The Schenker Crimes -- Schenker & Co.: Fencer, Plunderer, Accomplice in Murder

 

The DB AG's globally operating logistics company Schenker, a Deutsche Bahn subsidiary, is the state-owned successor of a criminal organization. This has been confirmed by new documents accessed in German archives by the "Train of Commemoration" on tips by British historians. According to these documents, Schenker had organized for the "Reichsgruppe Industrie" (Nazi state-controlled industrial business association) [1] the transfer of loot to Germany, plundered Europe-wide from countries under Nazi Wehrmacht occupation. Particularly during the last years of the war (1943-45), Schenker was involved in wide-ranging plunder raids stretching from Athens in the south, through the Balkans, from Lisbon in the west, Oslo in the north and in the east from Warsaw to within the Soviet Union. The spoils flowed into the coffers of the German state, which then shared them with such companies as Mannesmann, Rheinmetall, Siemens or AEG. However, even seemingly harmless family enterprises were having Schenker & Co. - in cooperation with the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German railroad) - deliver deported laborers and spoils from Eastern Europe.

After unloading on the territory of the German Reich, on its return trips to the front, Schenker transported voluminous arsenals to militarily secure Germany's large-scale plunder economy in its "New Europe." As the documents show, Schenker's criminal gang-like business dealings included transports of valuables of the Prussian State Mint, which, on behalf of the Reichsbank, had remolded looted gold into bullions, providing them with a counterfeit minting date. The objective was to dissimulate the origin (including from anti-Semitic massacres), so that the expropriated precious metals or those that had been torn from corpses could - undetected - be capitalized on the international market.

Neither Schenker & Co.'s successor (Deutsche Bahn subsidiary DB Schenker) nor the former and current owner of Schenker (the German state) seems to show interest in a thorough investigation of Schenker's crimes. For understandable reasons. Berlin has never restituted the assets it had obtained through fencing, plunder and complicity in murder. Clarification becomes all the more pressing with the suspicion growing that DB Schenker and its parent company's global economic expansion are driving Berlin's "Weltpolitik" ("global policy"). That is nothing new. Already before World War II, Schenker was considered the economic vanguard of Germany's great power subversion; Schenker branch offices were considered a hub of spies. In London, Schenker's regional branch office was set afire; in Eastern Europe warnings of Berlin's gaining a European monopoly in the logistics branch were raised.  (more...)

The Schenker Crimes Part I    Part II

Nazi horror camp for Polish children: new book reveals 'heart-breaking' accounts from survivors

 

Instead of cuddles and bedtime stories, Polish children as young as two would hear “Achtung! Raus! Polnische Schweine!” barked at them by degenerate German guards who treated them like animals.

Chilled to the bone in freezing weather, desperate for calories, the tiny victims of Hitler’s all-conquering Third Reich would be forced to crawl on the ground and lick German boots for a ladle of watery “soup” of dead insects, sand, plastic and maybe a few cabbage leaves.

Worked to exhaustion, beaten, tortured and riddled with disease, the children expired in large numbers. This incomprehensible human tragedy was planned and executed by the Germans at a concentration camp set up on the edge of the Łódź Ghetto for the specific purpose of abusing, humiliating and tormenting Polish children.

What is doubly shocking is that having stolen their childhoods once in 1942-45 when the camp operated, the Germans robbed them of their rights as victims after war by stealing and “losing” documents proving that they had been at the camp.

These are the sensational claims made by Jolanta Sowińska-Gogacz, the co-author of a blistering new book about the camp published this week ‘Mały Oświęcim. Dziecięcy obóz w Łodzi’ (Little Oświęcim. The children’s camp in Lódź), which was racing up the bestseller charts in Poland even before its launch.  (more...)

Nazi horror camp for Polish children: new book reveals 'heart-breaking' accounts from survivors of the camp in Łódź that postwar Germany tried to hush up

The camp in Przemysłowa Street

We are presenting you a documentary film that shows the story of the camp in Przemysłowa in Łódź (Poland).

The camp for Polish children, where around 3 thousand minors were brought!

After the end of World War II, the memory of the German labour camp for Polish children in Przemysłowa Street in Łódź – situated within the borders of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto – began to fade away and almost all of its remnants were destroyed.

With this film, the Institute of National Remembrance, Branch in Łódź is taking another step to sustain the memory of that place and its history.

Defunding the Myths and Cults of Cold War Canada

 

For decades the Canadian government has been supporting East European émigré associations whose much-revered founders, leaders and war heroes include veterans of Waffen SS divisions and other fascist military formations, perpetrators of the Holocaust and other ethnic-cleansing campaigns, officials from and apologists for Nazi puppet regimes, postwar CIA propaganda assets, proponents of Cold War terrorist groups like the US-armed Nicaraguan contras and Afghan mujahideen, and other virulently anticommunist “freedom fighters” and their ideologues.

Over the past few years alone, the most influential of these ethno-nationalist émigré organizations — those representing the right-wing Ukrainian diaspora — have received millions of dollars in Canadian government grants and contributions. For many decades, the Canadian government’s financial largesse has helped subsidize the most powerful of these groups’ day-to-day operations, their office spaces, meeting halls, events and publications. In doing so the Canadian government continues to aid and abet these associations’ efforts to glorify, with cult-like adoration, their fascist heroes from WWII and the Cold War.

Throughout the Cold War, Canada’s right-wing émigré groups—such as those representing Czechs, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks and Ukrainians—were enthusiastic cheerleaders for the Canadian government’s devotion to proUS and proNATO policies. Their ongoing support for Canada’s hawkish foreign policies has not wavered.

Long recognized by Canada’s government as officially representing their ethnic communities, these émigré organizations continue to promote propaganda narratives that whitewash their histories. These histories would be publicly embarrassing to them and to their government allies if the mass media were ever to expose them. However, the corporate press has itself been deeply complicit in perpetuating the very propaganda that still needs to be exposed.

Canada’s ethno-nationalist organizations continue to push their political agendas by initiating and assisting right-wing government policies that suit their shared goals. They also serve government interests by mobilizing electoral support from their ethnic communities and the public at large for mainstream politicians, their parties and corporate-friendly programs.  (more...)

Defunding the Myths and Cults of Cold War Canada

Articles detailing Canadian government funding of East European émigré groups with deep fascist roots

Mother's Day at the War Show

 It was the "Mother of All Air Shows!" The highly-militarized National Capital Air Show in Ottawa, Canada, was held on Mothers' Day, May 11, 1997. (Ironically Mothers' Day was conceived by Julia Ward Howe an American abolitionist and suffragette who wanted to inspire women to rise up against men's wars...)

The vast majority of the aircraft performing stunts at Canadian air shows are war planes, and most are America. In 1997, COAT received permission to have a booth inside Ottawa's air show. Once there we displayed original paintings by Iraqi children. Their artwork, collected by Canadian peace activists in Iraq, graphically showed US and allied warplanes bombing that country during the 1991 war.

The film juxtaposes jarring images and interviews from inside the war show with footage from Iraq. For example, we see:

* War planes zooming overhead to entertain families with young children

* Pentagon footage of these same varieties of war planes that bombed Iraq

* Iraqi children’s art depicting war planes dropping bombs

* Degrading paintings of women on the fuselages of warplanes that bombed Iraq

* Thrilled kids and youth describing their favourite war planes 

* Interviews with Iraqi victims of war

* Children enjoying fair-ground rides at the war show in mini-bombers with toy machine guns

* Peace activists inside the war show, including the documentary-maker interviewing his mother

* Images of devastation and suffering caused by war planes in Iraq

* Smiling spectators touching war planes and their missiles; and children in cockpits

* Statements by former US Att. Gen. Ramsey Clark in Iraq in 1991 describing the sanctions program which the UN said caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five

* Proud pilots on the runway posing with their war planes for photos by adoring fans

For years after 1997, until the show was cancelled, COAT held events outside its gates, including a Festival of Peace. COAT also produced materials about war shows and urged activists across Canada to draw attention to these events locally. Many did.

This 30-minute documentary was narrated by Marion Dewar, the former Mayor of Ottawa (1978-1985), an NDP Member of Parliament (1986-1988), and a mentor of COAT.  The film was written and produced for COAT by Richard Sanders.

Jenin, Jenin

Jenin, Jenin (2002) from Palestine Film Institute on Vimeo.

 Directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, Jenin Jenin includes testimony from Jenin residents after the Israeli army's Defensive Wall operation. The city and camp were the scenes of fierce fighting which ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. Palestinians as well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war crimes in the attack. The United Nations appointed a commission of inquiry, but Israel refused to let its members visit the scene.

Banned in Israel, Jenin Jenin is dedicated to Iyad Samudi, the producer of the film, who returned home to Yamun after the shooting of the film was completed. On June 23, as Israeli forces besieged Yamun, Samudi was shot and killed as he was leaving a militarily-closed area with three friends.

Road to Holocaust

“I remember what my mother once said around 1938. ‘Germany? Such a cultured country?’ This was unimaginable” – Krystyna Budnicka, who lost her parents and seven siblings to the Holocaust

For a very long time, many people simply couldn’t believe what was happening, as the Holocaust was a planned atrocity, carried out systematically on an unimaginably massive scale. Holocaust survivors carry a burden of memories which will forever weigh heavily on their hearts and souls. Witnesses and survivors of these tragic events shared their stories with the creators of the film “Witnesses to the Age. Road to Holocaust”. Their accounts paint a horrific picture of German occupation which includes the growing persecution of Jews and the successive stages of the Holocaust – leading up to the extermination camps. With no additional commentary, the film consists solely of the accounts of Holocaust witnesses and survivors, reflecting the terrifying truth about the scale of this atrocity. What happened outside the largest cities in German-occupied territories? How was the Holocaust carried out in small towns and villages? How many Jews died before getting to extermination camps? How many atrocities remain unknown outside local communities?

“Witnesses to the Age. Road to Holocaust” gives a voice to the Holocaust victims whose struggle had been unknown to many of us…