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Q. The notorious​ Unit 731 members​ from Japan went totally scot-free, I understand​, even though they were probably worse than the Nazis. Do you agree?A. Unit 731 was an Auschwitz equivalent. The perpetrators should all have been tried for war crimes. Particularly evil was Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, commander of the unit.Most of the victims were Chinese and a few Koreans. 30% were Russians. Those that the Soviet forces managed to arrest were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. The rest were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data gathered, to be co-opted into the U.S. biological warfare program, as had happened with Nazi researchers in Operation Paperclip.On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda.Gen. Ishii lived on the outskirts of Tokyo until his death in 1959. Other "graduates" of Unit 731 include the former governor of Tokyo, the former president of the Japan Medical Association, the former director of the health ministry's preventive health research center, the former chairman and president of Green Cross Corp. and the past heads of a number of Japanese medical schools. The man in charge of vivisections, Yoshisuke Murata, became director of the respected Kyoto Medical School, and later medical director at Kinki University.Perpetrators:Surgeon General Shirō IshiiLt. General Masaji KitanoEpidemic Prevention and Water Purification DepartmentUnmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity New York Times10 Atrocious Experiments Conducted By Unit 731 - ListverseJapanese World War II veterans recall horrors of Unit 731 (Youtube)Unmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War AtrocityMORIOKA, Japan— He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife, and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic."The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese Army unit in China in World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming."I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."Finally the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection. The Chinese prisoner had been deliberately infected with the plague as part of a research project -- the full horror of which is only now emerging -- to develop plague bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man's inside. No anesthetic was used, he said, out of concern that it might have an effect on the results.That research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons of biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted research by experimenting on humans and by "field testing" plague bombs by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start plague outbreaks. They could.A trickle of information about the program has turned into a stream and now a torrent. Half a century after the end of the war, a rush of books, documentaries and exhibitions are unlocking the past and helping arouse interest in Japan in the atrocities committed by some of Japan's most distinguished doctors.Scholars and former members of the unit say that at least 3,000 people -- by some accounts several times as many -- were killed in the medical experiments; none survived.The Unit 731 complex Pingfang, ChinaNo one knows how many died in the "field testing." It is becoming evident that the Japanese officers in charge of the program hoped to use their weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America, and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use Kamikaze pilots to dump plague-infected fleas on San Diego.The research was kept secret after the end of the war in part because the United States Army granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the doctors in exchange for their data. Japanese and American documents show that the United States helped cover up the human experimentation. Instead of putting the ringleaders on trial, it gave them stipends.The accounts are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Russian mother and daughter left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peered through thick glass and timed their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawled over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas. The Origins Ban on Weapon Entices MilitaryJapan's biological weapons program was born in the 1930's, in part because Japanese officials were impressed that germ warfare had been banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. If it was so awful that it had to be banned under international law, the officers reasoned, it must make a great weapon.The Japanese Army, which then occupied a large chunk of China, evicted the residents of eight villages near Harbin, in Manchuria, to make way for the headquarters of Unit 731. One advantage of China, from the Japanese point of view, was the availability of research subjects on whom germs could be tested. The subjects were called marutas, or logs, and most were Communist sympathizers or ordinary criminals. The majority were Chinese, but many were Russians, expatriates living in China.Takeo Wano, a 71-year-old former medical worker in Unit 731 who now lives here in the northern Japanese city of Morioka, said he once saw a six-foot-high glass jar in which a Western man was pickled in formaldehyde. The man had been cut into two pieces, vertically, and Mr. Wano guesses that he was Russian because there were many Russians then living in the area.Gen. Shiro Ishii, head of Unit 731The Unit 731 headquarters contained many other such jars with specimens. They contained feet, heads, internal organs, all neatly labeled. "I saw samples with labels saying 'American,' 'English' and 'Frenchman,' but most were Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians," said a Unit 731 veteran who insisted on anonymity. "Those labeled as American were just body parts, like hands or feet, and some were sent in by other military units."US POWs shot down in Japan 70 years ago dissected ALIVETerrible fate: Captain Marvin Watkins, top left, and his crew were downed over Japan. Six of them and two others not pictured were dissected alive or subjected to other terrible medical experiments at Kyushu Medical School. Pictured in the back row (l to r) are: Marvin S. Watkins (interrogated and released at the end of war) William R. Fredericks (died in medical experiment), Howard T. Shingledecker, (fate unknown), Charles M. Kearns (died at crash site), Dale E. Plambeck (died in medical experiment) Front row: Robert C. Johnson (died at crash site), Teddy J. Ponczka (died in medical experiment), Robert B. Williams (died in medical experiment), Leon E. Czarnecki (died in medical experiment), Leo C. Oeinck (died at crash site), John C. Colehower (died in medical experiment)The soldiers were flying a B-29 bomber, pictured, when it was shot down over the skies of Japan. Eight of the men on board were taken to the Kyushu Medical School and experimented on. None survived the vivisection.Medical researchers also locked up diseased prisoners with healthy ones, to see how readily various ailments would spread. The doctors locked others inside a pressure chamber to see how much the body can withstand before the eyes pop from their sockets.Victims were often taken to a proving ground called Anda, where they were tied to stakes and bombarded with test weapons to see how effective the new technologies were. Planes sprayed the zone with a plague culture or dropped bombs with plague-infested fleas to see how many people would die.The Japanese armed forces were using poison gas in their battles against Chinese troops, and so some of the prisoners were used in developing more lethal gases. One former member of Unit 731 who insisted on anonymity said he was taken on a "field trip" to the proving ground to watch a poison gas experiment.A group of prisoners were tied to stakes, and then a tank-like contraption that spewed out gas was rolled toward them, he said. But at just that moment, the wind changed and the Japanese observers had to run for their lives without seeing what happened to the victims.The Japanese Army regularly conducted field tests to see whether biological warfare would work outside the laboratory. Planes dropped plague-infected fleas over Ningbo in eastern China and over Changde in north-central China, and plague outbreaks were later reported.Japanese troops also dropped cholera and typhoid cultures in wells and ponds, but the results were often counterproductive. In 1942 germ warfare specialists distributed dysentery, cholera and typhoid in Zhejiang Province in China, but Japanese soldiers became ill and 1,700 died of the diseases, scholars say.Sheldon H. Harris, a historian at California State University in Northridge, estimates that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare field experiments. Professor Harris -- author of a book on Unit 731,”Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up" (Routledge, 1994) -- also says plague-infected animals were released as the war was ending and caused outbreaks of the plague that killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin area from 1946 through 1948.The leading scholar of Unit 731 in Japan Tsuneishi Keiichi, is skeptical of such numbers. Professor Tsuneishi, who has led the efforts in Japan to uncover atrocities by Unit 731, says that the attack on Ningbo killed about 100 people and that there is no evidence of huge outbreaks of disease set off by field trials. The Tradeoff Knowledge Gained At Terrible Cost.Many of the human experiments were intended to develop new treatments for medical problems that the Japanese Army faced. Many of the experiments remain secret, but an 18-page report prepared in 1945 -- and kept by a senior Japanese military officer until now -- includes a summary of the unit's research. The report was prepared in English for American intelligence officials, and it shows the extraordinary range of the unit's work.Scholars say that the research was not contrived by mad scientists, and that it was intelligently designed and carried out. The medical findings saved many Japanese lives.For example, Unit 731 proved scientifically that the best treatment for frostbite was not rubbing the limb, which had been the traditional method, but rather immersion in water a bit warmer than 100 degrees -- but never more than 122 degrees.The cost of this scientific breakthrough was borne by those seized for medical experiments. They were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water, until a guard decided that frostbite had set in. Testimony from a Japanese officer said this was determined after the "frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck."Museum visitors Harbin, Helongjaing ProvinceA booklet just published in Japan after a major exhibition about Unit 731 shows how doctors even experimented on a three-day-old baby, measuring the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant's middle finger."Usually a hand of a three-day-old infant is clenched into a fist," the booklet says, "but by sticking the needle in, the middle finger could be kept straight to make the experiment easier." The Scope Other Experiments On Humans.The human experimentation did not take place just in Unit 731, nor was it a rogue unit acting on its own. While it is unclear whether Emperor Hirohito knew of the atrocities, his younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China and wrote in his memoirs that he was shown films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans."In addition, the recollections of Dr. Ken Yuasa, 78, who still practices in a clinic in Tokyo, suggest that human experimentation may have been routine even outside Unit 731. Dr. Yuasa was an army medic in China, but he says he was never in Unit 731 and never had contact with it.Nevertheless, Dr. Yuasa says that when he was still in medical school in Japan, the students heard that ordinary doctors who went to China were allowed to vivisect patients. And sure enough, when Dr. Yuasa arrived in Shanxi Province in north-central China in 1942, he was soon asked to attend a "practice surgery."Two Chinese men were brought in, stripped naked and given general anesthetic. Then Dr. Yuasa and the others began practicing various kinds of surgery: first an appendectomy, then an amputation of an arm and finally a tracheotomy. After 90 minutes, they were finished, so they killed the patient with an injection.When Dr. Yuasa was put in charge of a clinic, he said, he periodically asked the police for a Communist to dissect, and they sent one over. The vivisection was all for practice rather than for research, and Dr. Yuasa says they were routine among Japanese doctors working in China in the war.In addition, Dr. Yuasa -- who is now deeply apologetic about what he did -- said he cultivated typhoid germs in test tubes and passed them on, as he had been instructed to do, to another army unit. Someone from that unit, which also had no connection with Unit 731, later told him that the troops would use the test tubes to infect the wells of villages in Communist-held territory. The Plans Taking the War To U.S. Homeland.In 1944, when Japan was nearing defeat, Tokyo's military planners seized on a remarkable way to hit back at the American heartland: they launched huge balloons that rode the prevailing winds to the continental United States. Although the American Government censored reports at the time, some 200 balloons landed in Western states, and bombs carried by the balloons killed a woman in Montana and six people in Oregon.Half a century later, there is evidence that it could have been far worse; some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax in the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattle-plague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops.There was a fierce debate in Tokyo, and a document discovered recently suggests that at a crucial meeting in late July 1944 it was Hideki Tojo -- whom the United States later hanged for war crimes -- who rejected the proposal to use germ warfare against the United States.At the time of the meeting, Tojo had just been ousted as Prime Minister and chief of the General Staff, but he retained enough authority to veto the proposal. He knew by then that Japan was likely to lose the war, and he feared that biological assaults on the United States would invite retaliation with germ or chemical weapons being developed by America.Yet the Japanese Army was apparently willing to use biological weapons against the Allies in some circumstances. When the United States prepared to attack the Pacific island of Saipan in the late spring of 1944, a submarine was sent from Japan to carry biological weapons -- it is unclear what kind -- to the defenders.The submarine was sunk, Professor Tsuneishi says, and the Japanese troops had to rely on conventional weapons alone.As the end of the war approached in 1945, Unit 731 embarked on its wildest scheme of all. Codename Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan was to use Kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague.Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945.Ishio Obata, 73, who now lives in Ehime prefecture, acknowledged that he had been a chief of the Cherry Blossoms at Night attack force against San Diego, but he declined to discuss details. "It is such a terrible memory that I don't want to recall it," he said.Tadao Ishimaru, also 73, said he had learned only after returning to Japan that he had been a candidate for the strike force against San Diego. "I don't want to think about Unit 731," he said in a brief telephone interview. "Fifty years have passed since the war. Please let me remain silent."It is unclear whether Cherry Blossoms at Night ever had a chance of being carried out. Japan did indeed have at least five submarines that carried two or three planes each, their wings folded against the fuselage like a bird.But a Japanese Navy specialist said the navy would have never allowed its finest equipment to be used for an army plan like Cherry Blossoms at Night, partly because the highest priority in the summer of 1945 was to defend the main Japanese islands, not to launch attacks on the United States mainland.If the Cherry Blossoms at Night plan was ever serious, it became irrelevant as Japan prepared to surrender in early August 1945. In the last days of the war, beginning on Aug. 9, Unit 731 used dynamite to try to destroy all evidence of its germ warfare program, scholars say. The Aftermath No Punishment, Little Remorse.Partly because the Americans helped cover up the biological warfare program in exchange for its data, Gen. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, was allowed to live peacefully until his death from throat cancer in 1959. Those around him in Unit 731 saw their careers flourish in the postwar period, rising to positions that included Governor of Tokyo, president of the Japan Medical Association and head of the Japanese Olympic Committee.By conventional standards, few people were more cruel than the farmer who as a Unit 731 medic carved up a Chinese prisoner without anesthetic, and who also acknowledged that he had helped poison rivers and wells. Yet his main intention in agreeing to an interview seemed to be to explain that Unit 731 was not really so brutal after all.Asked why he had not anesthetized the prisoner before dissecting him, the farmer explained: "Vivisection should be done under normal circumstances. If we'd used anesthesia, that might have affected the body organs and blood vessels that we were examining. So we couldn't have used anesthetic."When the topic of children came up, the farmer offered another justification: "Of course there were experiments on children. But probably their fathers were spies.""There's a possibility this could happen again," the old man said, smiling genially. "Because in a war, you have to win."Rape of Nanking10 Atrocious Experiments Conducted By Unit 731 - ListverseTHATCHER BOYDThe events of World War II may show humanity at its lowest point. Clashing political ideologies and the ensuing worldwide combat produced a nearly unprecedented level of bloodshed and destruction.Although The Holocaust showed the extreme nature of the war and the horrifying extent to which a nation could be driven, Japan’s Unit 731 facilities, an Auschwitz equivalent, held their own horrors in human experimentation. These are just some of the experiments that were performed during the unit’s existence from 1936 to 1945.10. DismembermentPhoto credit: maywespeak.comLike experiments at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, Unit 731 doctors and researchers studied the potential survival of soldiers on the battlefield. But instead of using Japanese soldiers for these experiments, Unit 731 used Allied POWs as well as Chinese and Russian civilians.One such war-influenced experiment was in various dismemberments, particularly limb amputations, to study the effects of blood loss. Other forms of dismemberment were purely experimental and not combat-related. For example, some amputated limbs were reattached to other sides of the body. Other times, limbs were frozen and amputated until only the victim’s head and torso remained.Often, this was done without anesthetic for fear of negatively affecting the experiments. Test subjects were degradingly called marutas (“logs”), a reference to the phrase, “How many logs fell?”9. Nanking AtrocitiesPhoto credit: TimeUnit 731 was one of the two most infamous, large-scale war crimes committed by Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The second war crime was the Nanjing Massacre.Besides the atrocities committed, the correlation between the two war crimes was that many POWs and civilians captured during the campaign were used in the Unit 731 experiments. By and large, the anti-Chinese sentiment was still in place between the two events. As soon as Japanese soldiers entered China’s capital in December 1937, the city was host to mass murder and rape.After the orders to eliminate all captives eventually arrived, no one was spared. The atrocities included beatings, drownings, decapitations, mass theft, forced incestuous rape, live burials, addictive drug distribution, and numerous unrecorded crimes.There was even a contest between two Japanese officers to see who would kill 100 people with a sword first. Unlike many of the participants in Unit 731, however, these officers were tried and executed.8. VivisectionPhoto credit: unit731.orgOne of the most common and brutal experiments performed was vivisection. This was done on live subjects without anesthesia as it was believed that the symptoms of decay after death would skew results.One purpose of these vivisections was to practice surgery. In fact, multiple different surgeries were often performed on a subject. Once the victim was of no more use, he was killed and dissected before being burned or placed in a large burial pit.Other times, vivisections were performed to see the internal effects of diseases. Vivisections were also part of crude experiments, like the removal of the stomach and the attachment of the esophagus to the intestines. Images of and testimonies about these surgeries are available online. But view them with discretion as they are extremely graphic.7. Lethal InjectionsInitially, many of Unit 731’s disease experiments were performed as preventative measures. The Japanese had found that 89 percent of battlefield deaths from the First Sino-Japanese War were from diseases. But these experiments into preventative medicines and vaccines evolved into offensive use as the war progressed.Unit 731 was split into eight divisions. The first focused on experimenting with bacteriological diseases, including the bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, and tuberculosis. These bacteria were injected into subjects regularly, and the resulting infections were studied. The outcomes became increasingly deadly because many people lived in communal cells.The Japanese also studied the effects of injecting humans with animal blood, air bubbles that caused embolisms, and seawater. These seawater injections were similar to the seawater ingestion experiments at Auschwitz.6. Venereal DiseasesPhoto credit: CDC/Robert SumpterChildren were not exempt from the unit’s atrocities as vertical transmission from mother to fetus was studied. This included diseases like syphilis. The researchers studied how syphilis would affect the resulting baby’s health and how it would harm the mother’s reproductive system. Although we don’t know the number of children born in captivity, it is known that none had survived when the unit dissolved in 1945.While diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox could be injected, syphilis and gonorrhea required a different method of infection. This was done using a male and a female, one of whom was infected. The couple was forced to have sexual intercourse under threat of being shot. The infected bodies were later vivisected to see the internal results.5. FrostbiteOne of the more horrifying series of experiments revolved around extreme temperatures. While extreme heat was also used on test subjects, extreme cold was used more often as it was suited to certain facility climates in Japan.After the test subjects were taken outside in the cold, water was intermittently poured on their arms until frostbite set into the affected areas. Other times, limbs were frozen and subsequently thawed to study gangrene.One might wonder how the researchers could tell that the arms were frostbitten. According to one officer’s testimony, frostbite had occurred if the “frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when struck.”However, these experiments did yield scientific findings. The unit determined that rubbing a frostbitten area was not the most effective treatment. Instead, it was better to treat frostbite by immersing the affected area in water warmer than 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 °F) but cooler than 50 degrees Celsius (122 °F). A scene depicting this experiment is featured in the 1988 filmMen Behind the Sun with some artistic license.4. Sexual assaultThe rape and sexual assault of women occurred with tragic frequency in Unit 731. Like the mass rapes and sex slavery exhibited during the Nanjing Massacre (aka “The Rape of Nanjin”), sex crimes committed by Japanese soldiers and researchers were rampant. Although these unlawful acts were committed for pleasure, they were sometimes justified by the researchers as experiments about venereal diseases.However, one guard’s account of a researcher shows the disturbing and casual nature of these crimes. According to the guard, the researcher “told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her.”3. Special Chamber ExperimentsPhoto credit: firsttoknow.comAlthough Unit 731 did plenty of testing in the field, the 6-square-kilometer (2.3 mi) facility was host to numerous buildings for specific experiments. Many of these buildings were used to raise fleas and culture pathogens, but some were specially built for testing.A centrifuge was built to examine how much force it would take to cause death. High-pressure chambers pushed victims’ eyes out of their heads. Forced abortions and sterilizations were conducted, and subjects were treated to lethal doses of X-rays.In an experiment to observe the innate bond between mother and offspring, a Russian mother and her child were monitored in a glass chamber while poisonous gas was pumped in. The mother covered her child in an attempt to save her, but both ultimately succumbed.2. Weapons TestingPhoto credit: china-underground.com, escapeartistes.comIn Unit 731, human subjects were also used in weapons testing at many facilities. The victims were typically taken to an experimental field like Anda and tied to wooden posts for testing. Then the victims had plague-spreading bombs dropped on them en masse, were used for target practice, had grenades lobbed at them, or were burned with flamethrowers.This was very similar to the Imperial Japanese Army’s protocol to use captured Chinese soldiers for bayonet practice. It’s an example of unnecessary cruelty. (baby above)Biological warfarePhoto credit: firsttoknow.comWorld War I brought technological advances in warfare, particularly biological warfare. Inspired by the success produced by these bioweapons (particularly the chlorine gas used during the Second Battle of Ypres), General Shiro Ishii experimented extensively in this area.In addition to dropping bombs filled with diseases like anthrax, cholera, typhoid, and bubonic plague on prisoners, Ishii designed a special porcelain-shelled bomb that allowed infected fleas to disperse and infect a wider area. Again, subjects were often tied to stakes and bombed. Scientists in protective suits examined the bodies afterward.Other times—such as on October 4 and 29, 1940—low-flying airplanes sprayed plague bacteria in the Chechiang province in China, killing 21 and 99 people, respectively. However, estimates for the total number of Chinese killed in this manner vary from 200,000–580,000 people.The Japanese regarded the Chinese as inferior. As a result, the Chinese were considered viable test subjects for these attacks. We can only speculate as to what the unit would have done on a larger scale with these biological weapons.Thatcher Boyd is a writer, actor, film lover, and drinker of a LOT of black coffee. You can reach him here to collaborate, communicate, or just shoot the breeze.Unit 731 General FactsUnit 731 - WikipediaUnit 731: OverviewPure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard for Human SufferingUnit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare ProgramJapan revisits its darkest moments where American POWs became human experimentsJapanese World War II veterans recall horrors of Unit 731Published on Aug 14, 2014Former members of Unit 731, a Japanese military unit that conducted illegal human experiments during World War II, can be seen discussing the atrocities they committed in a video that was recently released. Coming just before the 69th anniversary of Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, the video has shed new light on the unit's past activities in northeast China's city of Harbin. They are telling history to a Chinese man who has been researching the unit for 16 years.South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai Young on May 16, 2013, criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for posing for a photo in the cockpit of a plane with the number 731 written on its body, during his visit to an Air Self-Defense Force base in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi Prefecture as the figure reminds South Koreans of Unit 731, a former Japanese military unit believed to have conducted human experiments. (Photo: AAP).

I have read all the answers here already because the topic is very depressing and I really couldn’t think of an answer because my answer required a miraculous escape from Stalingrad. Only three men were known to have escaped from Stalingrad once it fell and they were killed later when the hospital train they were taking was shelled by the Russians. There were few miraculous escapes and to maximize survival I would have to have had prescient knowledge that the 6th Armee was going to be destroyed. Since no one had that vision it would be difficult to prepare for the time ahead. But let’s say I was having bad dreams that made me uncomfortable about the “future” and I came to believe something bad was going to happen. It wouldn’t have taken much - the Germans knew Stalingrad was a bad place to fight long before they arrived there.The average German soldier knew the Stalingrad battle was going to be a meat grinder long before they got anywhere near the city. By September, 1942 they were encountering extremely stiff opposition and it was increasingly difficult as they moved towards the city. But the German Army was a proud, well trained, modern army flush with the tools and weapons needed to win. Overhead Luftflotte 4 was pounding the city mercilessly. One could smell the smoke before they came anywhere near the city. The Germans were so assured that there were frequent signs posted along the route saying “This is a combat area. Tourists and Sightseers are not welcome and take their lives in their hands past this point”. The fires were so intense and so complete that later on when winter came there would be a black market in firewood as everything that wasn’t consumed by the fires of combat was burned for warmth. It was so bad that eventually a house beam was worth a horse so you had choose between freezing to death or starving to death.The truth is that there were a limited number of ways out of the pocket. First, if you were near the border when the Russians closed the ring you might have escaped to the West and therefore escaped being surrounded. Many men did this, choosing to go west away from the city, but it was probably by chance or instinct. It meant the difference between life and death. If you were trapped in the ring your best bet for breaking out would have been to try to infiltrate to the west before the Russians consolidated their positions. But that would have meant abandoning your “family” unit, which would have been unthinkable for most German soldiers. It was tantamount to desertion and it just didn’t happen that much at that stage of the war. The Germans built their units around cohesion. They wrote the book on it, a book that is still adhered to by Western armies today. You probably wouldn’t desert.So it’s November, 1942 and you have to survive not only until the surrender in February, 1943 but until they decide to release you, probably in 1955.Your first strategy is to find adequate food, warmth and maintain your health. Reading the book “Survivors of Stalingrad” the units with the highest class of survivor seemed to be members of the Signal Corps. The Signal Corps were typically in extremely exposed and dangerous conditions, under fire, laying telegraph wire, moving messages and so on, so it surprises me that they survived as a group in greater numbers than other classes. One thing about them was they were in the right place at the right time when they got wounded and since they got wounded so frequently they were evacuated more frequently.As others have said, once the ring closed, you might escape if you received the “Heimatschuss” or the “million dollar wound,” a wound that would get you on an HE-111 at Gumrak airfield and sent to Stalino and then on a train bound for Austria or somewhere where you might get real care. Getting such a wound and remaining ambulatory was important and it was no guarantee of success. Many thousands who were wounded were simply put outside to freeze to death, that being the most merciful way of treating hopeless cases without “wasting” precious medical supplies.To make the “Heimatshuss” technique work you had to be very, very lucky. You had to be wounded badly enough to require medical attention unavailable in the pocket and be high enough on the queue or in the right place at the right time to be put on a plane and survive the flight out of Stalingrad while your plane was pocked with Russian machine gun fire and anti-aircraft fire, and then survive triage in Stalino and be put on an unheated hospital train for the multi-day journey where you prayed there would be attendants who would empty the shit buckets or get you a morsel of food or a blanket, and survive partisan attacks on the trains and tracks until you got to a real hospital where you prayed you didn’t have gangrene. And if you survived all that and convalesced you could expect some home leave - and to be sent back to the 6th Army refitting in France months after its destruction at Stalingrad. This was a tough way to survive but some 25,000 soldiers were airlifted out of Stalingrad and did survive, at least until the 6th Armee was destroyed again at Debrecen and then again at Budapest. For a true tale of horror read the final chapter of the book “Survivors of Stalingrad” where the survivor tells of how horrible it was to escape by being severely wounded, where soldiers peeled the flesh from the wounded in the bunk next to them on the train so they could eat it, where pus and blood and puke and shit rained down from the bunks above onto the men below, where men froze to death in their unheated railroad cars and where the train was sometime buffeted by explosions and bullets passed through, sometimes striking the already wounded men. A rough way to survive.Another way to survive would be to have a skill deemed critical by High Command in the future reconstitution of the 6th Armee in France. Once it was clear the city would fall (and that was pretty early on), men with important technical knowledge were selected to be flown out of the city. The big example of this is General Valentin von Hube who was removed by guards sent into Stalingrad to force him to leave. He got a plane to himself and he got something no one else got - the opportunity to remove his luggage. He would be killed in a plane crash a year later or so outside the surrounded First Panzer Armee. However there were other men, men with engineering skills, electronics skills, administration skills who were deemed important enough to have special seats assigned to them on the planes that made it into Gumrak or one of the other makeshift airports.Of course, if you had family or friends in very high places and they put in a good word for you, that would also help too. Under those conditions you would probably be an officer but you would somehow be labelled “critical to re-organization of the Army” and find yourself with a ticket out of the city. Again, you still had to survive the gauntlet of getting your over-crowded plane off the ground and out of the city. Thirty percent of the planes leaving crashed or were shot down before arriving at Stalino or an intermediate destination. The Germans lost seven entire squadrons in the Stalingrad debacle, two on the ground during the encirclement and five shot down or crashed due to weather.Let us assume you cannot escape as the result of a wound: you don’t get shot. You’re in it for the long haul. You realize, despite the constant rumor mill of Hoth’s 4th Panzer Armee outside the city (and you can hear the battle as they approach) and the preparations to break out, since this was something you trained for, that the city is going down. 6th Armee command published a newspaper of sorts for awhile until the wherewithal to do so dried up, so soldiers felt that they were not forgotten. Survival depended upon a number of things: getting food, staying warm, remaining healthy for the ordeal to come. You didn’t want to be an artilleryman or a mechanic or a hostler. As the amount of artillery ammunition declined and you ran out of gas and there were fewer numbers of cattle to round up these men were combed out and sent directly to the front line where they died in droves. You might want to be a butcher or a quartermaster or a nurse. You might want to find yourself attached to the Military Police or to the Headquarters Staff. As a butcher, you were in the prime spot to cut and prepare the meat. As the circle closed on Stalingrad, the Army drove thousands of cattle into the city as described in the book, “Enemy at the Gates”. The cattle were joined by thousands of horses which were used to pull artillery and sledges filled with ammunition. There were also hundreds of police dogs. All were going to end up in the stew pot. As a butcher you knew one head of cattle could deliver 1000 rations; one horse could render 700 rations as described in James Lucas’ “War on the Eastern Front”. And as time went on there was no waste. Even pigs that had died in the shelling months before were dug from the soil as men tried to boil and eat their rotten flesh. But being a butcher you would be brought the food to prepare because you knew how to get the most out of an animal, even a rat. And rats were caught by the thousands. In addition, as a butcher you would have access to something that was extremely hard to get in Stalingrad - fresh water. Men were dying of thirst despite being surrounded by snow since everyone knew that to eat snow was a death sentence in the cold weather due to dysentery. And the only available cure for dysentery in Stalingrad was to eat charcoal.As a butcher you had access to the kitchens and warmth since to cook the food or deliver a meal there had to be fire and you were paid in food. The Germans captured numerous Russian granaries where the Russians tried to contaminate the wheat with diesel but a butcher, baker or cook still had to use that contaminated grain to make 1000 oil-contaminated loaves a day per baker in the field kitchens and supply kitchens. And there you could make all kinds of side deals with quartermasters and officers when supplies did arrive. Until the end, when even butchers were sent into the line, being able to prepare a dog or a rat or even a man for stew was a good way to stay well fed and healthy and off the main battlefield. And as for the last days of the city, you would have to get used to eating many, many kinds of things you might not like, and know exactly how much sawdust or straw you could add to the stew to increase the volume before it became inedible. And as time went on a Butcher would even be brought human parts to prepare. Most popular were trachea, livers and legs, especially the thighs. All of this was added to the stew.Being a quartermaster or a member of the military police often got you access to supplies that were stockpiled for distribution. Every army knows that many things are kept off the books and they disappear. Every army knows that to keep a disintegrating army from turning into a rabble you need well-fed military police to guard the supplies that are left. If you are in charge of the things you need to survive, or in charge of guarding them, then there’s a good chance you can get enough of the stuff you need to survive. The downside was that you had to police the increasingly starving, cold, desperate men outside, men of your own army whom you often had to shoot, and you had to guard the aircraft preparing to leave with the wounded or the important - but you were never chosen to get on the plane.Another way to survive was to make absolutely certain that you had the best footwear and that you always took care of your feet. An army without trucks depends on the health of its feet. The Germans went into Stalingrad with rather poor combat boots. They were good for combat in dry weather, but not cold weather. The Germans had learned a great deal from the frozen steppes outside Moscow the year before but the Russians still had the best boots. The Russians were issued with boots that were two sizes too large and stuffed with felt inserts. Boots that were too loose without that felt were as bad as boots that were too tight. In “Blood Red Snow” the story is told of how, when new boots become available, you grab whatever is there and run, with the hope it will fit or you can trade it with someone else who has boots that might fit. When they don’t, marching turns your feet to a bloody mess and becomes a life-threatening event. Get the right boots; make certain they have the right inserts; take them off at every opportunity and wash your feet with snow and let your feet dry out. Trench foot was common in Stalingrad and it was a court martial offense. Taking care of your feet was second nature. But when you slept, you had to wear your boots or someone would steal them. Taking the boots from a dead Russian or simply forcing a Russian prisoner to surrender his boots would be necessary. You had to have good footwear. There are many photos of battlefields, taken near the end of the war, where the dead combatants are strewn about, unshod. The guns and equipment of the dead might be left behind, but never the boots.And then you had to look to your head. You had to have good headgear. The metal Stahlhelm helmet would block the wind - and the metal would draw the heat directly from your body. You had to have excellent head gear as the Russians did and you had to protect your ears and nose. Russian or German fleece headgear, motorcycle goggles and headgear designed to protect the rider and taken from a dead rider, and whatever else protected your head without restricting your hearing or freedom of movement and sight would be key. But your feet come first. To survive until 1955 you are going to need to be able to walk since the Russians are going to make you walk hundreds and thousands of miles.Working as a nurse or orderly in the basement of bombed-out hospitals and makeshift aid stations works up to a point. You get access to food, warmth and you can keep your uniform up to date with the clothing taken from the dead German and Russian prisoners. But the psychological price is high. There were dwindling supplies. Decisions were made constantly about who got what was left. When a soldier died, his bloody bandage was removed to be used on someone else. Piles of amputated limbs had to be carried to the fires for cremation. The cries of the wounded were constant. The smell of blood, gangrene, fesces and urine filled the wards. You had to carry hopeless cases who begged for a reprieve out to the cold to let them freeze to death because there was no room or supplies for men who had no chance. And since the ground was too frozen for digging graves, cellars were filled with the frozen dead and the courtyards had them stacked in piles, mummified, staring, frozen into death masks of horror and pain. And as time went on you could still be combed out to become a combat medic or infantryman. And when the surrender came you simply had to keep unemotional as the Russians tossed fragmentation grenades into the wards of moaning, wounded men who tried to drag themselves away leaving trails of blood and entrails. The Russians weren’t going to waste any time assisting wounded Germans.Being able to speak Russian would be of great use. Colonel Hans von Luck writes in his book “Panzer Commander” of how frequently useful it was to know Russian during his time in Russian PoW camps after being captured outside Halbe in the last days of the war when he and his panzer unit deserted the breakout attempt and struck out on their own. The Russian guards didn’t care if you couldn’t understand them. If they gave you an order and you didn’t respond because you didn’t know what they were saying you could get beaten or shot. If you want to be one of the 5000 Stalingrad men returning from Russia in 1955, one of that 3 percent of men who went into the cauldron then you are going to need to know some Russian, and the more the better. Survivors like Gottfried Bidermann tells in the book “In Deadly Combat” how being able to speak Russian got him better jobs in the camp, better food, the opportunity to communicate with sympathetic doctors or guards and put him in the position to survive. He was with the 11th Armee in Kourland and was among the last men to surrender when the war ended but it was his Russian language skills that saved his life more than once.A knowledge of what plants and bugs you can eat and what will poison you would be a critical asset. A knowledge of what plants might have medicinal value, such as the bark of a willow tree would be helpful as well since there was no medicine for prisoners. German soldier prisoners were always used as slave labor and often worked to death in the fields or woods. Being able to grab this leaf or that bulb or that herb and eat it on the fly often meant the difference between life and death. The Russian diet for prisoners was often a thin maize gruel with cabbage or perhaps rotten fish or meat. There was neither enough caloric or nutritional value for the prisoners and so there was always the need to find ways to supplement the food provided. Cannibalism was rampant in the prison camps. Ad hoc teams of German, Romanian, Italian and even Spanish soldiers sprung up and would sneak around to kidnap the isolated, weak soldier and take him to a sympathetic butcher who would render him into stew. It’s likely every German prisoner at one time or another ate a comrade. Cannibalism was punishable by death and the soldiers engaged in procuring the meat were reviled and often murdered but when your survival is at stake you can convince yourself it’s rat or dog. In one camp the Germans set up a sieve to strain out the undigested corn from the shit in the latrines and grind it into corn flour to make a sort of bread. Scurvy, ricketts and other forms of malnutrition were rampant and a weak body is open to sickness and disease. You have to eat what comes your way and without pride or distaste or disgust. Your goal is to get home.The ability to accept your lot and be patient was a key factor in survival. Bidermann tells of how men became obsessed with the idea of escape. Even he was able to keep a compass needle hidden in his field cap. There was no place to go. They were often in the middle of nowhere. Those who did escape were almost always caught and killed. The men in the escapees prison group were punished mercilessly. Patience and acceptance were important to survival. You had to surrender your pride and dignity and step outside yourself. When the surrender of Stalingrad came, it was often best to appear without medals or watches or anything a Russian was going to strip or beat from your body. If you were an SS soldier you were going to be singled out for execution or special punishment. It would be best to have a friend cut out the SS blood tattoo under your armpit and make it look like a battlefield wound and exchange uniforms with a dead German soldier in a non-SS unit if at all possible, though in truth the likelihood of getting away with this ruse was weak. There was a trade in tattoo removal near the end of the war using whatever implement available that made it look like a war wound. Infection and gangrene were a big risk since the Germans didn’t have access to penicillin. The Russians looked for that tattoo first and punished those men the most.When rounded up, you must stay in the middle of the group of soldiers being force marched, not on the edges. The men on the edges were beaten and shot. They migrated there out of weakness. Make certain you have your hat, gloves, blanket and any rations you can carry. It’s better if your boots and gloves don’t match because it’s less likely they will be stolen or confiscated if they are obviously not a pair, or are damaged or discolored. If you have gold fillings you would want to have had them removed by the Stalingrad dentist before the capture. The Russians pulled gold-filled teeth from the mouths of prisoners with pliers while on the march and if you fell back, you got beaten or shot. This happened to Hans von Luck and it is the one bitter thing he was unable to get over, even years after the war. If you have a wedding ring, stick it up your ass. You’ll need it for a bribe later. Forget any other kind of jewelry, religious or military. Anything you hold on to can be used against you as you will be charged with being a committed fascist if you hold onto them. Bidermann tells of a man who somehow held onto his Iron Cross during his entire captivity and was discovered only when about to board the train back to Germany in 1955. He was dragged back to the prison and never heard from again.When you get to the cattle trains where the Russians are going to cram you for the duration of your trip to the camps you have to make some strategic decisions. Do you want to be near the door? The few windows? The one bucket that’s available for the latrine? Now is the time to pluck out that gold wedding ring from your ass and use it for a bribe if you know where the most survivable spot on that car is going to be. And make no mistake, surviving those trains was a matter of chance. On more than one occasion the prisoners were jammed into the cars but the locomotives didn’t show up for three days. When the cars were opened they were filled with dead men, frozen stiff, not a single survivor. Sometimes you cannot impact your chances for survival.You are going to be interviewed. Keep your story simple and keep it straight. The higher your rank the more the Russians are going to try to trap you. Never, ever admit to having liberated or confiscated so much as an egg while in Russia. If you admit it you will charged and subsequently convicted of theft of Soviet property and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in the uranium mines or in Siberia. Few German soldiers ever returned from Siberia. When asked you ate only “Conserv”, the food supplied by the German commissary. Your story must never change. The Russians are looking for contradictions, even over years, and if you forget, even once, you will be called a liar and separated for “special treatment”.Do not join the Communist Party while in the PoW camp. The Russians will make a full-court press to “de-Nazification” and re-education into the ways of Communism and will try to induct you into their special Hell with promises of extra food, cigarettes and privileges. In the end you will be hated by the other German prisoners you have to live with the way the Jewish Sonderkommando were hated by the other Jewish concentration camp prisoners. And it won’t really do that much good and if you survive: your shame and Russian blackmail will follow you around for the rest of your life. Your spirit will be broken and you will always be the lackey of some Russian functionary, as a guard, soldier, policeman, informer and you will hate yourself. So much.You must keep your mind active. In the PoW camps, even while starving and being worked to death the Germans set up all kinds of clubs and programs. Chess sets were carved; there were choral groups; there were college classes. Anyone with knowledge to impart would hold lectures and others would join and learn and ask questions.Know to whom to remain loyal. In many of the camps the Germans were kept to the Germans; the Italians to the Italians and the Romanians to the Romanians and so on. The Germans surrendered any notions of loyalty to their former allies and threw them under the bus. In one escapade they stole a pile of cabbages and made a trail to the door of the Romanian barracks and while the Russians beat the shit out of the Romanians the Germans ate all the cabbages. German sappers would make night time raids on Italian barracks to steal their food. Loyalty only went one way - to your survival and to the survival of those who were going to help you survive. The Russians forbade the use of titles and honorifics and singled out for “special treatment” anyone with the title “von” in their name. “You are all peasants here,” they said. But in private, Captains were still called Captain and courtesy, deference and obedience were maintained whenever possible. When it was cold men would die at night and their bodies would be put in positions of life, such as sitting at the chess board or propped up with their arms folded so that when the Russians came to make a ration count they would count the dead man as being alive and provide one more set of rations. Those bodies in extremely natural poses would be “lent” to other barracks and set up to accomplish the same trick. This worked until the temperatures rose enough for the bodies to start to decompose.Get religion. One of the things that helped many German soldiers survive the grueling years was converting to a religion then spending time learning about it and praying for succor. Perhaps it did nothing but it took their mind off their hunger and gave them hope and in this situation hope is the gold standard of survival. When finally released many of those who got religion abandoned it in recollection of the bitter years of imprisonment preceded by horrible combat. The Germans called these “The Lost Years”. It was a standard phrase, the time between 1940 and 1955 when their youth disappeared. This comes up over and over in the book “An Oral History of the Third Reich”.Talk. A lot. Many of the men captured by the Russians, especially towards the end of the war, were participants in the most brutal combat known to man - Stalingrad, Budapest, Konisgberg, Breslau, Memel and more were scenes of horror that no man should be part of and then lose the battle. The crushed spirits, the nightmares, the PTSD that accompanied all of this was assuaged by years of prison where soldiers decompressed among other soldiers, men who understood them and their experience and they talked about what they saw and heard and felt, for years. Unwittingly they provided each other with life-saving therapy, therapy that was denied to other soldiers like Guy Sajer, the author of “The Forgotten Soldier” who suffered nightmares and guilt for the rest of his life because he had no one to talk to after the war. He had to bottle it all up.And the number one thing that assured survival, after reading dozens of accounts of men who made it through the trial, was their attitude. Hans von Luck speaks of this at length as does Gottfried Bidermann. Men who turned to despair died in days despite no apparent cause. Men who were on their death bed but who had hope would recover and return home. The number one key you could carry around with you all the time was the attitude that this would end and that you would someday come home.Stalin wanted the German Army to rebuild the Soviet Union as slave labor and it took the constant work of Konrad Adenauer, the post-war leader of Germany to get them to finally release the German prisoners. Forty percent of the Germans captured by the Russians would die in their camps and those that returned, usually through France, received an overwhelming welcome. They returned as heroes. The German government and population turned out by the thousands to receive the trains that rolled into France loaded with much-older, much-thinner German soldiers still in their tattered military uniforms. The trains were showered with wreaths and flowers and the cheers of the German civilians who received them as heroes. German soldiers, after years of torture and privation, were reduced to tears by the homecoming, where wives and old mothers stood on the platform with signs stating their husband’s or sons name and rank. The French were pissed and tried to stop the outpouring of elation in future releases but whenever possible, released German prisoners were treated as returning heroes. And then these broken men got their back pay and compensation and were officially released from the German Army at last and went to wander in a still-shattered Germany where title to any pre-war property was in doubt, where there was no guarantee of locating family or friends and where you could easily find your wife remarried to another man or come home to grown children who saw you as a stranger. Fifteen years after the start of the war you had to start your life all over again.

THE BLOOD LIBELDuring the middle ages it was common for Christians to accuse Jews of, "ritual murder." Jews celebrated Passover during which they would put the blood of a slaughtered lamb on their doorpost commemorating their escape from Egypt. The Christian notion, deliberately perverted, was that Jews were required to use the blood of Christian children to reconcile with God. The Blood Libel charges Jews with replaying the crucifixion of Jesus by murdering a Christian child, most always a boy, and using his blood in perverse rituals that mock the Eucharist. Entire villages of Jews were tortured, mutilated, and burned when a Christian child turned up dead or missing. And though Popes, and magistrates, pleaded with local populations, and often hid Jews, the killings continued. Though the accusation continues today the Catholic church finally condemned it in 1934.Christians believed Jews needed Christian blood because:Jews suffered from hemorrhoids as a punishment for killing Jesus, and drinking blood was the best cure for hemorrhoids at the time.All Jewish men menstruate and need a monthly blood transfusion.Jewish men, when they're circumcised, lose so much blood because of that surgical procedure that they need to drink Christian babies' blood.It's the chief ingredient in matzah, and therefore prior to every Passover Jews would be requiring a large supply.In the thirteenth century, most people in northern Europe elieved that blood had enormous power. Chirstians thought it was a source of strength, because it held the power of the soul. They used animal blood in medicines and in amulets, or charms, to ward off evil. Jews also thought blood had power. Because they thought that blood contained the spirit of living beings, Jews were forbidden to taste blood. Jewish dietary laws require great care in the preparation of meat to avoid the possibility of eating blood. Animals are slaughtered in such a way that most of the blood is drained rapidly. Whatever blood remains is removed by broiling or soaking and salting the meat. Jews who come into contact with blood need to purify themselves before carrying out their religious obligations.The first accusation was made in Norwich England when a tanner's apprentice, a 12-year-old boy named William, was found dead in a woods, and his death was blamed on Jews. The false charge was brought during Holy Week, with the retaliatory murder of a Jew being carried out on Good Friday.A monk called Thomas of Monmouth wrote an account of that originating murder charge in The Life and Passion of the Martyr St. William of Norwich. The monk relates the testimony of the "informant" an apostate Jew named Theobald, who reported,"It was laid down by the Jews in ancient times that every year they must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world to the Most High God in scorn and contempt of Christ ... Wherefore the leaders of the Rabbis of the Jews who dwell in Spain assemble together at Narbonne ... and they cast lots for all the countries which the Jews inhabit ... and the place whose lot is drawn has to fulfill the duty imposed by authority."The boy involved in the 1144 hoax became known as St. William of Norwich. Absolutely no evidence was adduced that a murder had been committed; it seems indeed that the lad had been merely in a cataleptic fit when found, and was buried alive by his own relatives. Many people made pilgrimages to his tomb and claimed that miracles had resulted from appeals to St. William. The myth shows a complete lack of understanding of mainline Judaism. Aside from the prohibition of killing innocent persons, the Torah specifically forbids the drinking or eating of any form of blood in any quantity. However, reality never has had much of an impact on blood libel myths. This rumor lasted for many centuries; even today it has not completely disappeared.Pope Innocent IV ordered a study in 1247 CE. His investigators found that the myth was a Christian invention used to justify persecution and extortion of money or property from the Jews. At least 4 other popes subsequently vindicated the Jews. However, the accusations, trials, and executions continued. In 1817, Czar Alexander I of Russia declared that the blood libel was a myth. Even that did not stop the accusations against Jews in that country.Holy shrines were erected to honor innocent Christian victims, and well into the twentieth century, churches throughout Europe displayed knives and other instruments that Jews purportedly used for these rituals. Caricatures of hunchbacked Jews with horns and fangs were depicted in works of art and carved into stone decorating bridges. Proclaimed by parish priests to be the gospel truth, each recurrence of the blood libel charge added to its credence, thus prompting yet more accusations. This vicious cycle continued to spiral.There are 150 recorded cases of the charge of ritual murder, and many led to massacres of the Jews of the place.Some of the incidents were:1171: Jews in Blois, France were accused of ritual murder. All of the Jews in that town (34 men, 16 or 17 women) were, "dragged to a wooden tower where they were given the option of baptism or death. None chose the former." They were burned alive.1181: Three Christian boys disappeared after playing on a frozen river in Vienna, Austria. Several, "witnesses" swore that Jews had slaughtered the boys. Three hundred Jews were burned at the stake. After the spring thaw, the bodies of the boys were recovered. They had drowned, and were otherwise unharmed.1235: In Dec. 1235, five children of a miller, residing in the vicinity of the city of Fulda, Hesse-Nassau, were murdered, in consequence of which thirty-four Jews and Jewesses were slaughtered by the Crusaders. The Jews were accused of the deed, and those put to the torture are said to have confessed that they murdered the children, in order to procure their blood for purposes of healing1255: The case of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln is mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, and thus has become well known. A little lad of eight years, named Hugh, son of a woman named Beatrice, disappeared at Lincoln on July 31st, 1255. His body was discovered on August 29th, covered with filth, in a well belonging to a Jew named Jopin. On being promised by John of Lexington, a judge, who happened to be present, that his life should be spared, Jopin is said to have confessed that the boy had been crucified by the Jews, who had assembled at Lincoln for that purpose. King Henry III, on reaching Lincoln some five weeks afterward, at the beginning of October, refused to carry out the promise of John of Lexington, and had Jopin executed and ninety-one of the Jews of Lincoln seized and sent up to London, where eighteen of them were executed. The rest were pardoned at the intercession of the Franciscans.Many historians today believe that young Hugh accidentally fell into the well.The cathedral in Lincoln contained a shrine to "Little St. Hugh" that was a tourist attraction for 700 years. In 1955, ten years after the Holocaust and in response to it, the plaque was removed. In its place is one with these words:By the remains of the shrine of "Little St. Hugh": Trumped up by stories of "ritual murders" of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255. Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been, amend what we are, and direct what we shall be.1263: A Dominican monk published a theory that God had inflicted Jews with a terrible disease because they had murdered Christ. He reasoned that the only cure was to kill an innocent Christian child and consume its blood.1267: At Pforzheim, Baden, the corpse of a seven-year-old girl was found in the river by fishermen. The Jews were suspected, and when they were led to the corpse, blood began to flow from the wounds; led to it a second time, the face of the child became flushed, and both arms were raised. In addition to these miracles, there was the testimony of the daughter of the wicked woman, who had sold the child to the Jews. A regular judicial examination did not take place; and it is probable that the above-mentioned, "wicked woman" was the murderess. A judicial murder was then and there committed against the Jews.1431: After ritual murder charges, several Jewish communities were destroyed in southern Germany: Ravensburg, Uberlingen, and Lindau.1475: A few days before Easter, Samuel, a Jew in Trent Italy, found the body of a Christian infant named Simon. He had apparently drowned in a nearby river. A number of Jews were arrested and tortured. All confessed to murdering the infant. They were burned at the stake. Stories spread of miraculous cures which were believed to have been caused by contacting Simon's bones. Simon was canonized as a holy martyr by Pope Gregory XIII. Simon's beatification was reversed in 1965.1494: In a case at Tyrnau, Hungary, in 1494, the absurdity, even the impossibility, of the statements forced by torture from women and children, who admitted everything that was asked of them. They even said that Jewish men menstruated, and that they therefore practiced the drinking of Christian blood as a remedy.1529: At Bazin Hungary, in 1529, it was charged that a nine-year-old boy had been bled to death, suffering cruel torture. Thirty Jews confessed to the crime and were publicly burned. The true facts of the case were disclosed later, when the child was found alive in Vienna. He had been stolen by the accuser, Count Wolf of Bazin, as an easy but fiendish means of ridding himself of his Jewish creditors at Bazin.1881: A Roman Catholic journal, Civilta Cattolica, started a series of articles which attempted to prove that ritual murder was an integral element of the Jewish religion. They argued that the ritual murders occurred at Purim rather than Passover.1903: In April, the body of a young Russian boy was discovered. The rumor was spread that the boy had been the victim of Jewish ritual murder. The Russians of that era were quite ready to accept the story, and by the time the real murderer had been located (he turned out to be a Gentile relative of the victim who had committed the crime for financial gain) 2,750Jewish families had been uprooted, forty-seven killed, and over four hundred injured. Property damage amounted to 2,500,000 rubles.1928: Massena New York seems an unlikely location for a major event in American Jewish history, but it was.A "blood libel" accusation against the 100 or so Jewish residents then living in Massena tore the city apart. The myth of Jewish ritual sacrifice persisted through the centuries and occasionally resonated on the fringes of American society, no place more openly and angrily than in Massena, New York.On erev Yom Kippur, 1928, the New York State police brought in Rabbi Berel Brennglass of Massena’s Orthodox congregation Adath Israel for questioning. Four-year-old Barbara Griffiths of Massena had disappeared and Albert Comnas, an immigrant from Salonika, Greece, charged that, as the highest of Jewish holy days was at hand, the Jews of Massena might have kidnapped little Barbara and ritually murdered her for her blood. The police interrogated Rabbi Brennglass for more than an hour about Jewish practices in respect to human sacrifice and the use of blood in food. Fortunately, during the interrogation, Barbara emerged from the woods where, having become lost, she had spent the night in the tall grass.Her reappearance did not fully calm some townspeople. They suggested that the Jews had released her only on discovery of their plot. Choosing to believe this was true, mayor W. Gilbert Hawes organized a boycott of Massena’s Jewish-owned businesses. Massena’s dismayed Jewish community leaders called on Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, to intervene. Wise called on his friend Al Smith, New York’s governor, who was running for president on the Democratic ticket that year, to speak out in defense of Massena’s Jews. Smith assured Wise that while he could do nothing about the mayor’s actions, which were not under his jurisdiction, he would make certain that the actions of the state trooper in the case were thoroughly investigated.Mayor Hawes, with his eyes on his pending re-election campaign issued a public apology. His statement read in part:"In light of the solemn protest of my Jewish neighbors, I feel I ought to express clearly and unequivocally … my sincere regret that by any act of commission or omission, I should have seemed to lend countenance … to what I should have known to be a cruel libel imputing human sacrifice as a practice now or at any time in the history of the Jewish people." Hawes was reelected for a sixth consecutive term.Rabbi Brennglass reminded his congregation at Kol Nidre services in 1928, "We must forever remind ourselves that this happened in America, not tsarist Russia, among people we have come to regard as our friends. We must show our neighbors that their hatred originates in fear, and that this fear has its roots in ignorance. … We must show them they have nothing to fear from us. We must tell the world this story so it will never happen again."1930's +: Hitler re-used the blood-libel myth as justification for the Holocaust. The Nazi periodical, Der Stürmer, often published special issues devoted to allegations of ritual murder by Jews.Host desecration accusations against Jews:In the thirteenth century a number of Christians came to believe that the host had magical powers.The host is a wafer used during the Roman Catholic mass. At a certain point during the ritual, the church teaches that it is converted into the actual body of Jesus Christ, just as the wine becomes Jesus' actual blood. These elements of the mass are then eaten by the believers. This belief is not shared by Protestants, who believe that the bread and wine symbolize -- but do not become -- Jesus' actual body and blood.The first accusation of the desecration of the host arose after Pope Innocent III had recognized in 1215 the doctrine of transubstantiation, which resulted in the public and general worship of the consecrated host. Hence the first authentic accusation does not occur before the middle of the thirteenth century.Instead of accusing the Jews of killing an innocent child, they were accused of desecrating the host. Medieval documents tell stories describing how a Jew (usually always called Abraham) were alleged to steal the host, or acquire it by purchase or bribery, to step on it, to break it or seethe it, to stick needles into it or transfix it, to spit or urinate on it. Sometimes, they were accused of nailing the host, in a symbolic replay of the crucifixion, whereupon it began to bleed.The Jews, frightened on seeing the blood, endeavored to hide the host, but while doing so miracles are said to occur which aroused the attention of the Christian population and led to the discovery of the crime. The story is told, for instance, that once when the Jews were burying pieces of a pierced host in a meadow, these pieces were changed into butterflies, which began to heal cripples and blind persons. Another time, when some Jews were burning such pieces in a stove, angels and doves flew out. Again, the pieces fluttered out of a swamp, and a herd of grazing oxen, on seeing them, bowed down before them. The blood from the host was said to have splashed the foreheads of the Jews, leaving an indelible mark that betrayed them. It was also said that the pierced host had once whimpered and cried like an infant.In one version of the story. The rumor began in Paris. People whispered that a Jew had acquired a consecrated host (by theft or as security for a loan) in order to determine whether it had magical power. He stabbed it with a knife and then threw it into boiling water. The water immediately turned red with blood. According to rumors, after witnessing this miracle, the man and his family converted to Christianity.Even when such an accusation was supported only by the testimony of a thief, a disreputable woman, a recent convert, or some one having a grudge against the accused Jews, the alleged perpetrators were put on trial, and, on evidence that was often preposterous, or after a confession exacted by torture, were condemned and burned, sometimes with all the other Jews of the place. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered as a result of such stories.Dominican Giordano da Rivalto declared in a sermon that Jews steal the Eucharistic host to blaspheme it. Giordano claims to have personally witnessed such a desecration - and to have seen with his own eyes an apparition of the youthful Jesus, come upon the scene to stop it. Jesus "rallied the local Christian population to slaughter 24,000 Jews in punishment for their evil deed."Like the blood libel myth, host desecration makes no logical sense. Being Jews, they would not believe in the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation - that the host during mass becomes the actual body of Jesus. To them, the host is just a simple wafer with no religious significance.100 instances of the charge have been recorded, in many cases leading to massacres.Some of the incidents were:1215: The Fourth Lateran Council in Rome declared the belief in transubstantiation. This established the theological basis for the host desecration myth.1308: The Bishop of Strasbourg charged Jews in Sulzmatt and Rufach with host desecration. They were burned alive.1389: Jews in Prague were accused of attacking a monk carrying a wafer. All of the Jews in the city were offered the choice of conversion to Christianity or death. They were all killed.1399: A rabbi and 13 elders in Posen, Poland, were charged with stabbing the host and tossing it into a pit. They were slowly roasted to death. Some townspeople believed that the host had bled.Unlike the basic Blood Libel myth, rumors of host desecration by Jews appear to have died out in the Middle Ages. It has surfaced recently, during the mid-1990's. In at least two Roman Catholic cathedrals (one in Ontario, Canada and another in Mississippi) some parishioners believed that Satanists were masquerading as church members, attending mass but not swallowing the host. They believed that it was later taken from the cathedral and used in Satanic rituals.Redirecting...Blood Libel, Host Desecration and other Mythshttp://www.postfun.com/pfp/features/98/oct/bloodlibel.htmlBLOOD ACCUSATION - JewishEncyclopedia.comHOST, DESECRATION OF - JewishEncyclopedia.comAJHS | Academic AwardsCONSTANTINE'S SWORD, the CHURCH and the JEWS, JAMES CARROLL, copyright 2001, Houghton Mifflin Co.WHILE SIX MILLION DIED, ARTHUR D. MORSE, Copyright 1968, Random House Inc.ROOTS of HATE, Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the holocaust, WILLIAM I. BRUSTEIN, Copyright 2003, Cambridge university PressA CONVENIENT HATRED: THE HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM, PHYLLIS GOLDSTEIN, Copyright 2012, by Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation.JKH/324-08