Belzec was the prototype death camp and precursor of the killing centers of Sobibor and Treblinka. Secretly commissioned by the highest authority of the Nazi State, it acted outside the law of both civil and military conventions of the time. Under the code "Aktion Reinhardt", the death camp was organized, staffed and administered by a leadership of middle-ranking police officers and a specially selected civilian cadre who, in the first instance, had been initiated into group murder within the euthanasia program. Their expertise, under bogus SS insignia, was then transferred to the operational duties to the human factory abattoir of Belzec, where, on a conveyor belt system, thousands of Jews, from daily transports, entered the camp and after just two hours, they lay dead in the Belzec pits, their property sorted and the killing grounds tidied to await the next arrival. Over a period of just nine months, when Belzec was operational Galician Jewry was totally decimated: 500,000 lay buried in the 33 mass graves. The author takes the reader step by step into the background of the "Final Solution" and gives eyewitness testimony, as the mass graves were located and recorded. This is a publication of the "Yizkor Books in Print Project" of JewishGen, Inc 376 pages with Illustrations. Hard Cover

Belzec: Stepping Stone to Genocide

History

O'Neil, Robin

Europe

Jewishgen.Inc

Dr. Robin O'Neil's latest study on the Holocaust, "Oskar Schindler: Stepping Stone to Life," follows thematically from his previous book, "Belzec: Stepping Stone to Genocide," 2008, and his PhD thesis, "Belzec: Operation Reinhardt and the Origins of Jewish Genocide in Galicia." Whereas the previous works focused on the genocidal horrors of World War II, O'Neil's examination of Schindler focuses on life and hope. Dr. O'Neil's work on Schindler has been praised by important personages. In a conversation with Dr. O'Neil in 1995, Mrs. Oskar Schindler said, "My husband would have been proud of you." Professor Michael Berkowitz, of University College London, commented that "Dr. O'Neil's research re. Oskar Schindler is both fascinating and of fine scholarship." Judge Moshe Bejski wrote in 2002, "Your research material is exemplary and corrects many of the inaccuracies in film, written and the spoken word about Schindler." And Sir Martin Gilbert, the eminent Holocaust scholar, wrote: "No one has done more justice to the life and achievements of Oscar Schindler than Dr. Robin O'Neil, whose archival detective work and zeal for telling the story in all its fascinating detail is of the highest order." Dr. O'Neil worked on the Schindler story off and on since 1987. He took on many tasks in the intervening years, meeting people central to the story during his travels in Europe and Israel and the United States, investigating numerous leads, reading published and unpublished materials, questioning, observing, writing, and always taking notes and filing them away. Parts of the story would emerge in his other writings, many of which appeared online on JewishGen. Manuscripts such as "Poland and her Jews 1941-1944," translation of the "Kovno Ghetto Diary," and "Rabka Police School: Poland" enhanced his reputation as a foremost Nazi war crimes researcher who writes scholarly works on the destruction of European Jewish communities in an informal and highly readable style. "Oskar Schindler: Stepping Stone to Life" is the definitive work on Oskar Schindler. Dr. O'Neil examines the enigmatic Schindler, using all published and unpublished research to take the reader through all the evidence to the surprising conclusion.

Oskar Schindler: Stepping Stone to Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Susaneking.com

Factual descriptions (photographs) and methodology of executing Jewish men, women and children. Maybe upsetting to readers.The author was motivated to write this account some twenty years ago. Several Jewish survivors of the German Security Services Training School at Rabka related to him their stories. At that time. the author had no idea where this would lead, but as his investigations proceeded he was drawn further and further into a black hole, an unbelievable pit of horror and deprivation. It soon became apparent, that under the cloak of war, personal vendetta, corruption, robbery, and murder were committed. This criminal virus spread to other places and was now endemic among the SS leadership and their associates. When the war finished, the protagonists for a time escaped immediate attention. However, as the evidence emerged they were, one by  one, tracked down and dealt with according to the law.

Jewish Genocide in Galicia 2nd Ed

Historical Study & Educational Resources

lulu.com

'One does not normally connect Gustav Mahler with the holocaust, which came much later - but the seeds of the persecution were already there, in Vienna, in the ever-present anti-Semitism which Mahler himself had to suffer and deal with; and of course members of his family were caught up in the tidal wave of the holocaust when it came. Robin O'Neil's book is valuable in that it is the only one that makes this necessary connection. Coming events cast their shadow before. In a sense one is pleased that Mahler was spared this awful development, unlike his friend Arnold Berliner.' - Charles Muller: Diadem Books. Through the Mahler family letters between Gustav Mahler and the physicist Arnold Berliner, we are privy to their inner thoughts and daily musical life during Vienna's 'golden autumn' that preceded the turbulent times that followed. After Mahler's passing and with the rise of National Socialism, we follow the lives of the extended Mahler family, their friends, associates, and Vienna's musical and operatic elite. With the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, we observe the frontal attack on European Jewry and subsequent deportation policy enabling a 'Jew-free' Reich, where many close friends and family were to end their days in exile and the death camps of Nazi Germany. We follow Dr Berliner into the world of German scientific research, where among this collective of scientists, Berliner's close friend is the highest-placed British spy in Germany throughout World War II. This was significant in the race to dominate the nuclear age...and the atomic bomb. After the war, and well into the 21st Century, we are treated to an amazing recovery of perhaps Gustav Mahler's greatest song and with it, a tale of brutality beyond measure in an attempt to save it. 'You possess an incredible wealth of material and know all the sources that could possibly consulted on the subject. It is important to 'strike the right balance' which is a question that is not so easily answered. To my mind, you have already succeeded - you made a choice - very dramatic - indeed: perhaps the most tragic - examples of the fates of Mahler's family and friends'. Andreas Michalek Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft

The Mahler Family: In the Rise & Fall of the Third Reich

Arts & Literature

Memoirs

Oskar Schindler was a naive optimist, a chronic alcoholic, a lover of women outside his marriage to Emily Pelzl. The Jews he saved used to say, "Thank God he was more faithful to us than to his wife." Will the enigma ever be solved? Schindler is not here to tell us, and the survivors are uncertain and differ in their opinions. The establishment and Schindler's business associates in Krakow had opposing views of his ethics and would have preferred to sit on the fence and hope the Schindler story would retreat into the archives. Schindler's friends and enemies accept that he was a very unusual man. A few of the Jews that he saved maintain, after all these years, that they still consider him a Nazi and exploiter of Jewish slave labor. Others swear their love for the man. That he used Jewish slave labor to enrich himself is not questioned, nor are his endeavors to eventually save his Jewish laborers. The author forensically re-examines the life and times of Oskar Schindler with surprising results.﻿My introduction to the investigation of the Schindler story began in November 1987, with my arrest by guards at 4, Lipowa Street (Krakowskie Zaklady Elektroniczne 'TELEPOD'), Krakow, the former factory premises (Emalia) of Oskar Schindler. I had left the UK at 7am, and by 10pm, I was locked-up in Polish jail. This was the cold war period during which foreigners travelling in Eastern Europe were eyed with suspicion. Entering Lipowa Street, Krakow, I was about to take a photograph of Schindler's factory (now the Warsaw Pact communications establishment) but had failed to notice the signs forbidding photography. Surrounded by guards I was taken first to the central police station in Krakow and then to the headquarters of the SIB (Special Investigation Branch) and interrogated for several hours. It was somewhat comical, as, despite all their efforts, they failed to find an interpreter. I had decided not to reveal my knowledge of the Russin language and just sat in the corner smoking my pipe and reading Tom Kenealley's novel Schindler's Ark. Eventually common sense prevailed: having examined my camera and film and failing at any point to communicate with me, they kicked me out of the front door. Early in 2008, while escorting a group of Catholic Nuns (from Notting Hill, UK) to Schindler's haunts in Krakow, I met the guard named Mietek, who had arrested me in 1987. Long retired, he was now a security officer at 4, Lipowa Street: housing The Schindler Museum

The Real Oskar Schindler and His List - Hard Cover: Stepping-Stone to Life