Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitler. Show all posts

Saturday, January 24, 2026

Germany in 1934, The Holocaust Begins-Part 2

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                         

              

  January 1, 1930, already an anti-Jewish poster in a shop window telling 
people to defend themselves against Jews                     

1934 means a lot to me because that's when I was born in the USA, but in Germany, there was a campaign going on  to create "Jew-free"villages, and I'm Jewish.  In February Stormtroopers (started in 1921) entered the village Arnswalde in Pomerania and they threw stones at all the Jewish homes, shops and meeting halls.  They broke into the synagogue, the house of the rabbi and destroyed furnishings, tore up and trampled on the Torah and put out the Eternal Lamp, like the lamp in our history that was out and needed runners to go to the next town to bring back more oil and it had burned for 8 days with a drop of oil while waiting-a miracle, our Chanukah story. All night long they attacked other Jewish homes and beat up any Jew outside their home.  The Jews all left that next morning, and the German children went into these homes and helped themselves to toothpaste, soap and sponges found in the wreckage,  of a Jewish chemist's shop while adults watched them.

   April 2, 1933, Nazis boycott Jewish shop in Berlin

Palm Sunday came a month later: Stormtroops marched into Gunzenhausen which housed 19 Jewish families who were dragged outside.  The leader, Kurt Baer, caught a woman and dragged her by her hair.  They beat up the Jews all night long, and whipped and cursed them so bad that 2 died by the next morning;  a 75 year old man, Rosenfelder  had his chest torn open with knife wounds, and a 30 year old man, Rosenau, was found hung on a garden fence. 


Finally, on May 1, 1934, the Nazi Germany's semi-official and fiercely antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer warned of a Jewish program for world domination in this 1934 issue of the.newspaper.  Der Sturmer, wrote about this in this 14 page issue, but it took the side of the stormtroopers by reviving the medieval "blood libel" accusation against the Jews of using Christian blood in the baking of their Passover bread, and in other "Judaic" rituals. 

Jewish deportees march through the German town of Würzburg to the railroad station on April 25, 1942. (Photo: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration.)

 It was so popular that they printed 130,000 copies and sold them, and found on public noticeboards,, reproduced showing 4 rabbis sucking the blood of a Christian child through straws. Even in those days they could photoshop pictures somehow.  Another picture was of Jesus drinking Christian blood in the Communion ceremony.  That went too far, so Hitler ordered the issue banned because it was an attack on Christ.                          

     Two Jewish girls awaiting deportation in Munich on Nov. 11, 1942. Their identities are not known. (Photo: City Archive Munich DE-1992-FS-NS-00013.) I would have been an 8 year old in 1942, maybe like these little girls.  

Even in a photograph clearly showing two Jewish girls, we do not know anything other than that the Gestapo deported them to Kowno with the same transport depicted in the image showing Munich Jews being deported  The nearly 1,000 deportees from Munich were shot soon after they arrived at their destination in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.

The Jews had no idea the Holocaust officially will start in 1939 and not end till 1945.  I would have been 5 years old at the whistle-blowing start.                     

From Home to an Unknown Fate: The Deportation of the Jews of Wurzburg:  By the end of 1941, World War II had entered its third year. Germany advanced from one conquest to the next; they controlled almost all of Europe, from the outskirts of Moscow to the Pyrenees Mountains on the Spanish border. For the.. leaders of the Nazi regime, it was the opportune moment to eliminate the remaining Jews from Germany. The two thousand Jews of the small city of Würzburg in southern Germany, located between Frankfurt and Nuremberg, were among the first to be deported..

Yet the village cleansing went on.  By May 26th, a German newspaper wrote how at Hersbruck in Franconia, Streicher's province, "on Thursday at 5pm, the swastika flag was hoisted on the property of the last Jew to leave Hersbruck, now purged of Jews.  Other districts "will soon follow suit and that the day is not now far off when the whole of Franconia will be rid of Jews, just as one day there will no longer be one single Jew throughout the whole of Germany.  

June 3rd, and the people of that famous town of Worms celebrated the 900th anniversary of the foundation of its Old Synagogue.  According to legend in Roman days, the Jews of Worms declined to take part in the Sanhedrin elections in Jerusalem, claiming to have built their own "new" Jerusalem on the banks of the Rhine.  Now the Jews of Worms had to decide to ride out the storm or to leave Germany.  People had started leaving in 1933, with 62 going to France, 43 for Palestine, and 32 for Poland. So, in 1934, 29 left for the USA, 26 to Palestine.  By the end of 1934, 264 Jews had left-meaning almost 1/4 of the population of Worms were gone.   In court at Nuremberg on 14 June, a gentile wife of a Jewish man was put in prison for 4 months for"race-defiling."


A Courtroom was a scary place.  On July 15th, 1934, Kurt Baer shot dead 2 Jews, Simon Straus and his son who had given evidence against him after he had been accused of killing of the 2 other Jews in Gunzenhausen in March.  The court said the 2 had committed suicide.  Baer was only found guilty of "a breach of the peace."                        

The 1934 Constantine riots were an incident of antisemitic violence in the Algerian city of Constantine, targeting the local Jewish population. A mob of around 300 local Algerians attacked the Jewish quarter and targeted Jewish businesses and homes over a period of several hours, with the violence spreading to nearby towns. The French colonial authorities did little to rein in the violence.

It is uncertain what the exact cause of the riots was, but various accounts suggest that the riots were triggered by an altercation between a Jewish man and some Muslims at the Sidi Lakhdar Mosque in Constantine. Multiple sources report that 25 Jews and 3 Muslims died over the course of the three-day riot, and several Jewish establishments were pillaged. The events have been described as a pogrom.

Nazis started broadcasting their hatred to the Arab world using Radio-Berlin and Radioi-Stuttgart.  This caused on August 3, 1934 the beginning of 3 days of anti-Jewish riots in Constantine, Algeria. In it, 23 Jews were killed and 38 wounded. German refugees going to Palestine could not be halted by riots they knew nothing about.  In 1934, 6,941 German Jews were admitted to Palestine. 

By the end of 1934, only 50,000 German Jews had left Germany.  450,000 still stayed in in Germany. The feeling was that the anti-Jewish excesses would pass;  but they didn't.  They were followed by a newer Jewish policy, embodying moderate restrictions and disabilities.  There were even cases of a few Jews returning to Germany who were "unable to adjust themselves abroad, so they didn't help the escape from the worst.

By the end of 1935, hopes of Jews that this anti-Semitism would pass seemed to be happening.  But shops were just being discreet in telling Jews they wouldn't be  serving them, like a note in their teacup telling them so in one.  

Jews who had been interned in Dachau in 1933 found less there in 1935.  13 Jews had did there in 1933. One, Erich Gans, was killed there in on July 1,1934.   But the lull was over by March 1, 1935. A plebiscite (the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question such as a change in the constitution) in the League of Nations) . 

The Saar (or Saarland) was a heavily industrialized, coal-rich territory on the German-French border, historically detached from Germany twice as a separate entity under international or French control after both World Wars. It served as a League of Nations mandate (1920–1935)  and now a part of Hitler's Germany.  5,000 Jews chose French or Belgian citizenship.  In Germany, 20,000 Jews left their homes seeking sanctuary in Berlin.    On June 14, 1935, Otto Hirsch and Max Kreutzber ger in New York needed financial help others in  getting out of Germany was told that no campaigning would happen in 1936.  On July 15 there were anti- Jewish riots in Berlin and a few Jews were beaten.  12 days latear an article read, "Finish up with the Jews".  It went on to warn German girls of Jewish men, both dating, marrying or buying from makes you a betrayer of your German Volk and its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, and you would be committing a sin.  

Resource:

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert 

 

Friday, January 23, 2026

Remember the Holocaust and How It Started, Similar to Today's Events-Part I b

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     


  Field Marshall  Paul Von Hindenburg on March 9, 1922-Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany on April 26, 1925, and inaugurated on May 12, 1925, succeeding Friedrich Ebert. As a widely respected World War I general, he won the election as an independent candidate. Hindenburg served as the second president of the Weimar Republic until his death in 1934.                                      


  • Hitler's government took over Germany on January 30, 1933, when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Following this, the Nazis rapidly dismantled Germany's democratic institutions, turning the Weimar Republic into a one-party dictatorship within months. 
  • 1934 Plebiscite: A New York Times article from August 1934 reported that 89.9% of voters (roughly 38 million) approved of Hitler uniting the offices of President and Chancellor, while nearly 10% disapproved.
  • 1933 Election: In the last, partially competitive election in March 1933, the Nazi Party received 43.9% of the vote, rising to a majority when combined with coalition partners.
  •                         Hitler:  January 1, 1939
  • Support Levels: By the time war broke out in 1939, intense indoctrination and terror made public opposition extremely rare. While popular support was high, it was heavily influenced by propaganda, fear of the Gestapo, and the success of the regime's economic and foreign policies up to that point. 

From 1934 to 1939, it was obvious as to what was going on in Germany that the German government, now taken over by  a new regime, hated Jews and wanted them out of the country.  Jews traditionally all over the world have been treated as the scapegoats, for they had not converted to Christianity. They remained the mother religion that brought about Christianity in the first place out of polytheism.

Two or Three thousand Jews traveled by boat from German ports to Shanghai and got in without visas.  An English man, Captain Foley, supported this method of emigration though the Foreign Office in London hesitated.  "They would rather die as free men in Shanghai than as slaves in Dachau."  None had any idea how bad it would become.      

                                 Hitler's Speech

                                               

     After his speech on 26 September 1925 for the Deutschen Tag in Fürth's evangelist house: very popular,    

On January 30, 1939, on the sixth anniversary of his seizure of power, Adolf Hitler delivered a major two-hour speech to the German Reichstag (parliament) that is best known for containing a public prophecy or threat of "annihilation" against the Jewish people in Europe. 
The speech included a statement by Hitler that if "international finance Jewry" were to cause a world war, it would lead to the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe". Delivered during a period of international tension, the speech blamed Jewish people for the impending war. Historians debate the precise meaning of "annihilation" at that time, though it is seen as an escalation of Nazi rhetoric that preceded the Holocaust. Hitler employed anti-Semitic theories, alleging a Jewish plot. The speech and its threat were later used in Nazi propaganda and followed Kristallnacht in late 1938. Hitler made similar statements elsewhere in 1939.                       
                           Hermann Goering on January 1, 1939

Six days before Hitler's 1939 speech, Field Marshall Goering had instructed General Heydrich to "solve" the so-called Jewish problem "by emigration and evacuation".   An empty army camp in England at Richborough in Kent was opened In February for future arrivals which could hold 3,000 at a time.  Individual visas were not required by those who arrived. They only needed a block permit.   So England was aware of Germany's goal. Did the USA? 

                      He plotted a way to solve the Jewish problem.

Reinhard Heydrich (born March 7, 1904, Halle, Germany—died June 4, 1942, Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia [now in Czech Republic]) was a Nazi German official who was Heinrich Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Echelon”), the paramilitary corps commonly known as the SS. He played a key role in organizing the Holocaust during the opening years of World War II.

Within 12 months 8 thousand Jews  passed through getting to homes in Britain, most being young men who were sent to Dachau, Sachsenhausen and other concentration camps after the Kristallnacht, and had later been released.  Kristallnacht, also known as the "Night of Broken Glass," occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians destroyed Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues across Germany and Austria, marking a violent escalation of anti-Jewish persecution before the Holocaust. 

Hitler spoke in Berlin on 30 January 1939, and said,  "That in the event of war:  the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."                                 

                          London Embassies

By March 1939, an Eric Lucas was still trying to find a foreign embassy in London willing to give his parents a visa. Following are their questions:

1. Have you sufficient money for your parents to live there without working?  

     Answer:  "A small sum could be got together." 

2. Have your parents a valid passport?

    Answer:  "No, because they can only apply for a passport to leave the country if they have a visa and permission to proceed to this country to which they want to go."  

3. Yes, I see, but they cannot get a visa until they have a valid passport.

His parents perished in Germany 3 years later. 

Jews were kept out of countries and were forced to remain in Germany until the gas chambers were ready.  

Operational gas chambers used for the mass murder of Jews were located in six Nazi extermination and concentration camps, all in German-occupied Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Bełżec, Sobibór, Chełmno, and Majdanek. 

The largest and most notorious of these sites was the Auschwitz camp complex, which combined a concentration camp and a major killing center. The gas chambers at these camps were central to the Nazis' "Final Solution," their plan to systematically murder the Jewish population of Europe.  Auschwitz-Birkenau was located in Oświęcim, Poland, a town in occupied Poland where Nazi Germany built a large complex of concentration and extermination camps during World War II, serving as a primary site for the Holocaust. It's now preserved as the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, honoring the victims and serving as a research center. 


Resoource:

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert, book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_January_1939_Reichstag_speech#:~:text=On%2030%20January%201939%2C%20Adolf,world%20war%20were%20to%20occur.&text=Nazi%20propaganda%20minister%20Joseph%20Goebbels,policies%20of%20the%20Nazi%20government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp#:~:text=Nazi%20Germany%20used%20six%20extermination,the%20Independent%20State%20of%20Croatia.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reinhard-Heydrich





Saturday, May 17, 2025

What Would Trump Do If He Only Knew ....The Real Truth About Qatar?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                                   Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi  (9/9/1926-26/9/2022) 

Long ago in 1961, 64 years ago, Qatar hosted a man dedicated to the destruction of Israel;  Qaradawi.  Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Arabic: يوسف القرضاوي, romanized: Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī; or Yusuf al-Qardawi; 9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

                                               Al-Qaradawi in the 1960s.  

One 35-year-old Egyptian cleric, who had already been imprisoned by both King Farouk and Gamal Abdel Nasser as a Muslim Brotherhood member, was sent to the small emirate of Qatar in 1961. Qatar was probably the least and poorest of those Arab Gulf states at the time. That young man, Yousuf Al-Qaradawi (1926-2022), who died last week in Doha at the age of 96, would rise to great heights as he tied his fate and ideology to that of an increasingly wealthy and ambitious princely family.                                     


The Al Thani family, the ruling royal family of Qatar, was a key supporter of Yusuf al-Qaradawi. They granted him Qatari citizenship in 1969 and provided financial support for his travels and activities, particularly his visits to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations around the world according to a post on the Maydan website. Qaradawi was also protected by the Al Thani princes and given a diplomatic passport.                                     

Sheikh Tamim ibn Hamad Al Thani (born June 3, 1980, Doha, Qatar) is a member of the Thani dynasty and the emir of Qatar (2013– ) who succeeded his father, Sheikh Hamad, after Hamad abdicated in his favor.   He is the second son of former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. While often referred to as the "King" of Qatar, the official title is Emir.  The Al Thani family migrated to Qatar from central Arabia in the 1700s and became the dominant ruling family in the mid-19th century. They are from the Tamim tribe, which originally lived in central Arabia. While they share a common origin with the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, the Al Saud, the Al Thani dynasty established its rule in Qatar, a separate country on the Arabian Peninsula.  

The extravagant ways Gulf leaders rolled out the red (and lavender) carpet for Trump, in photos                         

By 1977, Qaradawi laid the foundation for the Faculty of Shari'ah and Islamic Studies at the University of Qatar and became the faculty's dean.  Al-Qaradawi would flourish with the Muslims, founding the Faculty of Islamic Law (Sharia) at Qatar University in 1977 at age 55, writing and teaching, and building up networks of like-minded contacts and allies throughout the region. In the years before the Muslim Brotherhood was seen as a threat by Gulf states, he was rewarded by governments other than Qatar. In 1994, he received the King Faisal Prize in Islamic Studies from Saudi Arabia. In 2000, he was awarded the Dubai International Holy Quran Award for Islamic Personality of the Year, an award established by Dubai's ruling family.

Some of his views, such as his condoning of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis, caused reactions from governments in the West: he was refused an entry visa to the United Kingdom in 2008, and barred from entering France in 2012.

He lectured from Qatar to Muslims all over by TV, radio, whatever could be used against Israel.    According to Qaradawi, the verses in the Quran that tell Muslims to break ties with Jews and Christians (Al-Maidah 5:54-55) refer to those people who were hostile to Islam and waged war against Muslims. This means that Muslims are not allowed to help or be friends with people who are hostile towards Islam, even if it means going against their own interests.  

In August 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research, of which al-Qaradawi was president, had used the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its theological deliberations. Al-Qaradawi's remarks were sharply criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which accused him of inciting violence against Jews.

In a 9 January 2009 sermon during the Gaza War, shown on Al-Jazeera, Qaradawi prayed for Allah to take revenge on the "enemies of Islam", specifically the Jews, whom he described as treacherous, aggressors who have spread much tyranny and corruption. He asked Allah to annihilate them completely, without sparing any of them]

In his Friday sermon broadcast on Qatar TV on 26 April 2013, Qaradawi announced that he would not participate in next year's interfaith dialogue if Jews were invited, stating that there should be no debate with those who have committed injustice. He cited a verse from the Quran which says that there should be no debate with the People of the Book except in a way that is best, and went on to say that the Jews have committed great injustice and that "their hands are soiled with blood".   Note:  Muslims are perfect, of course, in his mind, doing nothing.  

Qaradawi's statements were described as incitement to genocide in a Jewish Political Studies Review article, which connected his belief in Jewish conspiracies to the appeals to violence against them. 


Qaradawi asserted that Hitler meted out divinely sanctioned punishment to the Jews and called for Muslims to impose a similar punishment, calling openly for genocide. His appeals for genocide were coupled with paranoid conspiracy thinking that identifies the Jews as the greatest enemies of Islam; alleging a Jewish plot to take over the entire Middle East, including Mecca and Medina; blaming the Jews for the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate in 1924 and the spread of communism; and accusing the Jews of planning to tear down the al-Aqsa Mosque so as to build a Jewish Temple in its place. (The Jewish Temple is a possibility but not tearing down the Mosque---though that might be an idea to place on the table.)

Al-Qaradawi supported suicide attacks on all Israelis, including women since he viewed the Israeli society as a "completely military" society that did not include any civilians. He also considered pregnant women and their unborn babies to be valid targets on the grounds that the babies could grow up to join the Israeli Army.

Defending bombings against Israeli civilians, al-Qaradawi told BBC Newsnight in 2005 that:"An Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier.""I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an evidence of God's justice."  "Allah Almighty is Just; through His infinite Wisdom He has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have and that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs as Palestinians do."

In an interview with the newspaper Al Raya in April 2001, al-Qaradawi declared that suicide (or "martyrdom") bombings conducted by Palestinians against Israelis "are not suicide operations. These are heroic martyrdom operations, and the heroes who carry them out don't embark on this action out of hopelessness and despair but are driven by an overwhelming desire to cast terror and fear into the hearts of the oppressors."

On 8 May 2013, Qaradawi visited Gaza and gave a speech in support of Hamas. He asked all of the Palestinian people to work with other Arab people and Muslims around the world to destroy Israel, saying inflammatory things such as "Our wish should be that we carry out Jihad to death" and "We should seek to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, inch by inch."

An Anti-Defamation League report in 2011 said that al-Qaradawi had voiced his desire to see Jerusalem conquered in a fatwa in which he claimed that it was the Muslims' duty to "defend" Jerusalem with "their lives, their money and all they possess, or else they will be subject to Allah's punishment."]

Remember;  he's blaring all his frustrations of hatred of Jews to all the Muslims that are tuned in to his rants and ravings.   Yusuf Qaradawi's television program, Ash-Shari'a wal-Hayat (Sharia and Life), on Al-Jazeera, had an estimated 60 million viewers. Some reports suggest even higher viewership figures, with some citing 700-800 million worldwide. 

To answer the question of what Trump would do; Israel decided what to do.  A new round of negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal between Hamas and Israel began in Qatar on Saturday after the Israeli military launched its new expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to both Israeli and Hamas officials.  Hamas confirmed a new round of talks was underway. Terror group official Taher al-Nono told Reuters that both sides were discussing all issues without “preconditions.”

Update: 5/20/25; 6:30am

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed Al-Thani said that negotiations between Israel and Hamas have reached a dead end, blaming Israel. He said, "One side seeks a comprehensive agreement for Gaza, while the other insists on a partial deal. We have not been able to bridge the gap." Meanwhile, in remarks made at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York, Adam Boehler, U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy for hostage affairs, said progress was being made. “We’re getting closer to a deal. If Hamas presents a legitimate offer and is ready to release hostages, we’re open to it. I do think we're closer [to a hostage deal] than we ever were, and part of that is because of movement that the IDF and Israel did on the ground—it strengthens our hand.”


Resource:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-hamas-say-gaza-talks-renewed-after-idf-initiates-major-new-offensive/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sheikh-Tamim-ibn-Hamad-Al-Thani

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/qaradawis-war-egypt-sunni-cleric-al-jazeera-talk-show-fame-further-destabilizing#:~:text=The%20leading%20scholar%20has%20a,an%20estimated%2060%20million%20viewers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_al-Qaradawi#:~:text=Yusuf%20al%2DQaradawi%20(Arabic%3A,International%20Union%20of%20Muslim%20Scholars.

https://www.memri.org/reports/al-qaradawi-qatars-islamist-empire-builder