheid" whereby white people (now the minority) is being marginalized and treated in a manner that they (white population) is looking to immigrate to other countries such as UK, Australia and New Zealand.

It is well documented how the current ANC government, is looting the country's people tax money and an example being a palace for the President Jacob Zuma being built at a cost of R 240 million rand, whilst his neighbour is living in a house made of mud and wood.

Everyday you will read in our media about corruption in government departments and I don't even want to think about the total money lost and stolen from the people of South Africa for the past 18 years.

On This Day - Night of Broken Glass

On This Day - 1939 - A massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout the German Reich on the night of November 9 to November 10, came to be known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass.

The attack came after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jew living in Paris, shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff there in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered at the hands of Nazis in Germany.

On October 27, Grynszpan's family and over 15 000 other Jews, originally from Poland, had been expelled from Germany without any warning. They were forcibly transported by train in boxcars then dumped at the Polish border.

For Adolf Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, the shooting in Paris provided an opportunity to incite Germans to "rise in bloody vengeance against the Jews."

On This Day

On This Day - 1938 - German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people their homes and business in Germany and Austria leaving at least 100 dead and over 30 000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. This provided the prelude to the Holocaust in Germany. Over 100 000 German Jews left Germany realizing that they would not be safe. The world powers were outraged by what the Nazis had done but the strongest they did was to break off diplomatic relations which allowed Nazis to commit the mass murder of 6 million European Jews during the Holocaust.

On This Day

On This Day - 1941 - Nazi German SS troops rounded up 13 000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto and killed them execution style.

On This Day

On This Day - 1942 - Nazi Germany raided on Greek Jews in Paris.

On This Day

On This Day - 1939 - The USSR and Germany agree on partitioning Poland. Hitler deports all Jews.

On This Day

On This Day - 1942 - Leading British clergymen and political figures held a public meeting to register their outrage over the persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany.

Kuto Ghetto 1940

How Hitler's PERSONAL photographer captured for history the plight of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. Rare colour album depicts life in the Kutno Ghetto in 1940

• Hugo Jaeger's photographs normally celebrate the glory and triumphalism of the Third Reich
• But in this set he depicts the tragic circumstances of Jews while allowing them to retain their humanity and dignity
• Taken in the Polish town of Kutno in 1939 and 1940 they have been released to mark the official establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto

By DANIEL MILLER

The old man looks relaxed, almost happy chatting to the soldiers. He and most of the other Jewish citizens pictured here in 1939 and 1940, are smiling, seemingly pleased to pose for photographer Hugo Jaeger.

Yet we know, 70 years later, that these people, and thousands of others like them, were in fact prisoners, to be despised as 'rats' and 'parasites' in Nazi propaganda.

Even more surprising, Jaeger was Hitler's personal photographer, enjoying unprecedented access to the Third Reich’s upper echelon, traveling with the Fuhrer to his massive rallies and photographing him at intimate parties and during private moments.

Although a staunch Nazi, Jaeger as a  photographer perhaps perceived the Polish Jews as fascinating subjects and his work depicts their tragic circumstances while at the same time allowing them to retain their humanity and dignity. 

Apart from the odd soldier, there is very little German military presence. Instead the series shows the devastation in the landscape of the German invasion of Poland, while revealing very little of the 'master race' itself.

Exactly what Jaeger had in mind is of course a matter of guesswork, but from the reactions of the people portrayed in these images in Warsaw and Kutno, there appears to be surprising little hostility between the photographer and his subjects.

Jaeger's photos made such an impression on the Führer that he announced, upon first seeing his work: 'The future belongs to color photography.'

But beyond recording Hitler’s endless travels, Jaeger also documented the progress of the Reich, including the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. 

The Kutno pictures serve as a unique curiosity. Why, instead of focussing of the glories of the Hitler's third Reich, did a staunch Nazi like Jaeger chose to take pictures of conquered Jews? 

In June 1940, all 8,000 of Kutno’s Jews were rounded up and taken to what would be their new home - the grounds of an old sugar factory - where hundreds would die of hunger and Typhus.

Poles and Jews, friends and neighbours, were separated from one another. A Jewish council, the Judenrat, was created and tasked with forcing Jews to obey their German overlords.

A lucky few managed to escape and were sheltered by their Polish friends. Most were not so lucky.

In 1942, as part of Hitler's 'final solution' the Nazis began Operation Reinhardt, the plan to eliminate all of Poland's Jews. In the spring of 1942 the Kutno Ghetto itself was 'liquidated.' The majority of its inhabitants were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp.

The unique set of pictures could have been lost forever were it not for a bottle of brandy. As the allies advanced into Germany in 1945, Jaeger hid his photographs in a leather suitcase.

He was then confronted by a group of American soldiers. Luckily they were distracted by a bottle of Cognac which they opened and shared with the photographer. 

Had they searched the case further, and found so many pictures of Hitler Jaeger would have most likely been arrested on the the spot and tried as a war criminal.

After such a close shave, Jaeger decided to bury the pictures inside 12 glass jars outside Munich. He would periodically return to their burial place to check they were safe.

In 1955, he dug them up and stored them in a bank vault. Ten years later, in 1965, he sold them to Life magazine.