Last month we noted that the infamous war criminal Laszlo Csatary managed to escape justice and die at age 98 while awaiting trial for his crimes. However, this month things are looking up for those who support the rule of law. On September 3rd, German prosecutors announced that they are seeking to put 30 former Auschwitz death camp guards on trial for murder.
The 30 suspects all live in Germany, and their files have been referred to individual state level prosecutors who will decide whether to put them on trial.
Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest known survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp died today in Debno, Poland. Born on October 8, 1904 Dobrowolski was 108 years old when he died. In a world where today the word "hero" is almost casually applied Dobrowolski truly was one.
A teacher, Dobrowolski practiced his profession during the World War II German occupation of Poland. What made him so memorable was that he continued to teach in spite of the fact that the Germans had banned education of most Poles past four years of elementary school.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre (an organization dedicated to bringing to justice Nazi officials and collaborators responsible for the Holocaust) confirmed Sunday that it had found in Budapest, Hungary it's top wanted Nazi suspect - Laszlo Csatary. Csatary is said to be responsible for/participated in the deportation of an estimated 15,700 Jews while serving as a senior Hungarian police officer in the Hungarian ruled Slovakian city of Kosice.
An informer paid $25,000 provided the key information that allowed the Wiesenthal Centre to confirm the 97 year old Csatary's location in Budapest.
This final part in our series on the human cost of the Second World War in Europe will look at the nation most responsible for plunging humanity into global warfare: Germany. Though in the United States of America the Second World War is often cast today as the last "good war", in reality there were few nation's that participated in the war, willingly or not, and emerged from the war with entirely clean hands.
I make this observation because the people of Germany were both the perpetrators and, in some cases, victims of the violence Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime unleashed across all of
Though the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942 is often remembered as the seminal planning event of the Third Reich's genocidal strategic goals; in reality it represented a part of a much larger and horrific plan for mass murder. For on June 21, 1941, Heinrich Himmler had ordered planning to begin for a massive demographic reorganization of Eastern Europe, including the territories of the western Soviet Union. Professor Konrad Meyer authored this plan; labeled Generalplan Ost. Meyer’s genocidal plan went far beyond eliminating Europe’s Jews.
Gevork Vartanian died in Moscow at age 87. Vartanian was a veritable legend in Soviet espionage circles whose father and wife also worked as Soviet agents. Vartanian made his name when as a young Soviet agent he played a key role in helping to derail a Nazi plot to assassinate Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin, and Winston Churchill at their famous conference in 1943 at Tehran.
Vartanian retired in 1992 after an epic career that began in 1940 at the age of 16. Though he also played a key role in exposing a network of British secret agents, he will be most remembered for locating the six
