WTIO31 PGTW 290900
MSGID/GENADMIN/JOINT TYPHOON WRNCEN PEARL HARBOR HI//
SUBJ/TROPICAL CYCLONE 02B (MORA) WARNING NR 007//
RMKS/
1. TROPICAL CYCLONE 02B (MORA) WARNING NR 007
01 ACTIVE TROPICAL CYCLONE IN NORTHIO
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS BASED ON ONE-MINUTE AVERAGE
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
—
WARNING POSITION:
290600Z — NEAR 17.7N 91.5E
MOVEMENT PAST SIX HOURS – 020 DEGREES AT 08 KTS
POSITION ACCURATE TO WITHIN 060 NM
POSITION BASED ON CENTER LOCATED BY SATELLITE
PRESENT WIND DISTRIBUTION:
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS – 055 KT, GUSTS 070 KT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
RADIUS OF 050 KT WINDS – 000 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
040 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
030 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
030 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
RADIUS OF 034 KT WINDS – 075 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
095 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
100 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
130 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
REPEAT POSIT: 17.7N 91.5E
—
FORECASTS:
12 HRS, VALID AT:
291800Z — 20.0N 91.7E
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS – 065 KT, GUSTS 080 KT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
RADIUS OF 050 KT WINDS – 045 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
040 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
045 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
035 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
RADIUS OF 034 KT WINDS – 100 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
120 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
125 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
100 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
VECTOR TO 24 HR POSIT: 005 DEG/ 14 KTS
—
24 HRS, VALID AT:
300600Z — 22.8N 91.9E
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS – 060 KT, GUSTS 075 KT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
DISSIPATING AS A SIGNIFICANT TROPICAL CYCLONE OVER LAND
RADIUS OF 050 KT WINDS – 030 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
030 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
030 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
030 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
RADIUS OF 034 KT WINDS – 090 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
115 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
125 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
095 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
VECTOR TO 36 HR POSIT: 010 DEG/ 15 KTS
—
36 HRS, VALID AT:
301800Z — 25.7N 92.6E
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS – 030 KT, GUSTS 040 KT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
DISSIPATED AS A SIGNIFICANT TROPICAL CYCLONE OVER LAND
—
REMARKS: 290900Z POSITION NEAR 18.3N 91.5E.
TROPICAL CYCLONE 02B (MORA), LOCATED APPROXIMATELY 277 NM SOUTH
OF CHITTAGONG, HAS TRACKED NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD AT 08 KNOTS OVER
THE PAST SIX HOURS. ANIMATED MULTISPECTRAL SATELLITE IMAGERY DEPICTS
A TROPICAL CYCLONE THAT IS GRADUALLY BECOMING BETTER ORGANIZED, WITH
A LOW-LEVEL CIRCULATION CENTER (LLCC) DISPLACED SLIGHTLY TO THE EAST
OF THE DEEPEST CONVECTION. A 290400Z AMSU 89GHZ IMAGE ALSO SHOWS THE
DEEP CONVECTION TO THE WEST OF THE LLCC. THE LLCC IS PLACED WITH
MODERATE CONFIDENCE USING A 290316Z ASCAT PASS, WHICH INDICATES THAT
THE STRONGEST WINDS ARE LOCATED IN THE WESTERN AND SOUTHERN PORTIONS
OF THE CIRCULATION. THE CURRENT INTENSITY OF 55 KNOTS IS BASED ON
DVORAK ESTIMATES OF T3.5 FROM BOTH PGTW AND KNES. THE UPPER-LEVEL
ENVIRONMENT CONTINUES TO SUPPORT GRADUAL INTENSIFICATION, WITH ONLY
MODERATE EASTERLY VERTICAL WIND SHEAR (15-20 KNOTS) AND GOOD
POLEWARD AND WESTWARD OUTFLOW. TROPICAL CYCLONE MORA JOGGED TO THE
RIGHT OF THE FORECAST TRACK OVER THE LAST 6 HOURS, BUT A GENERAL
TRACK TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHEAST IS EXPECTED AS THE SYSTEM TRACKS
AROUND A SUBTROPICAL RIDGE SITUATED OVER SOUTHEAST ASIA. THE SYSTEM
SHOULD REACH A PEAK INTENSITY OF 65 KNOTS IN APPROXIMATELY 12 HOURS,
FOLLOWED BY LANDFALL NEAR CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH IN AROUND 24 HOURS.
RAPID WEAKENING IS EXPECTED AFTER LANDFALL, WITH THE SYSTEM
DISSIPATING BY TAU 36. DYNAMIC MODEL GUIDANCE REMAINS IN TIGHT
AGREEMENT LENDING HIGH CONFIDENCE TO THE JTWC OFFICIAL FORECAST
TRACK. MAXIMUM SIGNIFICANT WAVE HEIGHT AT 290600Z IS 20 FEET. NEXT
WARNINGS AT 291500Z, 292100Z, 300300Z AND 300900Z.
//
NNNN
TROPICAL CYCLONE ADVISORY RSMC – TROPICAL CYCLONES, NEW DELHI TROPICAL STORM ‘MORA’ ADVISORY NO. SIX ISSUED AT 0900 UTC OF 29TH MAY 2017 BASED ON 0600 UTC CHARTS OF 29TH MAY 2017
THE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ OVER EASTCENTRAL BAY OF BENGAL MOVED NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD DURING PAST 06 HOURS WITH A SPEED OF 15 KMPH AND LAY CENTRED AT 0600 UTC OF TODAY, 29TH MAY, 2017 OVER EASTCENTRAL BAY OF BENGAL NEAR LATITUDE 17.8ºN AND LONGITUDE 91.4ºE, ABOUT 610 KM SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF KOLKATA(42807) AND 500 KM SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF CHITTAGONG(41978). THE SYSTEM IS LIKELY TO INTENSIFY FURTHER INTO A SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM DURING NEXT 12 HOURS. IT IS VERY LIKELY TO MOVE NORTH-NORTHEASTWARDS AND CROSS BANGLADESH COAST BETWEEN LONGITUDE 91.0ºE AND 92.0ºE NEAR CHITTAGONG AROUND 30TH MAY 2017 FORENOON.
OBSERVED AND FORECAST TRACK POSITIONS AND INTENSITY OF THE SYSTEM ARE GIVEN BELOW:
DATE/TIME(UTC)
POSITION
(LAT. ºN/ LONG. ºE)
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED
SURFACE WIND SPEED (KMPH)
CATEGORY OF CYCLONIC
DISTURBANCE
29.05.2017/0600
17.8/91.4
80-90 GUSTING TO 100
CYCLONIC STORM
29.05.2017/1200
18.9/91.5
90-100 GUSTING TO 110
SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM
29.05.2017/1800
20.1/91.5
100-110 GUSTING TO 120
SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM
30.05.2017/0000
21.3/91.6
110-120 GUSTING TO 130
SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM
30.05.2017/0600
22.8/91.7
110-120 GUSTING TO 130
SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM
30.05.2017/1800
25.4/92.2
55-65 GUSTING TO 75
DEEP DEPRESSION
31.05.2017/0600
27.7/93.0
30-40 GUSTING TO 50
DEPRESSION
STORM SURGE GUIDANCE: THE STORM SURGE OF HEIGHT OF ABOUT 1 TO 1.5 METER ABOVE ASTRONOMICAL TIDES IS LIKELY TO INUNDATE OVER LOW LYING AREAS OF BANGLADESH COAST BETWEEN SITAKUND AND UTTAR JALDI AT THE
Contact: Phone: (91) 11-246524844 FAX: (91) 11-24623220 e-mail :cwdhq2008@gmail.com
TIME OF LANDFALL.
ACCORDING TO SATELLITE IMAGERY, INTENSITY OF THE SYSTEM IS T3.0. THE
MAXIMUM SURFACE SUSTAINED SURFACE WIND (MSW) IS 45 KNOTS GUSTING TO 55
KNOTS. THE ESTIMATED CENTRAL PRESSURE IS ABOUT 992 HPA. A BUOY NEAR
LATITUDE 17.6º N AND LONGITUDE 89.1ºE REPORTED MEAN SEA LEVEL PRESSURE
(MSLP) OF 1003.1 HPA AND MSW 320/21 KNOTS. ANOTHER BUOY NEAR LATITUDE
20.3º N AND LONGITUDE 92.0ºE REPORTED MSLP OF 1000.0 HPA. THE MULTISATELLITE
DERIVED WINDS SUGGEST HIGHER WINDS OF EASTERN SECTOR.
THE CONVECTION HAS FURTHER ORGANISED IN PAST 12 HOURS AND SHOWS
CURVED BAND PATTERN. BROKEN LOW/MEDIUM CLOUDS WITH EMBEDDED INTENSE
TO VERY INTENSE CONVECTION OVER BAY OF BENGAL BETWEEN LATITUDE 14.00N
TO 22.00N LONGITUDE 85.00E TO 97.00E. MINIMUM CTT IS ARROUND – 90.00C. THE SEA
SURFACE TEMPERATURE AROUND THE SYSTEM CENTRE IS 30-31ºC. THE OCEAN
THERMAL ENERGY IS ABOUT 100 KJ/CM2. THE VERTICAL WIND SHEAR IS MODERATE
TO HIGH AROUND THE SYSTEM CENTRE AND IS AROUND 15-25 KTS, VORTICITY IS
AROUND 200 X10-5 S-1. LOWER LEVEL CONVERGENCE IS OF THE ORDER OF 50 X10-5
S-1. UPPER LEVEL DIVERGENCE IS ALSO OF THE ORDER OF 50 X10-5 S-1 AROUND THE
SYSTEM CENTRE. THE UPPER TROPOSPHERIC RIDGE AT 200 HPA LEVEL RUNS
ALONG 17.0ºN IN ASSOCIATION WITH ANTI-CYCLONIC CIRCULATION TO THE
NORTHEAST OF SYSTEM CENTRE. THE SYSTEM IS MOVING NORHNORTHEASTWARDS
AS IT LAYS WESTERN PERIPHERY OF THIS ANTI-CYCLONIC
CIRCULATION. IT WOULD CONTINUE TO MOVE SO FOR NEXT 24-36 HOURS AND
THEREAFTER EASTERLY COMPONENT OF THE MOVEMENT WILL INCREASE
GRADUALLY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE TROUGH IN WESTERLY OVER
EASTERN INDIA. CURRENTLY SYSTEM IS BEING STARRED BY THE DEEP LAYER
WIND OF 200-850 HPA. THE MEAN DEEP LAYER WIND BETWEEN 200-850 HPA IS
170DEGREE/7 KNOTS. THE ANIMATION OF TOTAL PERCEPTIBLE WATER IMAGERY
INDICATE CONTINUOUS WARM AND MOIST AIR ADVECTION FROM SOUTHEAST
SECTOR. THE LATEST MICROWAVE IMAGERY FROM SSMIS AT 0001 UTC OF 29TH
INDICATE DEEP CONVECTIVE BANDING WRAPPING TOWARDS THE CENTRE FROM
NORTHEAST.
MADDEN JULIAN OSCILLATION INDEX LIES IN PHASE 3 WITH AMPLITUDE
MORE THAN 1. IT WOULD CONTINUE IN PHASE 3 WITH AMPLITUDE MORE THAN 1
DURING NEXT 3 DAYS. CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE SUPPORTING
FOR FURTHER INTENSIFICATION AND NORTH-NORTHEASTWARDS MOVEMENT OF
THE SYSTEM. DYNAMICAL STATISTICAL MODELS ALSO SUGGEST FURTHER
INTENSIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM. CONSIDERING THE MOVEMENT, MOST OF THE
MODELS ARE UNANIMOUS ABOUT NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD MOVEMENT DURING
NEXT 48 HRS.
(NARESH KUMAR)
SCIENTIST ‘D’
RSMC, NEW DELHI
Contact: Phone: (91) 11-246524844 FAX: (91) 11-24623220 e-mail :cwdhq2008@gmail.com
SPECIAL WEATHER BULLETIN: SL. NO. 12 (TWELVE), Date: 29.05.2017 (Local Times)
THE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ (ECP 990 HPA) OVER NORTH BAY AND ADJOINING EAST CENTRAL BAY MOVED SLIGHTLY NORTHWARDS FURTHER OVER THE SAME AREA, INTENSIFIED INTO A SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM (NEAR LAT 18.8°N AND LONG 91.3°E) AND WAS CENTRED AT 06 PM TODAY (THE 29 MAY 2017) ABOUT 385 KMS SOUTH OF CHITTAGONG PORT, 305 KMS SOUTH OF COX’S BAZAR PORT, 450 KMS SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF MONGLA PORT AND 370 KMS SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF PAYRA PORT. IT IS LIKELY TO INTENSIFY FURTHER, MOVE IN A NORTHERLY DIRECTION AND MAY CROSS CHITTAGONG – COX’S BAZAR COAST BY MORNING OF 30 MAY 2017.
UNDER THE PERIPHERAL INFLUENCE OF SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ GUSTY/SQUALLY WIND WITH RAIN/ THUNDER SHOWERS IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE OVER NORTH BAY AND THE COASTAL DISTRICTS AND MARITIME PORTS OF BANGLADESH.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WIND SPEED WITHIN 64 KMS OF THE CYCLONE CENTRE IS ABOUT 89 KPH RISING TO 117 KPH IN GUSTS/SQUALLS. SEA WILL REMAIN HIGH NEAR THE SYSTEM.
MARITIME PORTS OF CHITTAGONG AND COX’S BAZAR HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO LOWER DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER SEVEN BUT INSTEAD HOIST GREAT DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER TEN (R) TEN.
COASTAL DISTRICTS OF CHITTAGONG, COX’S BAZAR, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS WILL COME UNDER DANGER SIGNAL NUMBER TEN (R) TEN.
MARITIME PORTS OF MONGLA AND PAYRA HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO LOWER DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER FIVE BUT INSTEAD HOIST GREAT DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER EIGHT (R) EIGHT.
COASTAL DISTRICTS OF BHOLA, BORGUNA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGHERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS WILL COME UNDER DANGER SIGNAL NUMBER EIGHT (R) EIGHT.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ THE LOW-LYING AREAS OF THE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF COX’S BAZAR, CHITTAGONG, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR, BORGUNA, BHOLA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGHERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS ARE LIKELY TO BE INUNDATED BY STORM SURGE OF 4-5 FEET HEIGHT ABOVE NORMAL ASTRONOMICAL TIDE.
THE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF COX’S BAZAR, CHITTAGONG, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR, BORGUNA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, BHOLA, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS ARE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE WIND SPEED UP TO 89-117 KPH IN GUSTS/ SQUALLS WITH HEAVY TO VERY HEAVY FALLS DURING THE PASSAGE OF THE SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM.
ALL FISHING BOATS AND TRAWLERS OVER NORTH BAY AND DEEP SEA HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO REMAIN IN SHELTER TILL FURTHER NOTICE.
N Indian Ocean: TSR Storm Alert issued at 29 May, 2017 6:00 GMT
Tropical Storm MORA is currently located near 17.7 N 91.5 E with maximum 1-min sustained winds of 55kts (63 mph). MORA is forecast to affect land to the following likelihood(s) at the given lead time(s): Yellow Alert Country(s) or Province(s)     Myanmar         probability for CAT 1 or above is 20% within 12 hours         probability for TS is 95% within 12 hours     Bangladesh         probability for CAT 1 or above is 10% within 12 hours         probability for TS is 95% within 12 hours     India         probability for TS is 90% in about 24 hours Yellow Alert City(s) and Town(s)     Chittagong (22.3 N, 91.8 E)         probability for TS is 90% in about 24 hours     Cox’s Bazar (21.4 N, 92.5 E)         probability for TS is 90% in about 24 hours     Sittwe (20.1 N, 93.1 E)         probability for TS is 85% within 12 hours     Comilla (23.4 N, 91.2 E)         probability for TS is 80% in about 24 hours     Barisal (22.7 N, 90.3 E)         probability for TS is 70% in about 24 hours     Kyaukpyu (19.4 N, 93.6 E)         probability for TS is 65% within 12 hours     Dhaka (23.7 N, 90.4 E)         probability for TS is 60% in about 24 hours     Cheduba (18.8 N, 93.7 E)         probability for TS is 55% within 12 hours
Green Alert Country(s) or Province(s)     Bhutan         probability for TS is 35% in about 36 hours Green Alert City(s) and Town(s)     Khulna (22.9 N, 89.6 E)         probability for TS is 45% in about 24 hours     Shillong (25.6 N, 91.9 E)         probability for TS is 45% in about 36 hours     Dispur (26.1 N, 91.8 E)         probability for TS is 40% in about 36 hours     Imphal (24.8 N, 93.9 E)         probability for TS is 35% in about 36 hours
Note that
Yellow Alert (Elevated) is CAT 1 or above to between 10% and 30% probability, or TS to above 50% probability.
Green Alert (Low) is TS to between 31% and 50% probability.
CAT 1 means Severe Cyclonic Storm strength winds of at least 74 mph, 119 km/h or 64 knots 1-min sustained.
TS means Tropical Storm strength winds of at least 39 mph, 63 km/h or 34 knots 1-min sustained.
Deadly Cyclone Mora hits Bangladesh with high winds and rain – BBC News
(30 May 2017 1105 UTC)
Cyclone Mora has hit the south-eastern coast of Bangladesh, killing at least five people.
Most of them were killed by falling trees in the districts of Cox’s Bazar and Rangamati, officials told the BBC.
Hundreds of houses were fully or partly damaged, the officials said. Significant damage is reported in refugee camps housing Rohingya Muslims from neighbouring Myanmar.
The authorities have moved hundreds of thousands of people to shelters.
Cyclone Mora made landfall at 06:00 local time (00:00 GMT) between the fishing port of Cox’s Bazar and the city of Chittagong, with winds of up to 117 km/h (73mph), the country’s meteorological department said.
Low-lying areas of Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong and many other coastal districts were “likely to be inundated” by a storm surge of 1.2m-1.5m (4-5ft) above normal levels, the department had warned.
People have been evacuated to shelters, schools and government offices.
Fishing boats and trawlers have been advised to remain in shelters. Flights in the area have been cancelled.
About 20,000 houses in refugee camps for Rohingya were damaged, community leader Abdus Salam told AFP news agency.
“In some places, almost every shanty home made of tin, bamboo and plastic has been flattened,” Mr Salam added. “Some people were injured, but no-one is dead.”
Large camps have been set up in Cox’s Bazar for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar.
A clear picture is still not available due to poor communication with many affected areas, Bangladeshi officials told the BBC.
A number of houses were also damaged in western Myanmar.
Cyclone Mora will move northwards past Chittagong, weakening as it moves further inland and downgrading from a Category One hurricane to a tropical storm, tracking website Tropical Storm Risk forecasts.
Parts of eastern India are expected to be affected later on.
The Bay of Bengal is prone to storms and Bangladesh is often hit by severe weather during the monsoon season, from the middle to the end of the year.
Last year, Cyclone Roanu hit coastal Bangladesh, leaving at least 24 people dead.
MARITIME/SHIPPING
WTIN01 DEMS 291118
QUADRANT WIND DISTRIBUTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH CYCLONIC STORM “MORA” OVER BAY OF BENGAL
DATE AND TIME BASED UPON WHICH FORECAST IS PREPARED:
PRESENT DATE AND TIME: 290600 UTC
PRESENT POSITION: 17.8 0N/91.40 E
POSITION ACCURATE TO 40 KM
PRESENT MOVEMENT (DDD/FF) PAST SIX HOURS: 010/07 KT
PRESENT WIND DISTRIBUTION:
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS: 45 KT, GUSTS 55 KT
RADIUS OF MAXIMUM WIND 33 NM
WINDS VARY IN EACH QUADRANT
RADII ARE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THE QUADRANT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
FORECASTS:
06 HRS, VALID AT:
291200Z 18.9°N /91.50 E
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS: 50 KT, GUSTS 60 KT
RADIUS OF 028 KT WINDS:
140 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
160 NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
120 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
140 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
RADIUS OF 034 KT WINDS:
105 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
105NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
80 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
90 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
RADIUS OF 050 KT WINDS:
50 NM NORTHEAST QUADRANT
50NM SOUTHEAST QUADRANT
45 NM SOUTHWEST QUADRANT
50 NM NORTHWEST QUADRANT
Marine Warning SPECIAL WEATHER BULLETIN: SL. NO. 12 (TWELVE), Date: 29.05.2017
THE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ (ECP 990 HPA) OVER NORTH BAY AND ADJOINING EAST CENTRAL BAY MOVED SLIGHTLY NORTHWARDS FURTHER OVER THE SAME AREA, INTENSIFIED INTO A SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM (NEAR LAT 18.8°N AND LONG 91.3°E) AND WAS CENTRED AT 06 PM TODAY (THE 29 MAY 2017) ABOUT 385 KMS SOUTH OF CHITTAGONG PORT, 305 KMS SOUTH OF COX’S BAZAR PORT, 450 KMS SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF MONGLA PORT AND 370 KMS SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF PAYRA PORT. IT IS LIKELY TO INTENSIFY FURTHER, MOVE IN A NORTHERLY DIRECTION AND MAY CROSS CHITTAGONG – COX’S BAZAR COAST BY MORNING OF 30 MAY 2017.
UNDER THE PERIPHERAL INFLUENCE OF SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ GUSTY/SQUALLY WIND WITH RAIN/ THUNDER SHOWERS IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE OVER NORTH BAY AND THE COASTAL DISTRICTS AND MARITIME PORTS OF BANGLADESH.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WIND SPEED WITHIN 64 KMS OF THE CYCLONE CENTRE IS ABOUT 89 KPH RISING TO 117 KPH IN GUSTS/SQUALLS. SEA WILL REMAIN HIGH NEAR THE SYSTEM.
MARITIME PORTS OF CHITTAGONG AND COX’S BAZAR HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO LOWER DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER SEVEN BUT INSTEAD HOIST GREAT DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER TEN (R) TEN.
COASTAL DISTRICTS OF CHITTAGONG, COX’S BAZAR, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS WILL COME UNDER DANGER SIGNAL NUMBER TEN (R) TEN.
MARITIME PORTS OF MONGLA AND PAYRA HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO LOWER DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER FIVE BUT INSTEAD HOIST GREAT DANGER SIGNAL NUBMER EIGHT (R) EIGHT.
COASTAL DISTRICTS OF BHOLA, BORGUNA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGHERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS WILL COME UNDER DANGER SIGNAL NUMBER EIGHT (R) EIGHT.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM ‘MORA’ THE LOW-LYING AREAS OF THE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF COX’S BAZAR, CHITTAGONG, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR, BORGUNA, BHOLA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGHERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS ARE LIKELY TO BE INUNDATED BY STORM SURGE OF 4-5 FEET HEIGHT ABOVE NORMAL ASTRONOMICAL TIDE.
THE COASTAL DISTRICTS OF COX’S BAZAR, CHITTAGONG, NOAKHALI, LAXMIPUR, FENI, CHANDPUR, BORGUNA, PATUAKHALI, BARISAL, BHOLA, PIROZPUR, JHALOKATHI, BAGERHAT, KHULNA, SATKHIRA AND THEIR OFFSHORE ISLANDS AND CHARS ARE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE WIND SPEED UP TO 89-117 KPH IN GUSTS/ SQUALLS WITH HEAVY TO VERY HEAVY FALLS DURING THE PASSAGE OF THE SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM.
ALL FISHING BOATS AND TRAWLERS OVER NORTH BAY AND DEEP SEA HAVE BEEN ADVISED TO REMAIN IN SHELTER TILL FURTHER NOTICE.
Do not use any information on this site for life or death decisions. All information is intended as supplementary to official sources. Kindly refer to your country’s official weather agency/government website for local warnings, advisories and bulletins.
Swedish police say at least 15 people have been injured when a fire broke out overnight at one of the country’s largest refugee centers outside of Vanersborg in southwestern Sweden. Police spokesman Tommy Nyman says two people were taken to the hospital to be treated for injuries after jumping out of a second-floor window to escape the blaze and 15 people in all were treated for smoke inhalation. He said police received the alarm at 4:15 a.m. Sunday and all 158 people in the building were evacuated. Firefighters extinguished the flames. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Nyman said police would open an investigation.
Denmark has suspended all rail links with Germany after police stopped hundreds of migrants at the border. Danish police also closed a motorway between the two countries when some asylum seekers began walking north after being forced off a train. They say their destination is Sweden.
As the EU struggles with a major migrant crisis, the European Commission has proposed that 120,000 additional asylum seekers should be shared out between members, using binding quotas.
Denmark’s DSB rail operator said trains to and from Germany had been suspended for an indefinite period because of exceptional passport checks.
Two trains carrying more than 200 migrants are being held in Rodby, a major port with ferry links to Germany. Danish police say many migrants are refusing to leave the trains because they do not want to be registered in Denmark.
Police also closed part of the E45 motorway – the main road link between Germany and Denmark – after about 300 migrants left another train and set off on foot towards Sweden near the border town of Padborg.
Sweden has become a top destination for refugees after it promised to issue residency papers to all Syrian asylum seekers. Denmark’s new centre-right government has promised to get tough on immigration.
Since its election in June it has slashed benefits for new arrivals and restricted the right to residency. About 3,000 migrants have entered the country since the weekend. Prime Minister Lars Lokke-Rasmussen said Denmark was under pressure as asylum seekers arrive on their way to Sweden.
“This clearly shows that what we are facing right now is not only a refugee problem, it is also a migration problem,” he said. A surge of migrants fleeing conflict and hardship in Africa and the Middle East has pushed north through Europe over the past few weeks.
Many of those escaping the civil war in Syria have travelled from Turkey across the sea to Greece, through Macedonia and Serbia, and then to Hungary from where they aim to reach northern Europe.
On Wednesday European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced plans for a “swift, determined and comprehensive” response through a quota system.
In a “state of the union” annual address, he said tackling the crisis was “a matter of humanity and human dignity”. “It’s 160,000 refugees in total that Europeans have to take into their arms and I really hope that this time everyone will be on board,” Mr Juncker told the European Parliament. The new plans would relocate 60% of those now in Italy, Greece and Hungary to Germany, France and Spain.
The numbers allocated to each country would depend on GDP, population, unemployment rate and asylum applications already processed. Countries refusing to take in migrants could face financial penalties.
Thursday, 10 September, 2015 at 03:18 (03:18 AM) UTC RSOE
MSF first established a specialized surgery project in Amman in 2006 to care for victims of the war in Iraq, which it later expanded to receive patients from Iraq, Gaza, Yemen, and Syria. This year, MSF enhanced the project by moving into another hospital structure and renovating it.
“In this new and expanded facility, our highly trained and specialized medical teams from the region are able to improve the quality of care provided to our patients,” said Marc Schakal, MSF head of mission in Amman. “Our highest patient numbers are currently from Syria, followed by Yemen and Iraq. The people of these countries have already witnessed and experienced so much suffering.”
The MSF Specialized Hospital for Reconstructive Surgery provides a comprehensive care package for its patients, which includes physiotherapy and psychosocial support alongside surgical interventions. Patients are also given accommodation, now available on site in the new location, and financial travel assistance to reach the hospital and return home after or in between treatments, if their care plan is staggered over time. Patients often arrive with a family member to assist their care and recovery if needed.
Since 2006, MSF has admitted more than 3,700 patients and conducted over 8,238 surgeries at its project in Amman. Cases are identified by a network of medical liaison officers in the patients’ countries of origin. However, these numbers represent only a very small fraction of the needs for specialized surgery in the region.
“While they may receive initial care for their wounds, our patients do not usually have access to such specialized surgical procedures in their home countries, which are mostly at war,” said Dr. Ashraf Al Bostanji, head surgeon. “These hard-to-reach services include orthopedic, maxillofacial, and plastic reconstructive surgery, which we provide at no cost to the patients and lower running costs than the private sector.”
The hospital is staffed by local and international experts in their fields.
“The surgical techniques adopted in this project are world-class,” said Dr. Ashraf. “For instance, our team conducts microsurgeries, which involves three main types of surgeries: free flaps, nerve grafting, and hand surgery. What makes this project stand out is implementing such a high level of technical expertise for war victims in the humanitarian medical field.”
MSF has conducted more than 134,620 physiotherapy procedures and 45,660 psychosocial sessions in Amman since 2006. Nahla Fadel, a patient from Iraq, arrived in 2013 and underwent 24 surgeries.
“When I arrived, the mobility of my severely burned hands was so limited that I couldn’t comb the hair of my child or even feed him,” she said. “Now, after two years of surgeries with MSF, my hand mobility is almost back to normal.”
MSF has been present in Jordan since 2006. In 2013 it set up a mother and child health care project in Irbid, which also offers mental health support, and an emergency trauma project in Ramtha close to the Syrian border.
MSF also runs clinics in Irbid for noncommunicable diseases and a step-down unit in Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees. For the past two years it has been sending medical donations including surgical kits to health care facilities in the South of Syria.
MSF is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from health care. MSF offers assistance to people based on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender, or political affiliation. (Source: MSF)
A ship carrying 700 migrants has capsized off the Libyan coast, the Italian news agency Ansa reported on Sunday, adding that many are feared dead.
Coastguard vessels rescued 28 people after the accident was reported around midnight, it said, giving no source for its report. The Times of Malta said migrants rushed to one side of the boat to alert a passing vessel, prompting the ship to capsize. The accident occurred some 200 kilometres south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Times of Malta reported. The rescue operation continues.
Sunday, 19 April, 2015 at 11:49 (11:49 AM) UTC RSOE
Other News Reports
15:22, UK, Sunday 19April 2015
Search As Hundreds Of Boat Migrants Feared Dead
The capsizing of a boat, with up to 700 people on board, may be the “worst massacre ever seen in the Mediterranean”, says the UN.
Hundreds of people are feared drowned after a fishing boat trying to smuggle migrants to Europe capsized off Libya, the UN refugee agency says.
A major search and rescue operation by air and sea is taking place after the vessel, with up to 700 on board, went down about 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.
It is believed to have overturned when migrants moved to one side of the overcrowded 20-metre long boat in a desperate bid to get off and be rescued as a merchant ship approached.
At least 28 people were saved in the Mediterranean, while there were other reports of 50 survivors.
The alarm was raised at about midnight and the Italian coastguard and navy are continuing to search for survivors.
Mediterranean migrants: Hundreds feared dead after boat capsizes
Media captionAerial footage from the Italian coastguard shows recovery workers scouring Libyan waters
Hundreds of people are feared to have drowned after a boat carrying up to 700 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, the Italian coastguard says.
A major rescue operation is under way after the vessel, thought to be just 20m (70ft) long, capsized at midnight local time in Libyan waters south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.
So far 28 people have been rescued and 24 bodies retrieved.
At least 900 other migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean this year.
The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, said the latest sinking could amount to the largest loss of life during a migrant crossing to Europe.
Italian naval and coastguard ships, the Maltese Navy and cargo vessels, along with three helicopters, are all involved in the rescue operation, 130 miles (210km) off the coast of Lampedusa and 17 miles (27km) from the Libyan coast.
The Italian coastguard’s spokesman told the BBC the operation was still focused on search and rescue, “but in time it will be a search [for bodies] only”.
Mediterranean migrants
13,500
Migrants rescued 10-17 April
900
Migrants died attempting the crossing between 1 Jan and 15 April
31,500 Migrants have arrived from North Africa so far this year
218,000 Estimated to have crossed the Mediterranean in 2014
3,500 Migrants died attempting the crossing last year
AFP
The migrants reportedly fell overboard when they rushed to draw the attention of the passing Portuguese merchant ship King Jacob, causing their ship to capsize.
The Italian coastguard says the 28 survivors and 24 bodies are now on its vessel the Gregoretti.
Lampedusa is scrambling to react to the latest horror in the seas off its coastline. Much of the harbour has emptied. Coastguard, customs and fishing boats all left before dawn to help with the rescue.
Marta Bernardini works for the charity Mediterranean Hope, which is based on the island and works with migrants. She told the BBC: “We are very sad. It’s so difficult for us who live and work in Lampedusa every day, to know that a lot of people die in this way, in the Mediterranean Sea.”
Lampedusa is the most southerly point of Italy – nearer Africa than the Italian mainland. Locals say that since January – when the EU took control of patrolling Europe’s maritime borders – between 9,000 and 10,000 migrants have arrived on the island.
There are currently 1,000 migrants in a detention centre on Lampedusa – an island of 5,000 people.
Maltese PM Joseph Muscat said rescuers were “literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water”.
Mr Muscat told the BBC: “What is happening now is of epic proportions. If Europe, if the global community continues to turn a blind eye… we will all be judged in the same way that history has judged Europe when it turned a blind eye to the genocide of this century and last century.”
Pope Francis expressed his “deepest sorrow” over the sinking and appealed to the international community to prevent such incidents from happening again.
Rescuers have so far found few bodies or survivors An Italian coastguard official looks at the rescue area from the Rome operations room
“These are men and women like us who seek a better life. Hungry, persecuted, injured, exploited, victims of wars. They were looking for happiness,” he said.
It was the Pope’s second appeal in less than 24 hours. On Saturday, he backed a call by Italy for the EU to intervene to stop more lives from being lost.
The EU has been criticised for ending its maritime rescue operation, Mare Nostrum, last year. Some EU members said they could not afford it and expressed concerns that it was encouraging more migrants. The EU now runs a more limited border control operation called Triton.
While Mare Nostrum had a monthly budget of €9.5m ($10.3m; £9.6m) and covered much of the Mediterranean, Triton’s budget is less than a third of that at €2.9m ($3.1m), and its remit extends only into Maltese and Italian waters.
The migrants tried to get the attention of this passing Portuguese vessel Pope Francis urged international leaders to act decisively to prevent further tragedies
The UNHCR said that migrant boats had carried 13,500 people into Italian waters last week alone.
Justin Forsyth, chief executive of aid group Save the Children, urged the EU to restart rescue operations.
“The scale of what is happening in the Mediterranean is not an accident, it is a direct result of our policy,” he said.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the recent wave of migrant boat disasters was “unacceptable”.
“We have said too many times ‘never again’. Now is time for the European Union as such to tackle these tragedies without delay,” she said.
EU foreign ministers will meet to discuss the migrant issue on Monday.
Last year, a record 170,000 people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East made the perilous crossing to Italy. Thousands died making the journey.
Recent Mediterranean migrant disasters
Oct 2013: More than 360 people, mostly Eritreans and Somalis, die as their boat sinks off Lampedusa.
Sept 2014: At least 300 migrants drown off Malta when people smugglers ram a boat after its occupants refuse to move to a smaller one. Survivors said it was “mass murder”.
Feb 2015: At least 300 migrants feared drowned as four dinghies get into trouble after leaving Libyan coast in bad weather.
EU plans meeting after 700 migrants drown off Libyan coast
Sunday 19 April 2015 15.07
1 of 2
Personnel in the control room room of the Italian Coast Guard in Rome help coordinate relief effortsA boat transporting migrants arrives in the port of Messina yesterday after a rescue operation at sea
The European Union said it is organising an urgent meeting of foreign and interior ministers after the latest migrant boat disaster in the Mediterranean was feared to have killed up to 700 people.
In a statement, the European Commission said: “For as long as there is war and hardship in our neighbourhood near and far, people will continue to seek a safe haven on European shores.
Italy PM: Don’t leave us to deal with migrant crisis alone
Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has urged other European countries not to leave his country alone in dealing with the increasing number of migrants being trafficked across the Mediterranean.
Speaking after a shipwreck which is estimated to have left hundreds of people dead, Renzi said Italy often works alone in saving migrants by both blocking trafficking from Libya and rescuing those that are left stranded at sea.
Bid to save at least 1,000 migrants in Mediterranean
The Italian coastguard is conducting a major rescue operation to try to save more than 1,000 migrants in difficulty on the Mediterranean Sea.
Search teams have helped get at least 130 people to safety so far and are working to reach more, officials said.
There were reports that rescuers were threatened by armed men who approached them in a speedboat from the Libyan coast.
Earlier this week at least 300 migrants perished in the Mediterranean Sea
They had been travelling in dinghies which ran into trouble during stormy weather after leaving the coast of Libya.
Sunday’s rescue attempts took place in the seas south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, officials said.
Armed assailantsAccording to Italy’s Transport Ministry, four men with Kalashnikov rifles sped out from the Libyan shore during the rescue and ordered the coastguard to return a boat that had been emptied of migrants.
The UNHCR says almost 3,500 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe in 2014, making it the world’s most dangerous sea crossing for migrants trying to enter the European Union.
More than 200,000 people were rescued during the same period.
Many were plucked from the sea as a result of an Italian operation known as Mare Nostrum, which was launched in October 2013 in response to a tragedy near Lampedusa in which 366 migrants died.
That operation has now ended, leading the UNHCR to warn EU leaders to expect more deaths.
Some European countries, including the UK, have said a rescue service for migrants could encourage refugees to continue making the crossing.
The EU now runs a border control operation with fewer ships, called Triton, which only covers waters close to Europe’s coast.
Thousands of Syrian refugees are facing freezing temperatures and difficult weather conditions as snowstorms have hit areas where they’ve set up camps.
Families have been fleeing their homes in Syria because of fighting between the President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebel groups who want him out.
Many of them set up makeshift homes near the border with Lebanon. Over the past week the weather has become harsh with temperatures dropping so low icicles have formed on the huts.
Friday, 13 December, 2013 at 04:57 (04:57 AM) UTC RSOE
Other Reports
worldbulletin.net:
9 more Syrian children die from cold
Thousands face imminent death due to lack of access to basic necessities during the civil war.
(Image: worldbulletin.net)
World Bulletin / News Desk
“Nine more children including 4 newborn babies died from the cold, the Syrian Network for Human Rights announced Friday.
Doctors in the region warn that worsening weather conditions could lead to more deaths as the lack of access to basic necessities has left thousands facing imminent death. The Syrian opposition issued an urgent call for help to international institutions.
The Middle Eastern nation braves the wintry cold for a third time during the civil war which began in March 2011.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the more than three-year old conflict in Syria and over two million Syrians are now registered as refugees in neighboring countries, Turkey. Lebanon and Iraq, according to the UN.” – worldbulletin.net
(The following images: worldbulletin.net)
United Nations voices concern for refugees caught in winter storm in Lebanon
It is called Alexa a storm sweeping across Syria and Lebanon bringing in high winds and freezing temperatures. It is the start of what is predicted to be the worst winter for many years.
The United Nations said it is “extremely concerned” for the plight of the 2.2 million refugees living outside Syria and the millions more displaced inside the country.
In Lebanon humanitarian groups are struggling to meet overwhelming needs.
Syrian refugee Jined Al-Hussein explained his plight. “It is cold in the rain and we have nothing. Hunger and cold weather and there is nothing. I have been here for a week.”
Abdel-Karim Alibrahim is from Aleppo and such are the conditions he says he would prefer to return there.
“The tents blew about letting the rain and snow come in on the little children. We would have preferred to stay in Syria with the shelling.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is prioritising aid to refugees at high altitude where the snow is at its worst and said as long as people are in tents there is only so much they can do.
Related:
Cold Weather Camping and Hypothermia (Advice from US Scouts)
Lebih dari seribu pencari suaka tewas saat mencoba untuk sampai ke Australia dengan perahu . Tapi berapa banyak dari mereka bisa diselamatkan ? Pencarian Australia dan otoritas penyelamatan berdiri terdakwa dari penundaan yang tidak perlu , mengabaikan panggilan marabahaya dan melewati tanggung jawab Indonesia , yang tidak dilengkapi untuk melakukan operasi penyelamatan . Jess Bukit menyelidiki .
Sejak tahun 2001 , hampir 1.400 pencari suaka telah tenggelam antara Indonesia dan Australia . Lebih dari 300 telah tenggelam dalam 12 bulan terakhir saja . Mengapa begitu banyak pencari suaka tenggelam dalam perjalanan mereka ke Australia , dan kita bisa berbuat lebih banyak untuk menyelamatkan mereka ?
Latar Belakang Briefing telah melihat keadaan sekitar tenggelamnya empat kapal selama dua tahun terakhir , di mana lebih dari 400 pencari suaka tenggelam . Apa yang muncul adalah pola mengganggu penundaan , menutup- up dan kemacetan komunikasi .
Pada bulan Juni 2012, sebuah kapal nelayan sepanjang 20 meter dengan nama kode yang SIEV 358 tenggelam setengah jalan antara Indonesia dan Pulau Christmas . Perahu itu sudah penuh sesak dengan lebih dari 200 laki-laki dan anak laki-laki , sebagian besar warga Pakistan dan Afghanistan yang melarikan diri dari Taliban dan Al Qaeda . Penumpang telah membuat 16 panggilan untuk membantu otoritas keselamatan maritim Australia selama dua hari . Penelepon semakin tertekan mengatakan kapal rusak di satu sisi dan mengambil air , dan memohon untuk diselamatkan .
Pada awalnya saya tidak bisa percaya bahwa perahu kami telah tenggelam , tapi aku melihat mainan yang datang dari dalam perahu , melainkan datang dengan air. Ketika datang dekat dengan saya , saya menyadari bahwa tidak, itu bukan mainan . Itu masih kecil .
Esmat Adine , Hazara pencari suaka
Tapi tidak ada bantuan datang . Perahu itu sudah di Indonesia penelusuran dan zona penyelamatan , yang mencakup sebagian besar laut antara Indonesia dan Pulau Christmas , sehingga otoritas keselamatan maritim Australia mengalihkan tanggung jawab dengan mitra di Indonesia , BASARNAS .
Tiga puluh dua jam setelah panggilan darurat pertama dibuat , orang yang membuatnya – dan 101 lainnya – tewas .
Pengacara George Newhouse , yang telah bekerja pada tiga inquests coronial tenggelamnya kapal suaka , kata mendelegasikan ke BASARNAS tidak dapat diterima .
“Bagaimana bisa seorang otoritas keselamatan di tangan hati nurani yang baik alih tanggung jawab untuk menyelamatkan nyawa orang untuk sebuah organisasi yang mereka tahu tidak mampu memenuhi peran itu?” Katanya .
Kantor BASARNAS Indonesia di Jawa Barat , yang merespon kapal dalam kesusahan di pantai yang biasa digunakan oleh para penyelundup manusia , putus asa sakit-siap untuk melakukan laut terbuka menyelamatkan . Kepala operasi di sana , Rochmali , mengatakan semua yang mereka miliki mereka adalah perahu karet dan kapal-kapal nelayan tradisional, yang tidak bisa pergi lebih dari lima mil laut dari pantai .
Artikel ini merupakan bagian dari latar belakang yang lebih besar Briefing penyelidikan . Dengarkan laporan lengkap Jess Hill pada hari Minggu di 8:05 atau gunakan tautan di atas setelah siaran podcast .
Mantan diplomat Tony Kevin , yang telah menjadi kritikus vokal pencarian Australia dan otoritas penyelamatan sejak 353 orang tenggelam di perahu yang dikenal sebagai SIEVX , lebih langsung dalam kutukannya terhadap otoritas keselamatan maratime Australia .
” Apa yang menjadi perhatian saya sangat sekarang adalah bukti dari doktrin sistemik , terutama di dalam Otorita Keselamatan Maritim Australia ( AMSA ) – apa yang Anda sebut budaya sistemik skeptisisme dari pencari suaka klaim marabahaya . Sebuah semangat ” Kami lebih baik menunggu dan melihat apa yang terjadi ini, jika mereka benar-benar dalam kesulitan , karena kita sangat sering bahwa mereka tidak tahu ” . ‘
AMSA sangat menolak pernyataan ini dari Tony Kevin . Namun, pertanyaan tentang kapan panggilan dianggap panggilan darurat asli berada di jantung pemeriksaan coronial baru-baru ini ke para pencari suaka yang meninggal pada SIEV 358 .
Tapi ini bukan satu-satunya suaka kematian di laut Australia bisa dicegah .
Di tengah malam pada tanggal 17 Desember 2011, sebuah kapal pencari suaka yang disebut Barokah meninggalkan pantai Jawa dengan sekitar 250 pria, wanita dan anak-anak di atas kapal. Salah satunya adalah etnis Hazara pria , Esmat Adine . Perahu itu begitu penuh sesak , Adine bahkan tidak bisa menemukan tempat untuk duduk . Barokah adalah hanya 40 mil laut dari Indonesia ketika itu runtuh .
” Pada awalnya saya tidak bisa percaya bahwa perahu kami telah tenggelam , ” kenang Adine . “Tapi saya melihat mainan yang datang dari dalam perahu , melainkan datang dengan air. Ketika datang dekat dengan saya , saya menyadari bahwa tidak, itu bukan mainan . Itu masih kecil . Itu adalah anak bernama Daniel . Daniel adalah dengan ibunya , mereka duduk di depan saya , di samping saya, sementara kami datang dengan bus . Ketika saya melihat tubuh Daniel , aku menyadari bahwa perahu kami telah tenggelam , dan tidak ada harapan lagi bagi kita untuk hidup . ‘
Delapan jam kemudian , pada pukul 3 sore , sebuah perahu nelayan yang lewat menemukan sekitar seratus orang di laut lepas , sangat menempel ke puing-puing . Itu hanya bisa menyelamatkan 34 orang . Adine berteriak kepada orang-orang di dalam air , ” Bersabarlah – kami akan membawa Anda lebih banyak kapal , dan mereka akan menyelamatkan kamu . ”
Di Canberra malam itu , lembaga Australia menyadari Barokah itu tenggelam . Mereka mengatakan kepada pihak berwenang Indonesia , karena perahu itu dalam pencarian mereka dan zona penyelamatan .
Beberapa bulan kemudian , petugas bea cukai akan menceritakan Perkiraan Senat mendengar bahwa Indonesia awalnya menolak tawaran Australia untuk membantu upaya pencarian dan penyelamatan .
Tapi insiden waktu resmi, yang Fairfax diperoleh berdasarkan undang-undang kebebasan informasi , mengungkapkan bahwa BASARNAS , cari di Indonesia dan lembaga penyelamatan , telah meminta AMSA untuk mengkoordinasikan penyelamatan respon – AMSA menolak .
Selama dua hari , sedangkan laki-laki , perempuan dan anak-anak berjuang untuk bertahan hidup dalam gelombang hingga enam meter , Indonesia dan Australia tidak melakukan apa pun .
Akhirnya , pada 19 Desember , BASARNAS bertanya lagi untuk bantuan . Kali ini , AMSA setuju , dan dikirim aset angkatan laut dan Bea Cukai ke TKP .
Tapi itu sudah terlambat . Dua ratus dan satu orang tewas .
Pada bulan April tahun ini , pencari suaka lagi yang tersisa untuk tenggelam sebagai AMSA dan BASARNAS gagal untuk berkolaborasi efisien . Dilansir dari Indonesia , ABC koresponden George Roberts mengatakan , ” Semua kita sudah bisa mengetahui sejauh – kecuali hal telah berubah sejak malam – AMSA terakhir tidak membantu belum atau pihak berwenang Australia tidak membantu dan Indonesia belum hadn ‘ t meluncurkan pencarian sendiri . ‘
“Jadi , tampaknya menjadi jenis yang sama dari stand-off kami tahun lalu di mana Australia tahu ada masalah, Indonesia tidak mampu untuk dapat membantu dan sebagai hasilnya orang yang tersisa di dalam air selama berjam-jam . ”
Lima puluh delapan orang masih hilang .
Pada bulan Juni tahun ini , perahu lain tenggelam , kali ini mudah dijangkau dari kapal patroli Australia . Sebuah pesawat Bea Cukai terlihat itu 28 mil laut dari pulau – hanya empat kilometer di luar zona intersepsi nya . Sekitar 55 pria, wanita , dan anak-anak terlihat di geladak , melambai pesawat.
Setelah acara tersebut , pemerintah mengklaim perahu tidak menunjukkan tanda-tanda visual marabahaya . Tapi dokumen resmi dari Pusat AMSA Rescue Koordinasi ( RCC ) , yang Fairfax lagi diperoleh berdasarkan undang-undang kebebasan informasi , menunjukkan bahwa Bea Cukai telah melaporkan perahu sebagai ‘ mati di dalam air ‘ , dan telah khawatir tentang perahu dari saat mereka melihat itu .
Seperti jam berlarut-larut , laksamana yang bertanggung jawab atas Komando Perlindungan Perbatasan menjadi semakin prihatin untuk keselamatan kapal , dan meminta RCC untuk memulai pencarian . Tapi AMSA menolak , mengatakan mereka masih menilai bukti. Ketika puing-puing terlihat , AMSA mengatakan , pengawasan kemudian akan pindah ke fase SAR .
Dua hari kemudian , kapal itu ditemukan , terbalik . Tiga belas mayat ditemukan . Tidak ada yang selamat .
Dengarkan laporan lengkap Jess Hill hari Minggu ini , ketika Background Briefing akan mengambil melihat forensik di belakang layar di AMSA dan bertanya : apakah kematian lebih dari 400 orang mudah dicegah ?
A flash flood that swept through Kalma camp for displaced persons in South Darfur in Saturday night has reportedly killed 36 people, including nine children. Elsewhere in the region, floods and disease have killed three children and at least two adults, while wreaking extensive destruction to homes and property.
The spokesman for the Association of Displaced Persons and Refugees of Darfur, Hussein Abu Sharati, told Radio Dabanga that in addition to the dead and wounded in Kalma camp, the flood completely destroyed 1,567 houses.
He appealed to humanitarian organisations “to expedite emergency assistance in the form of tarpaulins and tents to the displaced who are now living in pools of stagnant water”, he said.
A sheikh of the camps in Saraf Omra in North Darfur reported to Radio Dabanga that three children have died “due to, disease, fever and diarrhoea”.
He said that Saturday’s rains led to the destruction of about 2,000 homes in the camps, as well as demolishing several sanitary facilities. “Dozens of families are still in the open without shelter, food or medicines,” he said, also appealing to humanitarian organisations for urgent assistance.
Another person died in Malah locality in North Darfur. Sheikh Adam Amin told Radio Dabanga that Idris Mahmoud Gulab perished on Saturday and flash floods destroyed about 60 houses in Malah.
He told Radio Dabanga that heavy rains caused damage to five schools, a hospital and the salt works Malha, as well as three schools in the village of Marega, and the Um Ajaja agricultural project. Amin said that the water swept Gulab away in one of the valleys in the region and his body was only found on Sunday.
Monday, 12 August, 2013 at 03:53 (03:53 AM) UTC RSOE
Other Reports
Sudan: UN and Partners Coordinate Aid for 150,000 People Affected By Flooding
12 August 2013
United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners are coordinating closely with the Government of Sudan to assist close to 150,000 people get food, water and shelter following heavy rains that began early this month.
“More rains are expected in the coming days and the estimated number of affected people is likely to rise further as rains continue and as more information becomes available,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
At least 26,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, OCHA said, noting initial estimates of the damage in the eight affected states.
The UN and its partners have provided a range of emergency relief items, including tents, plastic sheeting, blankets, water cans, buckets and mosquito nets from its emergency stockpiles in Khartoum state. They also provided mobile clinics, drinking water, and sanitation services.
“Other emergency support is currently being mobilized, particularly food, shelter, water, sanitation, hygiene and health services,” OCHA said.
Over 150,000 people have already been affected by the flooding, according to the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, the Khartoum State Commission for Voluntary and Humanitarian Work, the Government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), among other sources.
OCHA stressed that the UN and its partners remain committed to assisting flood-affected communities and supporting the Government’s relief efforts throughout the country
Floods in Sudan have killed at least 15 people in the past two weeks and left almost 100,000 more homeless, officials said. More than 20,000 houses have been destroyed or badly damaged after heavy rains pounded suburbs of the capital Khartoum.Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane reports.
Kalma, Sudan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kalma is a relocation camp in the Darfur region of Sudan. It is located 17 kilometers outside of Nyala, Sudan.[1]It is estimated that there are over 90,000 residents in the camp.[2] Most if not all the residents are there because of the violence caused by the Darfur conflict.
A boat carrying as many as 170 suspected asylum seekers bound for Australia has sunk off the south coast of Indonesia, with up to 60 people feared dead or missing, Australian media reported on Wednesday.
The latest mishap at sea involving boat people came less than a week after Australia slammed the door on would-be refugees with a deal to send all boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea for assessment and eventual settlement.
As many as 170 people were on board the vessel, which broke up in heavy seas late on Tuesday, News Ltd reported.
More than 100 people, mostly from Iran and Sri Lanka, were rescued by fisherman in the area overnight, it said.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) confirmed that a rescue operation was underway, without providing further information.
“Indonesian authorities are coordinating the rescue of that incident. AMSA is not involved at this stage,” a spokeswoman for the authority said. Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue (Basarnas) was not immediately available for comment.
Wednesday, 24 July, 2013 at 04:01 (04:01 AM) UTC RSOE
Other Reports
Al Jazeera:
Deaths after refugee boat sinks off Indonesia
Three people confirmed dead and others missing after asylum-seeker boat bound for Australia breaks up off coast of Java.
Three people are confirmed drowned and more deaths are feared after an asylum-seeker boat bound for Australia sank off West Java in Indonesia.
Australian media reported that the boat was carrying up to 170 people, mostly refugees from Sri Lanka and Iran, when it broke up and sank in heavy seas on Tuesday evening.
Indonesian authorities said that they had found 157 people alive and four dead, and searches were ongoing on Wednesday for others. They said the passengers were from Iran, Sri Lanka and possibly Iraq.
“We don’t know exactly how many were on board, so we’re focusing on searching for any more that may be out there,” Bandung search and rescue chief Rochmali told AFP early on Wednesday, adding the figure would likely be between 100 and 200.
“We will just focus on ensuring they’re well and making sure no one else is still at sea,” he said.
The Sydney Daily Telegraph, reporting from Java, said the engine of the boat started smoking and taking on water shortly after departure.
A man calling himself Soheil told the newspaper that he was the sole survivor of a group of 61 Iranians who set off from the fishing village of Cidaun.
Canberra’s new asylum policy
Hundreds have drowned making the same journey to Australia. Only a few days ago four people died in a boat that sank off Christmas Island, Australia.
The latest disaster on Wednesday came just days after Canberra announced a hardline new plan to send all unauthorised arrivals to its shores to Papua New Guinea.
Asylum-seekers arriving in Australian waters will now be sent to the Manus Island processing centre in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the Pacific nation for assessment, with no cap on the number that can be transferred.
They will not have chance to settle in Australia and will only allowed to live in Papua New Guinea if their asylum claims are approved.
‘Hollow and hypocritical’
Human rights groups have expressed outrage at Australia’s decision.
The Refugee Council of Australia said on Tuesday that the arrangement would exacerbate the region’s challenges with people movement by undermining efforts to improve refugee protection for those who most needed it.
Paul Power, the council’s chief executive, said that Australia could not outsource its Refugee Convention responsibilities to a much poorer neighbour and remain credible in advocating that other nations improve protection standards for refugees.
“By unreasonably shifting its responsibilities for asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea through this Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA), Australia’s international advocacy for responsibility sharing has been exposed as hollow and hypocritical,” Power said in a written statement.
“This arrangement is without precedent in the world. It cannot possibly be presented as an example of regional co-operation because it is little more than a wealthy country paying a much weaker neighbour to take on its international responsibilities to people seeking asylum.” ” – aljazeera
At least three people, two of them children, died on Tuesday, when a boat carrying would-be asylum seekers to Australia sunk in Indonesia waters. An official said more than 150 survivors had been rescued, mostly from Iran and Iraq, but it was unclear how many more might be missing.
15 Sri Lankan nationals were given refugee status in the United Kingdom, as a result of the work of Solicitor Kulasegaram Geetharthanan. In a Freedom of Information request, it was found that the 15 deportees managed to escape back to Britain between the end of the Civil War in 2009 and September 2012.
They claim that they were tortured by security forces in Sri Lanka, though this claim has been disputed by Tory (Conservative) Ministers in the UK.
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. It is this event which we now refer to as The Holocaust or the Shoah, a variation on a Hebrew word.
The Nazis spread their hatred through the use of propaganda and legislation designed to deny human rights to Jews and used centuries of anti-semitism as their foundation. By the end of the Holocaust, 6 million Jewish men, women and children had been murdered in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration and extermination camps, and many millions more were affected by the Nazis’ extreme policies.
As soon as the Nazis came to power they introduced laws and legislation intended to deny Jews the freedom of movement, work and other basic rights. Boycotts of Jewish doctors, lawyers and shops began in 1933 and by 1935 Jews were not allowed to join the civil service or the army. The introduction of the Nuremberg laws in September 1935 further increased Jewish marginalisation. Jews were banned from marrying non-Jews and their citizenship was removed including their right to vote. As time progressed, more restrictions were brought in and Jews were barred from all professional occupations and Jewish children were prohibited from attending public schools. In 1938, further laws decreed that men must take the middle name ‘Israel’ and women ‘Sarah’, all German Jews would have their passports marked with a ‘J’
On 9 November 1938 the Nazis initiated pogroms (an organised persecution of a particular group) against the Jews in all Nazi territories. It was a night of vandalism, violence and persecution that many have since described as ‘the beginning of the Holocaust’. 91 Jews were murdered, 30,000 were arrested and 191 synagogues were destroyed. This night became known as Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass, so called because of the smashed glass which covered the streets from the shops which were looted.
» listen to the testimony of Holocaust survivors such as Dr Martin Stern.
» find out about the Nazis final solution to annihilate all of European Jewry.
1919 – German Workers’ Party (later, Nazi Party) established.
1921 – Adolf Hitler becomes Party Chairman.
1921-1922 – Period of growth in support for the Nazis due to the appeal to young unemployed men who were suffering due to the economic crisis under the Weimar Republic.
1922 – Inspired by the National Fascist Party in Italy, Hitler introduced the straight-armed salute, which became synonymous with the Nazi party, and is still used by Neo-Nazi and Fascist groups today.
1923 – The Nazi Party carried out an unsuccessful coup against the government which resulted in imprisonment for Hitler. Whilst incarcerated Hitler wrote his manifesto Mein Kampf in which he outlined his ideology on a true ‘Aryan’ race and expressed his violent anti-semitism.
1923-27 – the Nazi Party continued to gain popularity.
1929 – By this point, the Nazi Party had approximately 130,000 members. The Nazis gained support by implanting the idea that the ongoing financial crisis, which saw unemployment rise and businesses fail was due to Jewish financiers, building on existing anti-semitism.
1933 – With over 400,000 party members, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Once in office, he quickly secured almost unlimited power through manipulation and terror, though he remained publicly respectful to the President, Paul Von Hindenburg. When the latter died in 1934 Hitler became Fuhrer. Governmental practice was changed, with a law being passed which allowed the Nazis to pass laws without parliamentary approval. They later banned all other political parties, turning Germany into a one-party state.
Kindertransport & Refugees
The Kindertransport
The Kindertransport was a unique humanitarian programme which ran between November 1938 and September 1939. Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland to Great Britain.
Immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933 the persecution of Jews began – this reached a pre-war peak with Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass) on 9/10 November 1938. 267 synagogues were destroyed, 100 people were killed, all remaining Jewish stores in the Reich were destroyed and almost 30,000 people were taken to concentration camps.
Sir Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, agreed that to speed up the immigration process by issuing travel documents on the basis of group lists rather than individual applications. Strict conditions were placed upon the entry of the children. Jewish and non-Jewish agencies promised to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child would have a guarantee of £50 to finance his or her eventual re-emigration.
The Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, later known as the Refugee Children’s Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organising, and transporting the children. On 25 November, after discussion in the House of Commons British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service. Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting these possible foster homes and reporting on conditions. They did not insist that prospective homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes.
The first Kindertransport from Berlin departed on 1 December, and the first from Vienna on 10 December. In March 1939, after the German army entered Czechoslovakia, transports from Prague were hastily organised. Trains of Polish Jewish children were also arranged in February and August 1939.
The last group of children from Germany departed on 1 September 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland and provoked Great Britain, France, and other countries to declare war. The last known Kindertransport from the Netherlands left on 14 May 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany.
After the war ended many of the children stayed in Britain or emigrated to the newly formed state of Israel, America, Canada or Australia. Most of the children had been orphaned since leaving their homes, losing their families in the Ghettos or camps they had escaped.
Refugees
The Jewish refugees who fled to Britain before the outbreak of war in 1939 to escape Hitler came from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. They were the first sizable group of refugees in the successive waves of immigration that flowed into Britain from the middle decades of the last century. By 1939, Britain was playing host to over 60,000 some 50,000 of whom settled permanently. They were joined after 1945 by a smaller group of Jews who had survived the Holocaust in Europe.
These refugees sought asylum from racial, religious and political persecution; even though Nazi measures against the Jews had not by 1939 escalated into the attempt at total extermination witnessed during the wartime Holocaust. The vicious and systematic discrimination to which Jews were subjected made life intolerable for them even before 1939.
The admission of Jewish refugees from Central Europe was opposed by sections of the press, by right-wing political forces, by groups like Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and by those arguing for the preservation of ‘British jobs’ at a time of high unemployment against the perceived threat of imported foreign labour. The refugees had their supporters in liberal circles and among those whose compassion was aroused by the plight of the Nazis’ victims. Only after the intensification of Nazi persecution of the Jews that took place in 1938/39 did Britain accept larger numbers of refugees, admitting some 50,000 in the last eighteen months before the outbreak of war, including some 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children who came on Kindertransport.
The pre-war refugees from Germany were drawn largely from the Jewish middle classes. Well educated, cultured and often with professional qualifications or experience, they had mostly been well integrated into the societies of their native lands, and they continued on the path of assimilation in Britain. After the war most took British nationality and settled down to build new lives for themselves and their families.
They largely preserved their German-language culture and their ‘Continental’ identity, while integrating broadly successfully into British society. The skills, enterprise and education that they brought with them ensured that they contributed significantly to British life.
Ghettos & Deportation
Ghettos
During the Nazi regime of hatred, ghettos were a central step in the process of control, dehumanisation, and mass murder of the Jews and Gypsies.
Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and as a result, the UK and other Western European countries declared war. Thus, the Second World War began – but the initial fighting in Poland lasted only a few weeks, as Poland’s old-fashioned army was quickly defeated by the modern, advanced German forces. In spring 1940 the Nazis established ghettos in the larger towns and cities across Poland.
The Germans regarded the establishment of ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options to realise the goal of removing the Jewish population, which in turn formed the ‘Final Solution’.
The largest ghetto in Poland was Warsaw, where 400,000 Jews were crowded into 1.3 square miles of the city. Other ghettos in Poland included those in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Many thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east.
The ghettos were specially selected areas where Jews were forced to live. Some had walls built around them, others were marked out by barbed wire. They were nearly always in the poorest areas of town and desperately cramped with poor sanitation. As time went on, food restrictions were introduced and terrible conditions led to hundreds of thousands dying from disease or malnutrition. Men, women and children were forced to leave their homes taking only the possessions they could carry and move into overcrowded houses and rooms, where their movement was strictly prohibited. Conditions in the ghettos were appalling, where families were crowded together without adequate supplies of food or water. Many people died from starvation, disease and casual executions carried out by the Nazis.
All Jewish inhabitants of the ghettos were forced to wear a Star of David, making them instantly recognisable to the Nazi authorities. Many Jews were used as forced labour in factories and businesses outside of the ghetto. Daily life in the ghettos was administered by Nazi-appointed Judenraete (Jewish Council). Ghetto police carried out the orders of the Nazis, assisting with deportations, punishment and oppression.
Deportations
After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 the Nazis stepped up their policy against those they hated through murder on an industrial scale. By December 1941 over 1.5 million Jews had been killed by beatings, starvation or mass shootings. Camps were established as soon as the Nazis came to power and those who were considered to be opponents of the regime were imprisoned and treated with great brutality.
The first concentration camp was established at Dachau on 23 March 1933. Following Kristallnacht huge numbers of Jews were imprisoned in camps simply because they were Jews. As the Nazis captured more territory the camp system was greatly expanded and used as a tool in the creation of the racial state.
The Wannsee Conference (20/01/1942) attended by German SS and State Officials saw the formulation of the attempted mass-deportation of European Jews to extermination camps that existed or were being constructed in German-occupied Poland. If successful this ‘Final Solution’ would see the extermination of Jews, not only in Nazi-occupied countries, but throughout Ireland, Great Britain, Sweden and Turkey. Deportation on this scale required organisation on an industrial scale and included many Government departments – the Ministry of Transportation to arrange train schedules and routes, the Order of Police to direct and manage the deportation and the Foreign Office to organise cross-border travel for Jews in allied countries. The co-ordination of these deportations showed how ‘normal’ hatred had become.
It is generally accepted that the Nazis attempted to disguise their intent, referring to the removal of Jews from ghettos to extermination camps as ‘resettlement in the East’. Jews would be rounded up from the ghettos and made to prepare for their ‘resettlement’ taking with them few of their most valuable possessions if they were able.
The Germans used freight and passenger trains for the deportations. No food or water was provided for those on the trains, despite being sealed into packed freight cars with little or no room to sit or lay down – those inside endured intense heat during the summer and freezing temperatures during the winter. Aside from a bucket, there was no sanitary facilities, adding to the indignity faced by those being deported. Many of those packed onto these trains died on route to the camps through starvation or over-crowding.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi extermination camp, where transports such as these arrived on a daily basis from virtually every Nazi-occupied country in Europe.
Life in the Camps
The first concentration camp was established at Dachau on 23 March 1933. As the Nazis captured more territory, the camp system was greatly expanded and used as a tool in the creation of a single-race state. In total, the Nazis created approximately 20,000 camps – including transit, forced labour, and extermination camps throughout German-occupied countries.
Camp inmates were subject to forced labour, overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, starvation and cruel treatment with many thousands dying.
The Nazis extended the camp system to include 6 extermination camps: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The mobile killing units which were originally used to kill inmates were expanded with the development of gas chambers.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Arrival in the camp started with a selection process – men, women and children were removed from the transports, which arrived daily and had their valuables taken away. Men were separated from women and children. A Nazi physician would quickly assess whether each person was healthy enough to survive forced labour, and based on this visual inspection, individuals were sent to the camps or to the gas chambers. The disabled, elderly, pregnant women, babies, young children or the sick, stood little chance of surviving this selection.
Those who were selected for death were led to the gas chambers, and, in order to prevent panic, some victims were told they were going to the showers to remove the lice from their bodies. They were made to hand over any remaining valuables and remove all of their clothes. After being ushered into the gas chambers, the doors would be shut and bolted. In some extermination centres, carbon monoxide was pumped into the chambers, and in others, a toxic insecticide called Zyklon-B. The poison took up to 20 minutes to kill those in the chambers. Camp prisoners were then forced by the SS guards to remove the corpses from the chambers and to remove hair, gold teeth and fillings. The corpses were then burned in ovens within the crematoria or were buried in mass graves.
Bergen Belsen
Bergen Belsen was set up in 1940 as a Prisoner of War camp until 1943, when it was divided into the prisoners’ camp and the ‘Star Camp’ in which prisoners classed as valuable and whom the Nazis planned to exchange with the Allies for German civilians. Few prisoners were exchanged. Bergen-Belsen also served as a collection camp for sick and injured prisoners transported from other concentration camps. They were housed in a separate section, the so-called hospital camp. Bergen Belsen was also the destination of survivors of death marches from other concentration camps. It is estimated there were over 60,000 prisoners in Belsen by April 1945. Approximately 35,000 prisoners died of typhus, malnutrition and starvation in the first few months of 1945.
Many Nazi concentration camps were built as forced labour camps, supplying cheap manual labour to local industries. Work was hard and treatment was brutal. Not working quickly or hard enough, whilst being starved, was punishable by death.
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt (often referred to as Terezin) was set up as a transit camp. Its main purpose was to serve as a transit camp for European Jews on their way to Auschwitz. Conditions were incredibly harsh. In a space previously inhabited by 7,000 Czechs, now over 50,000 Jews were gathered. Food was scarce, punishment by beatings or death was the norm. Terezin supplied slave labour to local industries.
Terezin was publicised by the Nazis as a place of high culture – many artists, musicians and others from the arts were held there prior to deportation. But the camp served as a much more sinister propaganda exercise. Under pressure from the international community, the Nazis permitted the International Red Cross to visit the ‘transit camp’ in July 1944. An intensive period of deportations took place prior to the visit, and the camp was ‘beautified’ – gardens were planted, concerts were held and a propaganda film was created. The hoax worked and the International Red Cross were satisfied with the treatment of the prisoners. After the visit, deportations resumed.
Badge system
Although the symbols worn by prisoners differed from camp to camp, the Nazis used the wearing of badges to differentiate between the prisoners in camps. The wearing of badges and prisoner numbers signified the absolute removal of human rights of an individual.
The badges sewn onto prisoner uniforms enabled SS guards to identify the alleged grounds for incarceration, although these did differ from camp to camp, it’s generally accepted that:
Yellow star or triangle – Jewish prisoner
Green triangle – Criminals
Red triangle – Political prisoners
Black triangles – Roma & Sinti (Gypsies), ‘asocials’, (nonconformists, vagrants, Lesbians)
Pink triangles – Gay men
Purple triangles – Jehovah’s Witnesses
Prisoners also had the first initial of the place they came from on their badges if they were non-German, and a variety of colours if they fell into a number of categories – (ie a Jewish political prisoner would have a yellow and red star).
We look to survivor stories to tell us more about what life was like in the camps.
Liberation, Resistance & Rescuers
Resistance
Jews responded to the ghetto restrictions with a variety of resistance efforts. Ghetto residents frequently engaged in so-called illegal activities, such as smuggling food, medicine, weapons or intelligence across the ghetto walls, often without the knowledge or approval of the Jewish councils.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The most well-known attempt by Jews to resist the Nazi regime took place in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943 and lasted for almost a month.
This was organised by the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa – Z.O.B (Jewish Fighting Organisation), and headed by 23 year old Mordecai Anielewicz with the aim of encouraging Jewish inhabitants to resist being rounded up into rail cars which would take them to the concentration camps.
In January 1943 shots had been fired during one such deportation by the Z.O.B using the small number of arms that had been smuggled into the Ghetto. After a few days of the attack, Nazi troops retreated. This success inspired further revolt.
On 19 April 1943 the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto to carry out its liquidation approximately 750 Z.O.B fighters fought the well-armed and trained soldiers. The revolt lasted for just over a month until, on 16 May they were finally defeated. More than 56,000 Jews were taken from the Warsaw Ghetto during the liquidation with 7000 being shot upon capture and the remaining 49,000 deported to concentration camps.
There were also violent revolts in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and several smaller ghettos.
Rescuers
Many people and organisations rescued victims of the Nazi regime. Some non-Jewish rescuers have been recognised by Yad Vashem as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for their actions during the Holocaust. Those regarded as rescuers may have hidden someone for a few hours, overnight or two or three years. Some may have saved one life, others saved thousands. Whatever the scale each deed was as significant as each other. Both the Talmud and the Koran remind us: ‘Whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved the world entire.’
During the Nazi period everyone had to make moral choices. Some people became perpetrators, others were bystanders. A small minority chose to help the persecuted – these are the rescuers and helpers. This was an extraordinary selfless choice. It meant risking not only their own lives but the lives of their own family and children. Many paid with their lives. None succeeded in halting the Holocaust but many people were enabled to survive as a result of their efforts. Each chose to defy the power of the Nazis and their collaborators – mostly single-handedly. That choice made a huge difference to many individual lives. More importantly they showed the power of the individual and provided hope in otherwise hopeless circumstances by demonstrating the importance of moral courage in action.
During the Nazi period the vast majority of people were not perpetrators, but bystanders. We know that fear was a major contributing factor to the success of Nazi policy generally and the genocide of Jews, and the persecution of Roma and Sinti, Black, disabled and Lesbian and Gay people specifically.
But there were courageous people who stood out from time to time. They were found in every Nazi-occupied country and from all walks of life. What is clear is that most of these people were very ordinary people, making individual choices of conscience. Their actions demonstrated that true heroes are often just ordinary people acting on their convictions. Many were surprised that what they had done was deemed to be exceptional.
The Nazis were brutal in their reprisals against anyone caught trying to assist. Bystanders therefore had good reason to be concerned for their personal safety. This in turn makes the actions of those who did resist the more remarkable. Their actions were selfless, but no less calculated. They knew the potential risk, but took the risk anyway.
Frank Foley
Frank Foley was born in Somerset in 1884. In the 1930’s, he worked for the Foreign Office and became Head of the British Passport Control Office in Germany. Eyewitnesses recall Mr Foley as an unassuming hero – a small, slightly overweight man with round glasses. However, Foley was in fact Britain’s most senior spy in Berlin.
During his time in Berlin, Foley is known to have saved an estimated 10,000 German Jews after Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933. He used his role in the Passport Office as a cover for his real job as an Intelligence Officer working for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), later called MI6. This made his efforts on behalf of the Jews even more dangerous.
Foley first moved to work in Berlin in 1920. He was therefore able to observe and report back on the political and social changes that took place in Germany as a result of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Foley was also able to see the impact of the many anti-Semitic measures introduced by the Nazis and the effect these had on the every day lives of Jews.
If he had been arrested, Foley would have had no diplomatic immunity as he was working as a spy, but for years he ignored many Nazi laws and helped Jews leave the country. He made no money from his rescue efforts but risked his own life to save so many others. He also did not seek recognition or praise for his acts of rescue.
Foley broke many Nazi laws, for example he entered concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen and presented visas to the camp authorities so that Jews could be freed to travel. Foley also hid Jews in his home and used his secret service skills to help them obtain false papers, forged passports and visas. By issuing these visas, Foley was also breaking British laws.
Whilst Oskar Schindler’s efforts in saving thousands of Jews were immortalised in the book Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally and the film Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg, Frank Foley’s bravery has gone largely unnoticed.
Schindler was a factory owner, employing and thereby saving the lives of 1,400 Jews who would ordinarily have been sent to the concentration camps.
Many of the Jews Schindler saved remained in contact after fleeing Germany, thus giving a voice to his story.
In contrast, many of the thousands helped to safety with forged visas supplied by Frank Foley, were unaware of the identity of their life saving benefactor.
Many Jews would arrive in Palestine with visas they knew they shouldn’t have, so understandably kept this information quiet.
During his lifetime, Foley received no recognition or honour for his actions in the UK. In 1999 though, Foley’s actions resulted in his being recognised as ‘Righteous Amongst the Nations’ at Yad Vashem in Israel.
On 24th November 2004, the 120th anniversary of Foley’s birth, a plaque was unveiled in his honour at the British Embassy in Berlin. Amongst those who travelled to Berlin to take part in a special ceremony was Elisheva Lernau, 91 who had been rescued by Foley. Elisheva said, ‘His name is written on my heart¦ I owe my life to this man I never met, a man of humanity in a time of unparalleled inhumanity’.
In Highbridge, Somerset a plaque has been placed on the house where Foley was born and in May 2005 a statue was unveiled in his honour.
Liberation
When Allied troops began a number of offensive strikes in Nazi-occupied Europe, they began to uncover the concentration camps throughout. After the first liberation – the camp of Majdanek in Poland in summer 1944, Nazi forces began to burn down the crematoria and the mass graves. Prisoners were forced to walk into the interior of Germany, already suffering from starvation and ill-treatment, many died on the enforced ‘death march’.
In late 1944, Soviet troops also overran the sites Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka, which had been disused by the Nazis from 1943.
Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945. They found several thousand emaciated survivors, and the smouldering remains of the gas chambers and crematoria – the Nazi attempt to destroy evidence of their crimes against humanity. In the following months, the Soviets liberated Stutthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck.
US troops liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, followed by Flossenburg, Dachau and Mauthausen.
British Troops liberated Bergen Belsen on 15 April 1945. Liberator Iolo Lewis recalls the sight that met the liberators:
I was absolutely horrified to find out what had happened where I stood and the inhumanity of man against man. I have never been the same since, mentally. How could people do this sort of thing to other people?… The people were not lively. They were treated like animals. They had lost reason. When the medics came in they tried to save a lot of people.
We cannot begin to imagine the scenes which confronted the liberators. Disease such as typhoid was rife, and an ever present danger to the malnourished survivors. Many camps had to be burnt to the ground in order to ensure the containment of diseases. The liberation of the camps exposed the full extent of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ to the rest of the world.
Life after the Holocaust
The Nuremberg Trials
After the war, judges from the Allied powers convened to bring those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust to trial. These took place in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1946. 22 Nazis were bought before the court, with 12 being sentenced to death. Charged with Crimes against Humanity, the majority of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges against them, but claimed they were just ‘following orders’. Those who were directly involved with the murder of over 11 million men, women and children were most harshly sentenced however, those who played a large role in the Holocaust, who facilitated the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’ (eg Government officials, business-men who used forced labour, and other executives) were sentenced to lenient prison sentences or no punishment at all.
Many Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Hitler who committed suicide at the end of the war, were never sentenced. Many fled the country and have never been found. However, people like the late survivor Simon Wiesenthal continued to hunt Nazis across the world. Wiesenthal found Adolf Eichmann, who had helped to instigate the ‘Final Solution’ in Argentina, and he was brought to trial and executed in 1961.
The Nuremberg Trials led to the establishment of The International Criminal Court in 2002 over 50 years later as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, although it cannot currently exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. As of July 2010 111 States are members of the ICC.
Despite what they went through survivors never clamoured to be heard and did not demand attention. Few sought revenge against those who had tormented them and most only reluctantly claimed compensation, even for what was theirs by right. Instead, they quietly went about the business of rebuilding lives and reconstructing the societies in which they lived. They set an unrivalled example of dignity to us all.
Many survivors share their stories with us. They do not insist on any reward: to them it is a civic duty. They take heart that society is learning from what they had to suffer, the knowledge that younger generations are listening to what they have to say and carrying their message forward. Survivors are not special just because they are survivors. Most will say that they did not escape from Germany or live through the ghettos or the camps because of something intrinsic to them. Most will readily admit that they survived thanks to sheer luck. Survivors of Nazi persecution and mass murder are special because of what they survived and what they have to tell us about that horrific experience.
Few comforting stories emerged from the Nazi dark ages. One of the most important things we can learn from the survivors of Nazi persecution and mass murder is that for people who emerge from war and genocide, suffering and grief do not end instantly with the declaration of peace.
For those in the camps, liberation was a muted experience. They were alive, but they had lost everything. Thousands died of malnutrition and disease even after Allied troops arrived. The sights that greeted Allied servicemen and women marked them for ever. They brought immediate aid to the survivors in terrible conditions and at great risk to themselves. The troops and relief workers should be honoured for that bravery and skill.
But after the initial rescue, survivors often faced incomprehension and even hostility. Those who went back to their own countries frequently discovered that their homes were occupied by other people and that their belongings were gone. They were treated with fear and resentment.
About 50,000 Jewish camp survivors gathered in the British and American zones of occupation in Germany, refusing to return to places that were no more than a graveyard. Outbreaks of violent anti-semitism in Poland led to over a hundred thousand Polish Jewish survivors joining them. But no country in the world was willing to take substantial numbers of Jewish ‘Displaced Persons’, ‘DPs’, as the survivors became known.
The British government refused to allow an influx of Jewish refugees and only a few thousand came to Britain under a scheme for the ‘distressed relatives’ of Jews already in the UK. The Government permitted 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children to enter the country but ruled out any old enough to work, even though tens of thousands of non-Jewish DPs, including Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, and ethnic Germans, were recruited for labour in Britain.
Few survivors received anything more than essential medical treatment. About 750 boys and girls who were brought to Britain by the British Jewish community were given excellent care and sustained attention – but they were the exception. Neither the survivors nor the liberating troops, many of whom were traumatised by what they had seen, received the kind of support that we would deem essential to their psychological well-being.
In the post-war trials of war criminals the testimony of survivors was almost totally ignored and they were at the bottom of the list of those to get restitution. It took decades before they obtained justice. In Germany Roma and Gay men had no chance of obtaining redress: the laws under which they had been persecuted remained in force for many years. Their experiences, like the Nazi treatment of Black people, were hardly mentioned. And yet most of the former Jewish refugees and the camp survivors who reached Britain between 1938 and 1945 came through and avoided the canker of bitterness. Some completed education while others began their schooling in a new tongue. They mastered trades and professions, and embarked on productive working lives. They married and raised families. They maintained their religious affiliations and cherished memories of a culture that was now in ruins. Above all, they avoided the temptation to hate or to teach their children to hate.
Victims of Nazi Persecution
The Nazis intended to create a society which valued everyone being the same and hated anyone who did not conform to their idea of a true Aryan.
Singling out Jews for complete annihilation in the Holocaust was not the full extent of Nazi hatred. Anyone who did not fit their narrow idea of who was ‘normal’ was targeted for persecution and discrimination across Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Porrajmos
Europe’s Gypsies were targeted by the Nazis for total destruction. The Porrajmos (The Devouring) is the term used to describe the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) population. Upward of 200,000 Gypsies were murdered or died as a result of starvation or disease. Many more were imprisoned, used as forced labour or subject to forced sterilisation and medical experimentation.
In June 1936, a Central Office to ‘Combat the Gypsy Nuisance’ opened in Munich and later that year, Berlin police were given the authority to conduct raids against Gypsies so that they would not mar the image of the city as the host of the summer Olympic Games.
Between 1939 and 1940 labour camps for ‘people avoiding work and living off crime’ were set up in the Czech Republic. Roma and Sinti men, women and children were also sent to camps in Lety and Hodonin, and in 1940, statistics about ‘Gypsies, mixed Gypsies and people with Gypsy style of life’ were officially collected. Those found to be in any of these categories were sent to the camps. Out of c.2500 internees at these camps, over 50% were deported to Auschwitz and many more died due to starvation and maltreatment within the camps.
In June 1938, Gypsy Clean-up Week took place throughout Germany. In Roma and Sinti men, women and children were targeted for persecution, hatred and imprisonment.
The experience of Europe’s Gypsy population has parallels with that of the Jewish people. Both were targeted on the grounds of their race and had previously suffered centuries of discrimination. The Nuremberg Laws which prohibited marriage between Jews and Aryans and enshrined the loss of citizenship rights were also applied to Gypsies. As with Jewish children, Gypsy children were banned from public schools and Gypsies found it increasingly difficult to maintain or secure employment.
As the Second World War began, the persecution of Gypsies intensified. Deportations of Gypsies to ghettos including Lodz and to concentration camps including Dachau, Mauthausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau which had a specific ‘Gypsy Camp’ began.
On 26 February 1943, the first transport of Roma and Sinti men, women and children arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of the 23,000 Gypsies imprisoned within the camp, it’s estimated that around 20,000 were murdered.
On 2 August 1944 the Zieguenlager (Gypsy Camp) at Auschwitz was liquidated and 2897 Roma and Sinti were exterminated in the gas chambers. The surviving prisoners were deported to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck concentration camps for forced labour.
Despite the atrocities committed against Gypsies by the Nazi regime their experiences were only fully recognised by the West German Government in 1981 and the Porrajmos is only now becoming more widely known.
» listen to historian Donald Kenrick talk about the Porrajmos
Gay Victims of Nazi persecution
Lesbian and gay life in Germany began to thrive at the beginning of the 20th century. Berlin in particular was one of the most liberal cities in Europe with a number of lesbian and gay organisations, cafés, bars, publications and cultural events taking place.
By the 1920s, Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code (which criminalised homosexual acts) was being applied in an increasingly limited fashion. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science led the world in its scientific approach to sexual diversity and acted as an important public centre for Berlin lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered life. In 1929 the process towards complete decriminalisation had been initiated within the German legislature.
Nazi conceptions of race, gender and eugenics dictated the regime’s hostile policy on homosexuality. Within days of Hitler becoming Chancellor repression against gay men and lesbians commenced. On 6 May 1933, the Nazis violently looted and closed The Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection on the streets. Other organisations were also shut down. The existing laws were toughened and the courts and police were encouraged to take draconian steps. Unknown numbers of German gay men and lesbians fled abroad, entered into marriages in order to appear to conform to Nazi ideological norms, and experienced severe psychological trauma. The thriving gay culture in Berlin was lost.
The police established lists of homosexually active persons. Records from 1937-1940 include the names of over 90,000 suspects. Significant numbers of gay men were arrested, of whom an estimated 50,000 received severe jail sentences in brutal conditions. Most homosexuals were not sent to concentration camps but were instead exposed to inhumane treatment in police prisons. There they could be subjected to hard labour and torture, or be executed or experimented upon. The Nazis dehumanised the prisoners in their camps and some of their prisons by giving them a symbol, which coded them according to the reason for their detention, and assigned them a number to replace their name. Some 10-15,000 people were deported for being gay to concentration camps. Many, but not all, were assigned pink triangles. Most died in the camps, often from exhaustion. Many were castrated and some subjected to gruesome medical experiments. Collective murder actions were undertaken against gay detainees, exterminating hundreds at a time. Some people belonged to more than one targeted group. For example, Jewish gays wore a yellow triangle and a pink triangle together.
During the 1935 redrafting of Paragraph 175 in Germany, there was much debate about whether to include lesbianism, which had not been recognised in the earlier version. Ultimately lesbians were not included in the legislation and they were subsequently not targeted in the same way as gay men. In Austria, after Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into greater Germany under the Nazi regime), a similar debate led to the inclusion of lesbianism in the penal code. lesbians suffered the same destruction of community networks as gay men. They were allowed to play no role in public life and therefore they often experienced a double economic disadvantage.
After the war, the Allies chose not to remove the Nazi-amended Paragraph 175. Neither they, nor the new German states, nor Austria would recognise homosexual prisoners as victims of the Nazis – a status essential to qualify for reparations. Indeed, many gay men continued to serve their prison sentences.
People who had been persecuted by the Nazis for being gay had a hard choice: either to bury their experience and pretend it never happened – with all the personal consequences of such an action – or to try to campaign for recognition in an environment where the same neighbours, the same law, same police and same judges prevailed.
Unsurprisingly very few victims came forward. Those who did – even those who had fought the Nazis and survived death camps – were thwarted at every turn. Few known victims are still alive but research is now beginning to reveal the hidden history of Nazi homophobia and post-war discrimination.
» read the testimony of Albrecht Becker who was persecuted by the Nazis
» listen to Ben Sumerskill of Stonewall speak about LGB discrimination
“In 1934, a special Gestapo (Secret State Police) division on homosexuals was set up. One of its first acts was to order the police “pink lists” from all over Germany The police had been compiling these lists of suspected homosexual men since 1900. On September 1, 1935, a harsher, amended version of Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code, originally framed in 1871, went into effect, punishing a broad range of “lewd and lascivious” behavior between men. In 1936 Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler created a Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion: Special Office (II S), a subdepartment of Executive Department II of the Gestapo. The linking of homosexuality and abortion reflected the Nazi regimes population policies to promote a higher birthrate of its “Aryan” population. On this subject Himmler spoke in Bad Tölz on February 18, 1937, before a group of high-ranking SS officers on the dangers both homosexuality and abortion posed to the German birthrate.
Under the revised Paragraph 175 and the creation of Special Office IIS, the number of prosecutions increased sharply, peaking in the years 1937-1939. Half of all convictions for homosexual activity under the Nazi regime occurred during these years. The police stepped up raids on homosexual meeting places, seized address books of arrested men to find additional suspects, and created networks of informers to compile lists of names and make arrests.
An estimated 1.2 million men were homosexuals in Germany in 1928. Between 1933-45, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and of these, some 50,000 officially defined homosexuals were sentenced. Most of these men spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of the total sentenced were incarcerated in concentration camps.
How many of these 5,000 to 15,000 “175ers” perished in the concentration camps will probably never be known. Historical research to date has been very limited. One leading scholar, Ruediger Lautmann, believes that the death rate for “175ers” in the camps may have been as high as sixty percent.
All prisoners of the camps wore marks of various colors and shapes, which allowed guards and camp functionaries to identify them by category. The uniforms of those sentenced as homosexuals bore, various identifying marks, including a large black dot and a large “175″ drawn on the back of the jacket. Later a pink triangular patch (rosa Winkel) appeared. Conditions in the camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. Many survivors have testified that men with pink triangles were often treated particularly severely by guards and inmates alike because of widespread biases against homosexuals. As was true with other prisoner categories, some homosexuals were also victims of cruel medical experiments, including castration. At Buchenwald concentration camp, SS physician Dr. Carl Vaernet performed operations designed to convert men to heterosexuals: the surgical insertion of a capsule which released the male hormone testosterone. Such procedures reflected the desire by Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males; lesbians were not subjected to systematic persecution. While lesbian bars were closed, few women are believed to have been arrested. Paragraph 175 did not mention female homosexuality. Lesbianism was seen by many Nazi officials as alien to the nature of the Aryan woman. In some cases, the police arrested lesbians as “asocials” or “prostitutes.” One woman, Henny Schermann, was arrested in 1940 in Frankfurt and was labeled “licentious Lesbian” on her mug shot; but she was also a “stateless Jew,” sufficient cause for deportation. Among the Jewish inmates at Ravensbrück concentration camp selected for extermination, she was gassed in the Bernburg psychiatric hospital, a “euthanasia” killing center in Germany, in 1942.
Consequently, the vast majority of homosexuals arrested under Paragraph 175 were Germans or Austrians. Unlike Jews, men arrested as homosexuals were not systematically deported to Nazi-established ghettos in eastern Europe. Nor were they transported in mass groups of homosexual prisoners to Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
It should be noted that Nazi authorities sometimes used the charge of homosexuality to discredit and undermine their political opponents. Charges of homosexuality among the SA (Storm trooper) leadership figured prominently among justifications for the bloody purge of SA chief Ernst Röhm in June 1934. Nazi leader Hermann Göring used trumped-up accusations of homosexual improprieties to unseat army supreme commander Von Fritsch, an opponent of Hitler’s military policy, in early 1938. Finally, a 1935 propaganda campaign and two show trials in 1936 and 1937 alleging rampant homosexuality in the priesthood, attempted to undercut the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, an institution which many Nazi officials considered their most powerful potential enemy.
After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution, and reparations were refused. Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps. The 1935 version of Paragraph 175 remained in effect in the Federal Republic (West Germany) until 1969, so that well after liberation, homosexuals continued to fear arrest and incarceration.
Research on Nazi persecution of homosexuals was impeded by the criminalization and social stigmatization of homosexuals in Europe and the United States in the decades following the Holocaust. Most survivors were afraid or ashamed to tell their stories. Recently, especially in Germany, new research findings on these “forgotten victims” have been published, and some survivors have broken their silence to give testimony.” – ushmm.org
Full movie “Bent” starring Clive Owen, also Mick Jagger.
A film about the rarely acknowledged persecution and annihilation of German homosexuals in the Nazi concentration camps.
Disabled Victims and the T4 Euthanasia Programme
Mentally and physically disabled people were targeted under Nazi hatred. From 1939 – 1941 the Nazis carried out their T4 programme (so called because Tiergartenstrasse 4 was the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care in Berlin).
People with physical disabilities, mental health needs and chronic illnesses were deemed to be damaging to the common good by the Nazi party. In 1933 the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ allowed for the forced sterilisation of those regarded as ‘unfit’, including people with conditions such as epilepsy, schizophrenia and alcoholism. Prisons, nursing homes, asylums, care homes for the elderly and special schools were targeted to select people for sterilisation. It has been estimated that between 1933 and 1939, 360,000 individuals were subjected to forced sterilisation.
In 1939 the killing of disabled children and adults began. From August 1939 the Interior Ministry required doctors and midwives to report all cases of newborns with severe disabilities. All children under the age of three who were suffering from illnesses or disabilities, such as Down’s syndrome, hydrocephaly, cerebral palsy or ‘suspected idiocy’, were targeted under the T4 programme. A panel of medical experts were required to give their approval for the ‘euthanasia’ of each child.
Many parents were unaware of the fate of their children, instead being told that they were being sent for improved care. After a period of time parents were told their children had died of pneumonia and their bodies cremated to stop the spread of disease.
Following the outbreak of war in September 1939 the programme expanded with less emphasis on assessment and approval. Adults with disabilities, chronic illnesses, mental health problems and criminals who were not of German origin were included in the programme. Six killing centres were established to speed up the process, the previous methods of killing people by lethal injection or starvation being too slow to cope with large numbers of adults. The first experimental gassings took place at the killing centre in Brandenberg and thousands of disabled patients were killed in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.
The model used for killing disabled people was later applied to the industrialised murder within Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
It is estimated that close to 250,000 disabled people were murdered under the Nazi regime.
» watch the story of Robert Wagemann whose Mother saved him from the T4 programme
Black experience
Although there was no systematic elimination of Black people under the Nazi regime it is clear that many were persecuted, alienated and even murdered during this period. In the 1920s, around 24,000 Black people were living in Germany.
Following World War One and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the victorious Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany. The use of French colonial troops, some of whom were Black, in these occupation forces exacerbated anti-Black racism in Germany. Racist propaganda against Black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases. The Nazis, at the time a small political movement, viewed them as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. In Mein Kampf, Hitler charged that ‘the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardisation’. Nazi propaganda posters, showing friendship across racial groups, referred to ‘a loss of racial pride.’ African-German mixed race children were economically and socially marginalised in German society, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military.
When the Nazis came to power, one of the first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler’s obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilised, in order to prevent further ‘race polluting’, as Hitler termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black survivor of Nazi racial policies and a victim of the mandatory sterilisation programme, explained in the film Hitler’s Forgotten Victims that, when he was forced to undergo sterilisation as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic. Once he received his sterilisation certificate, he was ‘free to go’, as long as he agreed to have no sexual relations with Germans.
To help usher in the Nazi dream of a pure, blond haired, blue-eyed race, Black Germans, like Jews, Roma and Sinti, Gay people and those with any criminal record were called ‘asocial’. Many Black people found that under the Nazis they no longer had jobs and that they were excluded from many aspects of life.
European and American Blacks were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system. Lionel Romney, a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine, was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Jean Marcel Nicolas, a Haitian national, was incarcerated in the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps in Germany. Jean Voste, an African Belgian, was incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp. Bayume Mohamed Hussein from Tanganyika (today Tanzania) died in the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin.
Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (International agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nicholas, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British Armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.
As the war progressed and Prisoners of War were taken, the Nazi regime separated Black prisoners from white ones. Once taken prisoner by Hitler’s troops, Black prisoners received harsher treatment and less food than white POWs and whilst most white POWs were imprisoned many of the Black soldiers either worked until they died or were executed.
On 1 April 1935 the Nazis made it illegal to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Thousands were imprisoned or murdered for their refusal to swear allegiance to the Nazi regime or to participate in military combat. Jehovah’s Witnesses faced an impossible decision. They could only secure their own release by renouncing their faith. Most refused and faced continued imprisonment or execution.
Approximately 2,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered under the Nazi regime, 250 of whom were executed for refusing to take part in armed conflict.
The Nazis incarcerated and murdered those they deemed to be ‘asocial’ including those who were politically opposed to national socialism, such as Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Trade Union leaders and those who were imprisoned due to criminal activity.
In order to identify these prisoners within a camp, the Nazi’s used a badge system – criminals wore a green triangle, political opponents a red triangle and black for non-conformists (including vagrants and in some cases, the Roma and Sinti).
» read the collected letters of Marian Serejski in I am healthy and I feel fine who was held as a political prisoner in Auschwitz
Non-Jewish Poles and Slavic Prisoners of War
The Nazis viewed Poles and other Slavic peoples as inferior, and slated them for subjugation, forced labour, and eventual annihilation. Poles who were considered ideologically dangerous (including thousands of intellectuals and Catholic priests) were targeted for execution in an operation known as AB-Aktion. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were deported to German territory for forced labour. Hundreds of thousands were also imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. It is estimated that the Germans killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War Two.
In the German-occupied Soviet Union, the Commissar Order (issued to the German army by the Armed Forces High Command) targeted Red Army political officers to be murdered. During the autumn and winter of 1941-1942, German military authorities and the German Security Police collaborated on a racist policy of mass murder by shooting of Soviet Prisoners of War, Jews, persons with ‘Asiatic’ features, and top political and military leaders. Around three million others were held in makeshift camps without proper shelter, food, or medicine with the deliberate intent that they die.
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.”
‘Doomed women’
Stieve was interested particularly in reproductive anatomy; a key reason why so many victims on his list were women.
“Before 1933, he was able to source the bodies of executed men, but no women; Germany was not executing women.”
“Then, suddenly, during the Third Reich, women were being executed too.”
About half of these women, including Liane Berkowitz, were executed for treason; some were betrayed to the Gestapo by fellow citizens for airing their anti-Nazi politics.
William Seidelman, former professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, has also spent years uncovering links between “medicine and murder” in the Third Reich.
“When a woman of reproductive age was due to be executed, Stieve was informed, a date of execution was decided upon, and the prisoner told the scheduled date of her death,” wrote Prof Seidelman.
“Stieve was particularly interested in the effects of stress and psychological trauma on the doomed woman’s menstrual pattern.
“Upon the woman’s execution, her pelvic organs were removed for examination. Stieve published reports based on those studies without hesitation or apology.”
Stieve referred to the organs he used as “material”. His publications during this time were some of the first to suggest that stress – in the form of being sentenced to death – disrupted a woman’s menstrual cycle.
In a mission to reveal the human lives behind this “material”, Dr Hildebrandt studied through the personal files of Stieve’s victims, which are held at the Memorial Site for the German Resistance in Berlin.
She cross-checked each file against a copy of Stieve’s list that is on file at the German Ministry of Justice, identifying every person on the list.
Dr Weindling says there were different “phases” to the Nazi’s experiments. The first was linked to eugenics and forced sterilisation.
The second phase coincided with the start of the war. “Doctors began experimenting on patients in psychiatric hospitals,” Prof Weindling writes in a BBC report. “Sporadic experiments were made in concentration camps like Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and anthropological observations at Dachau.”
The third phase began in 1942, when the SS and German military took greater control of the experiments. There was a surge in the numbers of experiments, with lethal diseases including malaria and louse-borne typhus administered to thousands of victims.
During a fourth phase in 1944-45, explains Dr Weindling, “scientists knew the war was lost but they continued their experiments”.
Dr Hildebrandt noted the correct spelling of the names of the 174 women and eight men on the list, their exact dates of birth and death, their nationality, the reason for their execution and any other biographical information she could find.
Some of the files contained personal letters expressing final wishes of condemned prisoners. “Some of them expressed wishes to be reunited with their families in death,” said Dr Hildebrandt.
One letter by Libertas Schulze-Boysen, a German-born resistance fighter who was once a member of the Nazi party, but left in 1937 and went on join the resistance and collect photographic evidence documenting National Socialist crimes of violence.
Libertas was arrested in September 1942 and sentenced to death for treason in December of the same year.
In a letter to her mother, she wrote: ”As a last wish I have asked that my ‘material substance’ be left to you. If possible, bury me in a beautiful place amidst sunny nature.”
Dark history
Dr Hildenbrandt said that her research made it “painfully clear” how little anatomists at the time were interested in the fate of the people whose bodies they were dissecting.
This left German anatomical research tainted by association.
Of the 31 anatomical departments at universities in Germany and its occupied territories between 1933 and 1945, Dr Hildebrandt found that “all of them – without exception – received bodies of the executed from execution chambers”.
The issue only came to public attention in the past two decades.
Prof Seidelman explained that, in 1989, an anatomy lecturer at the University of Tubingen indicated that specimens he was showing were from Russian or Polish slave labourers executed during the Third Reich.
Prof Seidelman told the BBC: “The students were dismayed and demanded an explanation.”
The university held a formal investigation, and all anatomy specimens of “suspect or uncertain origin” were buried in a special section of the Tubingen cemetery and, on July 8, 1990, a commemorative ceremony was held.
Pernkopf’s Atlas: A textbook tainted by Nazi association
Eduard Pernkopf, chairman of anatomy at the University of Vienna between 1933 and 1945, was a member of the Nazi party whose sourcing of executed prisoners for dissections is on permanent record in his now infamous anatomical atlas.
The detailed illustrations in anatomical atlas that Pernkopf produced made it famous among anatomy students.
Pernkopf worked 18-hour days dissecting corpses while a team of artists created the images; he worked for over two decades on the book.
AS Sabine Hildebrandt revealed in a 2006 paper in the journal Clinical anatomy, as well as confirming Pernkopf’s strong affiliation to the Nazi party, this project “revealed the delivery of at least 1,377 bodies of executed persons to the Anatomical Institute of Vienna” during the Third Reich. “The possible use of these bodies as models cannot be excluded for up to half of the approximately 800 plates in the atlas.”
Several universities, have carried out formal investigations into their own anatomy departments’ procurement of bodies during the Third Reich.
Many institutes in Austria were also involved, notably the University of Vienna.
“The University of Vienna had a special streetcar hearse that delivered the cadavers from the execution chamber of the regional court to the anatomy institute,” explained Prof Seidelman.
Eduard Pernkopf, who was chairman of anatomy there between 1933 and 1945, left a printed legacy in the form of a now infamous anatomy tome. It is now understood that many of the incredibly detailed illustrations in Pernkopf’s atlas depicted the bodies of victims of Nazi terror.
Prof Seidelman said that researchers were at the “very early stage of the journey of revealing the stories of those humans who became ‘experimental material’”.
“They became inanimate objects,” he added.
Dr Hildebrandt agrees that the issue still casts a shadow on anatomy today, and while a great deal has been published about the crimes of the perpetrators, “German post-war anatomy was built in part on the bodies of [the] victims”.
She added: “It’s time to return the names to the numbers – to give faces and biographies to the so far anonymous victims of anatomy in the Third Reich in order to remember and honour their humanity and the iniquities they had to endure.”
There are many organisations which will be able to assist and advise you with the organisation of your event. Some work with Holocaust and genocide survivors, others focus on remembrance and education and some work in community relations.
45 Aid Society Holocaust Survivors
Established in 1963 the 45 Aid Society consists mainly of survivors of concentration camps who came to Britain in 1945/46. The Society is active in the community, helps members and charities and is a major source of survivors who give testimony of their experiences to schools, councils and community groups.
Flat 4, Broadlands, Hillside Road, Radlett, Hertfordshire, WD7 7BX
Tel: 01923 850816
Email: 45aidsociety@onetel.com
Aegis Trust
The Aegis Trust campaigns to prevent genocide worldwide. Aegis activities include: research, policy, education, remembrance, awareness of genocide issues in the media and humanitarian support for victims of genocide.
Aegis Trust, P.O. Box 2002, Newark, Nottinghamshire NG22 9ZG
Tel: 01623 836627
Email: office@aegistrust.org
Website: www.aegistrust.org
Arnold-Liebster Foundation
The Arnold-Liebster Foundation provides information and resources for teachers and students wishing to explore the experience of Jehovah’s Witnesses under the Nazi regime. The website provides survivor testimony, study guides, DVD & Video resources and much more.
Email: alst@alst.org
Web: www.alst.org
Article 1
Article 1 works to inform governments and citizens about the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. We investigate and expose systematic and grave violations of human rights, making recommendations to decision-makers, the media and the public.
Tel: 020 7243 0300
Email: benedetta.cassinelli@article1.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WagingPeace
Twitter: @WagingPeaceUK
Website:www.article1.org
Association of Jewish Refugees
The Association of Jewish Refugees provides an extensive range of social and welfare services, and grants financial assistance to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution living in Great Britain. In addition to a dedicated social services team, AJR operates a nationwide network of regional groups and offer a volunteers service and advice on Holocaust compensation claims.
Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex, HA7 4RL
Tel: 0208 385 3070
Email: enquiries@ajr.org.uk
Website: www.ajr.org.uk
Anne Frank Trust
The Anne Frank Trust works with young people in Britain today to help build a society based on acceptance, mutual respect, compassion and responsibility.
It does this through touring exhibitions about Anne Frank and educational work in schools. Opened in October 2010, The Anne Frank Library is the newest lending and reference specialising in books and resources about Anne Frank, the Holocaust and the wider topics of prejudice and discrimination, social responsibility, conflict and behaviour, and all the moral issues surrounding these topics. Teachers and HE/FE students are welcome to use the library, but strictly by appointment only, via the details below. The Online Catalogue enables remote access to an index of the resources available in The Anne Frank Library.
Star House, 104/108 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 4BA
Tel: 020 7284 5858
Email: info@annefrank.org.uk
Website: www.annefrank.org.uk
Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre
Beth Shalom, The Holocaust Centre was Britain’s first dedicated Holocaust Memorial and Education centre and supports anyone needing resource and ideas for commemoration. Resources designed for commemoration are available. The Holocaust Centre is also open for individual and group visits.
Laxton, Newark, Notts, NG22 0PA
Tel: 01623 836627
Email: office@bethshalom.com
Website: www.bethshalom.com
Black History Month
Black History Month is celebrated across the UK every October and highlights and celebrates the achievements of the Black community and aims to uncover hidden histories of Black communities.
Studio 4, Hiltongrove, 14 Southgate Road, London, N1 3LY
Tel: 020 7407 7747
Email: info@blackhistorymonthuk.co.uk
Website: www.blackhistorymonthuk.co.uk
Board of Deputies of British Jews
Protects and supports the interests, religious rights and customs of Jews in the UK. The education department monitors trends in education and ensures sensitivity to Jewish needs within the national education system.
6 Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1A 2LP
Tel: 020 7543 5400
Email: info@bod.org.uk
Website: www.bod.org.uk
Child Survivors Association – AJR
The Child Survivors Association – AJR represents a group of child survivors of the Holocaust and their partners which arranges regular meetings. It is a Special Interest Group of the Association of Jewish Refugees. For more details contact Henri on 020 8954 5298 or email H.Obstfeld@talk21.com
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI)
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland is the umbrella body for all the major Christian Churches in Britain and Ireland. It liaises with ecumenical bodies in Britain and Ireland as well as ecumenical organisations at European and world levels.
Tel: 020 7654 7254
Email: info@ctbi.org.uk
Website: www.ctbi.org.uk
Claims Conference
The Claims Conference was set up in 1951 to negotiate compensation and lost assets taken by the Nazis during the Holocaust. They also obtain funds for relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany Inc. (Claims Conference)
1359 Broadway, Room 2000, New York, NY 10018.
Tel: +001 (646) 536-9100
Email: info@claimscon.org
Website: www.claimscon.org/index.asp
The Council of Christians and Jews
The Council of Christians and Jews was founded in 1942. Against a background of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Chief Rabbi Hertz and Archbishop William Temple decided to take an initiative that would bring Christians and Jews together to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice in Britain. Today CCJ has more than 50 branches throughout the UK and continues to enjoy support at all levels. CCJ works with Christian and Jewish communities to promote mutual understanding and combat prejudice and anti-Semitism.
CCJ, 1st Floor, Camelford House, 89 Albert Embankment, LONDON SE1 7TP
Tel: 020 7820 0090
UK local rate number 0845 1662 205
Email:cjrelations@ccj.org.uk
Website: www.ccj.org.uk
Equality and Human Rights Commission
The Equality and Human Rights Commission champions equality and human rights for all. The Equality and Human Rights Commission was established on 1 October 2007 and carries on the work of the Commission for Racial Equality, the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission which have now been abolished.
3 More London, Riverside, Tooley Street, London, SE1 2RG
Tel: 020 3117 0235
Email: info@equalityhumanrights.com
Website: www.equalityhumanrights.com
Hindu Forum
The Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB) is the largest umbrella body for British Hindus with over 270 member organisations from different regions around the country. HFB’s main activities are public policy and community consultation for the government; capacity building and project development for the Hindu community; and developing good interfaith relations with other faith communities to build a cohesive and inclusive Britain.
Unit 3, 861, Coronation Road, Park Royal, London NW10 6PT
Tel: 020 8965 0671 or 07915 383 103
Email: info@hinduforum.org
Website: www.hinduforum.org.uk
Holocaust Educational Trust
HET works to promote knowledge of the Holocaust and its relevance for today and provides an outreach programme including educator-led workshops and survivor speakers. The Lessons from Auschwitz Course for teachers and post-16 students incorporate a visit to the former Nazi camp and pre and post-visit seminars.
The Holocaust Educational Trust, BCM Box 7892, London WC1N 3XX
Tel: 020 7222 6822
Email: info@het.org.uk
Website: www.het.org.uk
Holocaust Survivor’s Centre
The Holocaust Survivor’s Centre is part of Jewish Care and is a Jewish Social Centre for Survivors who lived in Europe or came to Britain as refugees. The centre offers a varied social programme including art and creative writing classes, outings to theatre, as well as a drop in cafe facility for informal get-togethers. The centre also offers practical advice and befriending. Survivor testimonies are recorded and public speaking skills developed.
Melanie Gotlieb & Rachelle Lazarus
Corner of Church Road & Parson Street, Hendon NW4 1QA
Tel: 0208 202 9844
Email: hsc@jcare.org
The Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association
The HSFA is a Leeds-based charity set up in 1996. Their primary aim is to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and use its lessons to work towards a more tolerant society in which difference and diversity are celebrated. HSFA members regularly visit schools to give living witness accounts of their personal experiences as refugees, hidden children and survivors of Nazi concentration camps. Contact HSFA Website: HSFA
Hope Survivors Foundation
Hope Survivors Foundation is an UK-based organisation, founded by survivors of the Rwandan genocide, with their supporters and friends. Formerly operating as IBUKA (UK), Hope Survivors Foundation is continuing with the same mission and objectives as before – to support survivors of the genocide in Rwanda and to raise awareness of the genocide and contribute to a world free from genocide and crimes against humanity.
Tel: 07507 360001
Email: info@hope-survivors.org.uk
Website: www.hope-survivors.org.uk
Imperial War Museum (The Holocaust Exhibition and Crimes against Humanity)
The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum receives around 700 visitors daily, and features archival material and testimony to describe the Nazi persecution of the Jews and other groups. Surrounding galleries tell the wider story of conflict since 1914 and include Crimes against Humanity, an exhibition on genocide. Open daily 10am – 6pm, free entry.
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London,SE1 6HZ
Tel: 020 7416 5320
Website: www.iwm.org.uk
Institute of Education, Holocaust Education Development Programme
FREE Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in Holocaust Education is now available to secondary school teachers and PGCE students across England. The high quality, high-impact CPD is delivered by internationally recognised experts from the Holocaust Education Development Programme (HEDP), part of the world renowned Institute of Education, University of London. The CPD has been informed by an in-depth national survey and is delivered in regional workshops providing effective, age-appropriate, classroom-ready resources.
Website:www.hedp.org.uk
Inter Faith Network for UK
The Inter Faith Network for the UK was founded in 1987 to promote good relations between people of different faiths in this country. Its member organisations include representative bodies from the Baha’i; Buddhist; Christian; Hindu; Jain; Jewish; Muslim; Sikh; and Zoroastrian communities; national and local inter faith bodies; and academic institutions and educational bodies concerned with inter faith issues.
Website: www.interfaith.org.uk
Jehovah’s Witnesses
There were 25,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany in 1933. Thousands suffered in Nazi prisons and camps. Unlike other prisoners, each Witness could be set free simply by signing a statement renouncing his faith. They were the only religious group to take a consistent, organised stand against the Nazi regime. Jehovah’s Witnesses in Britain offer the Jehovah’s Witnesses Stand Firm against Nazi Assault teaching pack.
Office of Public Information for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Britain
Watch Tower House, The Ridgeway, LONDON NW7 1RN
Tel: 020 8906 2211
Jewish Museum, London
The Jewish Museum aims to increase knowledge and understanding of Jewish history, culture and religious life, as part of Britain’s diverse heritage. The London Museum of Jewish Life was founded in 1983 as the Museum of the Jewish East End, with the aim of rescuing and preserving the disappearing heritage of London’s East End – the heartland of Jewish settlement in Britain. While the East End has remained an important focus, the Museum expanded to reflect the diverse roots and social history of Jewish people across London. It also developed an acclaimed programme of Holocaust and anti-racist education.
Website: www.jewishmuseum.org.uk
Jewish Music Institute
The Jewish Music Institute is dedicated to the celebration, preservation and development of the living heritage of Jewish music for the benefit of all. JMI Forums such as the International Forum for Suppressed Music, the International Forum for Yiddish Culture and the Forum for the Promotion of Arab-Jewish Dialogue Through Music, provide an international focus for study and musicianship.
Jewish Music Institute, SOAS, University of London, PO Box 232, Harrow, Middx, HA1 2NN
Tel: 020 8909 2445
Website: www.jmi.org.uk
Kindertransport
A special interest group of the Association of Jewish Refugees, the Kindertransport represent the children who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1939 and prior to the start of the Second World War.
Contact can be made through the offices of the AJR or with Bertha on 0208 952 4280 or Hermann on 0208 427 6754
LGBT History Month
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History Month takes place in the UK every February and celebrates the lives and achievements of the LGBT community.
BM LGBT History Month, London, WC1N 3XX
Website: http://www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/
Email: listmgr@lgbthistorymonth.org.uk
London Jewish Cultural Centre
The London Jewish Cultural Centre works to promote anti-racist education and citizenship initiatives. Its cultural and educational programmes are aimed at a broad audience of Jews and non-Jews, encouraging inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue and activities. They work with Holocaust survivors who tell their stories to students in schools and colleges throughout the UK. The LJCC aims to build bridges between the Jewish experience of persecution and racism and that faced by those persecuted today, whether because of race, ethnicity or cultural difference.
London Jewish Cultural Centre, Ivy House, 94 – 96 North End Road, London, NW11 7SX
Tel: 020 8457 5000
Email: admin@ljcc.org.uk
Website: www.ljcc.org.uk
Manchester Jewish Museum
Manchester Jewish Museum contains the History, culture and religion of Manchester Jewry. The Holocaust is featured as it impacted upon people who came to Manchester before 1939 or who survived to leave testimonies on tape and written form. They have a number of resources about the Holocaust and can put people in contact with survivors.
Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, M8 8LW.
Tel. 0161 834 9879
Website: www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com
The Refugee Council
The Refugee Council is the largest organisation in the UK working with asylum seekers and refugees. The Refugee Council not only gives help and support, but also works with asylum seekers and refugees to ensure their needs and concerns are addressed.
Refugee Council Head Office, 240-250 Ferndale Road, London SW9 8BB
Tel: 020 7346 6700
Website: www.refugeecouncil.org.uk
Show Racism the Red Card
Show Racism the Red Card is an anti-racism charity, which was established in January 1996. The aim of the organisation is to produce anti-racist educational resources, which harness the high profile of professional footballers to combat racism.
Tel: 0191 257 8519
Email: info@theredcard.org
Website: http://www.srtrc.org/
Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
Established in 1998, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust invests in young people whose aspirations and life chances are constrained by economic, cultural and social hardship, brroadens access to the architectural, planning and associated professions and promotes equality, diversity and social cohesion.
The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, The Stephen Lawrence Centre, 39 Brookmill Road, London, SE8 4HU
Tel: 020 8100 2800
Email: information@stephenlawrence.org.uk
Website: www.stephenlawrence.org.uk
The Forum for Yom Ha Shoah
For all enquiries relating to Yom Ha Shoah, the annual Jewish day of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust, please contact the Forum.
Email: info@yomhashoah.org.uk
Website:http://www.yomhashoah.org.uk/
The Survivors Fund (SURF)
SURF was established in 1997 to assist survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and works through survivor led partner organisations in Rwanda to address the complex needs of survivors. SURF’s vision is a world where the rights and dignity of survivors are respected, its mission is to rebuild a sense of self and trust in humanity amongst survivors. Survivors Fund can provide resources on the Rwanda genocide, and will try to provide speakers for events where possible.
10 Rickett Street, West Brompton, London SW6 1RU
Tel: 020 7610 2589
Email: info@survivors-fund.org.uk
Website: www.survivors-fund.org.uk
USC Shoah Foundation Institute
Established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg to collect and preserve the testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute maintains one of the largest video digital libraries in the world. The Institute is part of the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California; its mission is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry — and the suffering they cause — through the educational use of the Institute’s visual history testimonies.
Website:http://college.usc.edu/vhi/
Teacher Education and Resources:http://college.usc.edu/vhi/education/
Watch videos on the Institute’s Youtube Channel
Join the Institute’s Facebook community
Follow the Institute on Twitter
Wiener Library
The Wiener Library is the world’s oldest Holocaust memorial institution, tracing its history back to 1933. It collects material related to the Holocaust, its causes and legacies.
The Wiener Library, Institute of Contemporary History
29 Russell Square, London WC1B 5PD
Email: info@wienerlibrary.co.uk
Website: www.wienerlibrary.co.uk
Copied from Alert Net to give this story a wider audience
Mali’s humanitarian crisis caused by hunger, displacement and violence, is rapidly worsening and the south, where needs are greatest, is being neglected as the world focuses on conflict in the north, a top U.N. official said.
(Photo: trust.org/alertnet) A Malian family displaced by war gather at a makeshift camp in Sevare, about 600 kms (400 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, July 11, 2012. REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun
Mali, which once enjoyed a reputation for being a stable nation in an often turbulent region, has been plagued by insecurity since a coup in March hastened a rebel advance across the north of the largely desert Sahel state.
A mix of local and foreign Islamists have outmanoeuvred separatist Tuareg rebels and now control the three northern regions, imposing strict Islamic law and stoking fears the zone has become a terrorist safe haven.
As a result of fighting, more than
420,000 people have been uprooted from their homes
within Mali or have fled to neighbouring countries such as Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.
At the same time, Mali is suffering a food crisis that has swept across West Africa’s Sahel region putting 18 million lives at risk. In Mali alone,
4.6 million people face severe hunger and 175,000 children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition
according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“The humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly because of the inadequacy of the response. The situation in Mali is desperate, but not hopeless,” said John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ending a three-day visit to the country.
He said a lack of funds was hampering a scale-up of relief operations.
Only 42 percent of the $214 million needed for the humanitarian response in Mali, has been received so far, with health, education, water and sanitation the most critically underfunded sectors, according to OCHA.
The U.N. refugee agency says in some camps, refugees are still coping with below “emergency standard” daily water supplies.
Ging said there was a misconception that, without a solution to the security and political crisis in the north of Mali, little could be done to scale up the humanitarian response.
“In fact, 80 percent of the country’s humanitarian needs are in the south where there is relative stability,” he said in a statement.
He also highlighted the humanitarian response under way in the north despite limited access due to the violence there.
“Remarkable work is being done by national and international NGOs in the north,” Ging said. “They have been creative in overcoming many obstacles to access the people in need, and their humanitarian interventions are stemming further mass displacement.”
Ging’s comments came a week after Washington called on Mali’s authorities to accept offers by African states to send a military force to stabilise Mali and help retake control of its north.
A ship carrying about 150 people has sunk in the waters between Australia and Indonesia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said today (Wednesday).
(Image: shire.gov.cx) Christmas Island
Two merchant vessels are trying to rescue people where the ship went down, about 107 nautical miles north of Australia’s Christmas Island, the authority said.- CNN Wire
A boat carrying around 150 suspected asylum seekers has capsized off northwest Australia today, just a week after 90 people drowned on a similar journey.
Merchant ships are currently collecting survivors from the capsizing, which happened between Indonesia and Australia’s
Dozens of asylum seekers are feared drowned after a second boatload of capsized in less than a week in Australian waters today.
The frail wooden boat was estimated to have been carrying about 150 people and there were fears that many had drowned as rescuers were making their way to the scene of the tragedy.
Mr Mal Larsen, from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said rescue ships were beginning to arrive at the scene and some people were being pulled from the water.
‘They are doing their best to pull people out,’ he said. ‘It’s too early to say how many have been saved.’
Update: At least one person died and Customs says 130 people have been rescued from the distressed boat.
Rescue authorities had been told by those aboard the vessel that its generator had stopped working and that the boat sank . – news.com.au
A crowded boat carrying asylum seekers to Australia capsized Wednesday and 125 survivors and one body were recovered from the Indian Ocean, less than a week after more than 90 people drowned on a similar journey. An air and sea search was ongoing for as many as 20 people who could still be missing, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. Three merchant ships that responded to the capsizing rescued 125 people, and the authority said one body was recovered. The area is midway between Christmas Island and the main Indonesian island of Java. The authority said up to 150 men, women and children may have been on the wooden Indonesian fishing boat. Prime Minister Julian Gillard told Parliament that two Australian warships and an air force aircraft that can drop life rafts on the sea joined the search by late Wednesday. The area is 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Australia’s Christmas Island and 185 kilometers (115 kilometers) south of Java. The boat capsized in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone but Australian authorities had raised the alarm, Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Jo Meehan said.
The first merchant ship reached the scene more than four hours later, she said. Last Thursday, 110 people were rescued when a boat carrying more than 200 mostly Afghan asylum seekers capsized only 24 kilometers (15 miles) from the latest tragedy. Only 17 bodies were recovered. The survivors’ refugee applications were being assessed at Christmas Island, where Australia runs an immigration detention center. Australia is a common destination for boats carrying asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka and other poor or war-torn countries. Last week’s disaster rekindled debate in Parliament on how Australia should deter asylum seekers from risking the hazardous sea journey. The government wants to send new boat arrivals to Malaysia in exchange for accepting U.N.-recognized refugees living there. The opposition won’t support the legislation because Malaysia has not signed the Refugee Convention.
Wednesday, 27 June, 2012 at 11:09 (11:09 AM) UTC RSOE
Italy PM: Don’t leave us to deal with migrant crisis alone
Teenage victim: Liane Berkowitz was pregnant when she was imprisoned by the Nazi regime
Goaty's News (UK) 
