Lesbian Victims & Survivors Of The Nazi Regime

... Aged nineteen, Baroness Gertrud von Puttkamer's first book of poetry Auf Kypros (On Cyprus) (1900), under the pen-name Marie Madeleine, was a collection of erotic sapphic verses which became a best-seller throughout the German Empire. Gertrud Günther was born to Jewish parents, in 1881, in Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia. In the same year she published Auf Kypros, aged nineteen, she married Baron Heinrich Georg Ludwig von Puttkamer, a member of the Pomeranian nobility who was 35 years her senior. They moved to Grunewald, Berlin and lived a life of high society and wealth. Fourteen years later, her husband died and it is believed she then turned to morphine.

By using her pen name Marie Madeleine, she had kept secret her identity for more than three decades, but during the Third Reich, the Nazis ferreted her out. Despite her nobility, the Nazis wanted to erase this Jewish lesbian poet addicted to morphine from history. In 1932, her writings were condemned as depraved and ordered them to be burned - explaining why her writings are so rare to find. Under the pretence of treating her for morphine addiction, in 1943, the Nazis committed her to a sanatorium in Katzenelnbogen, Rheinland-Pfalz. A year later, she died on 27 or 30 September 1944 while "under the care" of Nazi doctors. Was she murdered through the Nazi's Aktion T4 euthanasia campaign?

Baroness Gertrud von Puttkamer died: in an sanatorium in Katzenelnbogen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, "under the care" of Nazi doctors between the 27 to 30 September 1944 - she was 63 years old.

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... Artist Anita Rée committed suicide in 1933, in Kampen, Sylt (the largest of the North Frisian islands). She left a note behind for her sister, in which she admitted that it was harassment from anti-Semitic forces and "disappointments on the personal level" that lead to her depression and eventual decision to take her own life. A year later, the Nazis designated Rée's work as "Degenerate art" and began purging it from museum collections. Her art works were saved by a groundskeeper, Wilhelm Werner, at the Kunsthalle Hamburg by hiding them in his apartment.

Lesbian?: Many historians have surmised that the personal disappointments Anita refers to in her suicide letter is possibly to her inability to live a heterosexual life.

Anita Rée committed suicide: in Kampen / Sylt on 12 December 1933 - she was 48 years old.

Anita Rée's Stolperstein: is located on Fontenay 11, Eimsbuettel, Hamburg (oh my gosh my Silesian grandfather had a Fleischwaren Fabrik on Mittelweg 174, an der Fontenay I think between 1924 - 1935?).

Collections: Anita Rée's art can be seen at the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

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Christa Winsloe was an German-Hungarian novelist, playwright and sculptor, who wrote the play Gestern und Heute (1930) which was made into the film Mädchen in Uniform (1931). The play has become iconic as it was the first play to feature female homosexuality in the Weimar Republic without a "radical critique of the social discrimination of lesbian women."

On the strength of Mädchen in Uniform's success, Christa moved to Berlin, where at the time there was a swinging lesbian sub-culture. Enjoying her allowance from her ex-husband ( Baron Lajos Hatvany-Deutsch), she worked as an animal sculptor, and had a wide circle of friends. She was open about her sexuality.

Early in World War II, Christa fled the Nazis with her partner, American journalist Dorothy Thompson (early on Dorothy had warned against Hitler). They spent time in Italy and then Christa followed Dorothy to the U.S.. Christa was unhappy in America - her scripts were rejected from Hollywood producers and she did not want to write in English, so she left Dorothy and returned to Europe in 1935. After travelling between Italy, France, Hungary, Austria, and Germany, in October 1939, while in Nice she met the Swiss author Simone Gentet (born 1898?) and they moved to south of France and settled in Cagnes.

In February 1944 Christa and Simone left the Cote d'Azur and travelled to Cluny in Burgundy as Christa was planning get them to her sister-in-law in Hungary. Just before the landing of the allied troops in Normandy she received the necessary transit visa for Germany. On the 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, Christa and Simone were falsely accused of being Nazi spies by four French patriots, and without a trial, the gang of four shot and killed them in a forest near the country town of Cluny. My father landed on the Normandy beaches on the 27th June 1944 - I wished he could have saved them.

Christa Winsloe (aged 56) and Simone Gentet (aged 46?) were wrongly executed in a forest near the country town of Cluny, France on the 10 June 1944.

It is shock that this tragedy is not widely acknowledged. After the war, during an investigation, the gang leader, a livestock dealer called Lambert, referred to an alleged order of the résistance. The women were thought to have been spies and to have collaborated with the occupying power i.e. The Nazis. Though these accusations were totally unsubstantiated, Lambert and his co-defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence in 1948. Utterly a shocking miscarriage of justice. Do they have even graves? Moreover, this execution has almost airbrushed out of history, excluding Claudia Schoppmann's stellar research on Christa Winsloe.

To date there seems to be no commemoration to them?.

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persecution of Jews, was arrested with her Swiss-Jewish girl friend in 1943, and deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Eva Kotchever (born Chawa Złoczower but used many pseudonyms e.g Eve Adams), was a Polish-Jew who at the age 20, emigrated to the United States (1912) to seek new adventures. Dressed in men's clothing she became involved in the anarchist movement and became a cross-country traveling saleswoman of leftist periodicals, such as Mother Earth and The Liberator. By 1919, she was considered an "agitator" and became under the radar of the "Radical Division" of the Bureau of Investigation, run by J. Edgar Hoover.

In Chicago, with her partner, Swedish painter Ruth Norlander, they ran a tea room named The Gray Cottage which was a literary salon that also served as a "refuge for gay people." A Tearoom? From 1920 to 1933, in the US, there was a nationwide constitutional law which prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcohol! Eva returned to New York in 1923 to sign a declaration of intention to become a US citizen. Two years later she opened "Eve’s Hangout" in Greenwich Village in the similar vein as her previous tearoom. In that same year, 1925, Eve, wrote and published (pen name Evelyn Adams) Lesbian Love, a collection of short stories describing lives of women in the lesbian community and only printed 150 copies "for private circulation only". Lesbian Love was one of the earliest books of American lesbian literature.

After an undercover police detective, Margaret Leonard, entered Eve's Hangout and was shown Lesbian Love, Eva was arrested by the New York City's Vice Squad for "obscenity and disorderly conduct". Accused of "moral turpitude" and publishing an "indecent book," (Lesbian Love), she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Eva spent a year in at Jefferson Market Prison! There she met legendary actress Mae West who had been arrested for her "obscene, indecent, immoral" play Sex (1926). Though she pleaded to stay in America, In December 1927 Eva was deported back to Poland. There she wrote to friends about low wages and anti-Semitism in Poland.

In 1930, Eva moved to Paris and made a living by selling "dirty" books to American tourists which were banned in America, such as works by iconic James Joyce, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin and D. H. Lawrence, who some of them she met. During this time she wrote "a group of prison stories" that The New Review intended to publish, but the journal closed before it could do so.

In 1933, Eve fell in love with Swiss-Jewish singer Hella Olstein Soldner (stage name Nora/Norah Waren), and lived with her even after Hella married (marriage for foreign citizenship?). They intended to emigrate to Palestine and join Eva's brother, but lacked financial means to do so. Eva pleaded with friends including American anarchist Ben Reitman to help her get a return permit to the US. With no success, Eva and Hella moved to Southern France, in 1940.

In December 1943, Eva and Hella were arrested in Nice and imprisoned in the Drancy internment camp, near Paris. With about 850 other Jews, Eva and Hella were deported to Auschwitz in Convoy No. 63, on 17 December 1943. Until liberation in 1945, only 31 of Convoy No. 63 survived - Eve and Hella, were not among those. Eva died in Auschwitz two days later after her arrival - presumably in a Auschwitz gas chamber.

Eva Kotchever was murdered in Auschwitz, on the 19 December 1943 (two days after arriving) - aged 52.

Eva Kotchever Stolperstien: Unlike the Dutch and Germans, the French don't do Stolperstein commemorations.

Commemorations: rue Eva Kotchever, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris is named after Eva, as well as a public school.

Biography: The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (2010) by Jonathan Katz

Play: Unreachable Eden (2014) by Barbara Kahn

(Slick) Podcast: Rebels: Eva Kotchever

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... Mary Kümmermann was born on 24 August 1904 in Wandsbek, (Hamburg - haunting as my Mother was from Hamburg) to a Jewish family whose family ran for forty years a specialty store for ladies' clothing, the Korn Clothing Store, which was an institution with a large number of loyal customers, both from Wandsbek and outside its borders. Mary married a schoolfriend, Fritz Pünjer, who was not Jewish, in 1929.

The Korn Clothing Store was attacked during Kristallnacht ("the Night of Broken Glass", in November, 1938). The windows were broken, clothing strewn on the sidewalk, and the interior was damaged. After 40 years in business, the Kümmermann's were forced to give up her store.

On 24 July 1940, Mary was arrested and was interned in the Fuhlsbüttel prison in Hamburg. The reason for her imprisonment was listed as "asocial," with the note "lesbian" but did not specify Jew. Her stolpersteine researchers indicate there was no evidence to suggest that she was lesbian. Perhaps she went rarely to underground woman only bars because she felt that she wouldn't be discovered in the sub-culture scene? Three months later in October 1940, Mary was transferred to Ravensbrück - a German concentration camp exclusively for women located 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück. On her admission to the concentration camp, "lesbian" was not noted as the main reason, but only as an addition.

Between October 1940 and March 1941, Mary was sent back to Hamburg and interrogated several times by the Hamburg Police Department for Sexual Offenses. On 15 March 1941 she was sent back to Ravensbrück and assigned to the evil physician and eugenicist Friedrich Mennecke. Mennecke had other patients who were lesbian, including Henny Schermann (see below). Friedrich Mennecke was involved in the Nazi T4 campaign - a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany and Action 14f13 - the selection of concentration camp prisoners to be murdered. The timing of Mary's return to the Ravensbrück concentration camp coincides with the beginning of Action 14f13 in various concentration camps. However, she did not appear on Mennecke's list until his second visit in January 1942.

In 1942, Mary was assigned to Action 14f13. Mennecke's "diagnoses" of Mary: "Married full Jew. Very active ('frisky') lesbian. Continually visited 'lesbian establishments' and exchanged caresses in the establishment." There are no indications of a disability or illness, rather, her sexual orientation was viewed as an "anti-social act" which the Nazis used to condemn her to death. It would suggest that she had been arrested at lesbian bar. But who cares if she was there just to escape being quasi imprisoned in her home because of the Anti-semitic laws and thought she would not be betrayed there or, if indeed she held a woman's hand to seek a bit of warmth.

Mary Pünjer was murdered in The Nazi Euthanasia Centre at Bernburg, near Magdeburg on the River Elbe, on 28 May 1942 - she was 38 years old.

Under the "Sonderbehandlung 14f13" (Special Treatment 14f13), between 1941 and April 1943, about 5,000 people were murdered in the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre.

Kümmermann Stolpersteine Hamburg: There are three stolpersteine located on Wandsbeker Marktstraße 57, Hamburg in honour the memory of the Kümmermann family. Her mother Lina Kümmermann née Korn is displayed in the image - Lina Kümmermann was deported 15 July 1942 to Theresienstadt and was deported in 15 May 1944 to Auschwitz where she died / was murdered.

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Thérèse was from Épernay, northern France and before WWII she was a teacher and had participated in communist activities. While teaching at a preparatory school in Nancy, circa 1927, she met teacher and writer Emma Pitoizet and after falling in love they lived together. By 1935, however, they had split as Emma wanted to have children.

In 1942, in Carhaix (Brittany) she met a Finistere Resistance official (who later became Lieutenant-Colonel Pascal) and joined the French resistance. By September 1942, under the alias of Madeleine, she was the head of the Fougères resistance group and was responsible for more than a hundred men. She participated in the organisation of Francs-Tireurs et Partisans groups (formed by the French Communist Party) and was in contact with regional chiefs and with other resistance fighters.

On October 23, 1943, Thérèse was arrested in Fougères by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, SS Intelligence Service), and transferred to Rennes. As with so many others, the details of her death are not well known. In the Jacques-Cartier Prison, she was tortured, beaten ... (one can't imagine what she went through) for two consecutive days. Remarkably she managed to communicate with other prisoners through the central heating channel. Fellow prisoner Madame Lequeu, of Dol-de-Bretagne, was in contact with her: Thérèse sobbing, screaming in pain, tirelessly repeated: "I will not speak ... They will not make me talk." One can;t imagine the Gestapo torture she endured. Towards the end of the second day, Madame Lequeu heard Thérèse's last words. Thérèse defiantly said: "They got nothing from me ..." The next morning, Thérèse was found hanging from the bars of her jail, from one of her stockings. It was alleged to be a German-staged suicide. A salute to incredibly courageous Thérèse Pierre

Thérèse Pierre died: in Jacques-Cartier Prison, Rennes, France on 26 October 1943 - she was 34 years old

War Decorations

• Knight of the Legion of Honour
• The Order of the Division
• The medal of the French resistance
• War Cross with Silver Star.

Thérèse Pierre Commemorative Plaques: Two schools bear her name, including the college Thérèse-Pierre de Fougères and there are various commemorative plaques bearing her name e.g. on facade of the house she lived at 32, rue des Prés in Fougères, Châlons-en-Champagne in Marne

Book: Elles vivaient d’espoir (2010) by Claudie Hunzinger

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Courageous Heeny refused to use the middle name Sara (to distinguish female Jews) which had been decreed by The Nazis (from 1938) and continued to hangout in Frankfurt lesbian bars even though both were hugely dangerous to do.

In March 1940, Henny was arrested in Frankfurt and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. On the back of her prisoner photo, eugenics specialist, Friedrich Mennecke wrote: "Jenny (sic) Sara Schermann, born February 19, 1912, Frankfurt am Main. Unmarried shop girl in Frankfurt am Main. Licentious lesbian, only visited such [lesbian] bars. Avoided the name 'Sara.' Stateless Jew."

Mennecke was also the doctor assigned to Mary Pünjer, who was also accused of lesbianism. After two years in the concentration camp, Heeny was sent to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre and murdered on 30 May 1942. Henny was undoubtedly murdered because she was Jewish. However, Mennecke's comment on her passport photo demonstrates a direct interest in and condemnation of her sexuality by a leading doctor of eugenics at the Ravensbrück camp. Her transfer to the Bernburg Euthanasia Facility, could show how the Nazis did persecute homosexual women, who were guilty, according to Nazi ideology, of lowering the Reich's birth rate and weakening their "master race". Was her shameful murder due to her being Jewish / being lesbian or both? All of the reasons are despicable.

Henny Schermann was murdered in Bernburg Euthanasia Centre, on the Saale, near Magdeburg, Germany on 30 May 1942 - she was 30 years old.

Schermann Stolpersteine Frankfurt: Three Stolperstein commemorate the Schermann's at the address of her family's shoe shop in Frankfurt: Meisengasse 6b.

• Stolperstein for Henny Schermann (02/19/1912- 05/30/1942)
• Stolperstein for Selma Schermann nee Stern (Henny's Mother, born 03/19/1894)
• Stolperstein for Regina Schermann (Henny's sister, born 07/28/1916) FYI Due to the Nuremberg Race Laws, Regina Schermann was not allowed to marry her non-Jewish partner Albert Siebel, even though they had a child together.

Henny's mother Selma and her sister Regina were deported in the first convoy to leave Frankfurt on 19 October 1941. They were murdered in Lodz. Her brother, Herbert, escaped to France with their Father Julius Chil Schermann but Herbert was arrested in France and deported to Auschwitz. The dates of their murders are unknown.

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Martha Geiringer was born in Vienna - the daughter of coffee house owner Wilhelm Geiringer (a distant cousin of iconic composer Gustav Mahler) and his wife Irma, née Körner. From 1931 to 1935 Martha studied biology and sociology at the University of Vienna (without graduation?) and in 1935, she started her doctoral research at the BVA ("Biologische Versuchsanstalt" of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna).

Between March 11 – 13, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed (the "Anschluss") the neighbouring country of Austria. As Martha was Jewish and "non-Aryan", circa two days after the "Anschluss" she had to "resign" / was expelled from the BVA on March 15, 1938. With her sister Gertrude, she she managed to escape from Vienna and emigrated to Belgium where, in October 1938, she tried to resume and complete her studies in biology at the University of Ghent. Even though her passport was valid until July 1939 the German consulate refused to extend her passport and she was no longer able to continue her studies / graduate in February 1939.

Her sister, scientist Gertrude, managed to emigrate to England and later to the USA in 1939, but Martha "stayed" in Ghent and was taken in by Yvonne Fontaine (a GP and, resistance fighter from Ghent) and her husband, architect Andreas Claessens. Martha and Yvonne... fell in love. Apparently Martha travelled to Philippines, where she had planned to enter into a marriage of convenience with an old Viennese acquaintance (?) but unsuccessfully, returned to Belgium, in January 1941, which by then was occupied by Germany.

Under the operational plan "Fall Gelb" (Case Yellow), on 10 May 1940, Germany invaded Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium - Luxembourg was occupied that same day, the Netherlands surrendered on 15th and Belgium on the 28th May 1940. As Martha had Jewish heritage she was forced to "resign" from the University of Ghent without graduation. Martha was unable to flee.

On June 8, 1941, she had to register at the Aliens Registration Office in Ghent. It is postulated that Martha was denounced to the German authorities by her lover's (Yvonne's) husband, Andreas Claessens who sympathised with the Nazis and also out of spite, as Yvonne had filed for divorce. Between 1941 and 1942 Martha was arrested three times - one time she ventured out without the mandatory Star of David (to identify her as a Jew). After her last imprisonment, Martha was transferred to the internment camp Caserne Dossin, in Mechelen (Malines) and then, deported to Auschwitz on January 15, 1943. This transport arrived on January 18, 1943. The date of Martha Geiringer's murder is unknown.

Martha - if you had only stayed in the Philippines :( As in the biographies herein... though Yvonne had an lesbian affair with Martha it was because Martha was a Jew, that SHE was sent away to her death.

Martha Geiringer was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp (Oświęcim, Poland), probably on January 18, 1943 - she was 30 years old.

Martha's mother Irma Geiringer née Koerner (1885-1957), sister scientist Gertrude Adler and her two brothers, journalist and later APA founder Alfred Geiringer (1911-1996) and the physician and founder of the New Zealand Medical Association Erich Geiringer (1917-1995) escaped fcrom Austria and survived WW2.

Music - Martha's nephew, composer and pianist Frederick Adler, dedicated the string quartet #1 In memoriam Martha Geiringer to her memory, which was premiered in Ghent in May 2005.

Book - Martha's Labyrint Een uitzonderlijke vrouwengeschiedenis - Jonas Roelens

Martha Geiringer's Stolperstein: Sint Joriskaai 5, Ghent, Belgium

Credit - Thanks to a lovely lady at the Gent, Belgium fondssuzandaniel.be for "introducing" me to stellar Martha Geiringer.

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In WWII, across Europe there was a shortage of male workers so many jobs were taken up by women. Elli had been working for the Berlin Transport Authority (BVG) as a tram conductor in the Treptow district. Bizarrely, The BVG had received complaints that some of their female employees were taking their colleagues home, getting them tipsy and having lesbian sexual relationships.

In September 1940, three days apart Elli and fellow tram conductor Margarete Rosenberg were detained by the Gestapo and taken to the police prison at Alexanderplatz. Over the following weeks they were interrogated on at least four occasions by the Gestapo unit responsible for homosexuality. As they were unable able to carry out their duties Elli and Margarete Rosenberg were accused of seriously compromising the BVG. On the 30 November Elli and Margarete were transferred to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

Elli Smula "suddenly died" in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (90 km north of Berlin) on 8 July 1943 - she was 29 years old.

Elli Smula's Stolperstein is located opposite Singerstraße 120, Berlin

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Felice had wanted to finish school to become a photographer and journalist but following Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass when Nazis across Germany torched synagogues, vandalised Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and murdered close to 100 Jews), Nazi legislation (15 November 1938) barred Jews from all public schools and universities. Her sister, Irene, had been able to emigrate to England (their parents had died young) and Felice had made arrangements to leave for the United States which fell through. Therefore, Felice had to stay in Berlin and was recruited as a forced labourer in a bottle-top factory. In August 1942, Felice witnessed her last remaining family member, her grandmother (Hulda Karewski), being deported. Shortly after, Felice received orders for her own deportation, so the 20-year-old went into hiding.

Felice was noted as a risk-taker and landed a job as an editorial assistant at a Nazi paper in Berlin - under false identity papers with the alias Felice Schröder. She was also part of an underground circle of women who helped other Jews flee the country or go in to hiding. Through secret networks, they obtained fake IDs, ration tickets, cash, and other necessities for those who were less able to be in the open.

Inge Wolf was part of Felice's inner circle and introduced Felice to Lilly Wust, a German house wife whose husband was in the Wehrmacht (German Army) who she started flirting with. At the start of 1943, the hate and prosecution to Jews was intensifying. On 27 February 1943, a new round of deportations started - "Operation Factory," was put in to action to round up the remaining Jews, from their places of work (which in most cases was forced labour in factories). For Hitler's birthday, 20 April 143, Goebbels had promised to have no Jewish people left in Berlin. Felice’s circle was under heavy scrutiny and they decided that the danger finally was too much; they tried to escape, however, Felice chose to stay. By this time, Felice and Lilly had fallen in love and Felice lived in Lily's family home from April 1943.

Some one must have denounced Felice:

• 21 August 1944 - the Gestapo came for Felice, and sent her to the “Jews’ assembly camp” in Wedding, Mitte, Berlin.
• 8 September 1944 - Felice was deported (Transport nr. I/116) from Berlin to Theresienstadt (now Czech Republic). Lilly visited Felice in detainment and went to Theresienstadt, where she tried but failed to get consent to see her. Lilly was never to see Felice again.
• 9 October 1944 - Felice was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz Birkenau to be murdered. Fearing Nazis defeat, between November 1944 and January 1945, the gas chambers and crematoria were being dismantled and blown up to conceal the atrocities that had been carried out there.
• January 17, 1945 - as Soviet forces approached, SS units started evacuating prisoners from the Auschwitz camp complex. The inmates, including Felice, were taken on a death march to Groß-Rosen concentration camp and maybe later to a death march to Bergen-Belsen.

The date and place of Felice Schragenheim's death are unknown. Officially, by a Berlin court in 1948, the date of her death was specified as 31 December 1944 and "embolism" (a blocked artery caused by a foreign body, such as a blood clot or an air bubble) as the cause of her death - she was 22 years old. However, The Bundes Archiv states that Felice died in March 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Felice Schragenheim Stolperstein: is located on Friedrichshaller Str. 23, Berlin

Lilly Wust was declared Righteous Among the Nations on 31 August 1995 by Yad Vashem. As well as helping Felice, at the start of 1945, Lilly hid three Jewish lesbians: Dr. Rosa Ohlendorf, Katja Lazerstein and Lucie Friedländer who survived the war but, sadly Lucie committed suicide.

Inge Wolf - fate?

Book: "Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943" (1994) by Erica Fischer

Movie: "Aimée & Jaguar" (1999) directed by Max Färberböck

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Martha was born into a prominent Jewish family - her father Albert, was a lawyer who was involved in the drafting of the Japanese constitution and his brother, Rudolf Mosse was a Berlin publication magnate whose flagship newspaper was, Berliner Tageblatt.

As a "guest" student (as she had not passed her Abitur?), Martha attended law lectures at the University of Heidelberg and the Humboldt University of Berlin and managed to obtain a doctorate in law in Heidelberg in August 1920.

After employment as a legal assistant at the Prussian Ministry of Welfare she managed to get a rare appointment, to the Berlin Police Headquarters, in August 1922. In the Police's theatre department she was responsible for the employment of children for theatrical performances, film shoots and other public performances. She was promoted to police adviser in 1926 making her the first female high-ranking police officer (police adviser) in Prussia. With these increased responsibilities she monitored compliance with the Anti-Shame and Filth Act (Gesetzes zur Schund- und Schmutzbekämpfung) and combated shocking displays (Bekämpfung anstößiger Auslagen). In this capacity she was also directly involved in the censorship of homosexual magazines and books including magazines "Die Freundin" (The Girlfriend) and "Das 3. Geschlecht" (The Third Sex). This was a rather ironic position as Martha had been living since the mid-1920s with her non-Jewish partner, librarian, Erna Sprenger in Berlin-Halensee.

Shortly after the Nazis came to power, as she was Jewish, Martha was suspended from her police duties without salary under the Professional Civil Service Act (1933) and fired on January 1, 1934. She then became involved in the Jewish Community of Berlin (JGB) where she gave legal advise to Jewish traders regarding the Nazis' professional restrictions on Jews. From 1939, she ran the Housing Advice Service, for Jewish citizens whose homes had been confiscated by the Nazis and had to be relocated to "Jewish houses". From 1939, apparently she was directly subordinate to Gestapo instructions.

After the start of the deportation of Jews from Germany, Martha made more and more demands for restitution for her clients and tried to avoid greater misfortunes. At the beginning of October 1941, the Berlin Gestapo informed Martha, and JGB leaders that the "relocation" (deportation) of Berlin Jews was about to begin and that the JGB should participate in it - if they did not, the SA and SS would undertake this. Thus the JGB did at first participate in the deportations and had their members fill out questionnaires, from which the Gestapo constituted deportation convoys.

From October 1942 to January 1943, Alois Brunner of the Eichmannreferat carried out the deportation of Jews from Berlin in the most brutal way possible with an Einsatzkommando. From January 1943, the Gestapo in Berlin was again responsible for deportations with the last major roundup of Jews for deportation from Berlin (Große Fabrik-Aktion (Large Factory Action)), began on February 27, 1943, and ended about a week later. More than 60,000 Jews were deported from Berlin:

• more than 10,000 Jews were deported to eastern European ghettos
• about 15,000 Jews were deported to Theresienstadt ghetto, Czechoslovakia
• and more than 35,000 Jews were deported to the killing centers in occupied Poland

On June 17, 1943, Martha (age 59) was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, Czechoslovakia. Due to her father's connections and the intervention of the widow of a former ambassador to Japan and the Japanese Embassy, Martha was able to avoid deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. She remained in the Theresienstadt ghetto, and worked as (hmmm) an investigating judge in the "detective department", then, from the beginning of 1945, in the court for "Jewish self-government". The misdemeanours and offenses judged were for example thefts, burglaries and fights. From May 1945 until her release on July 1 , 1945, she was under the direction of the main administrative department of the camp.

After the Liberation of Theresienstadt ghetto she returned to berlin and her partner Erna Sprenger. She was fired from her job due to accusations concerning her former activity in the housing assistance service of the JGB. Though she had been exonerated by the Allied authorities and classified as a victim of fascism, she was still accused of collaborating with the Nazis, denounced as a "Gestapo employee", and crimes against humanity. At an honour trial by the Jewish community, Martha was not found guilty of collaboration, but neither was she clearly exonerated.

She planned to emigrate to the United States with Erna but Erna was unable to obtain a visa. Thus they stayed in Berlin where Martha advised the authorities of the American Occupation Zone in Germany on all matters relating to the Nuremberg Trials and worked as a translator. In February 1948, she testified as a prosecution witness against Gottlob Berger in the Wilhelmstrasse trial.

From 1948 until her retirement in 1953, Martha worked at the Kriminalpolizei in Berlin. In retirement she became involved with the Frauenbund (women's union) in Berlin and devoted herself to help the elderly of the feminist movement.

It has been argued that through the participation of the Jewish community in the deportations, the suffering of many individuals was alleviated as it would have been worse had the Gestapo carried out the actions alone. To be honest, I do question Martha's morals, her participation in: censoring homosexual magazines and books, (as part of the JGB) in the deportations of Berlin Jews and her role as an investigating judge in the "detective department" of Theresienstadt ghetto.

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During the Weimar era, Else owned several successful businesses that became rendezvous for lesbian women such as bar Verona-Diele. When she met Amalie "Mali" Rothaug, who became her partner, they opened a bar in Berlin-Schoeneberg known as Mali und Igel. Inside the bar, they ran a club, Monbijou des Westens, which entertained Berlin's lesbian, intellectual elite - actress Marlene Dietrich frequented the club. And each year they hosted balls with up to 600 women in attendance.

When the Nazis came to power, there was a campaign against homosexual meeting places. In March 1933, gay and lesbian venues were forced including "Mali und Igel". Because Elsa was half-Jewish (Nazi-term "Mischling"), her property was confiscated and times would have been very tough for her. Someone denounced Elsa because of her "non-Aryan" origins, being lesbian and for anti-state statements. On 5 October 1935, Elsa was arrested and imprisoned for 15 months in Berlin for "insulting the Reich government". Whilst Elsa was imprisoned, Mali ended their relationship.

Further Nazi persecution - only ten days after her release (4 January 1937), on 14 January, Elsa was taken into protective custody and imprisoned in the Moringen concentration camp. Moringen concentration camp was located 100km to the south of Hannover and was one of the first Nazi-concentration camps established ( April 1933).

Elsa was told that if she left for Palestine or overseas, she would be released. Though she agreed, the authorities delayed the provision of a passport, and as a consequence the passage on the ship to East Africa that had been booked for Elsa by her former lover, Berta Stenzel (1892–1979) expired. Elsa was not released until February 1938, with the condition that she leave Germany in the same year. Elsa had spent circa 28 months in imprisonment. On 12 November 1938, Elsa managed to book a passage to Tanzania.

From 1943 Elsa lived in Nairobi, Kenya, where she ran a milk bar. She returned to Germany in 1961.

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Banned From Exhibiting & Painting: In 1935, in Berlin, Gertrude was banned from working & painting because of her "non-Aryan descent". In 1942, she fled impending deportation by faking a suicide, to go underground (such Jews in hiding were called "U-Boote") and survived with the help of friends, including her partner Hedwig ("Johnny") Koslowski.

According to a census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Berlin, was about 160,000. Only 1,700 Jews survived World War II hiding in Berlin.

One of Gertrude Sandmann's most famous paintings is Gruppe IX (1922).

Key Exhibitions: Gertrude Sandmann primarily exhibited in Berlin.

Sapphic Relationships: artisan Hedwig Koslowski from 1927 - 1956 and, later her life partner, former circus artist Tamara Streck, until Tamara's death in 1979.

Collections: Some of Gertrude Sandmann's art is held at the Potsdam Museum, Berlin.

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... As a well-respected opera singer, Nelly toured European cities such as Paris, Milan and Zurich performing French operas and Italian classics. She had two daughters with the music critic Edouard Mousset but divorced him in the 1930s. During World War II, she used her mobility as a singer to provide courier services for resistance networks. In 1943, the Gestapo arrested her in Paris on suspicion of espionage.

Nelly was imprisoned in French and German prisons and transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp (50 miles north of Berlin) on December 1, 1944. There, on Christmas Eve 1944, Nelly was ordered to sing Christmas carols in one of the Ravensbrück barracks with French prisoners. After a couple of songs a voice called out from the dark "Sing something from Madame Butterfly!". Nelly sang Un bel di vedremo, about the waiting for a loved one. The request was made by Nadine Hwang, who was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador in Spain and a Belgian mother and who had worked in Paris for and was a lover of Natalie Clifford Barney. Nadine had been imprisoned in Ravensbrück for six months. Nelly and Nadine became lovers until Nelly was taken to Mauthausen Concentration Camp (20 kilometres, east of Linz, Upper Austria) in March 1945. Two months later (5 May, 1945) Nelly was liberated by the US Army and later, was reunited with her children and family in Brussels. Nadine, who had been brought to safety in Malmö went first to Paris and in 1946 to Mousset-Vos in Brussels.

Nelly resumed her singing career and worked for the Belgian National Institute for Radio Broadcasting, among others. In 1950 she emigrated to Caracas in Venezuela with her daughter Claude and Nadine. In 1969 the couple returned to Brussels and lived until Nadine died in 1972.

While in concentration camps Nelly wrote a diary and after liberation, Nadine took photographs and made home movies of their lives in Venezuela. It seems they wished their story be published in a book but looks likely that no one wished to publish it.

Documentary: Nelly & Nadine (2022)

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When she was 21, Margarete moved from her home city of Stettin to Berlin and there she married Arthur Rosenberg, a baker, in 1935. They opened a bakery in Berlin-Lichtenberg but had to close it the same year due to financial problems.

In August 1940, like Elli Smula, Margarete was employed by the Berlin Transport Authority as a tram conductor in Berlin-Treptow. With the shortage of male workers due to the war, women were used to fill in their jobs.

On 15 September 1940, Margarete was arrested and interrogated by the German Gestapo, on the grounds that she had taken female colleagues into her apartment, got them tipsey and had sexual relationships with them, with the result that they were unable to turn up to work the next day. She and her colleague Elli Smula were both accused of the same crime, namely that they had seriously compromised operations of the Treptow tram services.

On 30 November 1940, accused of conduct detrimental to the State, both Margarete and Elli were transferred to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (90 km north of Berlin).

Forgive me, but I'm a bit confused here. During her interrogations by The Gestapo, Margarete accused her husband of pimping and admitted to having sexual relationships, but was not accused of lesbianism. Under atrocious interrogations, who knows what one will say to stop the horrendous torture. In March 1942, Margarete was transferred from Ravensbrück to Berlin as a witness in her husband's trial. When she claimed under oath that her husband was responsible for her pregnancy, she was accused of perjury and convicted on 25 November 1941. After imprisonment in the Cottbus women's prison, she was returned to Ravensbrück on 12 September 1942 where she was listed and treated as a lesbian.

At Ravensbrück, she had to perform forced labour for the armaments company Siemens & Halske. In January 1945, she was transferred to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp (about five miles northwest of the city of Weimar, in east-central Germany) were she worked as forced labour producing armaments at the Poltke-Werke in Magdeburg. She was finally freed by the Americans on 13 April 1945 after serving four and a half years in Ravensbrück & Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Margarete married twice more, and died in Hamburg on 20 March 1985.

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From 1929 to 1931, Margot Holzmann attended the Wegner Ballet School. She then performed on several dancing tours in Germany and other European countries. It was in Hamburg that she met Marta Halusa, a German dancer and... they fell in love. Not only did they live together in Berlin they sometimes performed together as a duo "Pepita & Peter".

In 1938, Margot's Jewish father was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Oranienburg, north of Berlin where he would die in 1942, due to the harsh forced labour conditions. Having considered it previously, Margot's plans to leave Germany and go to neutral Switzerland, intensified. Switzerland, however, rejected her on the basis of "Überfremdung" ('over-foreignization").

Margot was now trapped in Berlin and the two women began to be subjected to increasing persecution by the Nazis. Being Jewish, Margot was especially scrutinised by the police. Most likely to obtain a foreign citizenship and foreign protection, in 1941, Margot married a Chi-Lan Liu (a Chinese waiter), in Berlin which granted her Chinese citizenship. Within a year her husband sussed that Margot was lesbian and in love with Marta. Her husband reported her and Marta to the Berlin police, in September 1942 and filed for divorce. Playing dirty, her husband's lawyer claimed that Jewess Margot was a prostitute who practiced "lesbian love" with the "Aryan" Marta Halusa, who was also a prostitute and this deserved punishment and was grounds for divorce.

For sure they would have been integrated by the Gestapo and probably under duress, both defendants admitted prostitution, but denied the charge of homosexuality (to keep their lives private). They were both condemned for prostitution. The criminal investigation unit of the police in Berlin also filed a "memorandum (...) for suspicion of lesbian love" for Margot Liu in October 1942.

For several years, Margot and Marta were reported to the police, arrested and released, only to be reported again. Sometimes they were released after bribing an officer; sometimes an officer extorted money from them. Eventually they went underground, moving from one place to place.

In 1943, Margot found work in a dental laboratory. The owners, Schorn & Schöning, clandestinely printed leaflets containing information heard on English and Russian radio stations. Marta agreed to secretly distribute the leaflets in the northern part of Berlin. In September 1944, Marta's mother was transferred from a mental institution in Schleswig to a facility east of Berlin, in Meseritz-Obrawalde (now in Poland), where she was killed.

Just before the war's end, they were betrayed, lured into a trap and arrested again, in April 1945. This time, they were accused of propaganda against the state and high treason - probably with regard to Schorn & Schöning's leaflets. While they were being transferred to another prison, the two women were able to escape, and managed to stay in hiding until the Soviet Army arrived.

Margot Liu's divorce was only pronounced after the war. In 1949, they emigrated to England, where Ilse, Margot's sister, lived in London. For the next two decades, Marta and her two sisters fought for some kind of restitution, if such a thing is possible, for the injustices they suffered during the Nazi regime. Marta's claim for restitution was granted in 1961, but only in a limited form. When the two women finally did receive larger sums of money, they bought a small house with a garden, where they spent many happy days together.

Margot Liu (1910 - 1999) is buried with Marta Halusa (1912 - 1993) in Edgwarebury Jewish Cemetery, North London.

In 2014. Margot Liu and Marta Halusa were commemorated in a ceremony held at the "Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted by Nazism", in Berlin.

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Margot Heumann was born in 1928 to Jewish parents living in a village (Hellenthal) close to the German - Belgian border. She was born five years before the Nazi persecution commenced - A timeline of the Holocaust.

Circa 1937, her family moved to Bielefeld, where, aged 9, Margot was enrolled in public school and her father worked for the Aid Association of German Jews (by this time there was an Anti-Jewish Boycott targeting Jewish-owned businesses and the offices of Jewish professionals). On April 25, 1933 The German government issued a Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities, which dramatically limited the number of Jewish students attending public schools. As consequence Margot and her little sister, Lore (born 1931), were expelled from school. After this, their parents sent them to a Jewish school where they had teachers, who, like them, had been kicked out of the schools by the Nazis. As a child Margot knew she fancied girls!

By 1942, most Jews in Bielefeld had been deported to extermination camps. Early in 1942, Margot was 14 when her family was sent to Theresienstadt Ghetto (Czechoslovakia). Margot and her little sister Lore were sent to separate youth homes but saw their parents every day after work. In Theresienstadt, Margot met an Austrian girl named Ditha Neumann who was the same age as her and they become inseparable. In May 1943, Margot (now aged 16) and her family were transported to Auschwitz (Poland). Ditha and her aunt arrived a few days later. On one horrendous day, prisoners were being selected for forced labour. Margot, Ditha and Ditha's aunt were ordered onto a convoy to be transported to a labour camp. Margot's mother had the option to go with Margot or stay with the her little sister Lore, who was too young for forced labour. Her mother, Johanna, stayed with Lore.

The group of about 200 women (including Margot, Ditha and Ditha's aunt) who passed the screening were transported by train from Auschwitz to Neuengamme concentration camp. Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, in the Hamburg suburb Neuengamme and more than 85 satellite camps. The prisoners were forced to build shelters for German civilians and clean up rubble, from Allied bomb attacks. Margot and Ditha were moved through three satellite camps of Neuengamme: from July to September 1944 to Dessauer Ufer, from September 1944 to February 1945 to Neugraben and from February to April 1945 to Tiefstack.

Like in Theresienstadt Ghetto, Margot and Ditha slept together in a bed at the end of their group's barracks, which disturbed some prisoners, but Ditha's aunt defended the couple on the grounds that they were still children. With the looming defeat of the Third Reich, at the beginning of April 1945, Neuengamme was shut down and the Jewish women had to walk (Death March) 100 kilometres from Neuengamme to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Lower Saxony).

Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15, 1945, by British forces (my father told me that he was there at / days after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and never could talk about it. He served with The 15th Scottish Reconnaissance Regt., C Squadron). Approximately 13,000 unburied corpses lay around the camp and 60,000 prisoners were discovered, most of them half-starved and seriously ill. As a result of the extremely poor sanitation and widespread typhus, in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, over 500 people died each day. A month after the relief operation had started approximately 100 prisoners still died every day. With a height of 1.67 metres (5.5 ft) Margot weighed only 35 kilograms (77 lb) and like many prisoners had caught typhus. For two months she was hospitalised for two months and brought to Sweden to recover while Ditha stayed behind.

Urged by her maternal uncle, in 1947, Margot moved to New York City and stayed in the United States and stayed because she was able to live as a lesbian... I do hope Margot managed to find Ditha who later emigrated to England, and was in contact with her.

Fate of Margot's Family: At the age of seventeen Margot became a Holocaust orphan - Margot's father (Carl Heumann) died at Auschwitz (aged circa 46) as did her mother (Johanna Falkenstein Heumann - aged circa 42), but her sister's (Lore Heumann) Stolpersteine indicates she died at Stutthof concentration camp (Poland) in 1944 aged circa 13 - heart-breaking to interpret that she may have been separated from her mother and died alone?

Heumann Stolpersteine: there are four Stolpersteine at Karl-Eilers-Straße 11, Bielefeld commemorating Carl Heumann, Johanna Falkenstein Heumann, Lore Heumann and Margot Heumann.

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Irena Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941, to Michał Klepfisz, a chemical engineer and member of the Jewish Labour Bund (the secular Jewish socialist movement), and Rose Klepfisz (née Shoshana Perczykow). During WW II, The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Nazi ghettos. It had been established in October 1940 by Nazi authorities in order to move all Jewish residents of Warsaw into a designated area, which a month later was sealed it off from the rest of the city by a 10 feet high wall that was topped with barbed wire and guarded. It has been estimated that the Warsaw Ghetto contained over 400,000 Jews in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.

"The hunger in the ghetto was so great, was so bad, that people were laying on the streets and dying, little children went around begging ... "— Abraham Lewent

Early 1943, Irena's father managed to smuggle Irena and her mother out of the ghetto. Using false papers and passing as non-Jews on the Aryan side of Warsaw, Irena was placed in a Catholic orphanage while her mother worked as a maid for a Polish family.

When Irena had just turned two years old, her father was killed on the second day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Yiddish: varshever geto oyfshtand). On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to liquidate the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to the forced labour camps in Lublin district. The ghetto resistance unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ŻOB) fought back. Irena's father, Michal Klepfisz, was in charge of the production of explosives and had been smuggling weapons in to the ghetto from the Home Army (the main Polish resistance group). Michal died in the area of ​​the so-called brushmakers' shop when he the himself on top of an enemy machine gun to save the lives of his comrades. For four weeks individuals and small groups valiantly resisted deportation. Nonetheless, on May 16, 1943, the Germans had crushed the uprising and deported the surviving ghetto residents to concentration camps and killing centres. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first significant urban revolt against German occupation in Europe.

After the uprising, Irena's mother retrieved her from the orphanage and fled with her into the Polish countryside, where they survived until the war ended by hiding and concealing their Jewish identities and aided by Polish peasants.

Irena was four years old when the war ended. They moved briefly to Łódź, then to Sweden and finally emigrated to the United States in 1949. Irena became a trailblazing lesbian poet but her poetry also dealt with the trauma of the Holocaust. Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021, is a complete collection of Irena's work. And since the 1970s, Irena has played a key role in the emergent Jewish lesbian movement. The play Between Worlds written by Naomi Newman is based on the life and poetry of Irena Klepfisz.

Irena's father, Michał Klepfisz, was posthumously decorated with the Silver Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari.

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Banned from exhibiting Art Work: Lotte Laserstein was barred, in Germany, by the Nazis regime from exhibiting in public as she was declared as being "three-quarter Jew" (having three Jewish grandparents). After fleeing to Sweden in 1937, she married Swedish business Sven Marcus (m. 1938–1940) to escape Nazis persecution of Jews. She tried so hard to bring her mother, Meta Laserstein, and her sister, Käte (an out lesbian) but was unable to. During a search of their home in Berlin, her mother refused to reveal Käte's whereabouts and was arrested on 29 July 1942. In December 1942 she was taken to Ravensbrück women's prison, where she died on 16 January 1943. Her sister Käte Laserstein survived by hiding in Berlin.

Sexuality: ? There is speculation regarding Lotte's sexuality, for example, The Schwules Museum, in Berlin acquired a work by Lotte as a conscious addition to their "Lesbian Archive".

Collections: Some of Lotte Laserstein's art is held at the Berlinische Galerie, National Portrait Gallery (London) ...

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Vera Lachmann was born in 1904 in Berlin, into a prosperous family of German-Jewish heritage whose father was a respected architect Louis Lachmann (who designed the Comic Opera building, the Tietz department store and built a synagogue in Lützowstraße Berlin). In 1931, Vera earned a PhD from the University of Berlin and planned to be a university lecturer but due to the lack of Women's equality in university lectureship positions, she had to train instead to teach at a Gymnasium (secondary school). Though she passed her state exam for graduate teaching, in February 1933, with the takeover by the Nazis Jews were not allowed to teach in Aryan Schools. Moreover, Vera was also unable to publish her literary texts and a drama written by her which was already planned to be performed, would no longer be performed.

In 1933, together with her former teacher Dr Helene Herrmann (who introduced Vera to the Greek world of thought and the German classics), Vera founded the Jagowstrasse School in Berlin-Grunewald which was a progressive private school for children of Jewish and Jewish-Christian parents who had been expelled from public schools and other non-Aryan children. They taught 65 Jewish students - boys and girls. Shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938, the school was closed down by the Nazis.

Afterwards, Vera worked in the children's emigration department of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden (the representative body of German Jews) which helped take Jewish orphans to safe countries. It became a race against time to hunt for entry and exit visas, ship passages and other required papers. The more dramatic the situation became for the refugees, the more restrictive most countries handled their policy of giving asylum.

With the growing persecution of Jews in Berlin, Vera's sister Nina and her family fled Germany to London, in the summer of 1939. Vera was then left alone in Berlin - her father had died in 1910 (aged 49) after committing suicide, her brother (Erich Lachmann) had died in WWI as a volunteer on the western front (aged 23) and her mother (Caroline Lachmann nee Rosenbacher) had died in 1937 (aged 73). Yet Vera resisted leaving Germany. Her friends Erika Weigand and German classical philologist Renata von Scheliha managed to convince her to leave. They helped Vera leave Germany for the United States on 17 November 1939, which many others do not manage after the beginning of World War II.

In America, Vera taught at various colleges and Yale University and founded Camp Catawba, a summer camp for boys in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, which was open from 1941 - 1970. It was there at the summer camp, in 1946, that Vera met Tui St. George Tucker, an American composer who began working as a music instructor there. They fell in love and became life partners. Aged 68, Vera received a professorship at the university of New York.

NB Dr Helene Herrmann née Schlesinger, who co-founded the Jewish School with Vera was unable to emigrate / escape to another country. On September 10, 1942, Helene and her husband Prof. Dr. Max Herrmann (a literary historian and theatre scholar) were deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt ghetto on '61. Transport of the Elderly'. Only about two months later Max Herrmann (aged 77) died in Theresienstadt in November 1942. Helene Herrmann and her sister Katharina Finder née Schlesinger, were deported from Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz concentration camp on May 16, 1944. It has been assumed that Helene Herrmann, like the other inmates of that transport who were unable to work (she was aged 67), was murdered on July 10 or 11, 1944 in the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Herrmann's Stolpersteine: There are two stolpersteine in front of her former home on Augsburger Strasse, in Berlin-Charlottenburg for Dr Helene Herrmann née Schlesinger and Prof. Dr. Max Herrmann

Commemorations for Prof. Dr. Max Herrmann:

• Every year on May 10, the day of the National Socialist book burning, the Berlin State Library awards the Max Herrmann Prize of the Friends of the State Library. Beginning on May 10, 1933, in 34 university towns and cities across Germany, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German”. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires including books by Karl Marx, Bertolt Brecht American authors; Jack London, Ernest Hemingway... and All Quiet on the Western Front.
• A street is named after Prof. Dr. Max Herrmann, in the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf.

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Born in Munich, Erika Mann was the daughter of the novelist and later Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Mann and Katia (née Pringsheim). Although her mother came from a wealthy, Jewish family (who owned coal mines and railroads), all of her children were baptised as Protestants.

In 1924, Erika began her theatrical studies in Berlin, and thereafter appeared in several stage productions and in the legendary lesbian movie Mädchen in Uniform (1931). She was very close to her brother Klaus and often appeared in his stage productions. Enjoying the bohemian lifestyle of Weimar Berlin Erika had flings with actresses Pamela Wedekind, Therese Giehse ... but life was about to change drastically.

While reciting a poem by Victor Hugo to a women's pacifist group, in January 1932, a group of Sturmabteilung (SA) men who were in the audience heckled to Erika: "You are a criminal... Jewish traitress! International agitator!" She later wrote: "... The Stormtroopers attacked the audience with their chairs, shouting themselves into paroxysms of anger and fury." When the Nazi newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, reported that Erika was "a flatfooted peace hyena" with "no human physiognomy" she sued for damages. After examining several photographs of Erika the judge declared that "her face was in fact legally human."

Later in 1932, Erika, with a group of left-wing activists, including Lotte Goslar, Therese Giehse, Magnus Henning, Walter Mehring and Wolfgang Koeppen planned a cabaret in Munich, called Die Pfeffermühle (The Peppermill) and put on a production. Erika wrote most of the material, much of which was anti-Fascist. It opened, next door to the local Nazi headquarters, on 1st January, 1933 and was such a success, after two months they prepared to move to a larger theatre. While the new theatre was being decorated Erika and Klaus were on a skiing trip and when they returned to Munich they were warned by their family chauffeur, that they were in danger. Later, Klaus wrote that the chauffeur "had been a Nazi spy throughout the four or five years he lived with us... But this time he had failed in his duty, out of sympathy, I suppose. For he knew what would happen to us if he informed his Nazi employers of our arrival in town."

Soon after Hitler came to power in 1933, a large number of writers were declared to be "degenerate authors" including Heinrich Mann (her Unkle), Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Hermann Hesse. Her father (Thomas Mann) and the family were on holiday in France and Erika was able to warn them not to return to Munich, as he faced the possibility of being arrested if he returned to Germany. In September, 1933, her father and the rest of the family settled in Küsnacht, near Zurich while she and Klaus decided to remain in Germany to continue the fight against fascism.

Erika became a staunch critic of National Socialism and professionally shifted from the stage to journalism. As she was in constant danger, her friends suggested that one way she could protect herself was to marry a foreigner which avoided her becoming stateless when the Germans would cancel her citizenship as she was a Mischling. In 1935, the poet W.H. Auden, who was gay, offered to marry her in a lavender marriage. Erika travelled to England for the marriage ceremony which took place in Colwall, Herefordshire. When the German government discovered what she had done, she was stripped of her German citizenship. According to Time Magazine, "at the risk of her life, she returned secretly to Germany to get some of her father's manuscripts."

In 1937, Erika moved to New York, where Die Pfeffermühle opened its doors again. There Erika Mann lived with Therese Giehse, her brother Klaus and Annemarie Schwarzenbach(whom she had had a fling with), amid a large group of artists in exile that included Kurt Weill, Ernst Toller and Sonia Sekula. Erika continued to attack Nazism - most notably with her 1938 book School for Barbarians, a critique of the Nazi education system.

During World War II, Erika worked for the BBC. After D-Day, she became a war correspondent attached to the Allied forces and attended the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg trials were a series of trials held in Nürnberg, Germany, from October 18, 1945 to October 1, 1946, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.

Her brother, Klaus, who she was so close, to died in Cannes, on 21 May 1949, from an overdose of sleeping pills - historians debate whether it was suicide or accidental. Until 1952, Erika had been living with her family in the US but due to the anti-communist red scare and numerous accusations from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Mann family left the US to live in Switzerland. Erika and W.H. Auden never lived together, but remained on good terms throughout their lives and were still married until Erika's death in 1969. Learn more

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Gisèle was born into a wealthy Jewish family in the Schöneberg, Berlin. During her university years in Frankfurt, Gisèle photographed life in the city and captured a May Day rally (1932), that erupted into a demonstration against the National Socialists. Gisèle was an ardent opponent of National Socialism, and a member of an anti-Fascist group.

Warned by friends, on May 30, 1933 she fled Germany to Paris. There, she continued her student research and working on her dissertation at the Sorbonne. Three years later, in 1936, Adrienne Monnier published Gisèle's ground-breaking doctoral dissertation on photography in nineteenth-century France - "the first thesis of its kind to address the value and importance of photography as a social, democratizing force": jwa.org

In the same year (1936), even though Gisèle was lesbian in an arranged marriage, she married Pierre Blum to obtain a visa to remain in France legally. Nonetheless, she was faced with danger when the blitzKrieg German troops approached France - she was Jewish born. Three days after The French government left Paris (13 June 1940), Gisèle fled alone by bicycle and found asylum in a small village in the Dordogne, southwest France. She lived underground for a year and miraculously managed to meet her husband, who had escaped from his prisoner of war camp, in the still unoccupied part of France. Though he advised Gisèle to leave the country as soon as possible, Pierre valiantly returned to Paris to fight the Germans in the French Resistance.

With gratitude to Victoria Ocampo, the director of the periodical Sur in Buenos Aires, who managed to arrange a visa and supply her with a boat ticket, Gisèle was able to find refuge in Argentina.

Gisèle Freund is best known for her portraits of renowned writers and artists such as André Malraux, Colette, Frida Kahlo, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Jean Paul Sartre, Man Ray, Simone De Beauvoir, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Many of the literati she photographed were meet through her friend, the French lesbian bookseller and publisher Adrienne Monnier, whose shop, La Maison des Amis des Livres, was a magnet for literati.

Gisèle achieved many first accolades. She was the first woman to work for Magnum, the cooperative photography agency founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, and others. Also she was the first woman to receive the Grand Prix National des Arts from France in 1980 and the first photographer to have a retrospective exhibition at the Paris Musée d’Art Moderne, in 1991. In addition Freund received the Cultural Prize of the 'Deutsche Gesellscaft für Photographie', in 1978.

Pierre Blum - fortunately, he must have survived the war as they officially divorced after the war, in 1948.

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... Friederike "Fritzi" Löwy set the European record in 200 m freestyle and received a silver trophy in 1927 and in the same year won a bronze medal for Austria in the 400 m freestyle at the 1927 European Aquatics Championships, Bologna, Italy. When she was 12 years old Fritzi started swimming in a Jewish sports club, The Hakoah, in Vienna. At 13, she was youth champion. At 14½, she was the Austrian champion and stayed that way for twelve years. From 1925, she won three times the annual five-mile open-water Austrian competition "Quer durch Wien" (Across Vienna) on the river Danube. Even before the rise of Hitler, Fritzi experienced awful anti-Semitism, for example newspapers, like the "Reichspost" and the Christian Social newspapers, wrote: "The Polish Jewess... won the 'Quer durch Wien' swim, a shame for Austria..". Another example of anti-Semitism she experienced was during a swimming race at Graz, Austria which she won. All the judges declared that it was the other swimmer who had won, apart from one judge Karli Schäfer, a famous Austrian figure skater, who said: "I was the first to see Fritzi, and it stays that way." It was decided to hold the race again at the end of the evening. Friederike "Fritzi" Löwy won again and superiorly.

During the 1920s–30s Fritzi won nearly every national title in freestyle. She competed also competed at the 1928 Summer Olympics (Amsterdam) and between 1932 - 1935 she won 5 gold medals at the Maccabiah Games, Israel. Her career was cut short after the Anschluss between Germany and Austria in 1938 as she had to flee from Jewish prosecutions, escaping first to Italy in 1939. Her sister, Anna, was arrested by the Gestapo in Milan in March 1944 and deported to Auschwitz where she died. Fritzi then fled to Switzerland on foot and lived in various refugee camps, such as in Brissago on Lake Maggiore. Many members of her family were murdered by the Nazis, including three of her sisters, three nieces and two brothers in law.

In 1947 Fritzi emigrated to Australia but in 1949, returned to Vienna where she worked as a secretary. Fate kept on rolling bad dice rolls - in the 1960s Fritzi had to fight breast cancer. Hedy Bienenfeld her swimming rival (who too was Jewish but who had also returned to Vienna after the death of her husband) had become close friends with Fritzi, and she kindly helped Fritzi financially.

Though Austria has "forgotten" about the former swimming champion through 2/3 photo albums being discovered at flea market in Vienna and passed on to the collection "Women's Heritage" at Vienna University's historical institute, Fritzi's story is slowly becoming commemorated.

It is thought that Fritzi was bisexual. There are no reports of her having married.

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... After seven years working in the German provinces, in 1926, she landed a position with the Munich Kammerspiele and later became a major star on stage and in films. Not wishing it, Therese was especially popular with Hitler and his Nazis, who often attended the theatre "Finally a real German woman in this Jew-infested house!"

In 1933, Therese Giehse, Erika and Klaus Mann (sister & brother) and the musician Magnus Henning founded the literary cabaret Die Pfeffermühle (The Pepper Grinder) in Munich. As the cabaret, was staunchly anti-Fascist, it only lasted two months before being shut down by the Nazi Party, but during its short lifespan, Die Pfeffermühle became a hub for underground resistance fighters and LGBT community in Munich. Therese with the Manns, fled to the Mann's family in Switzerland on 13 March 1933. It was round about this time Giehse had an affair with Erika Mann (an out lesbian) but in later life Therese refused to discuss this with her biographer Monika Sperr. Ironically, Erika Mann played an uncredited role (Frl. von Atems) in the original 1931 version of Mädchen in Uniform (one of the earliest lesbian films) and twenty seven years later, Therese Giehse played the Headmistress in the 1958 remake of it. Die Pfeffermühle was resurrected at the Hirschen Hotel in Zürich and played to full houses for many weeks. From 1934 to 1936 Die Pfeffermühle toured Europe. Though it was anti-fascist the actors never referred by name to individual entities or cities. Rather, they presented parables, fables and portraits designed to draw attention to the political situation in National-Socialist Germany.

After Hitler stripped Jews of their German citizenship and as a way of obtaining a British passport, Therese married gay English author John Hampson-Simpson in 1936. From 1938 to 1945 she worked at the Zürich Schauspielhaus. In exile, Therese played the first Mother Courage in the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht's pacifist play Mutter Courage Und Ihre Kinder, in 1941 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, Switzerland. During the 1950's and 60's Therese performed the great female roles of Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. After her death streets have been named in honour of her in Germany and Switzerland: Therese-Giehse-Allee in Munich, Therese-Giehse-Bogen in Hamburg, Therese-Giehse-Strasse in Berlin and Therese-Giehse-Strasse in Zurich.

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For 60 years, Mummy was haunted by not knowing what happened to "Unkle" Hans when, while emptying the family home after her death, I found a letter to her which stated he had died in Auschwitz concentration camp. On behalf of her and to commemorate "Unkle" Hans, during COVID lockdowns I researched v hard to get him a Stolperstein in Berlin.

"Unkle" Hans, was a jeweller in Berlin who ran a Jewellery Shop "Goldfreund & Rosenbaum" in Charlottenburg, Kurfürstendamm 75, in 1925. He hadn't married - I'm refraining from outing my gut intuition. "Unkle" Hans was deported on June 28, 1943 (aged 47) on the Osttransport 39 which was carrying up to 346 deportees, from Berlin to Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland. His last reported address before deportation was Charlottenburg, Kantstr. 44-45 and he was a subtenant of Loewe, suggesting he was not in hiding?

Hans Goldfreund's Auschwitz Concentration Camp Number was 127014. Only in Auschwitz were the ID numbers tattooed on to the prisoner's arm; in other concentration camps, the prisoners' numbers were worn on their clothing.

"Unkle" Hans was used as forced Labour for IG FARBEN at the subcamp - Monowitz (Buna) which was a synthetic rubber and liquid fuels plant. As the conditions were so hideous, the life expectancy of Jewish workers at Buna Werke (IG Farben Auschwitz) was three to four months; for those working in the outlying mines, only one month. Those deemed unfit for work were gassed at Auschwitz II Birkenau.

Less than two months after he arrived, between August 17 - November, 17 1943 - poor "Unkle" Hans was admitted four times into the camp's hospital and spent a total of 31 days there. There is no record of Hans Goldfreund after his last hospitalisation. On 17 November, 1943 he was discharged from hospital and sent to Auschwitz II Birkenau. On the transfer notification to Auschwitz (Uberstellungameldung nach Auschwitz) it states, by his name, Korperschwache (weak body). One can only assume that he had been worked so hard that he was no longer fit to work at IG Farben Auschwitz, so he was sent to his death at Auschwitz II Birkenau. His exact date of death in unknown.

Of his sisters fate:

• Henriette Else Goldfreund - a seamstress born in 1885 in Berlin | Deported: 1943, September 28: Osttransport 43 from Berlin to Auschwitz | Murdered: 28 September 1943? aged circa 57
• Margarete Grete Goldfreund - a shop assistant / owner born in 1887 in Berlin | Deported: 1941, November 1: Osttransport 4 from Berlin to Litzmannstadt (Lodz), Ghetto | Deported: 1942, May 9 from Litzmannstadt to Kulmhof (Chelmno) Extermination Camp, Poland | Murdered: 9th May 1942 (from the train she must have been immediately sent to the gas chambers), aged circa 54.
• Paula Goldfreund Wilk - born in 1892 in Berlin | Escape: before 1939 she had left Berlin to The Netherlands | Detainment: 1943, March, 30 transported to Westerbork Transit Camp, The Netherlands | From April to July 1943 while in Westerbork Transit Camp. Paula's daughter Ingeborg Hussein, who had managed to flee to Palestine, via the Red Cross tried to secure her an emigration application to Palestine but the detention documents indicate in October 25, Emigration: "further steps no goal". Deported: 1943 July 20 from Westerbork Transit Camp, The Netherlands to Sobibor Extermination Camp, Poland. | Murdered: 23 July 1943, aged circa 51.
• Erna Goldfreund - Modesalon owner born in 1894 who was married to Walter Schwarz (a lawyer?) managed to escape to London and died in 17 April 1986 35 Troy Court, Kensington South, London. Gutted - I was studying at UCl at the time and Mummy came down to visit me. I wished we would have known and be able to take her out for Kafee und Kuchen.

Both Erna Goldfreund and Paula's daughter Ingeborg Hussein, brought Restitution Case Against The Deutsche Reich.

"Unkle" Hans Goldfreund's Stolperstein: will be laid at Kleiststr. 31, Schöneberg, Berlin - his last know free dwelling address (1939). If you are in Berlin, please pay you respects to him.

My page dedicated to "Unkle" Hans Goldfreund and his relatives.

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When Willem, aged 17, told his parents he was gay he was thrown out of the family home. He struggled to earn a living as an artist, designing posters and illustrating poetry but he got a break when he was commissioned to paint a mural for Rotterdam City Hall (1923). From 1935, he switched to writing, Het Uilenhuis (The Owls House) and In de bloeiende Ramenas (In the Blossoming Winter Radish), which he also illustrated, and in 1938 he published his most successful work, Matthijs Maris: de tragiek van den droom (The Tragedy of the Dream), a biography of the painter and political activist Matthijs Maris.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Willem was among the first to join the resistance movement. In 1942, Willem started an underground periodical called the Brandarisbrief which merged with De Vrije Kunstenaar (The Free Artist) edited by Gerrit van der Veen, in 1943.

In the resistance, Gerrit specialised in forging identity cards. The Germans had introduced identity documents (Persoonsbewijzen) to distinguish between Jews and non-Jews. Willem, along with lesbian cellist Frieda Belinfante became involved in creating forged documents.

Along with lesbian cellist Frieda Belinfante, he fought against the forced registration of Jews and urged his fellow artists to do the same through underground, illegal publications. The Artists' Resistance group he belonged to specialised in forged documents. Willem, Frieda, Gerrit van der Veen (a Dutch sculptor), and Frans Duwaer (a Dutch printer) produced some 80,000 false identity papers. The Nazis countered by checking documents against public records. In his greatest act of resistance, on 27 March 1943, on the third attempt, Willem led the bombing on the Municipal Office for Population Registration in Amsterdam which destroyed 800,000 files (15% of the records). Though Frieda Belinfante wanted to participate in the attack she was not allowed to, on the grounds that she was female.

Five days later the unit was betrayed. Willem was captured on 1 April 1943 and he, Gerrit van der Veen, Frans Duwaer and 9 others out of the 13 captured, were executed in the dunes near Overveen. Willem had been openly gay and before the occupation of the Netherlands had lived with his boyfriend Jan Tijssen but he left the love of his life to protect Jan. Willem Arondeus' final message before his execution, as relayed to his lawyer, was to tell the world ... "homosexuals are not cowards."

Willem Arondeus was executed on July 1, 1943 in the dunes near Overveen, The Netherlands.

War Decorations (Posthumous):

• Medal by the Dutch government
• Resistance Memorial Cross (1984).

Yad Vashem recognized Willem Arondéus as Righteous Among the Nations (1986).

Willem Arondeus Stolperstein is located outside Singel 65, Amsterdam

Documentary: Willem & Frieda (2023) - sooooooooo watch it.

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... and then Italy, they were captured by Nazis and imprisoned in Bagni Di Lucca concentration camp. Though Reed had American citizenship he twice decided to not part from Gerdh and, they managed to escape the camp to eventual safety. Reed grew up with his grandmother, and as Reed's father had been injured during his military involvement during WWI, Reed received some funding for his education, from the Veterans Aid program.

After graduating magna cum laude (with great distinction) a Bachelor of Arts in Romance languages and literature at Harvard University (1935), a year later, he received his master's degree. As a Graduate Residence Fellow, he continued his studies at Columbia University and returned to Harvard in 1937 to pursue a PhD in comparative literature. Reed obtained several academic honours: the Orlando V. Doe Scholarship (1933–34), the Sales Scholarship (1934–35), the Medal of the Comité France-Amérique (1935), and was honourably mentioned for the Susan Anthony Potter Prize in Comparative Literature (1936).

Before completing his PhD, in 1938, Reed won two fellowships: the John Harvard Fellowship and the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to study abroad at the University of Paris, France. There he met and, fell in love with Gerdh Hauptmann who was from Copenhagen, Denmark and was studying fine arts and painting.

A year later, together they moved to Denmark to study at the University of Copenhagen. With the rising concern of Hitler's expansion of the the Third Reich they wished to move to America together but they didn't have the funds for the travel but also for Gerdh to emigrate to America. When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark they fled together to France and then Italy. As an American citizen, Reed surely could have left Europe - but, one can only interpret that his love was so great for Gerdh that he couldn't leave him alone to the dangers of the Nazis?

In 1941, they were both captured by Nazis and imprisoned in the Bagni Di Lucca concentration camp (Hotel Terme) near Pistoia, Tuscany, Italy. As Reed had American citizenship, he had the chance to return to the United States (America entered war with Germany and Italy on December 10, 1941), while Gerdh was "offered" work under German occupation. As they were not willing to separate from one another they remained prisoners and spent two years in German and Italian concentration camps, during which military personnel confiscated their documentation papers.

Miraculously, they managed to escape together and went on an incredible journey to reach the American lines: swimming in lakes, hiking through the snow-covered Apennines, and taking shelter in barns, caves, woods and the homes of friendly partisan supporters. They finally found safety in Italy when they reached the 92nd Infantry Division of the United States Army - the only African American infantry division (the "Buffalo Soldiers") to see combat in Europe during World War II, fighting in the Italian Campaign. FYI On 23rd January 1944 the interned Jews in Bagni Di Lucca were transported from Bagni di Lucca to Florence, then to Milan. On 30th January they were sent to Auschwitz.

Because their identification documents had been confiscated neither of them could travel to America. I can't suss out what happened to their deep love but they both suffer from nervous breakdowns and mental health problems.

After seven years, Reed returned to his home town Dorchester in Boston, Massachusetts and worked as a translator and a teacher and published several comparative literature and linguistic works, including The First French and English Translations of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia". Post-war, Reed's continued success as a scholar may have been blighted by the trauma caused by the Third Reich.

Sadly, I can't yet relay what happened to Gerdh Hauptmann. I wonder if he was a Danish Jew?

Watch out for Ethelene Whitmire's up-and-coming book: The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram

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Fritz came from a middle-class Stuttgart Jewish family and studied law and economics in Heidelberg, Munich and Tübingen (where he gained his doctorate). At the age of 27, in 1930, Fritz Bauer, became Germany’s youngest judge. Just after the National Socialists (Nazis) came to power (1933), Fritz was dismissed from his position as a judge and for political reasons he was detained in Lager Heuberg on the Swabian Alb, Germany. He was released nine months later after being coerced into signing a statement pledging obedience to Nazi rule.

In 1936, Fritz fled to Denmark but after the German occupation, the Danish authorities revoked his residence permit in April 1940 and interned him in a camp for three months. In the hope to protect himself from the Nazi persecution of Jews, he married, Danish kindergarten teacher, Anna Maria Petersen, in June 1943. When the Danish government resigned and the Nazis declared martial law, for eight days he hid in a cellar and on the night of 13 October 1943 he boarded a Danish fishing boat that took him to neutral Sweden.

Fritz returned to Germany to work again as a judge, in 1949, when the post-war Federal Republic (West Germany) was being established. Shockingly, some former Nazis held key positions in the new West German government. For example, Hans Globke, a former Nazi government member who helped draw up Nazi race laws, rose to secretary general to the Chancellor. Fritz Bauer considered the judicial prosecution of Nazi crimes fundamental to establishing a democratic system of justice and made this his objective. Therefore, he dedicated intensive efforts to investigate Nazi officials suspected of having committed serious crimes.

Adolf Eichmann Trial - Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann was pivotal in the implementation of the "Final Solution". He facilitated and managed the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. In 1957, Fritz was tipped off by a colleague in Argentina that Eichmann had escaped to Buenos Aires and was living there under a false identity. Instead of informing the German judiciary, Fritz informed the Israeli secret service, Mossad, with a crucial hint to Adolf Eichmann’s whereabouts. This vital information led to Eichmann’s secret kidnapping by Mossad agents in Argentina and his transfer to Israel in 1960. Eichmann was brought to trial in Jerusalem, in 1961 and a year later he was hanged in Israel.

Auschwitz Trial - Fritz initiated the Auschwitz trial, which was held in Frankfurt from December 1963 to August 1965. For the first time in Germany, Nazi SS henchmen faced justice and the German public had to face up to the horrors of the Holocaust and accept that the perpetrators lived in their midst. Of the 22 Nazis who faced trail: only six of the accused were given life sentences and twelve others, were given terms of up to 14 years. More Nazi war crime trails.

Though Fritz, sadly, lived in fear of being outed he bravely pressed for replacing the Nazis' 1935 version of Paragraph 175, of the German penal code, which made even the "expression of homosexuality" illegal (e.g. coming out was a criminal offense).

Fritz had been preparing for a trial against participants in the "Euthanasia" program when he was found dead in his Frankfurt flat, on July 1, 1968. Though the trial he had prepared, did not take place after his death, there had been "Euthanasia" trials in the past.

Decorations (Posthumous):

• Wilhelm-Leuschner-Medaille (2022).

The Fritz Bauer Institute was established in 1995 with the aim of the foundation is to pursue the study, research, and documentation of National Socialist mass crimes, especially the Holocaust.

The Fritz Bauer Monument is located outside Higher Regional Court on Zeil 42, Frankfurt, Germany

Movies: The People vs. Fritz Bauer (2015)

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Crimes Against Humanity: include invading peaceful countries and ordering genocide, eugenic euthanasia, massacres, exploitation of forced labour, mass rape, looting ...

War Trail: None, as Hitler cowardly committed suicide before capture.

Death: When it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, Hitler cowardly committed suicide via gunshot on 30 April 1945 in the Führerbunker in Berlin. Concurrently Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also committed suicide by taking cyanide. As ordered by Hitler, their bodies were taken up to the Reich Chancellery garden, where they were doused in petrol and burned. Find out more about Adolf Hitler.

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Crimes Against Humanity: include facilitating and overseering concentration camps and mass genocide.

War Trail: None, as Himmler cowardly committed suicide after capture.

Death: After the war, Himmler was captured, disguised and with false identity papers assigned to "Heinrich Hitzinger", by Soviet troops on May 20, 1945, who turned him over to the British. Himmler confessed his true identity and three days later on May 23, 1945, Himmler cowardly committed suicide by biting on a cyanide capsule that he had hidden in his mouth. Find out more about Heinrich Himmler.

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Crimes: 15 counts, including crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and War crimes.

War Trail: At WWII's end, Eichmann who was using forged papers that identified him as "Otto Eckmann" was captured by US forces and spent time in several camps for SS officers. He escaped in 1946 and eventually via the help of Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric and Nazi sympathiser then residing in Italy, he fled to Argentina and lived under a number of aliases, most famously Ricardo Klement. In 1960, through an invaluable tip-off from Nazi Hunter Fritz Bauer, agents of Mossad (the Israeli Security Service) abducted Eichmann and brought him to Israel to stand trial. The Eichmann Trial began on April 11, 1961 and was held before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court.

Death: In December 1961, Eichmann was sentenced to death by a special district court in Jerusalem and was hanged in Jerusalem at midnight, May 31, 1962. Find out more about Adolf Eichmann.

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Crimes Against Humanity: include sending over 400,000 people to their deaths at Auschwitz, undertaking unethical and inhumane experiments, the murder of victims through inhumane experimentation.

War Trail: None, as spineless Mengele evaded being captured by the help of unrepentant ex-Nazis, Nazi sympathisers and relatives.

Death: In 1979, in Brazil, Mengele died of a stroke while swimming and was buried in a suburb of São Paulo under the assumed name "Wolfgang Gerhard". Six years later (1985), a team comprising Brazilian, West German, and American forensic experts determined that the remains buried in Gerhard's grave were indeed Mengele's. A year later, Josef Mengele's son, Rolf, appeared on the Today show in which he admitted that he had helped conceal the fugitive Nazi war criminal because "I would never betray my father." Find out more about Josef Mengele and The victims of unethical human experiments and coerced research under National Socialism.

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Even more astonishing is that this story evolved when documentary film maker Magnus Gertten first identified the sad face of Nadine Hwang, in a newsreel footage of refugees arriving in harbour of Malmö, Sweden after the liberation of concentration camps. Regarding the very moving newsreel footage: Every Face Has a Name - is a project trying to bring as many names as possible to the many survivors seen in the newsreel footage and Harbour of Hope documents the stories of three people identified from the newsreel: Irene Krausz-Fainman, Ewa Kabacinska Jansson and Joe Rozenberg.

Nelly & Nadine - a must see documentary!

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