About Me

I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

Instagram Shots

    See more

    More liked posts

    Escaping the train to Auschwitz On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later. In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in. They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance. Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water. “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says. (Source: BBC News)

    Escaping the train to Auschwitz

    On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later.

    In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in.

    They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance.

    Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water.

    “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Poland’s Jews: A forgotten history Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test. How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here. This was clearly seen last November with the premiere of the movie Poklosie (“Aftermath”), a fictional thriller that told the story of a Polish man who returns to his hometown and discovers a dark secret about its past. During the war, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people, including his own father, rounded up the town’s Jews, locked them in a building and set it on fire. In the last 10 years or so it has become widely known that massacres like this actually happened in several Polish towns, most notably in Jedwabne, north-eastern Poland, where Poles at the instigation of the Nazis murdered more than 300 Jews. (Source: BBC News)

    Poland’s Jews: A forgotten history

    Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test.

    How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here.

    This was clearly seen last November with the premiere of the movie Poklosie (“Aftermath”), a fictional thriller that told the story of a Polish man who returns to his hometown and discovers a dark secret about its past.

    During the war, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people, including his own father, rounded up the town’s Jews, locked them in a building and set it on fire.

    In the last 10 years or so it has become widely known that massacres like this actually happened in several Polish towns, most notably in Jedwabne, north-eastern Poland, where Poles at the instigation of the Nazis murdered more than 300 Jews.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Tears of a concentration camp survivor on 68th anniversary of Buchenwald liberation where Nazis killed 56,000 men  With tears in his eyes as he holds roses in his left hand, Petro Mischtschuk poignantly stands on the grounds of a Second World War concentration camp where more than 50,000 people lost their lives. The 87-year-old Ukrainian survivor of the appalling Buchenwald yesterday laid flowers at a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the camp outside Weimar, eastern Germany. Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war died in the camp between 1937 and 1945. (Source: The Daily Mail)

    Tears of a concentration camp survivor on 68th anniversary of Buchenwald liberation where Nazis killed 56,000 men 

    With tears in his eyes as he holds roses in his left hand, Petro Mischtschuk poignantly stands on the grounds of a Second World War concentration camp where more than 50,000 people lost their lives.

    The 87-year-old Ukrainian survivor of the appalling Buchenwald yesterday laid flowers at a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the camp outside Weimar, eastern Germany.

    Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war died in the camp between 1937 and 1945.

    (Source: The Daily Mail)

    The colour of darkness: Vivid pictures of first Nazi concentration camps give chilling insight into the dawn of the Holocaust These horrifying colour pictures show the conditions endured by the first victims of Hitler’s concentration camps. The camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor. The images, posted on Vintage Everyday, show the earliest victims of Hitler’s murderous regime and harrowingly chronicle what they were forced to endure. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA, SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organised numerous detention camps to incarcerate and torture their opponents. Read more.

    The colour of darkness: Vivid pictures of first Nazi concentration camps give chilling insight into the dawn of the Holocaust

    These horrifying colour pictures show the conditions endured by the first victims of Hitler’s concentration camps. The camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor.

    The images, posted on Vintage Everyday, show the earliest victims of Hitler’s murderous regime and harrowingly chronicle what they were forced to endure.

    In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA, SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organised numerous detention camps to incarcerate and torture their opponents.

    Read more.

    Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network twice as big as previously thought Researchers have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. The network of camps and ghettos set up by the Nazis to conduct the Holocaust and persecute millions of victims across Europe was far larger and systematic than previously believed, according to new academic research. Researchers conducting the bleak work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. The figure has shocked academics and more than doubles an earlier finding by the same team that up to 20,000 sites were used. It casts a disturbing new light on the sheer scale of the machinery of imprisonment and oppression put in place by the Nazis throughout Europe, from Italy to Russia. The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented. The editors of the vast project, which is being compiled from hundreds of scholars into seven volumes due to be published by 2025, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania. The work, whose latest findings caused surprise among Holocaust academics when they were presented in Washington in January, draws together previously disparate records from dozens of archives, memorial sites and research bodies to create the first comprehensive catalogue of the facilities. Read more here.

    Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network twice as big as previously thought

    Researchers have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death.

    The network of camps and ghettos set up by the Nazis to conduct the Holocaust and persecute millions of victims across Europe was far larger and systematic than previously believed, according to new academic research.

    Researchers conducting the bleak work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death.

    The figure has shocked academics and more than doubles an earlier finding by the same team that up to 20,000 sites were used. It casts a disturbing new light on the sheer scale of the machinery of imprisonment and oppression put in place by the Nazis throughout Europe, from Italy to Russia.

    The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented.

    The editors of the vast project, which is being compiled from hundreds of scholars into seven volumes due to be published by 2025, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania.

    The work, whose latest findings caused surprise among Holocaust academics when they were presented in Washington in January, draws together previously disparate records from dozens of archives, memorial sites and research bodies to create the first comprehensive catalogue of the facilities.

    Read more here.

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis. She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child. Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation. The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables. Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin. The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan. “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims. Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims. “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.” Read more here.

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named

    Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis.

    She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child.

    Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation.

    The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables.

    Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin.

    The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan.

    “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims.

    Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims.

    “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.”

    Read more here.

    Fury over artist who claims he used ash from Nazi concentration camp crematorium in his painting A Swedish artist has caused outrage after exhibiting artwork which he claims to have painted using ashes gathered in the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp. Carl Michael von Hausswolff stole the ashes from Majdanek concentration camp in Poland during a 1989 trip and over two decades later, mixed it with water and used it as paint. He has now been reported to the police for desecrating the remains of Majdanek’s Holocaust victims, under Swedish burial protection laws. Mr von Hausswolff visited Poland in 1989 to exhibit his art at a gallery not far from Lublin, a town near Majdanek. He says he was ‘gathering material for the exhibition’ when he visited the concentration camp. ‘I gathered some ashes from one of the cremation ovens, but did not use it for the exhibition – the material was too charged with the cruelties which had taken place.’ Not until 2010 did the artist decide to ‘do something’ with the ashes he had stolen from Majdanek and used it as paint by mixing it with water. The exhibited result has enraged art critics and provoked public outcry over the use of human remains as art. Author and translator Salomon Schulman called the artwork ‘nauseating, obsessed necrophilia’. With what he calls ‘posthumous disgust’, Mr Schulman asks: ‘Some of the ashes may be from one of my relatives? Maybe even a brother of my flesh?’ ‘It is repulsive beyond the extreme’, he told Swedish television. Read more here.

    Fury over artist who claims he used ash from Nazi concentration camp crematorium in his painting

    A Swedish artist has caused outrage after exhibiting artwork which he claims to have painted using ashes gathered in the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp.

    Carl Michael von Hausswolff stole the ashes from Majdanek concentration camp in Poland during a 1989 trip and over two decades later, mixed it with water and used it as paint.

    He has now been reported to the police for desecrating the remains of Majdanek’s Holocaust victims, under Swedish burial protection laws.

    Mr von Hausswolff visited Poland in 1989 to exhibit his art at a gallery not far from Lublin, a town near Majdanek. He says he was ‘gathering material for the exhibition’ when he visited the concentration camp.

    ‘I gathered some ashes from one of the cremation ovens, but did not use it for the exhibition – the material was too charged with the cruelties which had taken place.’

    Not until 2010 did the artist decide to ‘do something’ with the ashes he had stolen from Majdanek and used it as paint by mixing it with water.

    The exhibited result has enraged art critics and provoked public outcry over the use of human remains as art.

    Author and translator Salomon Schulman called the artwork ‘nauseating, obsessed necrophilia’.

    With what he calls ‘posthumous disgust’, Mr Schulman asks: ‘Some of the ashes may be from one of my relatives? Maybe even a brother of my flesh?’

    ‘It is repulsive beyond the extreme’, he told Swedish television.

    Read more here.

    Bodies of two Luftwaffe pilots that have lain in unmarked grave since 1940 to be relocated after historians finally identify them

    A campaign has been launched to move the bodies of two Luftwaffe pilots to a German war cemetery after their single, unmarked grave was discovered 72 years on.

    The airmen were buried in the same grave in a Kent churchyard after their two bombers were shot down during a raid on London in August 1940.

    Three days later another German bomber crashed in the area, resulting in the remains of four men to be buried in one coffin on top of the other two men.

    More than 20 years later the German War Graves Service had the remains of all its servicemen killed in Britain in World War Two exhumed, and interred at the Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery, in Staffordshire.

    But the two airmen - Oberleutnant Horst von der Groeben and Oberleutnant Gerhard Muller - were left behind as it was not realised their coffins lay underneath the top one.

    They have remained in the unmarked grave in Whitstable cemetery ever since.

    Two local historians have now unravelled the macabre mystery and have identified the unknown airmen through their identity disc numbers.

    After realising their names were not on the Cannock Chase Memorial, Joe Potter and Andy Saunders researched local records and archives and were able to pinpoint them to ‘War Grave Number 1’ at Whitstable.

    Now the family of Oblt von der Groeben, the two historians and the Whitstable Royal British Legion are calling on the authorities to move the bodies to Cannock Chase.

    Mr Potter said: ‘It is a rather bizarre and macabre mystery.

    Full story here.

    Nazi grave robbers stealing medals, equipment and BODY PARTS to sell

    Grave robbers are plundering the burial sites of thousands of German soldiers to feed the demand in Britain for Nazi memorabilia.

    Tens of thousands of troops from the Third Reich were killed in battlefields in east Europe during the Second World War. Alongside their fallen bodies were items such as dog tags, rifles, daggers and helmets.

    Organised gangs are now digging up the graves of the dead soldiers to make off with the valuable items. The trade in Nazi memorabilia is worth millions of pounds and Britain is one of a handful of European countries where it is still legal.

    Full story here.

    Poland hopes to identify remains of Auschwitz heroIn this photo taken Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012, an archeologist uncovers a skeleton during works at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland. More than a hundred skeletons of Poles murdered by the communist regime after World War II have been excavated from a secret mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery during recent digging works. Historians hope to identify among them the remains of Witold Pilecki who volunteered to be an Auschwitz inmate to secretly gather evidence of atrocities there. Photo: Alik Keplicz / AP WARSAW, Poland (AP) — It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime — tried on trumped-up charges and executed. Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki’s remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery. The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic nation to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies. “He was unique in the world,” said Zofia Pilecka-Optulowicz, paying tribute to her father’s 1940 decision to walk straight into a Nazi street roundup with the aim of getting inside the extermination camp. “I would like to have a place where I can light a candle for him.” More than 100 skeletons, mostly of men, have been dug up this summer. On one recent day, forensic workers and archaeologists wearing blue plastic gloves and masks were carefully scraping away at the soil and piecing together bones as if working on a jigsaw puzzle. The front of one skull had been blown away by bullets; another had apparently been bludgeoned; a skeleton showed evidence of multiple gunshot wounds. Full story here.

    Poland hopes to identify remains of Auschwitz hero

    In this photo taken Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012, an archeologist uncovers a skeleton during works at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland. More than a hundred skeletons of Poles murdered by the communist regime after World War II have been excavated from a secret mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery during recent digging works. Historians hope to identify among them the remains of Witold Pilecki who volunteered to be an Auschwitz inmate to secretly gather evidence of atrocities there. Photo: Alik Keplicz / AP

    WARSAW, Poland (AP) — It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime — tried on trumped-up charges and executed.

    Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki’s remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery. The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic nation to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies.

    “He was unique in the world,” said Zofia Pilecka-Optulowicz, paying tribute to her father’s 1940 decision to walk straight into a Nazi street roundup with the aim of getting inside the extermination camp. “I would like to have a place where I can light a candle for him.”

    More than 100 skeletons, mostly of men, have been dug up this summer. On one recent day, forensic workers and archaeologists wearing blue plastic gloves and masks were carefully scraping away at the soil and piecing together bones as if working on a jigsaw puzzle. The front of one skull had been blown away by bullets; another had apparently been bludgeoned; a skeleton showed evidence of multiple gunshot wounds.

    Full story here.

    Holocaust deniers who claim World War Two extermination camp Treblinka was not site of Jewish genocide proved wrong by...

    archaeologicalnews:

    A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka - scuppering the claims of Holocaust deniers who say it was merely a transit camp.

    Some 800,000 Jews were killed at the site, in north east Poland, during the…

    Gym slammed for using picture of Nazi death camp Auschwitz to promote weight loss… but owner says it’s been great for business A gym has come under fire for using a picture of a Nazi concentration camp - where millions of Jews were starved and gassed to death - to promote weight loss. The Circuit Factory, in Dubai, sparked controversy by using a photograph of Auschwitz to kick-start potential new members into losing a few pounds. It shows train tracks leading up to the death camp with the caption ‘Kiss your calories goodbye’ underneath. Wow. Now how’s *that* for bad taste?! You can read the rest of the article by clicking on the photograph.

    Gym slammed for using picture of Nazi death camp Auschwitz to promote weight loss… but owner says it’s been great for business

    A gym has come under fire for using a picture of a Nazi concentration camp - where millions of Jews were starved and gassed to death - to promote weight loss.

    The Circuit Factory, in Dubai, sparked controversy by using a photograph of Auschwitz to kick-start potential new members into losing a few pounds.

    It shows train tracks leading up to the death camp with the caption ‘Kiss your calories goodbye’ underneath.

    Wow. Now how’s *that* for bad taste?! You can read the rest of the article by clicking on the photograph.

    Musical ‘masterpiece’ captures horror of Auschwitz concentration camp

    Opera based on novel by a Catholic death camp survivor and composed by a Polish Jew comes to Britain at last

    An Auschwitz survivor who wrote a novel based on her experiences in the camp has told the Observer that only the opera based on her book,which is due to have its UK premiere at the English National Opera this week, can adequately capture the horror of her time there.

    Zofia Posmysz, a devout Catholic, was arrested aged 18 and tortured by the Gestapo before being sent to the death camp for “three years and 21 days”, merely for being with someone carrying Polish resistance leaflets. She said only her faith gave her the courage to survive, despite suffering the “greatest extremes of degradation”.

    Her semi-autobiographical novel, The Passenger, inspired the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg to write the opera, which he completed in 1968. Despite being hailed by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich as a “perfect masterpiece”, the opera was banned by the Soviet Union and it did not receive its world premiere until it was staged in Bregenz, Austria, last year.

    I can’t say that opera has ever really appealed to me, but this sounds like it is something quite special. The Passenger opens at the Coliseum, London, on 19th Sept for eight performances - for further details see eno.org and if you are interested in reading more about Zofia Posmysz’s story, then click here.

    Rudolf Hess exhumed from ‘pilgrimage’ grave… The grave holding the remains of Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess has been destroyed to stop it being used as a pilgrimage site by neo-Nazis. Hess’s bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, early on Wednesday. The remains were later cremated and are to be scattered at sea. Hess was captured after flying to Britain in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison. He killed himself in a Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93. As he requested in his will, he was buried in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred. The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored. But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave. Click the photo for the rest of the article…

    Rudolf Hess exhumed from ‘pilgrimage’ grave…

    The grave holding the remains of Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess has been destroyed to stop it being used as a pilgrimage site by neo-Nazis.

    Hess’s bones were exhumed at the graveyard in the town of Wunsiedel, southern Germany, early on Wednesday.

    The remains were later cremated and are to be scattered at sea.

    Hess was captured after flying to Britain in 1941 and sentenced to life in prison. He killed himself in a Berlin jail in 1987 at the age of 93.

    As he requested in his will, he was buried in the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where his family had a holiday home and where his parents were already interred.

    The local Lutheran church which supervises the cemetery gave its permission for the burial at the time, ruling that the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored.

    But they and local people have since become concerned by the number of far-right groups visiting the grave.

    Click the photo for the rest of the article…