We discuss the experiences of Edward Adler, a Jewish man in 1930's Germany, as he describes growing anti-semitism, being forced to build one of the first extermination camps, and his narrow escape after Kristallnacht. And that one time he was a kid and joined the Nazis - before they found out he was a Jew.

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Germany - a sign on a Jewish store: Protect Yourselves, Germans, Do Not Buy From Jews.
Yad Vashem Archives
Archival Signature: 3116/50

Sources
RG Number: RG-50.042.0003 Interview with Edward Adler.  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn505557

Today we talk about Leopold II, King of Belgium from 1865-1909, and his personal empire in the African Congo. This is the story of a man who put his pocketbook ahead of a people, the nation he enslaved, and the global cast of writers and advocates that worked to bring him down.

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In The Rubber Coils. Scene - The Congo 'Free' State" Linley Sambourne depicts King Leopold II of Belgium as a snake attacking a Congolese rubber collector. Published on 28 November 1906

Edward Linley Sambourne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Mariner Books, United States, 1999.

David Renton; Seddon, David; Zeilig, Leo.  The Congo: Plunder and Resistance. London: Zed Books, 2007.

“General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885”.  Signed by the representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and Turkey (Ottoman Empire).  Berlin, February 26, 1885. 

George Washington Williams. “Appendix 1: An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo.”  Stanley Falls, Central Africa, July 18th 1890. 

George Washington Williams. “Report upon the Congo-State and country to the President of the Republic of the United States of America, ” 1890. 

“In the Rubber Coils.” Punch, 1906 from King Leopold’s Ghost, 120.

“The Guilt of Delay.” Punch, 1909. In King Leopold’s Ghost, p. 120.

Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Originally published 1899.  Independently published, December 9, 2019

Inventory of the Stanley Archives.  “Henry Morton Stanley: correspondence.” 

Maps from the Belgian Congo and Congo Free State. 1921.  Internet Archive. 

Mark Twain.  King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule.  Boston: The P.R. Warren Co., 1905. In King Leopold’s Soliloquy.The University of New Orleans Press Edition, 2016.

David Renton; Seddon, David; Zeilig, Leo (2007). The Congo: Plunder and Resistance. London: Zed Books.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Crime of Congo. New York Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909.

Vachal Lindsay (1914). The Congo and Other Poems.  New York: The Macmillian Company. OCLC 40402773

Accounts and Papers: Sixty-Five Volumes.  (14) Colonies and British Possessions—continued.  Africa—continued.  Session: 2 February 1904-15 August 1904.  Vol.  LXLL. Correspondence relating to the Recruitment of Labour in the British Central Africa Protectorate for Employment in the Transvaal.  [In continuation of “Africa No 2 (1903.] “Correspondence and Report from Hist Majesty’s Consul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo.”  Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty.  February 1904.  London: Printed for His Majesty’s Stationary Office, by Harrison and Sons, 1904.  Found in Project Gutenberg eBooks.

We discuss the Kindertransport program through which around 10,000 children were saved from Nazi occupied Europe from November 1938 until German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940.  

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A picture of one of the tags that children wore around their neck when arriving in Britain, as a way for them to meet with their foster families. This numbered identification tag was worn by Henry Schmelzer when he was a member of a Kindertransport sent from Austria to England in December 1938.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Henry Schmelzer
Source Record ID: Collections: 1989.215.2

Errata

Kristallnacht started on November 9th 1938. The Beer Hall Putsch started on November 8th 1923.

Bibliography

“A Bipartisan Move”, Washington Post, 14 Feb. 1939; see also “Clerics Ask US Help for German Child Refugees”, Newport News [Virginia] Daily Press, 10 Jan. 1939. 

Rymph, C. (2020). American child welfare and the Wagner-Rogers Bill of 1939. Jewish Historical Studies, 51(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2020v51.019

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.  Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.  Vintage Press, 1997.

Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Stories).  Emma Carlson Berne. Capstone Press. February 2017.

In America 1933-45: Response to the Holocaust, Rescuing the Future

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.  Bloomsbruy Publishing PLC. November 2017 

“Introduction to the Holocaust.”  Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jeffery Gurock (Editor). America, American Jews, and the Holocaust: American Jewish History.  Taylor and Francis, 1998.

Judy Bolton- Fasman. “And Then: The U.S.’s Culpability in the Holocaust” 

The Night of Broken Glass: Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht.  Edited by Uta Gerhardt and Thomas Karlauf.  Translated by Robber Simmons and Nick Sommers. Polity Press, 2009.

Interviews from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. 

RG Number: RG50.614.0038.  Oral History Interview with Norbert Wollheim.  The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust memorial Museum.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0012, Oral History Interview with Ernest Goodman,  The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C. 

RG Number: RG-90.008.0027. Oral History Interview with Ralph Samuel. The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0035.  Oral History Interview with Gita Rossi Zalmons, The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.