Holocaust Memorial Day and Nazi persecution of Freemasons

January 27th each year is HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY when the world remembers the evil committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party in World War 2 (1939-1945). What is less well known is that he focussed his genocidal attention on Freemasons and sent them from the occupied countries along with Jewish people and Gypsies to Nazi extermination camps for "special treatment". Concentration Camp Freemasons were categorised as "Political" prisoners, and made to wear an upside-down red triangle. In Germany alone a minimum of 80,000 Freemasons were sent to the camps and their death, some estimate as high as 200,000; we simply do not know.

It should also be noted that Freemasons were also actively sought out and hunted down by Moussolini, Franco and Stalin.

Why? The Nazi's put their reasons for persecuting Freemasons best in one of their SS pamphlets saying Freemasons are "dangerous" because... "Masonic lodges are... associations of men who, closely bound together in a union employing symbolical usages, represent a supra-national spiritual movement, the idea of Humanity... a general association of mankind, without distinction of races, peoples, religions, social and political convictions."

A description of railway transport to Auschwitz during the second world war ... "people; men, women and children were forced into cattle wagons, 50 persons to a wagon. 50 wagons to a train. A couple of small slits high up were left open to provide air through which the people within could see the stations fly past on their journey which would eventually [end] in the camps up to 4 days later. There was no heat, food or water for the entire journey. Any toilet activity was dealt with as a matter of expediency and added to the hellish cramped conditions within the wagons. The train entered the secured Auschwitz II camp and the now "prisoners" were taken off the trains under armed SS guard. Luggage and belongings parted company with their owners and the 2500 people per train split into male and female plus children and then fit (go to the right) and not fit (go to the left). Those who were fit were showered naked, shorn, and numbered. A bowl, wooden soled shoes and striped suit were issued, if not guarded 24 hrs per day, they would be stolen. It could be 2 days before food and water was available in the form of bowls of gruel.
... Those who were not fit were never seen again. "

The above is typical of the experience of people transported to the Auschwitz - Birkenau complex or Death Camps. The average life expentancy in the camp was around 2 to 3 months.
From 1942 until late 1944 The Nazis (SS) killed 3 million innocent people here. A further 3 million in other camps.

A harrowing visual account of Auschwitz can be seen pictorially on Google here with the keyowrds : the Lili (Lilly) Jacob Photo Album