A former SS guard on trial in Germany has provided chilling details about the operations of the camp and the lives of those who were imprisoned there.
Oskar Groening is facing 300,000 counts of accessory to murder in connection with his service at the camp from May to July 1944 when Jews from Hungary were brought to the camp and almost immediately murdered.
Groening testified that during the time so many trains full of Jews were coming to the camp that they sometimes had to wait with doors closed while other trains were emptied and processed into the camp. He testified about one night where he worked 24 hours straight on the ramp at Birkenau where the Jews were brought into the camp and it was “a busy shift”indicating there was non-stop arrivals of victims.
“The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited. Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn’t verify this. I didn’t know,” he said. “For the sake of order we waited until train 1 was entirely processed and finished.”
A surprising part of the testimony was Groening contracting many survivors claims that the process was chaotic, saying it was “very orderly”.
“The process was the same as Auschwitz I. The only difference was that there were no trucks,” he said during the second day of his trial. “They all walked —some in one direction some, in another direction … to where the crematoria and gas chambers were.”
Survivors and their families said they would be satisfied with any confessions given by Groening.
“I’m going to take whatever confession he gives —it’s better than no confession,” survivor Eva Kor, 81, told reporters. “Maybe this is the best thing he has ever done in his life. Isn’t that sad?”
The latest report by aid workers in Iraq is a 9-year-old girl that was repeatedly raped by 10 ISIS terrorists until she was impregnated.
The aid workers say the girl will likely die giving birth to the child.
“This girl is so young she could die if she delivers a baby,” thestar.com quotes Yousif Daoud, a Canadian-based aid worker who recently returned from the region, as saying. “Even a caesarian section is dangerous. The abuse she has suffered left her mentally and physically traumatized.”
The girl was part of a group of women and children released last week by the terrorists. The release of the women, some impregnated by the terrorists, is seen as a way to shame the community.
“If they are married, their husbands won’t take them back if they are pregnant. And it’s clear that the babies will never be accepted,” Daoud said. “I don’t know what the future would be for their babies. The girls and women don’t want them. They have suffered so much they just want to forget.”
The terrorists have been reported to give young girls to front line fighters as a reward for their efforts.
The 9-year-old has been flown to Germany to be taken care of by a medical charity.
Investigators have found that the co-pilot deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps.
The “black box” voice recordings have shown investigators that Andreas Lubitz, 28, was in total control of the plane and spent eight minutes descending the plane into a mountain.
“He voluntarily … allowed the loss of altitude of the plane, which he had no reason to do. He had … no reason to stop the pilot-in-command from coming back into the cockpit. He had no reason to refuse to answer to the air controller who was alerting him on the loss of altitude,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said to reporters.
Robin said that most of the passengers had no idea what was happening until the very end. The plane was descending at a speed where the entire craft was pulverized by the impact and death would have been instantaneous for everyone on board.
“Only towards the end do you hear screams,” he said. “And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous … the aircraft was literally smashed to bits.”
Police are searching the home of the co-pilot looking for any clues as to his motive for crashing the plane.
Two people are dead after a raid by an anti-terrorism team in Verviers, Belgium.
The group had connected to the Islamic terrorist group ISIS and had been working on Paris-style terrorist attacks within Belgium.
VTM News reported that federal Belgian police were able to take one suspect into custody near a train station as part of the operation.
A senior Belgian counter-terrorism official says that the operation in Verviers is just one of several anti-terror raids currently taking place in the country. The group reportedly had just returned from Syria where they had received ISIS training on carrying out terrorist attacks.
The attacks reportedly were planned in retaliation for coalition airstrikes against ISIS.
The official said under condition of anonymity that situations on Thursday with the group changed to the point Belgian forces had to stop surveillance and immediately carry out the raid.
German police are investigating an attack on an Israeli man in Berlin on New Year’s Eve by Germans who were singing anti-Semitic songs.
Witnesses say a group of young men were shouting anti-Semitic slogans and singing songs on a subway train. Shahak Shapira, 26, is an Israeli citizen who lives in Berlin and asked the group to stop singing the hate songs.
When the men refused to stop spewing their hate, Shapira recorded their actions on his cell phone.
He exited the train car at the next stop only to be followed by the men who shouted at him in both German and Arabic. They demanded that Shapira delete the video from his phone. When Shapira refused, the gang spat on him, beat him and then kicked him in the head when he fell to the ground.
Police say they are still looking for the attackers.
A former church is being transformed into the first synagogue in the German state of Brandenburg since 1938.
The former “castle church” in Cottbus, Germany was handed from Christian leader Ulrike Menzel to the Jewish Association of the State of Brandenburg. The facility will be renovated and then dedicated for use on January 27, 2015, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Menzel said during the transfer event that he was pleased to see the house of worship return to its intended use. The church that had met in the building had disbanded and the facility was used for social events during the last few years.
The synagogue in Cottbus was destroyed on Kristallnacht when Germans nationwide took Jewish property and synagogues. The site of that former synagogue in Cottbus is now the location of a department store.
The Jewish community formally reestablished in the city in 1998 and lists 350 members who are all former Soviet Union residents that fled for freedom to worship.
A United Nations medical official who tested positive for Ebola has arrived in Leipzig, Germany for isolation and treatment.
The medic is the second member of the U.N.’s medical team to contract the virus. The first member of the team infected died on September 25th.
“The man will be treated on an isolation ward… with strict security measures,” Dr Iris Minde, head of Leipzig’s St Georg clinic wrote in a press statement. “There is no danger of infection for other patients, relatives, visitors or the public.”
The clinic says their staff is fully trained in dealing with highly infectious diseases.
Meanwhile, two doctors who treated a Spanish nursing assistant who contracted Ebola from a priest who had been transported to Spain after his infection are under observation as a precaution. Neither the doctors nor the husband of the infected woman are showing signs of Ebola but remain quarantined.
Teresa Romero was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday and is the first person to catch the disease outside of Africa. Two other nurses who attended to the priest are in isolation and observation.
The death toll from the Ebola outbreak is closing in on 3,900.
A new study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics shows that the number of foreigners traveling to Switzerland to kill themselves has doubled in a four year period.
According to the study, 172 foreigners traveled to the country to end their lives in 2012 compared to 2009’s total of 86. Citizens of Germany and Great Britain make up the majority, over two-thirds of the total.
Switzerland has very liberal assisted suicide laws. The only requirement is that whoever assists in the death has no direct interest in the ending of the life, such as being in the victim’s will.
The rise of foreigners entering the country to end their lives raised enough concern among residents that in 2011 a ban on the practice was placed on the ballot but voted down.
People from 31 nations came to Switzerland to die. The median age of the victims was 69.
France and Italy saw large rises in the number of citizens who traveled to Switzerland to die.
Pope Francis spoke to a group of 50,000 German alter servers and gave them a surprising message. Instead of speaking of the Scriptures or some deep theological lesson, the Pope told the youths to get off the internet.
“Many young people waste too many hours on futile things,” the Pope said in a short speech to the altar servers. “Our life is made up of time, and time is a gift from God, so it is important that it be used in good and fruitful actions.”
The Pope also listed activities as watching TV soap operas, smartphones and other similar items as things that could pull them away from serving others and making a difference in their families and community.
Pope Francis also told the youths that it is very easy to lose track of time when you are working with electronic devices and before you realize it hours have passed with nothing constructive being done. He said that the time wasted on the internet and with electronics could be spent connecting to the Lord through prayer, meditation and study.
He called on the youths to create “a network not of wires, but of people.”
A new report shows anti-Semitism worldwide making a significant increase in the wake of the conflict in Gaza.
The footage of Hamas terrorists shooting rockets into Israel, the murder of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists, the tunnels into Israel that have been used for terror attacks have fallen on deaf ears in most countries because of media coverage only showing the impact on Palestinian civilians who are used as cover by terrorists.
The heavily Jewish section of Paris was looted and attacked as the mob showed “gas the Jews.” Synagogues and Jewish centers in Paris and other French cities were firebombed and Nazi symbols spray painted onto Jewish property.
Germany showed particularly nasty incidents including in Berlin where protesters would stand in front of the homes of Jewish residents and yell “Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight.” In Frankfurt, protesters carried signs saying “Jews are beasts.”
In the United States, the mainstream media ignored multiple instances of Jews being attacked and harassed. No major network covered the story of a Jewish student in Boston who was attacked by a woman saying that Jerusalem would be cleansed of the Jews while a crowd chanted that Jews better learn how to swim.
