Through the Looking-Glass
LightNews LightNews
banner
ramonfliek.bsky.social
Through the Looking-Glass
@ramonfliek.bsky.social
33 followers 41 following 320 posts
"Let the WARNING ride forth once more: Tyranny is at our door”

find the full stories here: https://www.facebook.com/ramonfliek
Posts Replies Media Videos
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 8, 1942: The 41th transport left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. The train carried 927 deportees of which 131 were children. Most of the deportees were send to the gas chambers on arrival and within 6 months all but a few men were murdered. Only two people survived.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: A transport leaving concentration camp Westerbork
December 9, 2025 at 12:39 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 7, 1941: Hitler issued the Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog") decree, targeting political dissidents for disappearances.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

“It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).
Political activists and resistance "helpers" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany were imprisoned, executed, or made to disappear into the "night and fog" of the Reich. The family and the population remained uncertain as to the fate or whereabouts of the alleged offender against the Nazi occupation power. Victims who disappeared in these clandestine actions were often never heard from again. Photo: SS officers at a construction site in the Hinzert political prisoners concentration camp
December 7, 2025 at 10:28 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 6, 1938: Von Ribbentrop and Georges Bonnet signed a treaty by which Germany and France guaranteed the inviolability of one another's borders and agreed to engage in mutual consultation to resolve all disputes peacefully. Germany invaded France 10 May 1940.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Georges Bonnet signed a treaty in Paris by which Germany and France guaranteed the inviolability of one another's borders and agreed to engage in mutual consultation to resolve all disputes peacefully. Germany invaded France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourger 10 May 1940. Ribbentrop was convicted on four counts at the Nuremberg trials.: crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the judgment, Ribbentrop was actively involved in planning the Anschluss, as well as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was also deeply involved in the "final solution"; as early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east. He supported the lynching of Allied airmen shot down over Germany, and helped to cover up the 1945 murder of Major-General Gustave Mesny, a French officer being held as a prisoner-of-war. He was held directly responsible for atrocities which took place in Denmark and Vichy France Even in prison, Ribbentrop remained loyal to Hitler: "Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say 'do this!', I would still do it." On 16 October 1946, Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged. Photo: Joachim von Ribbentrop (l) and Georges Bonnet (r) signed the treaty in Paris, 1938.
December 6, 2025 at 7:41 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 5, 1924: Benito Mussolini introduced a bill enforcing widespread press censorship.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Benito Mussolini goes for a drive with his pet lion cub, named Ras, in 1924
December 5, 2025 at 10:58 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 4, 1942: On this Friday, the first day of Hanukah, the Jewish feast of lights, the 40th mass transport from #Westerbork left for #Auschwitz. Nobody from this transport would survive.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
r. They were forced to work in one of the camps in Upper Silesia. Nobody from this transport would survive.
December 5, 2025 at 2:45 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 3, 1938: Nazi Germany had a nationwide "day of solidarity" collecting street donations for the Winterhilfswerk fund. Jews were ordered to stay off the streets. According to the order by Heinrich Himmler, they had "no share in the solidarity of the German nation."

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Magda Goebbels collects donations for the Winter Relief with a collecting box on the ‘Day of National Solidarity’ on 3 December 1938. Here she takes a donation from Adolf Hitler. A 1938 Nazi propaganda leaflet claimed that the Winterhilfswerk had collected nearly a billion Reichsmarks from 1933 to 1937 as well as half a billion in goods and two million kilograms of coal. However, in 1937 a group of exiled German economists writing under the pseudonym 'Germanicus' produced figures comparing the Winterhilfswerk of 1933 with the pre-existing Reich Winter Help of 1931. The figures showed that the Winterhilfswerk provided slightly more coal and potatoes to the needy, but dramatically less bread and meat. They also pointed out that the Reich Winter Help was supplemented by the relief efforts of the states and private organizations, but this help had ceased under the Nazis. American diplomat William Russell's eyewitness book Berlin Embassy pointed out that no account was ever made of where the huge amounts raised by Winterhilfswerk were spent. His contention was not only that the program was a sham and that all the proceeds were used to produce armaments.
December 3, 2025 at 9:41 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 2, 1938: The first 200 Jewish children of the Kindertransport program arrived in England.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organized rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–39 during the nine months prior to the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The program was supported, publicized, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfill. The British government placed no numerical limit on the program; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the program by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The term "Kindertransport" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Chateau de La Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organized program of the United Kingdom. Photo: Young refugees of the first Kindertransport after their arrival at Harwich, Essex, in the early morning of 2 December 1938.
December 2, 2025 at 8:51 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
December 1, 1936: Nazi Germany passed several new laws. Membership in the Hitler Youth was made mandatory and the death penalty was introduced for those who hoarded their wealth abroad.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Accompanied by their parents, ten-year-olds are forcibly enrolled into the Hitler Youth.
December 2, 2025 at 5:05 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 30, 1942: The 39th mass transport from the Netherlands left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz. Mostly former employees of the Hollandia-Kattenburg company and their families. There were 104 children on this transport. Only 9 men survived.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
9 of the 170 men taken at Cosel for slave labor survived the war: - Siegfried Parsser survived his wife, Rachel Lea Parsser-Duijts, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. - Samuel Jas survived, his mother and one of his sisters were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. His sister was married to Jacob de Boers who also survived. - Jacob de Boers survived, his wife, Josephine de Boers-Jas, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz together with her mother and mother in-law. - Jacob Nunes Vas survived, his wife, Rebecca, was murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. - Maurits Pim Pimentel survived, his parents survived Theresiënstadt. - Hessel Goldberg survived, his parents and brother would die in Sobibor and another brother in Auschwitz. - Erwin Hirschberg survived, his father died in Camp Blechhammer. - Mozes Engelsman survived, his mother and two younger bothers and sister were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. His father died in Auschwitz a year later. - Alexander Pais survived, his little sister Rachel and his parents Israël and Schoontje were murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. his brother Abraham died in Gross-Rosen and 4 others siblings would all end up in Auschwitz and perish. Alexander's sister Elisabeth, her husband Elias Abraham and 9 y/o son Gerrit committed suicide together with Elias's brother Pinas out of fear of deportation. Photo: Train bound for Auschwitz at Camp Westerbork.
November 30, 2025 at 9:01 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 29, 1941: The second mass shooting of the Ninth Fort massacres occurred. A total of 4,934 German Jews, that had been deported without due process, were killed by the Nazis in the two days of shootings in the Ninth Fort near Kaunas, Lithuania.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Jews imprisoned in one of the courtyards of the Ninth Fort in Kaunas (Kovno) Originally the ghettos of Riga, Lodz, and Minsk were to receive the Reich Jews. In particular, it was planned to send 25 trains to Riga. There had been some reluctance on the part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland headquarters in Riga, headed by Hinrich Lohse, to having to find accommodation for 25,000 Jews. This and other issues related to the treatment of Jews in the northern part of the Nazi-occupied Soviet territory, caused Lohse and his deputy Otto Drechsler to become embroiled in a dispute with Franz Walter Stahlecker, commander of the Einsatzgruppe A, who favored a more rapid policy of radical extermination. On 20 November 1941, Rudolf Lange, another Einsatzgruppe commander, informed Lohse's administration that the first five trains would be rerouted to Kaunas, where the Ninth Fort is located. Karl Jäger was the head of Einsatzkommando 3, a sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe A. Under his command, Einsatzkommando 3 took everyone off the trains after their arrival to the Ninth Fort, where, shortly after arrival, the Einsatzkommando shot them all. There were two separate shootings, on 25 November and on 29 November. In the 25 November shooting, 1,159 men, 1,600 women, and 175 children were killed (resettlers from Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt). In the 29 November shooting, 693 men, 1,155 women, and 152 children were killed (resettlers from Vienna and Breslau).
November 29, 2025 at 11:54 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 28, 1938: A police decree in Nazi Germany authorized presidents of administrative districts to order restrictions on freedom of movement for Jews.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
November 29, 2025 at 12:13 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 27, 1941: On this Thursday in 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln held a meeting at the Riga office of the Protective Police (Schutzpolizei) to coordinate the actions in the forthcoming Rumbula massacre.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
November 27, 1941: On this Thursday in 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln held a meeting at the Riga office of the Protective Police (Schutzpolizei) to coordinate the actions in the forthcoming Rumbula massacre. Heinrich Himmler had ordered the clearing out of the Riga Ghetto and eliminate the Latvian Jews there to make room for Jews from Germany and Austria to be deported to the Riga ghetto. To fulfill Himmler's order to clear out the Ghetto, Jeckeln would need to kill 12,000 people per day. Image: Nazi Franz Walter Stahlecker, another perpetrator of the Latvian Holocaust, prepared this map. Illustrated with coffins, it shows there were still 35,000 Jews remaining in Latvia before the Rumbula massacres. Estonia, the report states, is "Jew-free" (judenfrei).
November 27, 2025 at 7:41 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 26, 1942: The train that had left #Westerbork on Tuesday arrived at #Auschwitz. 42 women from this transport were admitted into the camp and were tattooed with the serial numbers 25927-25968. All the others, 667, were immediately murdered in the gas chambers.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: A disabled person being transported via a stretchers to the train. After the Jews at Westerbork selected for this transport had been registered, searched and expropriated, they had to board the deportation train on the camp grounds. Fred Schwarz, who had been imprisoned in Westerbork with his brother from July 1940 onwards, describes the departure in his memoirs. He recalls that the barrack leaders would typically call the deportees, and the men, women and children had to carry their luggage to the train. The Jewish camp staff (Ordnungsdienst) and the "flying column" (inmates in charge of taking the deportees to the train) helped the people onto the train. Food was distributed by the kitchen personnel and nurses usually took the invalids to the train on stretchers. Then the camp commandant would give the sign for departure. One day after the departure of the transport, on November 25, the Joodse Raad informed the members of the council that 705 persons from Westerbork had been deported to Germany the day before. The deportation list for this transport records 686 deportees. This list used by the Zentralstelle was copied by representatives of the Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co Bank, who worked at Westerbork and who passed it on to Hans Fischböck, General Commissioner for Economic Affairs in the Netherlands to whom the bank was directly accountable. The deportees comprised whole families as well as many infants, children and elderly people. There were 103 children under the age of 18. The youngest deportee, an infant girl (Belia de Leeuw), had just turned four months old when she was shipped away with her parents. The oldest deportee was Benjamin Lion, 88 years old. When the train stopped at Cosel approximately 80 km before Auschwitz, some 70 able-bodied men between the ages of 15 - 50 were selected for slave labour, including Rudolf de Leeuw, Belia's father. He and the others were forced to work in one of the camps in Silesia.
November 26, 2025 at 10:17 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 25, 1944: The German SS began dismantling the technical equipment of crematorium II at #Auschwitz II-Birkenau. An air-pump engine from the gas chamber was planned for #Mauthausen and pipes for #Gross-Rosen camps.

Photo: Ruins of crematorium II in 1946.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Ruins of crematorium II in 1946.
November 25, 2025 at 7:01 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 24, 1942: A transport left #Westerbork for #Auschwitz with 709 prisoners, nobody survived. Moritz Frank and his wife Johanna were on that transport. She was send to the gas chamber on arrival. Moritz died in #Buchenwald a few weeks before it was liberated.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945
November 25, 2025 at 2:01 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 23, 1931: Carl von Ossietzky is sentenced to 18 months in prison for "betraying military secrets". He had exposed details of Germany's construction of a secret air force in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Ossietzky died of tuberculosis in 1938.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
As editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Weltbühne, Ossietzky published a series of exposés in the late 1920s, detailing Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding an air force (the predecessor of the Luftwaffe) and training pilots in the Soviet Union. He was convicted of treason and espionage in 1931 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison but was granted amnesty in December 1932. Ossietzky continued to be a vocal critic against German militarism after the Nazis' rise to power. Following the 1933 Reichstag fire, Ossietzky was again arrested and sent to the #Esterwegen concentration camp near Oldenburg. His brutal torture after his arrest was attested by International Red Cross. In 1936, he was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, but was forbidden from travelling to Norway to accept the prize. After enduring years of mistreatment in Nazi concentration camps, Ossietzky died of tuberculosis in 1938 in a Berlin hospital after more than five years of imprisonment. Photo: Ossietzky in the Esterwegen concentration camp.
November 23, 2025 at 6:16 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 22, 1946: Otto Thierack, 57, Reich Minister of Justice in Nazi Germany from 1942-1945, committed suicide before he could be brought before a United States military court in the Nuremberg Judges' Trial.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Otto Thierack (right) with Judge Roland Freisler at the end of August 1942.
November 23, 2025 at 6:12 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 21, 1937: Lord Halifax ended his visit to Nazi Germany. He returned to London believing that Hitler could be bargained with, and this development marked the beginning of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy toward Germany.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Adolf Hitler greets British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the beginning of the Bad Godesberg meeting on 24 September 1938 in which Hitler demanded annexation of Czech border areas without delay, leading to the Godesberg Memorandum.
November 21, 2025 at 8:46 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 20, 1942: The 37th transport departed from #Westerbork to #Auschwitz. With this transport, 726 Jews were deported; On arrival after selection 654 people were send to the gas chambers. No one on this transport survived.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
It was the 37th time that a transport of imprisoned Jews departed from #Westerbork to #Auschwitz. Since the beginning of November, the starting point of the journey was no longer Hooghalen station; instead, the train was positioned in the middle of the camp. This train also consisted of passenger carriages—though old ones. With this transport, 726 Jews were deported; On arrival after selection 654 people were send to the gas chambers. No one on this transport survived. Photo: Jewish prisoners laying the train tracks that went from Hooghalen station to inside Westerbork.
November 21, 2025 at 1:51 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 19, 1943: Susanna Ledermann is 15 years old when she and her parents, Franz and Ilse, arrive at Auschwitz II-Birkenau from #Westerbork. Her sister, Barbara, is not with them. After selection Susanna and her parents are murdered in the gas chambers.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Photo: Left to right: Hannah Goslar (a.k.a., “Lies Goosens” in early editions of Anne's Diary), Anne Frank, Dolly Citroen, Hannah Toby, Barbara Ledermann and Susanne Ledermann (standing), Amsterdam, 1937. Susanna and her sister Barbara were born in Berlin Germany and moved with their parents to The Netherlands in 1933 when Hitler rose to absolute power. In Amsterdam Franz Ledermann started a legal firm together with Hans Goslar and they befriended the family Frank. Susanna, Barbara and Hannah Goslar become best friends with Anne and Margot Frank. Before their arrest Hans Goslar had succeeded in obtaining Paraguayan passports and getting his family placed on a list of Jewish people who were supposed to seek refuge in Palestine. Eventually, Hans Goslar and his daughters Hannah and Gabriele are transported to Bergen-Belsen on 15 February 1944. They ended up in the Sternlager. They were placed on the Palestine list — people on this list could be exchanged for Germans living in the British Mandate of Palestine. Although the conditions were appalling, the Goslars were far better off in their section of the camp. In February 1945, Hannah saw her childhood friend Anne Frank again. She walked to the fence that separated her part of the camp from the other section. Anne was on the other side of the fence, in the “small women’s camp.” The conditions in the camp where Anne was held were shocking. There was hardly anything to eat, and the prisoners were left entirely to their fate. They spoke a few more times after that. Anne and her sister Margot died in February 1945 from typhus. On 25 February 1945, Hans Goslar died. Hannah and Gabi were put on transport with others in early April 1945. After thirteen days traveling through the German countryside, they were liberated by the Russians. Barbara Ledermann also survived the war and emigrated to the United States in 1947.
November 20, 2025 at 1:50 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 18, 1943: The Ebensee (a subcamp of #Mauthausen) concentration camp opened, receiving its first 1,000 prisoners.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Ebensee was a subcamp of #Mauthausen concentration camp established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria where the inmates were put to work excavating tunnels in the Salzkammergut Mountains near Ebensee in the Ostmark, German-annexed Austria, for the purpose of establishing a missile development facility. Originally, the laborers were Aryan, with Jewish prisoners being shipped seven months later. At the peak of its operations, the camp had 18,000 slave workers engaged in the mining operations, and 11,000 of the inmates of the Ebensee would die from starvation and disease. Photo: Liberated prisoner at the Ebensee concentration camp on 8 May 1945.
November 19, 2025 at 1:25 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 17, 1939: Germans stormed the Prague University, attacking and arresting thousands of students. The Nazis executed nine students and professors by firing squad without trial that day for leading the previous demonstrations against the German occupation.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
In late 1939 the Nazi authorities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia suppressed a demonstration in Prague held by students of the Medical Faculty of Charles University. The demonstration was held on 28 October to commemorate the anniversary of the independence of the Czechoslovak Republic (1918). During this demonstration the student Jan Opletal was shot, and later died from his injuries on 11 November. On 15 November his body was supposed to be transported from Prague to his home in Moravia. His funeral procession consisted of thousands of students, who turned the event into an anti-Nazi demonstration. However, the Nazi authorities took drastic measures in response, closing all Czech higher education institutions, arresting more than 1,200 students, who were then sent to concentration camps, mainly #Sachsenhausen. On 17 November the Nazis executed nine students and professors without trial. The Nazis granted permission for the funeral procession already expecting a violent outcome, in order to use that as a pretext for closing down universities and purging anti-nazi dissidents. Photo: The nine students and professors executed on 17 November in Prague. From top left: Josef Adamec, Jan Černý, Marek Frauwirth, Jaroslav Klíma, Bedřich Koula, Josef Matoušek, František Skorkovský, Václav Šaffránek, Jan Weinert.
November 18, 2025 at 1:11 AM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 16, 1940: The Warsaw Ghetto was officially sealed, cutting off 380,000 Jews from the rest of the world.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday

“It happened, therefore it can happen again. It can happen and it can happen anywhere” (Primo Levi, Survivor of #Auschwitz).
1) Warsaw ghetto wall Poland 1940. Photo taken by German soldier. Before the war, several tram lines ran along Tłomackie Street, where passengers were admired by, among others, representative building of the Great Synagogue. This route could reach Wola or Żoliborz. From March 1940, tram number 16 crossed the street, connecting Teatralny Square with Ulrychów. 2) Warsaw Ghetto gate on Solna Street (currently Jana Pawła II Avenue). Image from Mirowski Square towards the north 1941. Author of the photo unknown. When the ghetto closed on November 16, 1940, 22 gates were created (some of them were closed as the boundaries of the „Jewish district were changed”). The only legal way to get behind the wall was to pass through the gate after presenting a pass. Poles, Volksdeutsche and Germans used yellow cards. There was also a blue stripe on Jewish documents. The entrances were guarded from the outside by German gendarmes from the Schutzpolizei (Protective Police), from the inside by – Polish policemen and the Jewish Order Service. On October 15, 1941, Governor Hans Frank issued an ordinance prohibiting Jews from leaving the ghetto under threat of the death penalty.From this point on, guards on both sides of the wall could shoot at Jews illegally crossing the ghetto borders. The first executions for „unauthorized abandonment of the Jewish district” were carried out on November 17 (eight people killed) and December 15 (12 people killed). The victims were shot by grenade police officers. Not only were – smugglers killed, some gendarmes also shot at ordinary passers-by who were not involved in smuggling and had passes.
November 16, 2025 at 7:02 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 15, 1943: Himmler issued an order reclassifying the Gypsies in German-occupied territories. He declared "nomadic Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), issued an order reclassifying the status of Gypsies in German-occupied territories. While "sedentary" people of Romani origin were "to be treated as citizens of the country", he declared "nomadic Gypsies and part-Gypsies are to be placed on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps." Photo: Romani (Gypsy) families in #Belzec extermination camp.
November 16, 2025 at 6:20 PM
ramonfliek.bsky.social
November 14, 1938: Four days after the #Kristallnacht pogrom the Reich Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, officially put into effect the immediate exclusion of all Jewish students from German schools after Hermann Göring had issued a decree two days earlier.

#RememberHistory #USAtoday
November 14, 1938: Four days after the #Kristallnacht pogrom the Reich Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, officially put into effect the immediate exclusion of all Jewish students from German schools after Hermann Göring had issued a decree two days earlier: "Anordnung über den Ausschluß der Juden aus deutschen Schulen”. This Tuesday in 1938 marked a turning point in the systematic exclusion of Jewish people from all areas of public life - including from school, a place that was actually intended to serve learning, community and the future. Some communities tried to independently organize Jewish private schools in order to at least provide basic education. But these were under strict control and offered only limited opportunities. Photo: Jewish school in Deventer, the Netherlands, in September 1942.
November 14, 2025 at 11:50 PM