On this day in 1941 a man named Witold Pilecki deliberately got himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was a spy sent in to investigate the camp and establish underground resistance cells. He sent reports to Warsaw, which passed them to London. In 1942, his reports that prisoners were being gassed were not believed.
posted on Sep 19, 2008 - View this thread

1945. As the new year breaks in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the months-long SS torture of four women -- Ala Gertner, Roza Robota, Regina Safirzstain and Ester Wajcblum -- draws to an end. The women were being interrogated about their role in the Sonderkommando revolt of October, 1944.
posted on Jan 4, 2008 - View this thread

You know who else enjoyed Auschwitz? No, not them. That's right, them.
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

"I would like to do better, to be better than I am". He's the French New Wave maverick and Academy Award winner (at 26, for his first short) who, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz -- with considerable personal pain and the admission that "no description, no picture can reveal the true dimension" of what happened in the camps -- made what François Truffaut called "the greatest film ever made", duly censored by French authorities. Four years later he baffled audiences with "the first modern film of sound cinema", shattering the rules of chronology to describe the “anguish of the future”: even if all he ever wanted was "to stop death in its tracks" (French language link), only for one minute. But he is also the unabashed lover of la bande dessinée who learnt English by reading comic books and in the Seventies dreamed (French language link) of making "Spider-Man" into a movie (the Hollywood studios were not convinced), the MGM old-school musical and operetta nut so in love with design that "half of the fashion photography of the past 40 years owes a debt" to him. Now, Alain Resnais' new work, just shown at the Venice Film Festival where his buddy David Lynch was awarded a lifetime achievement Golden Lion, is a French film inspired by an English play with 54 short scenes, music by the X-Files's Mark Snow. (more inside)
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

Jewish group denounces video on Auschwitz Housewitz, a incredibly racist video mixing Auschwitz with a dance party, has come under fire from, well, everyone. Creator claims it was a joke. The video (Warning: GRAPHIC, RACIST, NSFW).
posted on Aug 10, 2005 - View this thread

The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz were subjected to experiments by famed Nazi Dr. Mengele. 81-year old Perla is the subject of a 1999 film .
posted on Mar 18, 2005 - View this thread

Holocaust survivors with Alzheimer's are forced to relive Auschwitz. "At Baycrest's Apotex Centre, Jewish Home for the Aged in Toronto, 50 per cent of patients with dementia are Holocaust survivors for whom the loss of short-term memory condemns them, once again, to the death camps."
posted on Sep 21, 2002 - View this thread

Who owns the products of slave labour? Or, more broadly, how do we remember the Holocaust? A unique dispute over ownership rights to artwork in the case of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum vs. former camp prisoner Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt illuminates underlying moral questions about the Holocaust and post-Holocaust culture. Babbitt, now living in southern California, is a university-trained Czechoslovak artist who has been fighting to reclaim her art from the Auschwitz Museum since 1973... [She] was a Jewish prisoner there in 1944 when Josef Mengele learned of her artistic skills and forced her to make watercolor portraits of dying Gypsies in order to get the kind of documentation he wanted on exact skin color and ear shapes. Gottliebova Babbitt made a dozen such portraits, seven of which are now tucked away in Room No. 11 of the Auschwitz Museum. [...] "Mengele ordered me to do it as slave labor. But it was my work, my paintings."
posted on Mar 28, 2002 - View this thread

Guantanamo Bay: 'The American Auschwitz' "...We always see how human beings prey upon each other, how values are trampled, and how tragedies recur. This is exactly what happened, and is still happening, at the 'American Auschwitz' detention camp...excuse me, I meant the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay!! " more follows: any truth to what he is saying or is this total madness?
posted on Mar 5, 2002 - View this thread

Two survivors of the Auschwitz death camp are suing the American government for not bombing the death camp and are seeking $40 billion in damages. (via Fark)
posted on Apr 14, 2001 - View this thread

The Last Expression project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, focusing on the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. ... It is neither widely recognized in the realm of Holocaust history, nor in the discipline of art history, that concentration camp prisoners -- victims of the Nazis -- produced works of art during their incarceration. [from the Introduction.]
posted on Feb 12, 2001 - View this thread

'An investor has obtained permission to operate a discotheque in a former tannery where Auschwitz inmates worked and died, an official said yesterday, and a TV report said it was already open for business.' I'm not even outraged by this. it just makes me numb.
posted on Aug 18, 2000 - View this thread