Today’s blog is a redo of the one I wrote more than five years ago (same title). It was back in the days when I limited my blogs to six hundred words and very few images. The topic was very popular, and I received many friendly comments. So, I decided to “reprint” it albeit in an expanded version with more images. The story is very uplifting, and I hope you enjoy reading it.
I wrote the original blog shortly after reading a BBC article about the death of Sir Nicholas Winton. It was one of the few positive stories surrounded by the horrors of Hitler and the Third Reich. As you will see, the children that Winton and others saved were a mere fraction of those murdered by the Nazis during the twelve years of the Third Reich.
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Memorial of Nicholas Winton, savior of 669 Jewish children, located in the Prague Main railway station. Photo by Ludêk Kovár. Sculpture by Flor Kent (September 2009). PD-GNU Free Documentation License. Wikimedia Commons.
Earlier this year, I wrote the blog, Hitler’s Enablers – Part One – Wannsee Conference. Click here to read the blog. The blog primarily dealt with the first and second level of enablers ⏤ senior Nazi leaders setting policy and leaving the formation of details and final implementation to the second layer. An “enabler” is someone who enables another to achieve an end.
Today, we will examine the third level of enablers. These were the men and women who were responsible for the administration and ultimately, ensuring the end result met senior Nazi leaders’ expectations. In other words, these were the people who carried out the day-to-day activities that ultimately resulted in the murder of millions of men, women, and children. Beginning with arrests and ending with the wholesale exterminations in the gas chambers, Hitler would not have been able to carry out his perverse vision without the assistance of hundreds of thousands of third level enablers.
Execution of Stutthof concentration camp overseers at Biskupia Górka. From left to right: Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff. Further in the background is the guard SS-Oberscharführer Johann Pauls and several Polish kapos. Photo by Polish authorities (4 July 1946). PD-Polish Public Domain.
As we will see, most of these people were sadistic thugs who had no compassion for other human beings. Many of the defendants could not comprehend why they were on trial after the war. The common defense position taken by Nazi war criminals was that they were only following orders ⏤ all fingers pointed to Adolf Hitler ⏤ and when that didn’t work, they boiled it down to “Victor’s Justice.” Read More Hitler’s Enablers – Part Two – The Camps
“Informative and entertaining, Stew Ross’ newest work evokes a difficult and frightening time in the history of the City of Light. The detailed descriptions of sites such as the Vél’ d’hiv’ or Gestapo headquarters reminds us of the choices people made during those years.”
Cynthia Bisson, PhD, Professor of History, Belmont University, French Resistant Expert
“Another outstanding, well-researched, and presented book by Stew Ross. It gives a detailed guided walking tour full of facts about the activities of the Gestapo during their occupation of Paris during World War II. I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in what life was like during the Nazi occupation in France.”
Richard H.F. Neave, President Royal British Legion Paris branch, member Paris-based Libre Résistance SOE “F” Section and author of SOE: A Life in the Shadows
