Millions of Souls: The Philip Riteman Story

26/27 April 1943 | At 2 am a co-founder of camp conspiracy Witold Pilecki escaped from the camp together with Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski. Read more about ...escapes from Auschwitz: http://lekcja.auschwitz.org/en_15_ucieczki/ Read more about resistance movement in Auschwitz: http://lekcja.auschwitz.org/en_16_ruch_oporu/ In the spring of 1943 Witold Pilecki, sensing the threat of exposure and intending to personally submit a report about the situation in the camp, decided to escape. For this purpose, he got transferred to the Kommando employed in the bakery, situated outside the main camp (about 2 km north). Two other prisoners with whom he intended to escape, Edward Ciesielski and Jan Redzej, also got transferred to the same Kommando. The escape took place at night, on April 26/27, 1943 directly from the bakery premises. During work, the prisoners managed to cut telephone and alarm ring wires, opened the door with a duplicate key and moved away bolts locking the door. Then they immediately left the building, barricaded the exit from the outside and ran east. That night they also managed to cross the Soa river, swam across the Vistula river and reached nearby forest in a boat found by accident. After the entire day of rest they carried on the march, during which they crossed the border of the General Government. Finally, after a few days, they reached Nowy Winicz near Bochnia, where they established contact with the regional Headquarters of the Home Army. Pilecki presented the Home Army his plan of attacking the camp which however was not approved by the leadership. He described his activities in conspiration movement and the situation in the camp in special reports. Pilecki continued his underground activity. He fought in Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After its collapse he was arrested in a POWs camp in Murnau. After the liberation he joined the II Polish Corps of general Wadysaw Anders in Italy. At the end of 1945 he come back to Poland. In 1947 he was arrested by the communist regime. He was sentenced to death for alleged espionage. He was executed in Mokotów prison in Warsaw on May 25, 1948. He was rehabilitated in 1990. Jan Redzej perished during the Warsaw Uprising. Edward Ciesielski after the war was arrested by the communist regime. His sentence was commuted into life imprisonment and then into 15 years.

24 April 1893 | A German Jew, Alfred Dresel, was born in Fraustadt (Wschowa). A businessman. He was among MS St. Louis passengers. After the forced return to Eu...rope he stayed in France. During the occupation , he was deported - via Gurs & Drancy - to Auschwitz. He was murdered in a gas chamber on 28 August 1942. See more

21 April 1935 | A French Jewish boy, Jean Louis Wajnberg, was born in Amiens. He was deported to Auschwitz in January 1944 with his parents: Chasis (Asia) and Benajamin. They were most probably murdered in a gas chamber after the selection

16 April 1947 | A few minutes after 10 a.m. Rudolf Höss, the founder and the first commandant of the German Nazi Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp ...was executed. Rudolf Höss lived in a villa 50 meters from the camp fence. He lived there with his wife Hedwig and his four children: Klaus, Heidetraut, Inge-Brigitt, and Hans. His fifth child, Annegret was born on 7 November 1943. The gallows was built at the remains of the former camp Gestapo offices, next to the building where the first crematorium had been created. The gallows was around 100 meters from the villa Höss used to live in with his family and from his office.

Marcel Marceau’s extraordinary talent for pantomime entertained audiences around the world for over sixty years. It also saved hundreds of Jewish children durin...g the Holocaust. Born to a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France in 1923, young Marcel Mangel discovered Charlie Chaplin at age five and became an avid fan. He entertained his friends with Chaplin imitations, and dreamed of starring in silent movies. When Marcel was 16, the Nazis marched into France, and the Jews of Strasbourg - near the German border - had to flee for their lives. Marcel changed his last name to Marceau to avoid being identified as Jewish, and joined the French resistance movement. Masquerading as a boy scout, Marcel evacuated a Jewish orphanage in eastern France. He told the children he was taking them on a vacation in the Alps, and led them to safety in Switzerland. Marcel made the perilous journey three times, saving hundreds of Jewish orphans. He was able to avoid detection by entertaining the children with silent pantomime. Documentary filmmaker Phillipe Mora, whose father fought alongside Marcel in the French resistance, said, ''Marceau started miming to keep children quiet as they were escaping. It had nothing to do with show business. He was miming for his life.’' Marcel’s father perished at Auschwitz. Marcel later said, The people who came back from the camps were never able to talk about it. My name is Mangel. I am Jewish. Perhaps that, unconsciously, contributed towards my choice of silence. While fighting with the French resistance, Marcel ran into a unit of German soldiers. Thinking fast, he mimicked the advance of a large French force, and the German soldiers retreated. Word spread throughout the Allied forces of Marcel’s remarkable talent as a mime. In his first major performance, Marcel entertained 3,000 US troops after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Later in life, he expressed great pride that his first review was in the US Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes. In 1947, Marcel created his beloved character Bip, a childlike everyman with a stovepipe hat and a red carnation. For the next six decades, Marcel was the world’s foremost master of the art of silence. Pop star Michael Jackson credited Marcel with inspiring his famous moonwalk. In 2001, Marcel was awarded the Wallenberg Medal for his acts of courage during the Holocaust. When the award was announced, people speculated on whether Marcel would give an acceptance speech. He replied, Never get a mime talking, because he won’t stop. Until his death at age 84, Marcel performed 300 times a year and taught 4 hours a day at his pantomime school in Paris. He died on Yom Kippur, 2007. For risking his life to save orphans, and entertaining generations of fans without uttering a word, we honor Marcel Marceau as this week’s Thursday Hero at Accidental Talmudist. With thanks to Essia Cartoon-Fredman ------------------- Receive stories like this in your inbox: accidentaltalmudist.org/sign-up

To her Queens, New York, neighbors, she was Mrs. Ryan, the nice lady who didn't make the little boy pay when he accidentally threw a baseball through her window.... To the inmates at Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps, she was known as "the mare" because she brutally kicked them with her iron-tipped boots. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was tipped off to search for Ryan, also known as Hermine Braunsteiner. The New York Times publicly identified her. In 1973, Braunsteiner became the first Nazi criminal to be extradited from the United States. In Germany, she was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the death of more than 1,000 prisoners. The revelation of a Nazi criminal in the neighborhood electrified the press and galvanized public opinion. It touched off an investigation that discovered the US government hadn't done enough to prevent America from becoming a haven for Nazi criminals. In 1979, the Department of Justice created the Office of Special Investigations and charged it with investigating and removing people who had participated in Nazi persecution and preventing other perpetrators from coming to America. During the Holocaust, women were rescuers, survivors, victims, and, yes, perpetrators.