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Albert Battel (German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈbatl̩] ( listen); 21 January 1891 – 1952) was a German Army lieutenant and lawyer recognized for his resistance during World War II to the Nazi plans for the 1942 liquidation of the Przemyśl Jewish ghetto. He was posthumously recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1981.
20-yearAt the Nürnberg trials, Albert Speer was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he served a 20-year prison sentence. Following his release in 1966, Speer wrote popular books about the Third Reich.
After the war, Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" arrested and charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime at the Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence.
war crimes and crimes against humanitySpeer was found guilty on counts three and four (war crimes and crimes against humanity) at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in 1966.
1939Food was rationed immediately in 1939, although Germans did not experience chronic shortages until 1944. The Germans' diet became more monotonous, with lots of bread, potatoes and preserves. There were meat shortages due to lack of imports from the USA.
Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's former deputy, is found strangled to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, apparently the victim of suicide. Hess was the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle and the sole prisoner at Spandau since 1966.
But it was two particular deaths, those of Hitler, 56, and Eva Braun, 33, in that sordid underground bunker on April 30, 1945, that signaled the true, final fall of the Third Reich.
Bergfriedhof, Heidelberg, GermanyAlbert Speer / Place of burial
Przemyśl, Poland… July 26, 1942 – As a 51-year-old lawyer, Albert Battel fulfilled his German army-reserve duty in Przemyśl, Poland, serving as the adjutant to the local military commander, Major Max Liedtke. When the SS attempted to carry out the first liquidation of Przemyśl’s Jews, Battel and Liedtke ordered the army to block the bridge over the River San, the one entry-point to the Przemyśl ghetto. As the SS troops continued to advance along the bridge, Battel’s guards commanded them to stop and threatened to open fire on them. At the same time, Battel arranged for army trucks to collect some 100 Jews from the ghetto and to bring them to the barracks of a local military base where the Wehrmacht could protect them. The Jews in the ghetto who were not able to make it to the military base were deported by the SS to the Belzec death camp.
At the same time, Battel arranged for army trucks to collect some 100 Jews from the ghetto and to bring them to the barracks of a local military base where the Wehrmacht could protect them.
Battel was released from the army in 1944 due to a medical condition.
When the SS attempted to carry out the first liquidation of Przemyśl’s Jews, Battel and Liedtke ordered the army to block the bridge over the River San, the one entry-point to the Przemyśl ghetto.
Due to his prior affiliation with the Nazi party, he was not able to practice law. Albert Battel died in 1952. ← Belkova, Kira Bartoszewski, Wladyslaw →.
After this episode, which was a great embarrassment for the Nazi party, an investigation was conducted. Battel, while a member of the Nazi party since 1933, had previously raised suspicions among Nazi officials.
Battel’s heroic stand against the SS, unparalleled in the annals of the Third Reich, came to be recognized only a long time after his death; most notably, through the tenacious efforts of the Israeli researcher and lawyer Dr. Zeev Goshen.
Before the war he had been indicted before a party tribunal for having extended a loan to a Jewish colleague.
Albert Battel was born on January 21, 1891 in Klein-Pramsen. As a fifty-one-year-old reserve officer and lawyer from Breslau, Dr. Battel was stationed in Przemysl in south Poland as the adjutant to the local military commander, Major Max Liedtke.
On January 22, 1981, Yad Vashem decided to recognize Albert Battel (posthumously) as Righteous Among the Nations.
No less a figure than Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer -SS, took a lively interest in the results of the investigation and sent a photocopy of the incriminating documentation to Martin Borman, chief of the Party Chancellery and Hitler’s right-hand man.
When the SS prepared to launch their first large-scale “resettlement” (liquidation) action against the Jews of Przemysl on July 26, 1942, Battel, in consort with his superior, ordered the bridge over the River San, the only access into the Jewish ghetto, to be blocked.
A lawyer like no other - the true crime story of Albert Battel, a Nazi lawyer who stood up to the SS | Duhaime's Anti-Money Laundering & Financial Crime News.
Dr. Albert Battel at 3 Piłsudskiego, Przemyśl, Poland, 1942 (Source: Unknown) Dr. Battel was the only known Wehrmacht officer to have ever threatened the SS with armed force to protect the Jewish people.
The Wehrmacht had 18 million soldiers; why only one — Albert Battel — stood up to the SS in broad daylight in what was, in effect, a moment of humiliation for the SS, to protect Polish Jews from an extermination camp can never be explained. Here is his story.
The head of SiPo later reported to Germany commanders that the SS officers had to hold themselves back from shooting at the Wehrmacht for daring to openly confront the SS in public and reported that Dr. Battel had said that he wanted to get Jews out of the ghetto.
The Wehrmacht eventually opened the railway bridge and the next day, the SS conducted the same violent destructive removal operation as they had for the Warsaw ghetto, forcibly removing approximately 3,850 Jews from their apartments, marching them to the train station and deporting them by cattle cars in trains to Bełżec where they perished, killing any who resisted.
InJune 1942, the SS drew up plans to deport the Jews in the ghetto of Przemyśl to the Bełżec extermination camp.
She was deported to Lithuania and killed during the Kaunas Fort IX massacre on November 25, 1941, in which 9, 200 German Jews were shot to death in fields over the course of three days.
A brave hero, Raoul was responsible for intercepting Jews who were transported to death camps, and provided them with protective passports. His heroism saved the lives of over 100,000 people.
Once World War Two was over, the Soviet court charged Dimitar Peshev for anti-semitism and anti-communism, and he was sentenced to death.
Raoul Wallenberg also established soup kitchens and hospitals, and employed Jewish people to work in them. He also took it upon himself to move Jews into blocks of flats, which flew the Swedish flag.
With Hitler accelerating the extermination of Jews , Wallenberg created documents with official-looking stamps and crests before distributing them to as many Jewish people as he could.
Hedtoft warned senior Rabbis about the plan and, as a result, 6,000 Jews were ferried by boat to Sweden over a period of two months.
His heroism saved the lives of over 100,000 people. He also inspired neutral Spanish and Swiss to follow in his footsteps. Despite his many acts of bravery, no-one could protect Raoul from his mysterious fate. When the Russians liberated Budapest, he was arrested on suspicion of being a spy and was never seen again.
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz. image via www.tel-aviv.diplo.de. Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz may have been a member of the Nazi Party, but he helped save over 6,000 Jews. In 1943, the Nazis decided to round up the Danish Jews and transport them to concentration camps.