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FEMALE SS SUPERVISOR: RUTH NEUDECK (JULY 5, 1920 TO JULY 29, 1948)

July 28, 2014, 2:08 pm
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On this date, June 26, 1947, a Female Nazi SS Supervisor, Ruth Neudeck, was executed by hanging. I will post the information about this Female Nazi War Criminal from Wikipedia. 


Ruth Neudeck [PHOTO SOURCE: http://listsoplenty.com/blog/?p=14143&ModPagespeed=noscript]
Ruth Closius-Neudeck (July 5, 1920 – July 29, 1948) was an SS supervisor at a Nazi death camp complex from December 1944 until March 1945.

Early life

Ruth Closius was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland). She later married and was known as Ruth Neudeck.

Camp work

In July 1944, she arrived at the Ravensbrück concentration camp to begin her training to be a camp guard. Neudeck soon began impressing her superiors with her unbending brutality towards the women prisoners, so she was promoted to the rank of Blockführerin (Barrack Overseer) in late July 1944. In the Ravensbrück camp, she was known as one of the worst female guards. Former French prisoner Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz commented after the war that she had seen wardress Neudeck "cut the throat of an inmate with the sharp edge of her shovel". In December 1944, she was promoted to the rank of Oberaufseherin and moved to the Uckermark extermination complex down the road from Ravensbrück. There she involved herself in the selection and execution of over 5,000 women and children. The prisoners were also mistreated by Neudeck or her fellow SS Aufseherinnen. In March 1945, Neudeck became head of the Barth subcamp.

Capture and execution

In late April 1945, she fled from the camp, was later captured and detained in prison while the British Army investigated the allegations against her. In April 1948, she stood accused at the third Ravensbrück Trial, along with other SS women. The 28 year old former SS supervisor pleaded guilty to the accusations of murder and maltreatment made against her.

The British court found her guilty of war crimes and sentenced her to death by hanging. On July 29 1948, Neudeck was executed by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint on the gallows at Hamelin Prison.
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WILLIAM WILBERFORCE WOULD BE PRO-LIFE. [ARTICLES ON PRO-LIFE OF THE FORTNIGHT ~ SUNDAY JULY 27, 2013 TO SATURDAY AUGUST 9, 2013]

July 28, 2014, 2:09 pm
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            In loving memory of William Wilberforce, who died on this date, July 29, 1833. I will post two Pro-Life articles to remember him. 


William Wilberforce’s famous quote [PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/278082]
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/william-wilberforces-great-grandson-says-if-alive-today-wilberforce-would-f

William Wilberforce’s Great Grandson Says if Alive Today Wilberforce Would Fight Abortion

Editor’s Note:  The following letter by Fr Gerard Wilberforce, a Catholic priest in Exeter, who is the great grandson of the famed William Wilberforce is reproduced with the permission of Independent Catholic News.

By Fr. Gerard Wilberforce

March 31, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - I am writing as the great great grandson of William Wilberforce, who campaigned vigorously for the ending of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, which ultimately paved the way for the abolition of slavery itself throughout the entire British Empire in 1833.

I am often asked what would be the campaigns Wilberforce would be fighting if he were alive in 21st century Britain. I believe that there would be a number of different issues among them human trafficking and the scourge of drugs. But almost certainly at the top of the list, would be the issue of abortion.

As the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill comes before Parliament over the next few weeks, the opportunity presents itself to amend the abortion Act. With the number of abortions having reached 200,000 per year in the UK alone, the time is right to tighten up the law that was designed to protect women by ending illegal abortion, but never to allow such a high degree of deprived life.

There are great similarities between the status of the foetus and the status of African slaves two centuries ago. Slaves were considered a commodity to do with whatever the vested interests of the day decided. Today, in our desire to play God in our embryology experimentation, with all its’ unfulfilled promises of miracle cures, and our decision to abort unwanted children, we are no better that those slave traders who put their interests and world view higher than they placed the sanctity and value of human life.

Most people at the time didn’t believe the evil of slavery could ever be defeated, as so much of the economy at the time was dependent on the trade. It’s easy for us to think that is the case today with abortion, but I believe William Wilberforce would not take such a view.

Whilst our hearts go out to those who have chosen abortion, there should now be much greater emphasis on the alternatives that exist. Many of us would like to see far more support to those who have made such a significant and difficult decision but whilst we recognise the trauma many women have gone through, we also have a duty to ‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ (Proverbs 31).

The Psalmist says ‘My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.’
With abortions in the UK reaching 600 a day, it seems to me that the ‘secret place’, is one of the most dangerous places to be in modern day Britain.

As with my great ancestor, the battle took many years, even decades. But now, with the passage of time we look back in horror at how we devalued human life. I truly believe we will look back in years to come, repent and ask forgiveness for what we let happen to the unborn child.

There is something deeply depressing about a society in which abortion is so easy, yet alternatives such as adoption are made to appear so difficult.

NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

PAGE TITLE:http://www.epm.org/
ARTICLE TITLE: You May Choose to Look the Other Way, But…
DATE: July 1, 2013
AUTHOR: Randy Alcorn
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Randy Alcorn (born 1954) is an American Protestant author and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries, a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to teaching an eternal viewpoint and helping the needy of the world. He has written several novels, including Deadline, Dominion, and Deception. He received a Gold Medallion Book Award in 2003 for his novel Safely Home.He has also written a number of non-fiction books, including Heaven, The Purity Principle, and The Treasure Principle. Eternal Perspective Ministries owns the royalties to his books and 100 percent of them are given away to support missions, famine relief, pro-life work, and other ministries. He and his wife, Nanci, have two grown up and married daughters, Karina and Angela, who assisted him in writing the novel The Ishbane Conspiracy in 2001. Randy and Nanci have four grandsons. They live in Gresham, Oregon. He wrote a book similar to The Screwtape Letters called Lord Foulgrin's Letters. In Alcorn's book, references are made to demons, known only as "ST" and "WW" (for it had become a crime in Hell to even speak their real names), who had their letters found by a human and were punished by Beelzebub for their incompetence. He has also written a sequel to Lord Foulgrin's Letters entitled The Ishbane Conspiracy in which Lord Foulgrin from the first book is put on probation and is receiving letters from a senior demon named Prince Ishbane. In between the letters actual scenes from the humans lives unfold. In November 2009, Alcorn signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration calling on Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox not to comply with rules and laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences.
URL:http://www.epm.org/blog/2013/Jul/1/look-other-way


Randy Alcorn
In this video interview with Julia Stager, EPM staff, she quotes William Wilberforce who said, “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know”, and asks what that quote means to me.

In the following video and transcript, I share some thoughts:

Historically, William Wilberforce was an abolitionist in England. He was a committed Christian who wanted to free all the slaves and abolish the slave trade. He was ultimately successful. His story is told in many places, including in the popular movie Amazing Grace. He had a relationship with John Newton (who wrote the song Amazing Grace) and Newton had a great influence on him.

But I think Wilberforce was saying here that when you see the realities of the slave trade, you can never go back. He used to stand up in Parliament, and would keep slave chains under his seat and pull them out and drape them around himself as he was speaking. He was sounpopular. Everybody was against him. Hardly anyone was in favor of abolishing the slave trade when he first spoke against it. But then, over time, he was successful. Literally just a few days before he died, slavery was abolished in England.

So how can we apply that quote today? How do you see that as still relevant?

When you see something evil, you see the reality of it. There’s no going back or denying it.

That’s the way it shouldbe anyway. I would apply that to something like sex trafficking. You read about it and watch a film of some of the things that are happening. You see it devastating the lives of children who are being used in such horrific ways. There should be no turning back.

The same is true when you see children who are dying of hunger and diseases that are treatable, or kids that need clean water. Once you see that, there should be no denying it.

And, of course, the big overlooked area today is abortion. I encourage everyone to look online at pictures of aborted children. It’s horrific. (A wonderful ministry called Abort 73.com has produced a simple two minute video showing the objective truth about abortion.) 

But from that point forward when you see the truth, you should never go back. We should always speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

William Wilberforce’s famous quote [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.epm.org/blog/2013/Jul/1/look-other-way]

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THE JEWISH SKELETON COLLECTION (JULY 30, 1943)

July 29, 2014, 2:32 pm
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On this date, July 30, 1943, August Hirt had 79 Jewish men, 30 Jewish women, 2 Poles, and 4 "Asians" selected among the inmates at Auschwitz. These people were sent to Natzweiler-Struthof on July 30, 1943. Here they were gassed, by Josef Kramer, on August 17 and August 19, 1943. Their bodies were returned to Hirt at the anatomical laboratory of the Reich University in Strasbourg for preparation as an anthropological display, where they were re-discovered after the liberation.

I will post information from Wikipedia about The Jewish Skeleton Collection.

Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp entrance (behind, the Monument to the Departed)
The Jewish skeleton collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the Jews' status as Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), in contrast to the German race which the Nazis considered to be Aryan Übermenschen. The collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg in the annexed region of Alsace, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed.

The collection was sanctioned by Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler, and under the direction of August Hirt with Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers, general manager of the Ahnenerbe, being responsible for procuring and preparing the corpses.


Beger conducting anthropometric studies in Sikkim, India.
Selection

Originally the "specimens" to be used in the collection were to be Jewish commisars in the Red Army captured on the Eastern front by the Wehrmacht. The individuals ultimately chosen for the collection were obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates at Auschwitz concentration camp in Occupied Poland. They were chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. The initial selections and preparations were carried out by SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Beger and Dr. Hans Fleischhacker(whose name literally translates to "butcher"), who arrived in Auschwitz in the first half of 1943 and finished the preliminary work by June 15, 1943.

Due to a typhus epidemic at Auschwitz, the candidates chosen for the skeleton collection were quarantined in order to prevent them from becoming ill and ruining their value as anatomical specimens. An excerpt from a letter written by Sievers in June 1943 reports on the preparation and the typhus epidemic: "Altogether 115 persons were worked on, 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under quarantine in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz."

In February 1942, Sievers submitted to Himmler, through Rudolf Brandt, a report from which the following is an extract read at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial by General Telford Taylor, Chief Counsel for the prosecution at Nuremberg:

"We have a nearly complete collection of skulls of all races and peoples at our disposal. Only very few specimens of skulls of the Jewish race, however, are available with the result that it is impossible to arrive at precise conclusions from examining them. The war in the East now presents us with the opportunity to overcome this deficiency. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive, but characteristic subhuman, we have the chance now to obtain a palpable, scientific document.

"The best, practical method for obtaining and collecting this skull material could be handled by directing the Wehrmacht to turn over alive all captured Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars to the Field Police. They in turn are to be given special directives to inform a certain office at regular intervals of the number and place of detention of these captured Jews and to give them special close attention and care until a special delegate arrives. This special delegate, who will be in charge of securing the 'material' has the job of taking a series of previously established photographs, anthropological measurements, and in addition has to determine, as far as possible, the background, date of birth, and other personal data of the prisoner. Following the subsequently induced death of the Jew, whose head should not be damaged, the delegate will separate the head from the body and will forward it to its proper point of destination in a hermetically sealed tin can especially produced for this purpose and filled with a conserving fluid.

"Having arrived at the laboratory, the comparison tests and anatomical research on the skull, as well as determination of the race membership of pathological features of the skull form, the form and size of the brain, etc., can proceed. The basis of these studies will be the photos, measurements, and other data supplied on the head, and finally the tests of the skull itself."


The cadaver of Berlin dairy merchant Menachem Taffel. He was deported to Auschwitz in March 1943 along with his wife and child, who were gassed upon arrival. He was chosen to be an anatomical specimen. He was shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and murdered in the gas chamber in August 1943.
 

Portrait of Rudolf Brandt as a defendant in the Medical Case Trial at Nuremberg. [Photograph ##07335], Porträt von Rudolf Brandt als Angeklagter im Nürnberger Ärzteprozess. [Fotografie#07335]


Mugshot of Wolfram Sievers, taken by American authorities after his arrest


August Hirst [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.die-namen-der-nummern.de/html/august_hirt.html]
Preparation

Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof, 46 of these individuals were originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. The deaths of 86 of these inmates were, in the words of Hirt, "induced" in an improvised gassing facility at Natzweiler-Struthof and their corpses, 57 men and 29 women, were sent to Strasbourg. One male victim was shot as he fought to keep from being gassed. Josef Kramer, acting commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof (who would become the commandant at Auschwitz and the last commandant of Bergen Belsen) personally carried out the gassing of 80 of these 86 victims.

The first part of the process for this "collection" was to make anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons. In 1944, with the approach of the allies, there was concern over the possibility that the corpses, which had still not been defleshed, could be discovered. In September 1944 Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing-at least in part-and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards."


Elizabeth Klein, murdered at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Her mother, Elizabeth Klein, was born in Thalheim on 29 May 1878. While in Vienna she married a Hungarian merchant Koloman Klein from Kisnána, with whom she had a daughter, Elizabeth Klein. The family emigrated to Belgium in 1938. Elizabeth was arrested during a raid in February 1943. On 19 April 1943 she was deported to Auschwitz from the Mechelen internment camp. There she was selected for the Jewish skeleton collection directed by August Hirt. She was one of 86 people murdered in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp whose bodies were shipped to Reich University of Strasbourg in the Alsace region of Occupied France, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed.
Aftermath

Brandt and Sievers were indicted, tried and convicted in the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg and both were hanged in Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948. Hirt committed suicide in Schönenbach, Austria, on June 2, 1945 with a gunshot to the head. Josef Kramer was convicted of war crimes and hanged in Hamelin prison by noted British executioner Albert Pierrepoint on December 13, 1945. In 1974 Bruno Beger was convicted by a West German court as an accessory to 86 murders for his role in procuring the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison. According to his family, Beger died in Königstein im Taunus on October 12, 2009.

For many years only a single victim, Menachem Taffel (prisoner no. 107969), a Polish born Jew who had been living in Berlin, was positively identified through the efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. In 2003 Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang, a German professor at the University of Tübingen succeeded in identifying all the victims, by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at Strasbourg, surreptitiously recorded by Hirts' French assistant Henri Henrypierre, with a list of numbers of inmates vaccinated at Auschwitz. The names and biographical information of the murder victims were published in the book Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers). In 1951 the remains of the 86 victims were reinterred in one location in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery. On December 11, 2005, memorial stones engraved with the names of the 86 victims were placed at the cemetery. One is at the site of the mass grave, the other along the wall of the cemetery. Another plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital.

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THE REICH BISHOP: LUDWIG MULLER (23 JUNE 1883 TO 31 JULY 1945)

July 30, 2014, 10:49 am
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            On this date, 31 July 1945, one of Adolf Hitler’s Reich Bishop, Ludwig Müller, committed suicide. I will post information about this False Prophet from Wikipedia.


Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.todocoleccion.net/cristianos-hitler-que-es-cristianismo-positivo-ludwig-muller-gastos-envio-gratis~x36981127]
Ludwig Müller(23 June 1883 – 31 July 1945) was a German theologian and leading member of the "German Christians" (German: Deutsche Christen) faith movement. In 1933 he was imposed by the Nazi government as Reichsbischof (Reich Bishop) of the German Evangelical Church (German: Deutsche Evangelische Kirche).


Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller
Life

Müller was born in Gütersloh, in the Prussianprovince of Westphalia, where he attended the Pietist Evangelical Gymnasium. He went on to study Protestant theology at the universities of Halleand Bonn. Having finished his studies, he worked as a school inspector in his hometown, from 1905 also as a vicar and assistant preacher in Herford and Wanne. In 1908 he became parish priest in Rödinghausen. At the outbreak of World War I, he served as a Navychaplain in Wilhelmshaven.

After the war, Müller joined the Stahlhelmparamilitary organization and continued his career as a military chaplain, from 1926 at the Königsberg garrison. He had been associated with Nazism since the 1920s, supporting a revisionist view of "Christ the Aryan" (or a "heroic Jesus") as well as a plan of purifying Christianity of what he deemed "Jewish corruption," including purging large parts of the Old Testament.

Müller had little real political experience and, as his actions would demonstrate to Adolf Hitler, little if any political aptitude. In the 1920s and early 1930s, before Hitler's assumption of the German chancellorship on 30 January 1933, he was a little-known pastor and a regional leader of the German Christians in East Prussia. However, he was an "old fighter" with Hitler (German: Alter Kämpfer) since 1931, when he joined the Nazi Party, and had a burning desire to assume more power. In 1932, Müller introduced Hitler to Reichswehr General Werner von Blombergwhen Müller was chaplain of the East Prussian Military District and Blomberg was the district's commander.


Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller on 27 September 1933
 

Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller giving a speech (23 September 1934)
As part of the Gleichschaltungprocess, the Nazi regime's plan was to "coordinate" all 28 separate Protestant regional church bodies into a single and unitary Reich Church (Reichskirche). Müller wanted to serve as leading Reich Bishop of this newly formed entity. His first attempt to achieve his post ended in a miserable and embarrassing failure, when the German Evangelical Church Confederation and the Prussian Union of churches designated Friedrich von Bodelschwingh on 27 May 1933. Eventually, however, after the Nazis had enforced Bodelschwingh's resignation, Müller was appointed regional bishop (Landesbischof) of the Prussian Union on 4 August, and on 27 September finally was elected Reich Bishop by a national synod through political machinations.

Müller's advancement angered many Protestant pastors and congregations, who deemed his selection to be politically motivated and intrinsically anti-Christian. Still regional bishop, he handed over more powers to the Reich Bishop—himself—as an example of imitation, to the discontent of other regional bishops like Theophil Wurm (Württemberg). On the other hand, Müller's support by the "German Christians" within the Protestant Church decreased, as he was not able to wield explicit authority. The radical Nazi faction wanted to get rid of the Old Testament and create a German National Religion divorced from Jewish influenced ideas. They supported the introduction of the Aryan Paragraphinto the Church. This controversy led to schism and the foundation of the competing Confessing Church, a situation that frustrated Hitler and led to the end of Müller's power.


Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller shook hands with Adolf Hitler [PHOTO SOURCE: http://randalrauser.com/2014/06/christianity-on-trial-a-review/]
Many of the German Protestant clergy supported the Confessing Church movement, which resisted the imposition of the state into Church affairs. Hitler's interest in the group had waned by 1937, when the party took up a more aggressive attitude toward the resistant Christian clergy, so Müller tried to revive his support by allowing the Gestapo to monitor churches and the Christian youth groups to consolidate with the Hitler Youth.

He remained committed to Nazism to the end. He committed suicide in Berlin in 1945, soon after the Nazi defeat.

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COP KILLER: GEORGE EVERETTE SIBLEY JR. (EXECUTED IN ALABAMA ON AUGUST 4, 2005)

August 3, 2014, 2:16 pm
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On this date, August 4, 2005, a Cop Killer, George Everette Sibley Jr.  was executed by lethal injection in Alabama for the October 4, 1993 murder of Sergeant Roger Lamar Motley. His partner-in-crime, Lynda Lyon Block was executed by the electric chair in that State on May 10, 2002. It was Double Justice for the Fallen Cop’s families! 


George Everette Sibley Jr. 


Roger Lamar Motley

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JOSE ERNESTO MEDELLIN (MARCH 4, 1975 TO AUGUST 5, 2008)

August 4, 2014, 2:14 pm
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RECIDIVIST KILLER: JAMES BARNEY HUBBARD (EXECUTED ON AUGUST 5, 2004)

August 4, 2014, 2:14 pm
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            On this date, August 5, 2004, James Barney Hubbard (March 7, 1930 – August 5, 2004) was sentenced to death by the state of Alabama in 1977 for the murder of Lillian Montgomery, with whom he was living after having been released from prison. Hubbard had served a 20-year sentence for murder and called police to report a shooting on January 10, 1977. He said Lillian had shot herself at her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She died as the result of three gunshot wounds, one to the face, one to the head, and one to the shoulder. He was executed by lethal injection 27 years after the murder. At age 74, he was the oldest American to be executed in decades.

He was another example of a recidivist murderer that had committed murder and was released more than 15 years later only to murder again. 


James Hubbard

 

James Hubbard



Please go to this previous blog post to learn more about this recidivist killer.
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THE 35TH D.A OF SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY: MICHAEL A. RAMOS

August 4, 2014, 2:15 pm
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            I will post information about one of my favorite Attorneys from California, Michael A. Ramos from Wikipedia and other links.

Michael A. Ramos
INTERNET SOURCE:
http://cms.sbcounty.gov/da/AboutDARamos/AboutDistrictAttorneyMichaelARamos.aspx

Michael Ramos is the San Bernardino County District Attorney - On January 4, 2011, Michael A. Ramos was sworn in as District Attorney of the County of San Bernardino for a third term. In his address, he noted the importance of continuing his mission to fight violent crime and corruption and make victims’ rights a priority. In June 2014, Ramos was reelected to his fourth term which officially begins in January 2015.

No stranger to the local area, District Attorney Ramos was born and raised in Redlands, California. He has been married to his wife Gretchen for 30 years.  He has two grown children, Michele and Michael and a grandson, Christian.

After attending local schools in Redlands and graduating from Redlands High School in 1976, Ramos earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of California in Riverside in 1980 and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Citrus Belt Law School in Riverside in 1988.

Ramos’ government service began in 1980, where he started as a group counselor with the Probation Department and then later became a Probation Officer. He started his career with the District Attorney’s Office in June 1989, as a Deputy District Attorney. 

In addition to his work in general prosecution and the narcotics unit, he served with the Major Crimes Unit for four years, until 2002, when he was elected District Attorney for San Bernardino County.

His civic services have included serving as a school board member from 1995 – 2002; member of the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board; and President of the California District Attorney AssociationBoard Member, to name a few.

Recently, Ramos was elected to represent the State of California on the National District Attorney’s Association Board of Directors and serve as co-chair of the NDAA’s committee for corrections and prison re-entry.

“Because of my work as president of the CDAA with Governor Brown on AB 109 this past year, I have been noticed as an expert in this area,” said Ramos. “Having this opportunity will give me the chance to highlight the successes and models of our office with my colleagues across the country. Ultimately, though, this will allow me to be a leader on all issues that affect public safety and victims of crime.”

A firm believer in serving his community, Ramos has been recognized with such awards as the Inland Empire Hispanic Image Awards recipient for Influential Latino of the Year (2005); the Victim Service Award San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office Victim/Witness Assistance Program (2000); and M.A.D.D. Prosecutor of the Year Award (1998).

During his tenure, he has added a Public Integrity Unit to handle political corruption and a Lifer Parole Hearing Unit to ensure that violent prisoners serve their maximum prison terms. He has also expanded Gang Units to all three of his major offices, as well as Fontana.

Since 2005, when the Gang Unit was created, there have been 3,902 state prison commitments secured for a total of 25,840 years plus 108 life terms in state prison.

“The rise of criminal street gangs in this county is a real threat to our communities, but I refuse to allow these local terrorists to determine how we live our daily lives,” said Ramos. “I’ve said it before and I will continue to say that coming down hard on gang crime and keeping our communities safe will always be an important mission of this office.”

To further combat gangs, in 2007, Ramos implemented a Gang Injunction Unit, which targets gangs in unincorporated areas of the county and uses civil abatement methods to assist in ridding the county of gangs. The most recent gang injunction was filed in July 2011 against a criminal street gang in the City of Rialto. The injunction will serve to disrupt the gang's activities and make it harder for them to intimidate community members by prohibiting members from congregating and loitering in an area designated as the Safety Zone. 

Ramos has also expanded the Cold Case Unit to deal with the increase in cold cases that are being solved due to new technology, such as DNA. “These are important cases, said Ramos, “because to a victim or a victim’s family, a case is never ‘cold.’”

Ramos has also established an Identity Theft Unit with attorneys in his three major offices, as well as the Victim Services Unit, which provides assistance to victims as they make their way through the criminal justice system. Additionally, he has expanded the Family Violence Unit with attorneys who are cross-trained in elder abuse, domestic violence and crimes against children.

“Ultimately, our job is to represent the people in the criminal justice system for the County of San Bernardino,” said Ramos. “As long as I am district attorney, I will continue to ensure that we do just that in a manner that is consistent with our mission and the ethical responsibilities that we are sworn to uphold as prosecutors.”

Michael A. Ramos
35th San Bernardino County District Attorney
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 4, 2002
Personal details
Born
August 5, 1957 (age 56)
Redlands, California, U.S.
Political party
Republican
Residence
Redlands, California
Alma mater
University of California in Riverside
Citrus Belt Law School
Website
Government website

Michael A. Ramos(born August 5, 1957) is an American attorney. He is the 35th and current District Attorney of San Bernardino County following the 2010 countywide elections. He was first elected in 2002, defeating incumbent District Attorney Dennis L. Stout, and he was reelected in 2007. He has been a prosecutor for 24 years. Ramos is the first Hispanic district attorney in San Bernardino County.

Early Life and Education

The second of two children, Ramos was born at Redlands Community Hospital in Redlands, California, in 1957. Ramos attended Redlands High School. After graduating from high school in 1976, Ramos earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of California in Riverside in 1980 and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Citrus Belt Law School in Riverside in 1988. He was admitted to the California bar in 1989. Ramos’ government service began in 1980, where he started as a group counselor with the Probation Department and then later became a Probation Officer. He started his career with the District Attorney’s Office in June 1989, as a Deputy District Attorney in the Major Crimes Unit.

San Bernardino County District Attorney

Ramos was elected to his first term as District Attorney in 2002 by defeating incumbent Dennis Stout and was reelected when he ran unopposed in 2006. In 2010, Ramos was reelected to his third term when he defeated Frank H. Guzman and Bob Conaway. He has served as president of the California District Attorneys Association and is currently the chair of the Corrections and Reentry Committee for the National District Attorneys Association.

Family

Ramos has been married to his wife Gretchen for 30 years. He has two grown children, Michael and Michele, and a grandson, Christian.

Issues

Death Penalty

Ramos is in favor of capital punishment, citing that the decision to pursue the death penalty is perhaps the single most difficult decision he has to make. He has long noted that he has nothing but respect for the entire process, and just as much respect for the victims and their families who didn’t have a choice. In November 2012, Ramos campaigned heavily against Proposition 34, also known as the SAFE California Act. Proposition 34 sought to replace California’s death penalty with a life sentence with no chance of parole as the maximum punishment for murder. The initiative to repeal the death penalty failed by a narrow margin of 52.8% to 47.2%.

Ramos has expressed it takes far too long for convicted criminals to move through the justice system, but the very people who are now crying foul, are the same individuals who have bogged down the system for years with frivolous appeals. He believes that rather than repealing the death penalty we need to enact measures that would mend the current system and prevent countless motions and appeals by the ACLU and its supporters from clogging up our justice system. One solution to speeding up the process is to move forward with the single-drug protocol for lethal injections that would replace the three-drug concoction that federal courts have blocked. In an effort to continue his fight for victims and their families, Ramos met with California Governor Jerry Brown in May 2013 to voice his concern. Ramos noted that despite their philosophical differences regarding the death penalty, the governor understands the vote of our citizens.

Victims' Rights

Victims and their families have always been a priority for Ramos. "Preserving the dignity of victims and their families" is a part of the official mission statement of the District Attorney’s Office in San Bernardino County. Ramos was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to serve on the Governor's Victim Compensation and Government Claims Boardon January 23, 2004. After being elected to his first term one of the first actions that Ramos took was placing the supervisor in charge of victim services on his executive staff, elevating the position to the role of a chief, and creating the Bureau of Victim Services Unit. Ramos sees his role as lead prosecutor one in which he is charged with the responsibility of representing “the people" in the criminal justice system and those who fall victim to crime and we take that charge seriously. In 2013, during Crime Victims’ Rights Week, Ramos announced that his office had contracted with One Call, an automated phone system, in an effort to reach crime victims and give them information about their rights and possible compensation. Crime victims who provide law enforcement with a land line phone number will get the recorded message that tells them they have rights under the state’s 2008 Victims’ Bill of Rights Act, passed by voters as Proposition 9. It is most often referred to as Marsy’s Law. By utilizing this automated technology, Ramos noted that his office can better serve all victims not only because his office is obligated to do so under Marsy’s Law, but because “it’s the right thing to do.” When Ramos was sworn in to his third term he continued to highlight his commitment to victims’ rights by stating that fighting for victims is “what drives me every day.”


Michael Ramos with the Three Musketeers of California. [[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sbcountyda.org/AboutDARamos/AboutDistrictAttorneyMichaelRamos.aspx]
Public Corruption

In April 2003, months after being elected to office, Ramos formed the Public Integrity Unit to address the problem of public corruption in San Bernardino County. In 2011, Ramos and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown jointly announced that a criminal grand jury had indicted four men on 29 counts of crimes tied to a $102 million bribery scandal involving Paul Biane, a former 2nd District supervisor; Jim Erwin, former chief of staff for 3rd District Supervisor Neil Derry; Mark Kirk, former chief of staff for 4th District Supervisor Gary Ovitt; and Jeff Burum, general partner with Colonies Partners LP. Brown called this case “one of the most appalling corruption cases ever seen in California.”

Human Trafficking

In 2009, Ramos responded to this problem of human trafficking in San Bernardino County and created the county’s Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation(C.A.S.E.). C.A.S.E. brought together a partnership of county departments including the District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Department, Probation Department, County Superintendent of Schools, Department of Children and Family Services, Public Defender, and Department of Behavioral Health, to raise awareness of this issue, and to provide enhanced county and community resources to victims. Since that time, he campaigned heavily in favor of Proposition 35 which voters overwhelmingly passed in 2012 and created a Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. Formation of the unit was announced at the premier of a short 45-minute documentary entitled Teenage $ex 4 $ale: Human Trafficking in San Bernardino County. In an effort to reduce the demand for victims of human trafficking, Ramos started the Stop the John Project in 2013 and began releasing the names and photographs of those defendants convicted of solicitation in San Bernardino County.

Gangs

With help from the Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney’s office was able to double the size of its gang unit in 2005. It is a vertical prosecution unit composed of 13 deputy district attorneys spread out across the county. These specially trained prosecutors seek gang-enhanced charges whenever possible, which increases the penalty against the offenders and keeps them off the street for a longer period of time. By closely monitoring gang offenders’ performance on probation, gang prosecutors ensure that repeat offenders go to state prison. Gang deputies also work closely with gang officers in the affected communities. They attend monthly meetings to share information with law enforcement, probation, corrections and other agencies that deal in the area of gang crime. Since the office’s Gang Program began in July 2005, 7,673 gang-related gang cases have been filed. Two of those charged are now on California’s Death Row. There have been 4,583 state prison sentences adding up to 31,893 years, plus 153 life terms.

Despite the increasing number of filed cases, the number of gangs doubled to 719 in San Bernardino County in early 2008 from estimated 360 in 2005. Active gang member numbers also rose to 16,193 from about 13,000 in the same time frame. In October 2011, San Bernardino County had the third highest gang population of any county in America, according to a report released by the FBI.

Prevention and Intervention

Early on in his career Ramos recognized that if he only focusses on adult offenders, the crime problem will never be fully addressed. He realized that most criminals started by getting into trouble as juveniles and eventually dropped out of school. As a result, Ramos has made prevention and intervention programs a cornerstone to the way he effectively addresses crime in San Bernardino County.

Thanks to the state’s Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA), his office implemented the “Let’s End Truancy” (L.E.T.) Project, which works to improve school attendance for previously truant students, discourage future truancy and helps to make education a priority for at-risk youth. In 2008, Ramos, along with the then-District Attorney Kamala D. Harris and Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel, testified before the California Senate Public Safety Committee to discuss the public safety threat from truancy, which has been linked to dropping out of school. One step that Ramos has taken to address the problem of truancy is arresting parents for failure to address the issue.

Ramos also has various other programs such as Camp Good Grief and the Gang Resistance Intervention Partnership (GRIP) which are both making significant strides with our children.

Camp Good Grief is a three-day grief camp for children and teens whose lives have been shattered due to an act of murder or suicide.

San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, in partnership with Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, offers this unique three day camp that provides a relaxed, supportive and safe environment for children to enjoy the typical activities of a summer camp, as well as to have opportunities to work with professionals to share their feelings related to their loss, learn new ways to cope, and interact with other children and teens in an atmosphere of love and acceptance.

The Gang Resistance Intervention Partnership (GRIP) is a program designed to provide second- and fifth-graders strategies for steering clear from gangs and drugs over a period of several weeks.

Animal Cruelty

Ramos is regarded as an advocate for animal rights by local and national Animal Rights groups. The National District Attorneys Association praised his aggressive efforts to prosecute those who participate in cockfighting and raise awareness. In 2011, in conjunction with the Humane Society of the United States and Fontana Animal Services, Ramos released a short film to increase awareness about the dangers of cockfighting. To better focus on animal abuse, in 2012, Ramos created the San Bernardino County Illegal Animal Fighting and Abuse Task Force, a multi-disciplinary collaboration designed to promote community awareness, education and prosecution of animal fighting and abuse in San Bernardino County.

One of the most significant animal abuse cases in the history of San Bernardino County took place in 2008. As a result of undercover video footage captured by the Humane Society of the United States, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges. In the video, workers at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. of Chino are seen ramming “downed” cows that are too sick to walk with the blades of a forklift. At one point, a worker can be seen jabbing a cow in the eye with a baton, while another worker blasts water up the nose of another cow with a powerful hose—all in an attempt to force the injured animals back onto their feet and off to the slaughter.

As a result of the footage, the USDA ordered the largest beef recall in U.S. History—143.4 million pounds—and said the meat had been used in school lunches and food assistance programs.

References
1.     History of the Office
2.     http://cms.sbcounty.gov/Portals/9/Elections/Past_Elections/2010_Statewide_Direct_Primary/06-08-2010_election_results.pdf
3.     Michael A. Ramos begins third term as San Bernardino County D.A. - Redlands Daily Facts
4.     http://cms.sbcounty.gov/Portals/9/Elections/Past_Elections/2002-11-05%20ElectionResults.pdf
5.     San Bernardino County district attorney asks Congress to make DNA collection part of immigration reform - LA Daily News
6.     Coffee w District Attorney Mike Ramos: Redlands Native Talks Past and Present - Police & Fire - Redlands-Loma Linda, CA Patch
7.     State Bar of CA :: Michael Anthony Ramos
8.     Mike Ramos | San Bernardino County District Attorney
9.     Victim Compensation Connection Newsletter, July 2010
10.  http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/San%20Diego%20committeeboard.pdf
11.  Californians asked to end death penalty - to save money - Page 2 - Chicago Tribune
12.  http://www.sfbar.org/forms/sfam/q32012/opp-prop-34-sfamq32012.pdf
13.  http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/ndaa_clips_5_02_12.pdf
14.  Proposition 34 | Official Voter Information Guide | California Secretary of State
15.  http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2012-general/ssov/ballot-measures-summary-by-county.pdf
16.  Prop 34 fails but signals the imminent demise of California's death penalty | David A Love | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
17.  Nothing 'safe' about repealing California's death penalty - San Bernardino County Sun
18.  Dan Morain: Maldonado trips as he gins up crime issue - Dan Morain - The Sacramento Bee
19.  Commentary: Playing Politics on Crime Issue Got Us Into This Mess in the First Place
20.  Serving Victims | San Bernardino County District Attorney
21.  http://www.vcgcb.ca.gov/docs/reports/AnnualReport-FY-07-08.pdf
22.  San Bernardino County - Local Help
23.  Crime victims in SB County to be notified of rights by phone | notified, phone, rights - Victorville Daily Press
24.  Vigil for crime victims offers hope, advocacy in San Bernardino - San Bernardino County Sun
25.  Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008: Marsy's Law | State of California - Department of Justice - Kamala D. Harris Attorney General
26.  San Bernardino County: Auto-call will alert crime victims to rights
27.  http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/nfl/ci_17021003
28.  Public Integrity Unit | San Bernardino County District Attorney
29.  Grand jury indicts four in $102 million SBC bribery scheme | bernardino, million, bribery - Victorville Daily Press
30.  Brown Files Bribery Charges Against Public Officials in $102 Million Corruption Case | State of California - Department of Justice - Kamala D. Harris Attorney General
31.  Interview with CASE: Coalition Against Sexual Exploitation | Washington Times Communities
32.  Activist says human trafficking a local problem « Tony Rocha Official Blog
33.  Proposition 35 would help stop sexual trafficking, says San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos, survivors - San Bernardino County Sun
34.  Here’s more of the plan to combat human trafficking in S.B. County
35.  TEENAGE $EX 4 SALE (TRAILER) - YouTube
36.  Cassie MacDuff
37.  DA to post prostitution solicitor photos online | solicitor, online, photos - Victorville Daily Press
38.  ‘Stop The John’ Project To ID Defendants Convicted Of Solicitation « CBS Los Angeles
39.  DA's Stop-the-John program to shame sex-solicitors - DailyBulletin.com
40.  DA: Convictions making dent in gangs - San Bernardino County Sun
41.  Gang Unit | San Bernardino County District Attorney
42.  SB COUNTY: Gang statistics released
43.  San Bernardino County is No. 3 in America for gangs | county, san, bernardino - FBI - Victorville Daily Press
44.  SB County ranks third in nation in number of gang members - San Bernardino County Sun
45.  Prevention & Intervention | San Bernardino County District Attorney
46.  DA makes case for state support of anti-truancy programs - DailyBulletin.com
47.  CALIFORNIA – Law enforcement leaders testify on value of truancy prevention | Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
48.  Three Fontana school district parents arrested for failure to address truancy - DailyBulletin.com
49.  Fontana school parents arrested over kids' truancy | UTSanDiego.com
50.  DA’s Office Holds 6th Annual “Camp Good Grief” – Special Victims’ Program (SVP) - Inland Valley News
51.  Camp Good Grief helps area kids | camp, san, good - Community - Victorville Daily Press
52.  These graduates got GRIP on life - San Bernardino County Sun
53.  Animal Abuse
54.  San Bernardino County targets cockfighting - San Bernardino County Sun
55.  Cockfighting In San Bernardino County - Youtube
56.  San Bernardino County task force to focus on animal abuse - DailyBulletin.com
57.  ChinoHills.com
58.  Slaughterhouse Investigation: Cruel and Unhealthy Practices - YouTube
59.  USDA orders largest beef recall: 143.4 million pounds - USATODAY.com
External links

PLEASE GO TO THIS PREVIOUS BLOG POST TO HEAR HIS QUOTES.
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LIEUTENANT GENERAL MASAO BABA (7 JANUARY 1892 TO 7 AUGUST 1947)

August 6, 2014, 2:10 pm
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            On this date, 7 August 1947, Lieutenant General Masao Baba, was executed by hanging. He was charged with command responsibility for the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2200 Australian prisoners of war perished. This doctrine was similar to the Yamashita Standard.

INTERNET SOURCE:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao_Baba

 

Lieutenant-General Masao Baba [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.generals.dk/general/Baba/Masao/Japan.html]

Born
7 January 1892
Kumamoto prefecture, Japan
Died
7 August 1947 (aged 55)
Rabaul, Territory of New Guinea
Allegiance
Empire of Japan
Service/branch
Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service
1909–1945
Rank
Lieutenant General
Commands held
IJA 37th Army
Battles/wars
Second Sino-Japanese War
World War II

Masao Baba(馬場正郎Baba Masao, 7 January 1892 – 7 August 1947) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, commanding the Japanese ground forces of the Borneo Campaignof 1945 in the closing months of the war.


LABUAN ISLAND, NORTH BORNEO. 1945-09-10. SUPREME JAPANESE COMMANDER IN BORNEO, LIEUTENANT GENERAL MASAO BABA, SEATED IN A JEEP AT LABUAN AIRSTRIP ON HIS WAY TO SIGN THE OFFICIAL SURRENDER DOCUMENT AT 9TH DIVISION HEADQUARTERS.

Biography

Baba was born in Kumamoto prefecture, as the son of Lieutenant Baba Masayuki, a career officer in the Imperial Japanese Army, and his wife. He attended military preparatory schools from childhood, starting with the Army Cadet School in Hiroshima, whose curriculum was based on Prussian models. He graduated from the 24th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in December 1912, specializing in cavalry. As a second lieutenant, he was assigned to the IJA 5th Cavalry Regiment.

Baba studied as part of the 33rd class of the Army War College, graduating in November 1921. He remained in the cavalry throughout his career, and was attached to the Inspectorate of Cavalry from 1933-1935, where he served as an instructor at the cavalry school. In 1935, Baba was promoted to colonel and subsequently given command of the IJA 2nd Cavalry Regiment from 1935 to 1938.

In July 1938, Baba was promoted to major general, and served as commanding officer of the IJA 3rd Cavalry Brigade to 1939. From 1939 to 1940, he served as a staff officer with the Inspectorate of Cavalry. He became the commander-in-chief of all cavalry operations from 2 December 1940 to 1 October 1941. During the Second Sino-Japanese war, he was assigned to Inner Mongolia to develop cavalry operations. In August 1941, Baba was promoted to lieutenant general.

With the start of World War II, Baba was assigned command of the IJA 53rd Division, a post which he held to 25 September 1943, when he was appointed commander of the IJA 4th Division in Sumatra. He subsequently became commander in chief of the IJA 37th Army based in Borneo.

While in Borneo, Baba organized anti-guerrilla operation in the interior of the island. He was also military governor of Sabah from 26 December 1944 until 10 September 1945. The Allied reconquest of Borneo began on 1 May 1945 with the landing of the Australian Army at Tarakan, and with landings at Brunei and Labuan on 10 June. Japanese forces surrendered on 9 September, with General Baba formally turning over his sword to Major General George Wootten of the Australian 9th Division at Labuan on 10 September. Baba was officially discharged from the Imperial Japanese Army in April 1946.

Baba was arrested in January 1947 on suspicion of involvement in war crimes and brought to Rabaul for trial. Baba was charged with command responsibility for the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2200 Australian prisoners of war perished. Evidence was presented at the trial that Baba was aware of the weakened condition of the prisoners, yet gave direct orders for the second march. The trial began on 28 May 1947 and was concluded eight days later on 5 June 1947 with a death sentence. Baba was executed by hanging on 7 August 1947.

OTHER LINKS:
http://www.worldcourts.com/ildc/eng/decisions/1947.06.02_Australia_v_Masao.pdf

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CHARLES E. RICE ON PRO-LIFE [PRO LIFE QUOTE OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY AUGUST 3, 2014 TO SATURDAY AUGUST 9, 2014]

August 6, 2014, 2:11 pm
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Charles Edward Rice
QUOTE:“Any 'pro-life' effort that temporizes on contraception will be ultimately futile. Legalized abortions in the United States are usually estimated at about 1.5 million a year. This figure, however, does not include early abortions caused by the intrauterine device and some so-called contraceptive pills. Such early abortions have been estimated at between 6.4 and 8.8 million each year in this country."
[No Exception: A Pro-Life Imperative, by Charles E. Rice, p. 46]

AUTHOR: Charles Edward Rice (born August 7, 1931) is an American legal scholar, Catholic apologist, and author of several books. He is best known for his career at the Notre Dame Law School at Notre Dame, Indiana. He began teaching there in 1969, and in 2000 earned Professor Emeritus status. He still teaches an elective course called "Morality and the Law" each spring.
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SATAN GATOR: DARRELL WAYNE FERGUSON (EXECUTED IN OHIO ON AUGUST 8, 2006)

August 7, 2014, 2:13 pm
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On this date, 8 August 2006, a Satanist Killer, Darrell Wayne Ferguson was executed by lethal injection in Ohio. He was convicted of stabbing to death 3 people between December 25 to 26, 2001. He showed no remorse and requested for a suicide assist. Good radiance that he is gone to end his reign of terror. I bet no abolitionists can even rehabilitate him. 


Darrell Wayne Ferguson




Please go to this previous Blog Post to learn more about this killer.
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DANIEL WAYNE COOK (EXECUTED IN ARIZONA ON AUGUST 8, 2012)

August 7, 2014, 2:13 pm
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On this date, August 8, 2012, Daniel Wayne Cook was executed by lethal injection in Arizona for the July 20, 1987 murders of 16-year-old Kevin Swaney and his friend, Carlos Froyan Cruz-Ramos. 


Daniel Wayne Cook


Kevin Swaney

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HITLER YOUTH LEADER: BALDUR VON SHIRACH (MAY 9, 1907 TO AUGUST 8, 1974)

August 8, 2014, 7:41 am
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            40 years ago on this date, August 8, 1974, the Hitler Youth Leader, Baldur Von Shirach passed away. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.
 
Baldur von Schirach as Hitler Youth Leader
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=18818]

Reichsjugendführer
In office
1931–1940
Appointed by
Adolf Hitler
Preceded by
Post created
Succeeded by
Artur Axmann
Gauleiter of Vienna
In office
August 1940 – May 1945
Appointed by
Adolf Hitler
Preceded by
Josef Bürckel
Succeeded by
None
Personal details
Born
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach
9 May 1907
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died
8 August 1974 (aged 67)
Kröv, Rhineland-Palatinate, Federal Republic of Germany
Political party
National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Spouse(s)
Henriette von Schirach
(née Hoffmann; married 1932)
Children
4
Military service
Awards
Hitler Youth Golden Honour Badge with Diamonds and Rubies

Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (9 May 1907 – 8 August 1974) was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of crimes against humanity. He was the head of the Hitler-Jugend (HJ, the "Hitler Youth") and later Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna.

Emblem of the Hitlerjugend Hitler Youth
 
Soldiers of the Hitlerjugend practicing the use of rifles while in a Bann-Lager in 1933.

Early life

Schirach was born in Berlin, the youngest of four children of theatre director Rittmeister Carl Baily Norris von Schirach (1873–1948) and his American wife Emma Middleton Lynah Tillou (1872–1944). A member of the noble Wendish-origined (West Slavic) Schirach family, he was three quarter American of mainly Philadelphia descent. Through his mother, Schirach descended from two signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence. English was the first language he learned at home and he was not able to speak German until the age of five. He had two sisters, Viktoria and Rosalind von Schirach, and a brother, Karl Benedict von Schirach, who committed suicide in 1919 at the age of 19.

On 31 March 1932 von Schirach married 19-year-old Henriette Hoffmann, the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer and close friend. Von Schirach's family was vehemently opposed to the marriage to Henriette, but Hitler insisted. Gregor Strasser dismissively described Von Schirach as "a young effeminate aristocrat" upon whom Hitler bestowed both Henriette and the Hitler Youth position. Through this relationship, von Schirach became part of Hitler's inner circle. The young couple were appreciated guests at Hitler's "Berghof". Henriette von Schirach gave birth to four children: Angelika Benedikta von Schirach (born 1933), Klaus von Schirach (born 1935), Robert von Schirach (1938) and Richard von Schirach (born 1942). The lawyer and bestselling German crime writer Ferdinand von Schirach is his grandson.

He was a published author, contributing to literature journals, and an influential patron of the arts.

Hitler meeting Phillip Bouhler with Schirach at extreme left, Munich 1938
Military career

Schirach joined a Wehrjugendgruppe (military cadet group) at the age of 10 and became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1925. He was soon transferred to Munich and in 1929 became leader of the Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbund (NSDStB, National Socialist German Students' League). He was named Reichsjugendführer(Youth Leader) of the NSDAP in 1931, and in 1933 he was made head of the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend) and given an SA rank of Gruppenführer. He was made a state secretary in 1936.

He appeared frequently at rallies, such as the Nuremberg rally of 1934, when he appeared with Hitler in rousing the Hitler-Jugend audience. It was filmed for Triumph of the Willthe propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl for the Nazi Party. He set the militaristic tone for the youth organisation, and they participated in military style exercises, as well as practising use of military equipment, such as rifles. When older, they would become Wehrmacht soldiers, but in the final years of the Second World War, they were recruited as youths of as young as 12 to fight in depeleted army units. An entire division, the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, was recruited almost entirely from the Hitler Jugend. It fought in Normandy in 1944, and committed several war crimes.

In 1940 he organised the evacuation of 5 million children from cities threatened by Alliedbombing. Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross before being recalled. He served with the 4th (Machine Gun) Company of Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland in the rank of Gefreiter. During the French Campaign he was promoted to Leutnant and decorated for bravery. Schirach lost control of the Hitler Youth to Artur Axmann, and was appointed Governor (Gauleiter or Reichsstatthalter) of the Reichsgau Vienna, a post in which he remained until the end of the war.

An anti-Semite and an anti-Christian, Schirach was responsible over the next few years for sending Jews from Vienna to German death camps. During his tenure 65,000 Jews were deported from Vienna to Poland. In a speech on 15 September 1942 he said that their deportation was a "contribution to European culture." Later, during the war, von Schirach pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticised the conditions in which Jews were being deported. He fell into disfavour in 1943, but remained at his post.

Schirach was notoriously anxious about air raids. He had the cellars of the Hofburg Palace in the Vienna city centre refurbished and adapted as a bomb shelter, and the lower level of the extensive subterranean Vienna air defence coordination centre in the forests to the west of Vienna held personal facilities for him, as well. The Viennese promptly dubbed this C&C centre Schirach-Bunker.

Baldur von Schirach with Hitler and Goering at the Obersalzberg
Trial and conviction

Schirach surrendered in 1945 and was one of the officials put on trial at Nuremberg. At the trial Schirach was one of only two men to denounce Hitler (the other was Albert Speer). He said that he did not know about the extermination camps. He provided evidence that he had protested to Martin Bormann about the inhumane treatment of the Jews. Schirach claimed at the trials that the roots of his anti-Semitism could be found in the readings of Henry Ford's The International Jew. He was originally indicted for crimes against peace for his role in building up the Hitler Youth, but was acquitted on that charge. However, he was found guilty on 1 October 1946 of crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of the Viennese Jews to certain death in German Nazi concentration camps located in Poland. He was sentenced and served 20 years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison, Berlin.

On 20 July 1949 his wife Henriette von Schirach (3 February 1913 – 27 January 1992) divorced him while he was in prison.

He was released on 30 September 1966, and retired quietly to southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler") and died on 8 August 1974 in Kröv.

Portrayals

Baldur von Schirach has been portrayed in film, television and theatre productions:
  • Douglas O'Keeffe in the 2000 Canadian/U.S. T.V. production Nuremberg
  • Markus Boysen in the 2005 German docudrama series Speer und Er, (Speer and Hitler: The Devil's Architect) (2005)
  • Timothy Walker in the 2006 British television docudrama Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial
In fiction, Baldur von Schirach was portrayed in Philip K. Dick's 1962 prize winning alternate history novel, The Man in the High Castle, in a somewhat more sympathetic manner than other Nazi war criminals. The fictionalized account noted his efforts to mitigate racial exterminations of slavs, and his calling for an end to certain forms of mercy killings and medical experimentation. Upon the death of Reichskanzler Martin Bormann, the Japanese see him as the most preferable successor (although, Joseph Goebbels ultimately prevails). In the novel, von Schirach is also said to have been responsible for the completion of "Project Farmland", wherein the Mediterranean Sea was dammed and drained, reclaiming huge areas of farmland, à la Atlantropa.

Baldur von Schirach at the Nuremberg Trials (in second row, second from right)
INTERNET SOURCE:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baldur_von_Schirach

Baldur Benedikt von Schirach (May 9, 1907 – August 8, 1974) was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna. He was sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials and served twenty years as a prisoner in Spandau Prison. On July 20, 1949 his wife Henriette divorced him while he was in prison. He was released on September 30, 1966, and retired quietly to southern Germany. He published his memoirs, Ich glaubte an Hitler ("I believed in Hitler"), in 1974 and died in Kröv.

Sourced

  • If he descended from heaven today
    the great warrior who beat the money-traders
    you would shout your "crucifige!"
    and nail him to the cross which he himself bore.

    But he mildly smiles upon your hate:
    "The truth will prevail, even if the bearer falls;
    the faith will live, for I give my life ...
    and stand tall at the cross for all warriors of the world."
  • The body expresses our very being. The striving for beauty is inborn among the Aryan.
    • To a league of German girls. Quoted in "German Bodies: Race and Representation After Hitler" - Page 47 - by Uli Linke - Social Science - 1999
  • We simply believed.
    • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 220 by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999
  • To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us.
    • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999 - Page 220
  • Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience.
    • Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 221 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999
  • He who serves our Führer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.
    • Quoted in "Germany 1918-1945" - by J. A. Cloake - Germany - 1997
  • In the presence of this blood banner which represents our Führer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the saviour of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.
    • An oath written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" - Page 253 - by William Lawrence Shirer - Germany - 1990
  • That is the greatest thing about him. That he is not only our leader and a great hero. But himself, upright, firm and simple. In him the roots of our world. And his soul touches the stars. And yet he remains a man like you and me.
    • A poem written by Schirach about Hitler in 1936. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 287 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997
  • To the Führer. This is the truth which bound me to thee: I looked for thee and found my Fatherland. I was a leaf floating in limitless space. Now thou art my homeland and my tree. How far would I be carried by the wind, wert thou not the strength that flows up from the roots. I believe in thee, for thou art the nation. I believe in Germany. For thou art Germany's son.
    • A poem written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "Dem Führer: Gedichte für Adolf Hitler" - Page 7 - by Karl Hans Bühner - German poetry - 1939
  • Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble. Thy Third Reich comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth. Let us hear daily thy voice and order us by thy leadership, for we will obey to the end and even with our lives. We praise thee! Heil Hitler!
    • A pledge written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "Hitler Youth: The Hitlerjugend in Peace and War, 1933-1945" by Brenda Ralph Lewis - History - 2000 - Page 57
  • Führer, my Führer given me by God. Protect and preserve my life for long. You rescued Germany from its deepest need. I thank you for my daily bread. Stay for a long time with me, leave me not. Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light. Hail my Führer.
    • A prayer written by Schirach and repeated by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) before meals. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 288 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997
  • They say of us that we are an anti-Christian movement. They even say that I am an outspoken paganist.... I solemnly declare here, before the German public, that I stand on the basis of Christianity, but I declare just as solemnly that I will put down every attempt to introduce confessional matters into our Hitler Youth.
    • Braunschweig speech, December 1933. Quoted in "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" by Richard Steigmann-Gall - Religion - 2003
  • If today he descended from Heaven, the great warrior who struck the moneychangers. You would once again shout crucify! And nail him to the cross that he himself carried. But he would gently laugh at your hatred. The truth remains even when your bearers are passed. Faith remains, because I give my life... And the fighter of all the world towers on the cross.
    • About Christ, Evangelium im Dritten Reich, July 1, 1934. Quoted in "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945" by Richard Steigmann-Gall - Religion - 2003
  • If you outlaw half a million people you make martyrs of them. For example, if you outlaw Robin Hood, it is all very well, but if you outlaw a whole group of people around Robin Hood, then Robin Hood and his merry men become legends.
    • To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
  • I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.
    • To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
  • Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind.
    • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 245
  • Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil.
    • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
  • I lived with people who had varied opinions, some of whom did not accept my Nazi views. I encouraged this. If a man said something that was critical of me or my ideas, I wouldn't consider him an enemy.
    • To Leon Goldensohn, June 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

About Schirach

  • Baldur von Schirach was guilty of far more than war crimes. His was the deadly evil of corrupting the young. He poisoned the minds of an entire German generation. He trained and schooled the SS men, the men of the gas vans, the men of Oswiecim and Maidanek.
    • The New Central European Observer, published 1948
  • In 1937, Rommel was given the duties of liaison officer with the Hitler Jugend, under the charming but arrogant Baldur von Schirach. The two men did not like each other. Schirach, who was American-educated, disliked the ramrod-stiff Rommel whom he saw as a caricature of the Prussian officer. He was surprised when Rommel opened his mouth and spoke with a broad Swabian accent, and proved far less stiff than he had expected.
    • Christer Jorgensen, "Rommel's Panzers," page 20
  • Schirach corrupted millions of German children so that they became what they really are today, the blind instruments of that policy of murder and domination which these men have carried out.
    • Final speech of the British prosecution at Nuremberg against Schirach, August 30, 1946
  • Von Schirach, poisoner of a generation, initiated the German youth in Nazi doctrine, trained them in legions for service in the SS and Wehrmacht [armed forces], and delivered them up to the Party as fanatic, unquestioning executors of its will.

Hitler Youth members performing the Nazi salute at a rally at the Lustgarten in Berlin, 1933
OTHER LINKS:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/bvs.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/JudgeSchirach.html

http://spartacus-educational.com/GERschirach.htm

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/baldur_von_schirach.htm

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JOHN GEORGE HAIGH (24 JULY 1909 TO 10 AUGUST 1949)

August 9, 2014, 4:58 pm
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On this date, 10 August 1949, John George Haigh A.K.A The Acid Bath Murderer was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint. Please go to this Blog Post to learn more. 


John George Haigh A.K.A The Acid Bath Murderer

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POLICE STORY: SHEPHERD’S BUSH MURDERS (12 AUGUST 1966)

August 11, 2014, 2:06 pm
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On this date, 12 August 1966, 3 British policemen, Detective Sergeant Chris Head, Temporary Detective Constable David Wombwell and PC Geoff Fox were gunned down in Braybrook Street, Shepherds Bush, London. In memory of the 3 policemen, I would post from Wikipedia and at the end of the article, I will explain how the death penalty could have save the policemen from being killed. Please go to this previous Blog Post to learn more. 


Harry Roberts' victims: Chris Head, David Wombwell and Geoff Fox were gunned down in Braybrook Street, Shepherds Bush in August 1966

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STALIN AND ANTISEMITISM

August 11, 2014, 2:06 pm
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On this date, August 12, 1952, 13 prominent Jewish intellectuals were murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union. This case is also known as The Night of The Murdered Poets. I will post information about the Soviet Dictator, Joseph Stalin and antisemitism from Wikipedia and other links. 


Out of the Red Shadows : Anti-Semitism in Stalin's Russia
By Gennadi V. Kostyrchenko
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1664&zenid=so34lv434nmlbec8t552grran3]

Though communist leaders including Joseph Stalin publicly denounced antisemitism, instances of antisemitism on Stalin's part have been witnessed by contemporaries and documented by historical sources.

Early years

Born in Gori, Georgia (then in the Russian Empire) and educated at an Orthodox seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi) before becoming a professional revolutionary and a Marxist around the start of the 20th century, Stalin appears unlikely to have been stirred by antisemitism in his early years and met only a limited number of revolutionaries of Jewish origin during his first years of political activity. Although active in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he did not attend a party congress until 1905.

Although Jews were active among both the Social Democratic Bolshevik and the Menshevik factions, Jews were more prominent among the Mensheviks. Stalin took note of the ethnic proportions represented on each side, and, in a 1907 report on the Congress published in the Bakinsky rabochy (Baku Workman), included a coarse joke, purportedly made by then-Bolshevik Grigory Aleksinsky:

Not less interesting is the composition of the congress from the standpoint of nationalities. Statistics showed that the majority of the Menshevik faction consists of Jews—and this of course without counting the Bundists—after which came Georgians and then Russians. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik faction consists of Russians, after which come Jews—not counting of course the Polesand Letts—and then Georgians, etc. For this reason one of the Bolsheviks observed in jest (it seems Comrade Aleksinsky) that the Mensheviks are a Jewish faction and the Bolsheviks a genuine Russian faction, so it would not be a bad idea for us Bolsheviks to arrange a pogrom in the party.

Joseph Stalin on Killing People [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.pinterest.com/glachance/quotes/]
1917 to 1930

Although the Bolsheviks regarded all religious activity as counter-scientific superstition and a remnant of the old pre-communist order, the new political order established by Lenin's Soviet after the Russian Revolution ran counter to the centuries of antisemitism under the Romanovs.

The Council of People's Commissarsadopted a 1918 decree condemning all antisemitism and calling on the workers and peasants to combat it. Lenin continued to speak out against antisemitism. Information campaigns against antisemitism were conducted in the Red Army and in the workplaces, and a provision forbidding the incitement of propaganda against any ethnicity became part of Soviet law. State-sponsored institutions of secular Yiddish culture, such as the Moscow State Jewish Theater, were established in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union during this time, as were institutions for other minorities.

As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin was the cabinet member responsible for minority affairs. In 1922, Stalin was elected the first-ever General Secretary of the party—a post not yet regarded as the highest in the Soviet government. Lenin began to criticize Stalin shortly thereafter.

In his December 1922 letters, the ailing Lenin (whose health left him incapacitated in 1923–1924) criticized Stalin and Dzerzhinskyfor their chauvinistic attitude toward the Georgian nation during the Georgian Affair. Eventually made public as part of Lenin's Testament—which recommended that the party remove Stalin from his post as General Secretary)—the 1922 letters and the recommendation were both withheld from public circulation by Stalin and his supporters in the party: these materials were not published in the Soviet Union until de-Stalinization in 1956.

After the incapacitated Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, the party officially maintained the principle of collective leadership, but Stalin soon outmaneuvered his rivals in the Central Committee's Politburo. At first collaborating with Jewish and half Jewish Politburo members Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Jewish arch-rival Leon Trotsky, Stalin succeeded in marginalizing Trotsky. By 1929, Stalin had also effectively marginalized Zinoviev and Kamenev as well, compelling both to submit to his authority. The intransigent Trotsky was forced into exile.

When Boris Bazhanov, Stalin's personal secretary who had defected to France in 1928, produced a memoir critical of Stalin in 1930, he alleged that Stalin made crude antisemitic outbursts even before Lenin's death.

Nevertheless, following Lenin's death in early 1924, another large scale campaign against antisemitism was again conducted in 1927–1930, under Stalin's leadership.


Joseph Stalin (left) & Adolf Hitler (right) [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.agoravox.tv/IMG/jpg/tumblr_m9npybzZyk1qirhm0o1_500.jpg]
1930s

Stalin's 1931 condemnation of antisemitism

On 12 January 1931, Stalin gave the following answer to an inquiry on the subject of the Soviet attitude toward antisemitism from the Jewish News Agency in the United States:

National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

Establishment of Jewish Autonomous Oblast

To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's nationality policy an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with the center in Birobidzhanin the Russian Far East was to become a "Soviet Zion". Yiddish, rather than "reactionary" Hebrew, would be the national language, and proletarian socialist literature and arts would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish population there never reached 30% (as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges, as local leaders were not spared during the purges.

Great Purge

Stalin's harshest period of mass repression, the so-called Great Purge(or Great Terror), was launched in 1936–1937 and involved the execution of over a half-million Soviet citizens accused of treason, terrorism, and other anti-Sovietcrimes. The campaign of purges prominently targeted Stalin's former opponents and other Old Bolsheviks, and included a large-scale purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of the kulak peasants, Red Armyleaders, and ordinary citizens accused of conspiring against the Stalinist government. Although many of Great Purge victims were ethnic or religious Jews, they were not specifically targeted as an ethnic group during this campaign according to Mikhail Baitalsky, Gennady Kostyrchenko, David Priestland, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Roy Medvedev and Edvard Radzinsky.


Stalin and Ribbentrop at the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact, 23 August 1939
Nazi-Soviet rapprochement and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Main article: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

During his meeting with Ribbentrop, Stalin promised him to get rid of the "Jewish domination", especially among intellectuals. After dismissing Maxim Litvinov as Foreign Minister in 1939, Stalin immediately directed incoming Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews", to appease Hitler and to signal Nazi Germany that the USSR was ready for non-aggression talks.

According to some historians, antisemitic trends in the Kremlin's policies could be fueled by the exile of Leon Trotsky.

In the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s far fewer Jews were appointed to positions of power in the state apparatus than previously, with a sharp drop in Jewish representation in senior positions evident from around the time of the beginning of the late 1930s rapprochement with Nazi Germany. The percentage of Jews in positions of power dropped to 6% in 1938, and to 5% in 1940.


Joseph Stalin on Happiness Quote [PHOTO SOURCE: https://dancingczars.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/crimea-votes-to-join-russia-accelerating-ukraine-crisis-of-course-they-did/]
After World War II

Further information: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and Night of the Murdered Poets

The experience of the Holocaust, which wiped out some six million Jews in Europe under Nazi occupation, and left millions more homeless and displaced, contributed to growing concern about the situation of the Jewish people worldwide. However, the trauma breathed new life into the traditional idea of a common Jewish peoplehood and became a catalyst for the revival of the Zionist idea of creating a Jewish state in the Middle East.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast experienced a revival as the Soviet government sponsored the migration of as many as ten thousand Eastern European Jews to Birobidzhan in 1946–1948. In early 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSRannounced a plan to build new infrastructure, and Mikhail Kalinin, a champion of the Birobidzhan project since the late 1920s, stated that he still considered the region as a "Jewish national state" that could be revived through "creative toil."

In the meantime, Stalin also warmed to the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. In 1947, the Soviet Union joined the United States in supporting the partition of British Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and supported Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War with weaponry supplied via Czechoslovakia.

Nonetheless, Stalin began a new purge with repressing his wartime allies, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In January 1948, Solomon Mikhoels was assassinated on Stalin's personal orders in Minsk. His murder was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels was taken to MGB dacha and killed, along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov, under supervision of Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security Sergei Ogoltsov. Their bodies were then dumped on a road-side in Minsk.

Despite Stalin's willingness to support Israel early on, various historians suppose that antisemitism in the late 1940s and early 1950s was motivated by Stalin's possible perception of Jews as a potential "fifth column" in light of a pro-Western Israel in the Middle East. Orlando Figes suggests that

After the foundation of Israel in May 1948, and its alignment with the USA in the Cold War, the 2 million Soviet Jews, who had always remained loyal to the Soviet system, were portrayed by the Stalinist regime as a potential fifth column. Despite his personal dislike of Jews, Stalin had been an early supporter of a Jewish state in Palestine, which he had hoped to turn into a Soviet satellite in the Middle East. But as the leadership of the emerging state proved hostile to approaches from the Soviet Union, Stalin became increasingly afraid of pro-Israeli feeling among Soviet Jews. His fears intensified as a result of Golda Meir's arrival in Moscow in the autumn of 1948 as the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR. On her visit to a Moscow synagogue on Yom Kippur (13 October), thousands of people lined the streets, many of them shouting Am Yisroel chai ('The people of Israel live!')—a traditional affirmation of national renewal to Jews throughout the world but to Stalin a dangerous sign of 'bourgeois Jewish nationalism' that subverted the authority of the Soviet state.

Historians Albert S. Lindemann and Richard S. Levy observe that "When, in October 1948, during the high holy days, thousands of Jews rallied around Moscow's central synagogue to honor Golda Meir, the first Israeli ambassador, the authorities became especially alarmed at the signs of Jewish disaffection. ". Jeffrey Veidlinger writes that "By October 1948, it was obvious that Mikhoels was by no means the sole advocate of Zionism among Soviet Jews. The revival of Jewish cultural expression during the war had fostered a general sense of boldness among the Jewish masses. Many Jews remained oblivious to the growing Zhdanovshchina and the threat to Soviet Jews that the brewing campaign against 'rootless cosmopolitans' signaled. Indeed, official attitudes toward Jewish culture were ambivalent during this period. On the surface, Jewish culture seemed to be supported by the state: public efforts had been made to sustain the Yiddish theater after Mikhoels's death, Eynikayt was still publishing on schedule, and, most important, the Soviet Union recognized the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. To most Moscow Jews, the state of Soviet Jewry had never been better.

In November 1948, Soviet authorities launched a campaign to liquidate what was left of Jewish culture. The leading members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They were charged with treason, bourgeois nationalism and planning to set up a Jewish republic in Crimea to serve American interests. The Museum of Environmental Knowledge of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (established in November 1944) and The Jewish Museum in Vilnius (established at the end of the war) were closed down in 1948. The Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Georgian Jewry, established in 1933, was shut down at the end of 1951.

In Birobidzhan, the various Jewish cultural institutions that had been established under Stalin's earlier policy of support for "proletarian Jewish culture" in the 1930s were closed down between late 1948 and early 1949. These included the Kaganovich Yiddish Theater, the Yiddish publishing house, the Yiddish newspaper Birobidzhan, the library of Yiddish and Hebrew books, and the local Jewish schools. The same happened to Yiddish theaters all over the Soviet Union, beginning with the Odessa Yiddish Theater and including the Moscow State Jewish Theater.

In early February 1949, the Stalin Prize-winning microbiologist Nikolay Gamaleya, a pioneer of bacteriology and member of the Academy of Sciences, wrote a personal letter to Stalin, protesting the growing antisemitism: "Judging by absolutely indisputable and obvious indications, the reappearance of antisemitism is not coming from below, not from the masses. . . but is directed from above, by someone's invisible hand. Antisemitism is coming from some high-placed persons who have taken up posts in the leading party organs. . . The ninety-year-old scientist wrote Stalin a second letter in mid-February, again mentioning the growing antisemitism. In March, Gamaleya died, still having received no answer.

During the night of 12–13 August 1952, remembered as the "Night of the Murdered Poets" (Ночь казнённых поэтов), thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers of the Soviet Union were executed on the orders of Stalin. Among the victims were Peretz Markish, David Bergelson and Itzik Fefer.

In a 1 December 1952 Politburo session, Stalin announced: "Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA. . . They think they are indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists."

A notable campaign to quietly remove Jews from positions of authority within the state security services was carried out in 1952–1953. The Russian historians Zhoresand Roy Medvedev wrote that according to [MVD]General Sudoplatov, "simultaneously all Jews were removed from the leadership of the security services, even those in very senior positions. In February the anti-Jewish expulsions were extended to regional branches of the MGB. A secret directive was distributed to all regional directorates of the MGB on 22 February, ordering that all Jewish employees of the MGB be dismissed immediately, regardless of rank, age or service record. . . .".

The outside world was not ignorant of these developments, and even the leading members of the Communist Party USA complained about the situation. In the memoir Being Red, the American writer and prominent Communist Howard Fastrecalls a meeting with Soviet writer and World Peace Congress delegate Alexander Fadeyev during this time. Fadeyev insisted that "There is no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union", despite the evidence "that at least eight leading Jewish figures in the Red Army and in government had been arrested on what appeared to be trumped-up charges. Yiddish-language newspapers had been suppressed. Schools that taught Hebrew had been closed. . . ."


Stalin Versus Mario [PHOTO SOURCE: http://hitlerparody.wikia.com/wiki/File:Mario_and_Stalin_Comparison_1_by_DrSVH.jpg]
The Doctors' Plot

Main article: Doctors' plot

On 13 January 1953, the Soviet Union's TASS information agency announced the unmasking of a conspiracy of so-called "doctors-poisoners" who had covertly attempted to decapitate the Soviet leadership. The accused doctors were all senior physicians—most of them Jewish—who had allegedly confessed to planning and successfully carrying out heinous assassinations, including the covert murders of such high-profile Soviet citizens as writer Alexander Shcherbakov (died 1945) and politician Andrey Zhdanov (died 1948). The alleged conspirators were accused of acting on behalf of both the American and British intelligence services and an anti-Soviet international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization.

As Western press accused the Soviet Union of antisemitism, the Central Committee of Communist Party decided to organise a propagandistic trick, a collective letter by the Jewish public, condemning with fervour "the murderers in white overalls" and the agents of imperialismand Zionism, and to assure there was no antisemitism in the USSR. The letter was signed by well-known scientists and culture figures, who had been forced to do so by the NKVD.

However, the letter, initially planned to be published in February 1953, remained unpublished. Instead of the letter, a vehement feuilleton "The Simple-minded and the Swindlers" was published in Pravda, featuring numerous characters with Jewish names, all of them swindlers, villains, saboteurs, whom the naïve Russian people trust, having lost vigilance. What followed was a new wave of antisemitic hysteria, and a plan by Stalin to send all of the Jews to Siberia, similar to other ethnic groups. Only Stalin's death the same year relieved the fear.

Similar purges against Jews were organised in Eastern Bloc countries (see Prague Trials).

During this time Soviet Jews were dubbed as persons of Jewish ethnicity. A dean of Marxism-Leninismdepartment at one of Soviet Universities explained the policy to his students:

One of you asked if our current political campaign can be regarded as antisemitic. Comrade Stalin said: "We hate Nazi not because they are Germans, but because they brought enormous suffering to our land". Same can be said about the Jews.
 
Iosif Dzhigashvili (better known as Josef Stalin) with Lazar Kaganovich.
Associates and family

Some of Stalin's associates were Jews or had Jewish spouses, including Lazar Kaganovich. Many of them were purged, including Nikolai Yezhov's wife and Polina Zhemchuzhina, who was Vyacheslav Molotov's wife, and also Bronislava Poskrebysheva. Historian Geoffrey Roberts points out that Stalin "continued to fête Jewish writers and artists even at the height of the anti-Zionist campaign of the early 1950s."

When Stalin's young daughter Svetlana fell in love with prominent Soviet filmmaker Alexei Kapler, a Jewish man twenty-three years her elder, Stalin was strongly irritated by the relationship. According to Svetlana, "He (Stalin) was irritated more than anything else by the fact that Kapler was Jewish". Kapler was convicted to ten years of hard labor in Gulag on the charges of being an "English spy." Stalin's daughter later fell in love with Grigori Morozov, another Jew, and married him. Stalin agreed to their marriage after much pleading on Svetlana's part, but refused to attend the wedding.

Stalin's son Yakov also married a Jewish woman, Yulia Meltzer, and though Stalin disapproved at first, he began to grow fond of her. Stalin's biographer Simon Sebag Montefiore writes that Lavrenty Beria's son noted that his father could list Stalin's affairs with Jewish women.

Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that

A hostile attitude toward the Jewish nation was a major shortcoming of Stalin's. In his speeches and writings as a leader and theoretician there wasn't even a hint of this. God forbid that anyone assert that a statement by him smacked of antisemitism. Outwardly everything looked correct and proper. But in his inner circle, when he had occasion to speak about some Jewish person, he always used an emphatically distorted pronunciation. This was the way backward people lacking in political consciousness would express themselves in daily life—people with a contemptuous attitude toward Jews. They would deliberately mangle the Russian language, putting on a Jewish accent or imitating certain negative characteristics [attributed to Jews]. Stalin loved to do this, and it became one of his characteristic traits.

He further professed that Stalin frequently made antisemitic comments after World War II.

Analyzing various explanations for Stalin's perceived antisemitism in his book The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–1953, historian Michael Parrish posits that

It has been suggested that Stalin, who remained first and foremost a Georgian throughout his life, somehow became a 'Great Russian' and decided that Jews would make a scapegoat for the ills of the Soviet Union. Others, such as the Polish writer Aleksander Wat (himself a victim), claim that Stalin was not an antisemite by nature, but the pro-Americanism of Soviet Jews forced him to follow a deliberate policy of antisemitism. Wat's views are, however, colored by the fact that Stalin, for obvious reasons, at first depended on Jewish Communists to help carry out his post-war policies in Poland. I believe a better explanation was Stalin's sense of envy (an occupational hazard for Marxists), which consumed him throughout his life. He also found in Jews a convenient target. By late 1930, Stalin, as [his daughter's] memoirs indicate, was suffering from a full-blown case of antisemitism.

On the other hand, in Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews, historian Albert S. Lindemann observes that

Determining Stalin's real attitude to Jews is difficult. Not only did he repeatedly speak out against anti-Semitism but both his son and daughter married Jews, and several of his closest and most devoted lieutenants from the late 1920s through the 1930s were of Jewish origin, for example Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, Maxim Litvinov, and the notorious head of the secret police, Genrikh Yagoda. There were not so many Jews allied with Stalin on the party's right as there were allied with Trotsky on the left, but the importance of men like Kaganovich, Litvinov, and Yagoda makes it hard to believe that Stalin harbored a categorical hatred of all Jews, as a race, in the way that Hitler did. Scholars as knowledgeable and diverse in their opinions as Isaac Deutscher and Robert Conquest have denied that anything as crude and dogmatic as Nazi-style anti-Semitism motivated Stalin. It may be enough simply to note that Stalin was a man of towering hatreds, corrosive suspicions, and impenetrable duplicity. He saw enemies everywhere, and it just so happened that many of his enemies—virtually all his enemies—were Jews, above all, theenemy, Trotsky.

Jews in the party were often verbally adroit, polylingual, and broadly educated—all qualities Stalin lacked. To observe, as his daughter Svetlana has, that 'Stalin did not like Jews,' does not tell us much, since he 'did not like' any group: His hatreds and suspicions knew no limits; even party members from his native Georgia were not exempt. Whether he hated Jews with a special intensity or quality is not clear.

OTHER LINKS:
http://www.jewishhistory.org/stalin%E2%80%99s-anti-semitism/

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/125203/surviving-stalins-purges

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/aug/16/20030816-105043-6895r/?page=all

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/the-jews-under-stalin/

http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/history/stalin.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union

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THOMAS MANN ON TOLERATING EVIL [PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE OF THE WEEK ~ SUNDAY AUGUST 10, 2014 TO SATURDAY AUGUST 16, 2014]

August 11, 2014, 2:06 pm
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Thomas Mann Quote [PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/249780]


QUOTE:“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

AUTHOR:Paul Thomas Mann ([paʊ̯l toːmas man]; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist and 1929 Nobel laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Mann was a member of the Hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in the novel Buddenbrooks. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, returning to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.

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THE LAST TWO MEN HANGED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM (13 AUGUST 1964)

August 12, 2014, 2:23 pm
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            50 years ago on this date, 13 August 1964, Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen, became the last two men to be executed by hanging in the United Kingdom. I will post information about them from Wikipedia.


Evans (left), Allen (right)
Last known image of the last 2 men hanged in the United Kingdom.
The murder of John Alan West on 7 April 1964 was the crime which led to the last time a death sentence was executed in the United Kingdom. West was a 53-year-old van driver for a laundry when he was killed by Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen who had gone to rob him at his home in Seaton, Cumberland. Both murderers were unemployed and had a history of petty crime; they were arrested and charged within two days of the crime. At trial, each blamed the other, but the jury by its verdict found both responsible. Use of the death penalty had been declining and the decision not to reprieve the two came as a surprise.

Gwynne Evans

Gwynne Owen Evans had been born at Maryport, Cumberland on 1 April 1940 with the name John Robson Walby, the third but eldest surviving child of Thomas and Hannah Walby. While attending a Secondary modern school in Maryport, he occasionally attended Dovenby Hall Mental Colony in Cockermouth. On leaving school at 15 he worked as a page boy at a hotel in Carlisle and an engine cleaner for British Rail, in between periods of unemployment. He was given a supervision order in 1957 and sent to a hostel in Bristol; later that year he enlisted in the Border Regiment but was discharged in March 1958 as "unfit under existing standards". He enlisted again in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in November 1958, being discharged in February 1959 for the same reason.

At this point he took to using the name Owen Evans, and worked briefly for British Rail before again trying the armed forces. The Royal Air Force accepted him in July 1959, but discharged him after four months as "physically unfit for Air Force service". It was during a series of short-term jobs around Workington from September 1960 that Evans briefly worked for the Lakeland Laundry and came to know Jack West. He soon left and moved to Birmingham in October 1961 and there worked as a kitchen porter, driver and lift attendant. On 5 April 1963 as Gwyn Evans he was convicted by Carlisle magistrates of larceny of 10s cash, and obtaining 16s. cash and a railway ticket by false pretences. He was fined £5 with four days' detention in default; he chose to serve the four days. He had stolen two half crowns from a friend while he was distracted, and obtained a 16s loan from a police station by claiming to have lost his wallet at his mother's funeral. In the following month Evans was given three months' imprisonment at Dudley for driving a motor vehicle without a licence, and using a driving licence with intent to deceive. Evans enlisted again, into the Lancastrian Brigade, in October 1963 but was discharged on 14 November 1963 when his criminal convictions and failure to disclose them came to light.

Evans then moved to Preston where he lodged with Peter Allen and his wife. He worked for an agricultural trading society for about a month. On 21 January 1964 Evans committed his first crime with Allen, removing the lead flashing from an empty house. On 28 January the two broke open a cigarette machine and stole the contents; they then stole a car and a van, using them in burglaries of several other premises. An incompetent attempt to cover up the van's registration number led to their arrest and to fines of £10. From 5 March Evans was employed by a dairy; on 17 March, having only worked two days, he was dismissed for absenteeism. The robbery of West was intended to provide enough money to pay the fines.

When he appeared in court, Evans spoke with a Welsh accent. He claimed that he had adopted the name Evans on finding out that his parents were German and that he had been born at Innsbruck.

Peter Allen

Peter Anthony Allen was born at Wallasey, then in Cheshire, on 4 April 1943, the second son of Richard Thomas Allen. After attending a secondary modern school in Wallasey, he too left at age 15. He obtained but lost two jobs within a month, dismissed for carelessness, but later found employment as a pipe-cleaner for three months. He enlisted as a junior gunner in the Junior Leaders Regiment of the Royal Artillery, serving for 11 months before being discharged as "no longer required"; he was given a good reference. For two years after leaving the army, Allen worked for two trucking companies; he was dismissed by the second in October 1961 when he was given a promotion and was unable to handle the responsibility. While he was working as a trucker, Allen received his first criminal conviction, for aiding and abetting the taking of a car in August 1960; he was given a conditional discharge.

On 11 November 1961 Allen married a cinema usherette; the couple had a Catholic wedding. Later that month he found employment at a scrap-dealer, being dismissed in April 1962 for poor timekeeping. Six months work in a dairy was followed by six months in a steel works, Allen having moved to Preston in November 1962. He found a job as a labourer but after two months he injured his back and was unable to work; he was not dismissed until January 1964. Later that month he committed the various robbery offences with Evans. In February 1964 he was taken on by a Preston dairy, but was dismissed for absenteeism after a month.

Crime and arrest

John West, known to his friends as Jack, was a bachelor who lived alone at 28 Kings Avenue in Seaton. Aged 53, he had worked for 34 years as a van driver for the Lakeland Laundry in Workington. After a normal working day, West had returned to his home just before 6 PM on Monday 6 April 1964. At about 3:00 AM the following morning his next-door neighbour was awoken by a noise in West's house and, looking out of the window, observed a car disappearing down the street. The neighbour called the police, who found West dead from severe head injuries and a stab wound to the chest. In his house the police found a raincoat in the pockets of which was a medallion and Army Memo Form. The medallion was inscribed "G.O. Evans, July, 1961", and the memo form had the name "Miss Norma O'Brian" on it, together with a Liverpool address. Liverpool Police traced a Norma O'Brien at the address; she was a 17-year-old Liverpool factory worker who told the police that in the autumn of 1963, while staying with her sister and brother-in-law in Preston, she had met a man called "Ginger Owen Evans". She also confirmed that she had seen Evans wearing the medallion. She was driven up to Kendal and identified the medallion.

Evans and Allen had stolen a car (a black 1959 Ford Prefect, registration NXC 771) to go to West's house, and later abandoned it in a builders' yard in Ormskirk, Lancashire. Evans had asked a neighbour whether he could leave it there, and the neighbour thought his behaviour suspicious; she reported it to the police on the evening of Tuesday 7 April. The police found that the car had been stolen and matched the descriptions given in Seaton; with descriptions of the car and pictures of Evans, they traced its route back to Lancashire. The police also traced Evans, through his parents, as well as criminal and army records, to Allen's address in Preston. At 1 PM on Wednesday 8 April, less than 36 hours after West's murder, the police turned up (in search of Evans) at Allen's home in Clarendon Road, Preston. Allen agreed to go to the police station in Preston, and was then driven up to Kendal and then to Workington (where the murder squad were based). In questioning Allen claimed to have been home with his wife and "Sandy Evans" on the night of the murder.

He said his wife was visiting her mother in Manchester, and gave the address. A Bolton police officer went to the address to find only the mother there; he left telling her he would wait outside for Allen's wife to return, and a few hours later she did return and went out immediately to the police car to tell the officer where to find Evans. Evans was soon found on a street corner at Phillips Park Road in Miles Platting and a search revealed West's watch. Taken initially to the police station in Middleton, when told he was being arrested on suspicion of murder Evans admitted that he, together with Allen, Allen's wife and two children, had gone to borrow money from West. Evans accused Allen of sole responsibility for the murder. He and Mrs Allen were then driven up to Workington.

Interrogation

Allen initially stood by his claim not to have done anything on the Monday night, but changed his mind when he was told that his wife and Evans were in custody. He explained that Evans had suggested robbing West, and had initially gone into West's house on his own. Evans had then let Allen in, hoping that West would not notice, but West had come downstairs and so Allen had fought him. He said that Evans had given him an iron bar which he used to hit West. Allen then made a statement along these lines.

Evans claimed West had told him that he should see him if ever he was in Workington and needed money, so he had gone to ask for a loan. However, he said that Allen had forced his way into West's house intent on robbery, and that Allen had been the only one to attack West. During questioning, Evans spontaneously mentioned that he knew nothing about a knife and did not have one; until this point, the police had not revealed that West had been stabbed. Evans admitted to stealing West's watch.

Mrs Allen's statement supported her husband's account that Evans had come out to invite him in. She reported that she had asked the two men what had happened in the house, and that Evans had said both had attacked West. At 1.15 AM on Thursday 9 April, less than 48 hours after the murder, both Evans and Allen were charged.

Trial

Allen and Evans were committed for trial by Workington Magistrates after a two day hearing. The trial was initially put down for Lancaster Assizes, but on application by the defence was transferred to Manchester Assizes. The joint trial before Mr Justice Ashworth began on 23 June; Joseph Cantley QC led the prosecution, with Allen defended by F. J. Nance and R. G. Hamilton, and Evans defended by Griffith Guthrie Jones QC. The indictment was for capital murder under the Homicide Act 1957, because West had been killed in the course of a theft (there was an additional charge of robbery with aggravation of two bank pass books and a gold watch). Allen claimed only to have struck West a few blows, and that Evans used the knife. Evans' defence was that the robbery had been suggested by Allen (if West refused a loan), and he had only gone along with it provided there was no violence.

The most important witness at the trial was Mrs Allen, who was called in her husband's defence. She stuck to her statement that Evans had let Allen into West's house, and that both men had been responsible for attacking West. She also testified that Evans had thrown the knife used to murder West out of the window of the car at Windermere, and that Evans had made an incriminatory remark apparently referring to stabbing West. In cross-examination she accepted that Evans had been more than a lodger to her; Evans' counsel then produced affectionate letters which she had written to Evans in Durham Prison while he was awaiting trial. The affectionate tone had suddenly ended when she heard Evans' account of the murder at the Magistrates' court, and she had then written of her "deep and bitter hatred" of him. The Judge later directed the jury to treat her evidence with caution; however the prosecution obtained permission to introduce her first statement which showed that her story had remained consistent.

In summing up, the judge asked the jury to decide if the murder had actually been committed by one of the two men alone; in the latter case the other would be found guilty only of non-capital murder at the most. The jury found both men equally guilty, and both were sentenced to "suffer death in the manner authorised by law".

Hangings

Both men appealed, with the appeal heard by the Lord Chief JusticeLord Parker of Waddington, Mr Justice Winn and Mr Justice Widgery on 20 July. Judgment was given the following day dismissing the appeal. The date for the execution of the death sentence was set at 13 August. Under the law, the Home Secretary had to decide whether to advise the Queen to exercise the prerogative of mercy and commute the death sentence to life imprisonment; of 48 death sentences passed since the 1957 Act, 19 people had been reprieved. Only two executions had taken place in 1963, and none so far in 1964. According to author Elwyn Jones, the police in the north-west expected a reprieve.

A recent reprieve to a notably brutal murderer from Lancashire may have led opinion in Preston to believe that a reprieve was likely for Allen and Evans, and a petition demanding their hanging was started (there was also a smaller petition calling for a reprieve). On 10 August, the Home Office sent out letters announcing that the Secretary of State had "failed to discover any sufficient ground to justify him in advising Her Majesty to interfere with the due course of law" in both cases. Gwynne Owen Evans was hanged by executioner Harry Allenat Manchester's Strangeways Prison at 8:00 am on 13 August 1964. At the same time, Peter Allen was hanged at Liverpool's Walton Prisonby Robert Leslie Stewart, assisted by Royston Rickard. These were the last two hangings in Britain.

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NAZI DIPLOMAT: KONSTANTIN VON NEURATH (2 FEBRUARY 1873 TO 14 AUGUST 1956)

August 13, 2014, 1:45 pm
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            On this date, 14 August 1956, one of the defendants of the Nuremberg Trials, Konstantiin Von Neurath passed away. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.

 

Konstantin von Neurath as Reichsprotektor, 1939

Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs 
Weimar Republic
 Nazi Germany
In office
1 June 1932 – 4 February 1938
President
Paul von Hindenburg (1932–1934)
Adolf Hitler Führer (1934–1938)
Chancellor
Franz von Papen (1932)
Kurt von Schleicher (1932–1933)
Adolf Hitler (1933–1938)
Preceded by
Heinrich Brüning
Succeeded by
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
In office
21 March 1939 – 24 August 1943
Appointed by
Adolf Hitler
Preceded by
New post
Succeeded by
Reinhard Heydrich (de facto)
Wilhelm Frick (de jure)
Personal details
Born
2 February 1873
Kleinglattbach
German Empire
Died
14 August 1956 (aged 83)
Enzweihingen
West Germany
Political party
Independent (1932–1937)
Nazi (1937–1945)
Spouse(s)
Marie Auguste Moser von Filseck
Children
2

Konstantin Hermann Karl Freiherr von Neurath (2 February 1873 – 14 August 1956) was a German diplomat remembered mostly for having served as Foreign minister of Germany between 1932 and 1938. Holding this post in the early years of Adolf Hitler's regime, Neurath was regarded as playing a key role in the foreign policy pursuits of the Nazi dictator in undermining the Treaty of Versailles and territorial expansion in the prelude to World War II, although he was often averse tactically if not necessarily ideologically. This aversion eventually induced Hitler to replace Neurath with the more compliant and fervent Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Neurath served as "Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia" between 1939 and 1943, though his authority was only nominal after September 1941. He was tried as a major war criminal in Nuremberg and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for his compliance and actions in the Nazi regime.


Konstantin von Neurath during his military service, 1893
Early life

Neurath was born at the manor of Kleinglattbach (since 1872 part of Vaihingen an der Enz) in Württemberg, the scion of a Swabian dynasty of Freiherren. His grandfather Constantin Franz von Neurath had served as Foreign Minister under King Charles I of Württemberg (reigned 1864–1891); his father Konstantin Sebastian von Neurath (died 1912) had been a Free Conservative member of the German Reichstag parliament and Chamberlain of King William II of Württemberg.

He studied law in Tübingen and in Berlin. After graduating in 1897 he initially joined a local law firm in his home town. In 1901 he entered into civil service and worked for the Foreign Office in Berlin. In 1903 he was assigned to the German embassy in London, at first as Vice-Consul and from 1909 as Legationsrat(legation counsel). Following the visit of the Prince of Wales to the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1904, as Lord Chamberlain to King William II, he was created an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. Neurath's career was decisively advanced by Secretary of State Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter. In 1914 he was sent to the embassy in Constantinople.

On 30 May 1901 Neurath married Marie Auguste Moser von Filseck (1875–1960) in Stuttgart. His son Konstantin was born in 1902, followed by his daughter Winifred in 1904.

During World War I he served as an officer with an infantry regiment until 1916 when he was badly wounded. In December 1914 he was awarded the Iron Cross. He returned to the German diplomatic service in the Ottoman Empire (1914–1916), where he witnessed the Armenian Genocide. In 1917 he temporarily quit the diplomatic service to succeed his uncle Julius von Soden as head of the royal Württemberg government.


Konstantin von Neurath in 1920
Political career

In 1919 Neurath with approval by president Friedrich Ebert returned to diplomacy, joining the embassy in Copenhagen as Minister to Denmark. From 1921 until 1930 he was the ambassador to Rome; he was not overly impressed with Italian Fascism. After the death of Gustav Stresemann in 1929, he was already considered for the post of Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Chancellor Hermann Müller by president Paul von Hindenburg, but his appointment failed due to the objections raised by the governing parties. In 1930 he returned to head the embassy in London.

Neurath was recalled to Germany in 1932 and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the "Cabinet of Barons" under Chancellor Franz von Papen in June. He continued to hold that position under Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and then under Adolf Hitler from the Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933. During the early days of Hitler's rule, Neurath lent an aura of respectability to Hitler's expansionist foreign policy.

In May 1933, the American chargé d'affaires reported that "Baron von Neurath has shown such a remarkable capacity for submitting to what in normal times could only be considered as affronts and indignities on the part of the Nazis, that it is still quite a possibility that the latter should be content to have him remain as a figurehead for some time yet". He was involved in the German withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933, the negotiations of the Anglo-German Naval Accord (1935) and the remilitarization of the Rhineland. In 1937, Neurath joined the Nazi Party. He was awarded the Golden Party Badge and was given the honorary rank of a Gruppenführer in the SS—equivalent in Wehrmachtrank to a lieutenant general.


On 5 November 1937, the conference between the Reich's top military-foreign policy leadership and Hitler recorded in the so-called Hossbach Memorandum occurred. At the conference, Hitler stated that it was the time for war, or, more accurately, wars, as what Hitler envisioned were a series of localized wars in Central and Eastern Europe in the near future. Hitler argued that because these wars were necessary to provide Germany with Lebensraum, autarky and the arms race with France and Britain made it imperative to act before the Western powers developed an insurmountable lead in the arms race. He further declared that Germany must be ready for war as early as 1938, and at the latest by 1943.

Of those invited to the conference, objections arose from Neurath, Blomberg and the Army Commander in Chief, General Werner von Fritsch. They all believed that any German aggression in Eastern Europe was bound to trigger a war with France because of the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, the so-called cordon sanitaire. They further believed that if a Franco-German war broke out, it would quickly escalate to a European war, since Britain would almost certainly intervene rather than risk the prospect of France's defeat. Moreover, they contended that Hitler's assumption that Britain and France would just ignore the projected wars because they had started their re-armament later than Germany was flawed. The opposition expressed by Fritsch, Blomberg and Neurath was concerned entirely with the assessment that Germany could not start a war in the heart of Europe without Anglo-French involvement, and that more time was needed to rearm. However, they did not express any moral opposition to aggression or disagreement with Hitler's basic idea of annexing Austria or Czechoslovakia.

In response to the reservations expressed at the Hossbach conference, Hitler tightened his control of the military-foreign policy making apparatus by removing those who out of touch with his policy. On 4 February 1938, Neurath was sacked as Foreign Minister in the course of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair. He felt his office was marginalised and was not in favour of Hitler's aggressive war plans because he felt Germany needed more time to rearm, which were detailed in the Hossbach Memorandum of 5 November 1937. He was succeeded by Joachim von Ribbentrop, but remained in government as a minister without portfolio to allay the concerns that his removal would have caused internationally. He was also named as president of the "Secret Cabinet Council", a purported super-cabinet to advise Hitler on foreign affairs. On paper, it appeared that Neurath had been promoted. However, this body only existed on paper; Hermann Göring subsequently testified that it never met, "not for a minute."

In March 1939, Neurath was appointed Reichsprotektor of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, serving as Hitler's personal representative in the protectorate. Hitler chose Neurath in part to pacify the international outrage over the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Soon after his arrival at Prague Castle, Neurath instituted harsh press censorship and banned political parties and trade unions. He ordered a harsh crackdown on protesting students in October and November 1939 (1200 student protesters went to concentration camps and nine were executed). He also supervised the persecution of Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws. Draconian as these measures were, Neurath's rule overall was fairly mild by Nazi standards. Notably, he tried to restrain the excesses of his police chief, Karl Hermann Frank.


However, in September 1941, Hitler decided that Neurath's rule was too lenient, and stripped him of his day-to-day powers. Reinhard Heydrich was named as his deputy, but in truth held the real power. Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 and succeeded by Kurt Daluege. Neurath officially remained as Reichsprotektor through this time. He tried to resign in 1941, but his resignation was not accepted until August 1943, when he was succeeded by the former Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick. In June of that year he had been raised to the rank of an SS-Obergruppenführer--equivalent to a three-star general.

Late in the war, Neurath had contacts with the German resistance.


Konstantin von Neurath in 1920
Trial and imprisonment

The Allies of World War II prosecuted Neurath at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Otto von Lüdinghausen appeared for his defence. The prosecution accused him of "conspiracyto commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes and crimes against humanity". Neurath's chief defence strategy was predicated on the fact that his successor and fellow defendant, Ribbentrop, was more culpable for the atrocities committed in the Nazi state. The International Military Tribunal acknowledged the fact that Neurath's crimes against humanity were mostly conducted during his short tenure as actual Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, especially in quelling Czech resistance and the summary execution of several university students. The tribunal came to the consensus that Neurath, though a willing and active participant in war crimes, held no such prominent position during the height of the Third Reich's tyranny and was therefore only a minor adherent to the atrocities committed. He was found guilty by the Allied powers on all four counts and was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment.

Neurath was held as a war criminal in Spandau Prison until November 1954, when he was released in the wake of the Paris Conference, officially due to his ill health – he had suffered a heart attack. He retired to his family's estates in Enzweihingen, where he died two years later, aged 83.

OTHER LINKS:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Neurath.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Neurath1.html
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DHANANJOY CHATTERJEE (14 AUGUST 1965 TO 14 AUGUST 2004)

August 13, 2014, 1:46 pm
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            Ten years ago on this date, 14 August 2004, an Indian Pedophile, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, was executed by hanging at Alipore Jail. I will post information about him from Wikipedia.


Dhananjoy Chatterjee [PHOTO SOURCE: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/the-last-hanging-took-14-years-after-rape-and-murder/1050101/]
Dhananjoy Chatterjee (14 August 1965 – 14 August 2004) was born in a Bengali Hindu family in Kuludihi, West Bengal, India and worked as a security guard. He was executed by hanging for the murder (following a rape) of the 14-year-old Gujarati female juvenile Hetal Parekh at her apartment residence in Bhowanipur, on 5 March 1990 at Alipore Jail in Kolkata, India.

Chatterjee, whose mercy plea was rejected on 4 August 2004, was kept at Alipore for nearly 14 years. The execution was scheduled on 25 June 2004 but it was stayed after his family petitioned the Supreme Court of India, and filed a mercy plea with the then President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. The family refused to either attend the execution or claim his body; it was later cremated.

The date of Chatterjee's execution was fixed at a high-level meeting at the office of Jail Minister Biswanath Choudhury. This was the first hanging at Alipore since 1993, when murder convicts, Kartik Sil and Sukumar Burman, were hanged. It was the first execution in India since 1995 (Auto Shankar was hanged on 27 April 1995).

OTHER LINKS:
http://www.indiatvnews.com/crime/news/dhananjoy-chatterjee-and-hatel-parek-3845.html


Dhananjoy Chatterjee’s execution [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040813/asp/frontpage/story_3619686.asp]


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