Story From Everyday

Naked Jewish women from the Mizocz ghetto wait in a line before their execution by the German Order Police with the assistance of Ukrainian auxiliaries Locals played a very important role in the mass shootings committed by the Germans in the Baltics and the USSR. In some cases, locals would instigate their own pogroms against Jews once the Germans arrived. Otherwise, local citizens would help the Einsatzgruppen and other units locate Jews in the immediate vicinity and then either assist with or participate in the mass killings. One of the facts that I learned about the Holocaust from my grandfather that has stuck with me even up through today is that we’ll never know truly how many died or who they were. There were people that were murdered, and not only were they murdered, but EVERY SINGLE PERSON that knew them, EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO HAD EVER known them, were also murdered.  Try to imagine that. Every last human being you’ve ever come in to contact with, murdered.  Tha...

The horrific execution of Clayton Lockett by lethal injection this spring in Oklahoma took an astonishing 43 minutes to complete. Together with other botched killings, the incident has focused attention on the inexperience and incompetence that now accompanies many executions in America.  "After he died, an autopsy showed potentially toxic levels of the drug in his system, suggesting he also attempted an overdose before he was executed."   So he might have done this to himself with the drug reaction issue.  Who knows if it would have been this bad if he hadn't attempted to OD first.   But if you read about what he did to that girl, he deserved every second of that agony.  He buried a girl alive for shit's sake! Guillotines have moving parts and require mechanical maintenance and lubrication (plenty of failed beheading by guillotine in France when it was in vogue), they're also needlessly bloody when a bag of nitrogen accomplishes the same goal. Cl...

Human intercourse with real people who donated their bodies to science and to make education interesting. (The picture was taken by me when I visited a very controversial German exhibition called "Körperwelten") All the bodies are donated and the people knew what they where getting into, but its still controversial After some actual research, I found out that there have been multiple controversies about some corpses and how they were obtained. And in the end they were sadly donated. I did a bit of research on this topic, and my takeaway is this: The exhibition uses Chinese bodies. van Hagen has also access to enough bodies through the donation program (according to their site, there are 17k registered donors in Germany). Van Hagen made a statement at some point about bodies that he destroyed because they had injuries that made him suspect that they are prisoners (eg. chinese ones) He later clarified that he was referring to bodies that he was preparing as contract work f...

The Execution of Irma Grese  Irma Grese, often referred to as the "Hyena of Auschwitz," remains one of the most infamous female figures associated with Nazi war crimes. Her name is synonymous with the brutality that characterized the Holocaust, and her execution marked the end of a young life steeped in unimaginable cruelty. Early Life and Rise to Power Born on October 7, 1923, in Wrechen, Germany, Irma Grese grew up in a tumultuous household. Her mother committed suicide when Grese was only 13 years old, an event that had a profound impact on her. At 15, she left school and initially worked as a nurse, but soon became captivated by Nazi ideology. By the age of 19, she had joined the SS and was assigned to work at the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a guard. Her rise within the ranks of the SS was swift and alarming. Grese was later transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the most notorious concentration camps, where she quickly gained a reputation for her extreme sa...

A curious woman had to be rescued by a crew of firemen after she became stuck between two giant rocks - because she wanted to try and sneak through the tiny gap. The woman became wedged between the boulders after her bottom and breasts could not make it through the opening in the popular tourist city of Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. The frightening scenario had echoes of the film 127 hours, which is based on the ordeal of real-life canyoneer Aron Ralston, whose arm became trapped in a crevice in Blue John Canyon, Utah, in April 2003. + 8 View gallery She tried to squeeze through a small gap + 8 View gallery Firefighters had to use ropes to save her + 8 View gallery The woman became trapped between two boulders after her curiosity got the better of her and she tried to sneak through a thin gap The woman had to be rescued Woman had to be rescued The adventurer, who was played by James Franco in Danny Boyle's film adaptation, was deserted in the isolated s...

Executing The Beautiful Spectre. Seen here are several former SS camp guards and overseers executed after the first Stutthof trial, in 1946. The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in Poland for the prosecution of former Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials. The Stutthof concentration camp was the first German concentration camp outside German borders in WWII, located near the village of Stutthof, Free City of Danzig(now Gdánsk, Poland). Stutthof was originally a civilian internment camp, but eventually expanded and became a vast network of forced-labor camps. It turned into a regular concentration camp in early 1942. A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943-44, to be used as a part of the final solution. Over 60 000 prisoners of Stutthof and its subcamps died as a result of executions, disease, starvation, brutal treatment, forced labour ,and death marches after forced evacuations. Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on May 9, 1945. One of th...

January 17th, 1920, Alcohol Prohibition started in the USA. The roots of the temperance movement can be traced back to the 19th century, fuelled by concerns over the negative social and economic consequences of alcohol consumption. Religious groups and reformers argued that alcohol was responsible for a myriad of societal problems, including domestic violence, crime, and workplace inefficiency. The movement gained momentum in the decades leading up to the 20th century, culminating in the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919. Rather than eradicating the consumption of alcohol, Prohibition gave rise to a flourishing black market. Organised crime syndicates, led by infamous figures like Al Capone, seized the opportunity to supply the demand for illegal alcohol. Speakeasies, hidden establishments where patrons could secretly enjoy alcoholic beverages, became popular across the nation, creating a vibrant underground culture. As the negative consequences of Prohibition became increasin...

scene depicting a German soldier grabbing a Belgian girl in 1914. This image is a still from the 1918 silent fim "Stake Uncle Sam To Play Your Hand", colourised by @ungermario. The following is excerpts of 24-year-old Danish-German soldier Christian Tastesen's report of April 6, 1918 - today 106 years ago - in which he and his comrade jokingly threatened to behead a French civilian woman's baby. Translated by myself: "On April 6 we boarded the train again and headed to Lille. Since there was no more room we had to relocate to an adjacent village, around an hour-long march from Lille. There a comrade and I entered a house where a young lady and her child lived. We suspected no hostility and entered gently with our rifles on our backs. The lady sat by the table, but suddenly she pulled out a revolver, which was hidden under the table, pointed it at us and asked us to get out. We didn't have a choice but to leave. Once we had exited we were nevertheless emb...

A captured Chinese tank crewman being guarded by a Vietnamese soldier, during the Sino-Vietnamese War, which began on this day in 1979. Less than four years after the end of the Vietnam War, the former communist allies turned against each other and a new war broke out in Indochina involving Vietnam, China and Cambodia. On 25 December 1978, following a series of bloody cross-border raids into Vietnam by Pol Pot's troops, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia and overthrew the genocidal Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime in two weeks. In response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, China launched a punitive operation against Vietnam. After a massive artillery bombardment on February 17, 1979, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed Vietnam's northern border to invade the country. Despite initial progress and enjoying numerical superiority, the PLA soon found itself bogged down in a costly conflict against Vietnamese irregulars, even though many battle-...

Execution of Pietro Koch, Nazi collaborator, June 1945 Official caption: Koch, who deserted the Italian Army to aid the German SS, is tied to the death chair with his back to the firing squad. He is neatly dressed in a light tan suit. Near Rome, Italy. June 1945 1. Receiving last rites 2-3. Tied to the chair 4. Dead 5. Burning the chair About 2.2 million troops fought against the axis before France fell in 1940. After that, the Free French Army fought on the allies' side. In 1944 there were about 400 000 free french troops (many of them, around one third or perhaps more, were from France's colonial empire, but in some divisions colonial troops made up to two thirds of the total force). By the end of the war, the size of the FFA had risen to 1.3 million, making it the fourth largest allied force. Concerning the french forces of the interior (FFI, or "the resistance"), it's hard to give a definite figure, but 400 000 by 1944 is a common estimate. Compare these ...