The Only Guaranteed Reason to Send Kids to Prison Should be Violent Crime. Boys have been sent to prison for jay walking, being late to school, running away from home, even from abusive parents, shoplifting a candybar, burping in PE Class, etc. Shame on US.
Roger Kiser was an orphan abandoned by his parents, then sent to Dozier Reform School/PRISON because he couldn't follow the rules, which was the catch phrase and FRAUDULENT justification for sending orphans to prison. His life became a living hell for the next 10 years, every night he would pray to die.
For those who say this kind of thing only happens in the past, from 2014: Republican Florida Attorneys General Pam Bondi and Ashley Moody REFUSED to prosecute guards, sworn officers of the law, WHO RAPED, TORTURED AND MURDERED BOYS AT DOZIER REFORM SCHOOL. Did you know that Bible Belt "christian" Florida sent ORPHAN BOYS as young as 7-years-old to PRISON rather than sending them to orphanages or trying to get them adopted? EPISCOPALIAN ORPHAN Roger Kiser from Jacksonville was abandoned by his parents when he was 4-years-old. Roger was sent to Dozier Reform School/Prison by an Evangelical County Judge when he was 8-years-old instead of being kept in an orphanage. Roger spent the next 10 years of his life in PRISON, a living hell. Roger was tortured/raped by the guards and staff at the facility. WHY?
North Florida Evangelical County Judges sent Orphans to Dozier Juvenile Prison because it brought State of Florida Taxpayers' Money and Jobs to rural Jackson County. It makes sense, if you have no heart or conscience, ORPHANAGES were paid for by local taxpayers, while the State of Florida paid for juvenile prisons. More kids in prison meant more state money and jobs.
See the Third Story Below for my research and surviving boys from Dozier Evangelical Bible Belt Torture/Murder Camp. The following boy, Gregory Sampson, was in a wheelchair, had bruises on his arms and face and was wearing an eye patch the last time his family saw him. He told his family that he was terrified of the guards, NOT THE OTHER PRISONERS. Shortly afterwards, guards reported that Gregory "escaped" and disappeared. No one has heard a word from him since that last visit by his family. His body has not been found and reports from the boys say he may have been fed to alligators or buried off campus in the swamps around the juvenile reform school by police officers, guards and/or staff at Dozier.
When Gregory Sampson's family visited him at Dozier for the LAST TIME, he was in a wheel chair, his body covered in bruises with a patch over his eye. It was obvious he was SCARED to death of the guards and "living" in TERROR. His family has asked Gov. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis to get Gregory's body back so he can be buried among the people who loved him. Gov. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis did NOTHING because they could not possibly have cared less. Police and prison guards vote Republican, so no one, certainly no Republican/Evangelical, cares about these children.
READ THE WHOLE STORY TWO STORIES BELOW
Anti-Nazi Heroes You Never Head of But Should Know!
Sophie and Hans Scholl were college students in Bavaria in the early 1930's. When the Nazi's came to power in 1933, Sophie and Hans could have been like everybody else and gone along, but the two Lutheran kids heard a speech by German Catholic Bishop von Galen in defense of freedom of conscience. Already raised to believe in liberal ideas by their parents, these two young people were inspired to join other college students to campaign for free speech by handing out pamphlets. They formed a group called the White Rose, eventually they were arrested by the Nazi Gestapo for Treason, tried and executed. Below is a video of Sophie's interrogation. She shows grace and courage and no regrets.
The White Rose group was motivated by ethical and moral considerations. They came from various religious backgrounds. Willi Graf and Katharina Schüddekopf were devout Catholics. Alexander Schmorell was an Orthodox Christian. Traute Lafrenz adhered to the concepts of anthroposophy, while Eugen Grimminger considered himself a Buddhist. Christoph Probst was baptized a Catholic only shortly before his execution. His father Hermann was nominally a Catholic, but also a private scholar of Eastern thought and wisdom. In their diaries and letters to friends, both Scholl siblings, nominally Lutherans, wrote about their reading of Christian Scholars, including Augustine of Hippo, Etienne Gilson, whose work on Medieval philosophy they discussed amongst other philosophical works within their network of friends.
Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way ... The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage.... Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!
— 2nd leaflet of the White Rose.
Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?
— 3rd leaflet of the White Rose
"Es lebe die Freiheit!" Translated as: "Let Freedom live!"
Hans Scholl's last words before being beheaded by the Gestapo
Wikipedia
Sophie Scholl's interrogation by the Gestapo
Sophie never took a partisan point of view only an unfaltering defense of free speech.
Some people were listening.Hans Scholl as a member of the Hitler Youth, indoctrinated, but not swayed, he and his sister listened to Catholic Bishop von Galen who made a plea for freedom of conscience and became convinced that that was their mission in life. Heroes for the Ages.
The Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen (16 March 1878 – 22 March 1946) was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. During World War II, Galen led Catholic protest against Nazi euthanasia and denounced Gestapo lawlessness and the persecution of the church. He was appointed a Cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
As soon as World War II was over, Hitler and Himmler said their first goal was to wipe the Catholic Church off the face of the earth, but their first execution was going to be Bishop von Galen. Hitler told Himmler that he wanted to PERSONALLY GARROTE the Archbishop. They hated him because they couldn't silence him and he wouldn't stop attacking them, subtly sometimes, bluntly at others, but relentlessly at all times.
The guillotine with which Sophie and her brother Hans were beheaded by the Nazi Gestapo. The usual punishment for Hitler's enemies was hanging. Nazi Judge Roland Freisler sent 100's to the gallows and Himmler's Einsatzgruppen under Adolf Eichmann needed to execute quickly and publicly to set examples, so shooting and hanging were the preferred methodology. It was also applied the July 14th Plot participants. But dissidents like the White Rose and internal German opposition like the Edelweiss Pirates and pacifists like Wandervogel were imprisoned for life or executed privately by beheading. One writer said this was done to terrorize the people for whom this penalty was set, in letters to family and friends, this would frighten would be followers. Though dead, their voices were never silenced. Sophie and Hans converted to Catholicism while awaiting execution, taking Last Rights, HEROES FOR THE AGES.
President John "JFK" Kennedy and NYC Mayor and Eagle Scout Michael Bloomberg were Boy Scouts and attended Boy Scout Jamborees as adults, offering words of encouragement to all the boys there, the way it is supposed to be.
Helmuth Hubener (January 8, 1925 - October 27, 1942) was a 14-year-old Boy Scout in Germany, when the Nazis made membership in the Hitler Youth mandatory for all boys 10-years-old and older, Hubener refused to quit the Boy Scouts or join the Hitler Youth. He also began hand typing Freedom of Speech pamphlets including copying White Rose Movement pamphlets and BBC Broadcasts. Helmuth was tracked down as the typist, arrested and thrown into a concentration camp when he was 14-years-old. Helmuth's Mormon parents DISOWNED him, his stepfather was a leading Nazi, and His Mormon Church immediately EXCOMMUNICATED him and his parents didn't even claim his body after he was executed/BEHEADED by the Nazi Gestapo. Given a chance to retract the pamphlets and join the Hitler Jugend, Helmuth steadfastly and unapologetically refused. Helmuth Hubener is a Hero for the ages. Helmuth Hubener was beheaded by the Gestapo on October 27, 1942 at the age of 17. Here is a photo of Helmuth shortly before his execution, then with fellow scouts, in the center, flanked by Rudolf "Rudi" Wobbe (left) and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (right). All three boys were arrested by the Nazi GESTAPO, Helmuth Hubener was beheaded, his two friends were sentenced to 5 years at hard labor. Upon entering prison they never saw each other again. Helmuth's prison photo taken immediately before his execution in 1942.
St. George's Mormon Church, where Helmuth's Nazi Official Father was a Deacon
Statement by an adult congregant at Helmuth's Church during the Gestapo investigation of Helmuth's free speech pamphlets.
I rang the bell and the door opened automatically. The hallway was dark and there was nobody there. Suddenly, I heard a voice over the loudspeaker: “Come in. Take three steps forward!” which I did. The door closed behind me and I stood in the dark. Then a light went on and I saw a man sitting there; he took my papers. He wrote my name in a book, then handed me a piece of paper with a number on it and told me, “Sit on the chair with this number on it and wait until you are called. If you walk around or try to look into other rooms, you are breaking the law.” I went upstairs to the next floor and sat on the chair with the assigned number. I had not been waiting long when the door next to me opened and I was ordered to enter and take a seat. Until that moment, I had seen nobody but the man at the entry and all doors had opened and closed automatically. The building was like a mausoleum and I couldn’t hear anything. . . . It was creepy and I have to admit that my knees were shaking. I entered the room and it was empty except for two chairs and a table between them—that was the extent of the furnishings. A few files and a telephone were on the table. An official about thirty years old ordered me to sit down. I told him that while sitting in the hall I have been more afraid than at any other time in my life. . . . I felt the presence of evil and knew that I was in a dangerous situation and could not escape. Before entering the room I had said (“screamed” would be a better word for it) a quick prayer to my Heavenly Father. I cried for help from the depths of my soul; no sound escaped my tongue. When I sat down, all fear left me and I was encompassed by total peace. . . . I knew that God had heard my prayer and that I was under His protection. I noticed that a higher power had taken control over my body and this feeling stayed with me for four days—the duration of my interrogation. There is no other way to explain it; there is no other way that I could have answered all of those questions honestly and quickly and to the satisfaction of the Gestapo. A friend of the three boys was brought in and questioned, this is his recollection of the interrogation.
Helmuth's friend Rudi Wobbe's Nazi Identification Documents, which Identify him as a political prisoner. Rudi would be freed by French Soldiers in 1945.
Teenager Helmuth photographed a few days before his arrest by the Gestapo.
German Boys, Hitler Youth, BURNING BOOKS. Helmuth Hubener refused to be one of them. Groups of Hitler Youth would hunt Jewish, Gay and Gypsy Boys, when they caught one, they would strip them naked and beat them to death, usually in front of laughing German Police Officers and Soldiers. A few days ago, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott attacked books in public and school libraries, calling for them to be removed/burned. History repeats itself.
The Announcement in German newspapers announcing Helmuth Hubener's Execution
PROCLAMATION
Having been sentenced to death and the permanent deprivation of his civil rights by the People’s Court on August 11, 1942 on charges of conspiracy to commit treason and treasonously aiding and comforting the enemy, the 17 year old
HELMUTH HÜBENER
of Hamburg
was executed today.
Berlin, this 27th day of October, 1942.
OFFICE OF THE HIGH IMPERIAL PROSECUTOR, PEOPLE’S COURT
I saw and episode of American Greed narrated by Stacey Keach about Shawn Merriman, a Mormon Deacon and Bishop who ran a Ponzi Scheme at his Mormon Temple, targeting his fellow Mormon parishioners. A spokesman for the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City spoke about his EXCOMMUNICATION from the Mormon Faith, saying it was the ultimate penalty and his animus towards Shawn was obvious, saying that he will pay for his betrayal of his faith.
There were church leaders who died defending and protecting members of their faith, but no one risked anything to protect Helmuth Hubener. He was condemned, alone and abandoned. His stepfather was a fanatic Nazi and Mormon. Raised in the Mormon Church, Helmuth was a good, serious boy. Hitler and his Nazis killed millions of Jews and Gypsies, but took particular pride in murdering Rabbis. The Nazis also murdered 6000 Catholic Priests and Nuns. All killed because they stood up for their parishioners.
The reason I am saying this is there are several videos on YouTube, which put a spin on Helmuth's death, which is not supported by the facts. Helmuth was alone, abandoned, by everyone except his two friends who were arrested with him. They received much lighter sentences, 5 years in a GESTAPO Concentration Camp/Prison. The never saw him again. All three boys were left naked to humiliate them then left in their freezing cold cells and beaten and tortured every day. Sadism by guards was expected in Nazi Germany. I remember Sophie and Hans Scholl and White Rose Activists were defended and loved by their families and friends and welcomed into the Catholic Church after their conversion, even as they faced execution. The Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran churches and the families of the White Rose victims, Sophie and Hans included, asked for their children's bodies back so they could be buried near their home, among the people who loved them. They never waivered in their support.
Sophie and Hans Scholl's graves and tombstones, in their ancestral home of Bavaria. Catholic Archbishop von Galen presided over their funeral. No one knows where Helmuth Hubener was buried. As a means of redemption, why doesn't the Mormon Church try to find his grave and give him the hero's burial that he deserves?
The German Republic named a street after the 14-year-old Hero and marked the site of his execution:
The site of Helmuth Hubener's execution at age 17. The plotters who attempted to assassinate Hitler were shot or hanged with piano wire, note the hooks hanging from the rafter next to the windows, but the White Rose Movement Participants, Edelweiss Pirates Pacifist Movement and Boy Scout Helmuth Hubener were beheaded. They apparently earned special wrath from the Fuhrer, Heinrich Himmler and the Gestapo. The fear of this punishment was a special form of torture and this was widely reported to make sure pacifist knew the price of their protests.
One letter written by Helmuth written immediately before his execution, survived the bombing of Hamburg, where he lived before jail and execution. His faith gave up on him, apparently, he never gave up on Jesus.
Ich bin meinem himmlischen Vater sehr dankbar, daß heute Abend dieses qualvolle Leben zu Ende geht, ich könnte es auch nicht länger ertragen. Mein Vater im Himmel weiß, daß ich nichts Unrechtes getan habe, es tut mir nur leid, daß ich in meiner letzten Stunde noch das Gebot der Weisheit brechen mußte. Ich weiß, daß Gott lebt, und Er wird der gerechte Richter über diese Sache sein. Auf ein frohes Wiedersehen in einer besseren Welt!
Ihr Freund und Bruder im Evangelium
Helmuth
I am very grateful to my Heavenly Father that my miserable life will come to an end tonight — I could not bear it any longer anyway. My Father in Heaven knows that I have done nothing wrong. I am just sorry that I had to break the Word of Wisdom at my last hour. I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!
Your friend and brother in the Gospel,
Helmuth
The Plotzensee Prison where Helmuth was mostly kept naked in his cell 24/7, the only purpose for which was to humiliate him. His only toilet was a bucket, which was only emptied when full, filling his cell with a putrid smell, which probably made him physically ill as he recovered from the horrific torture sessions. During the years he was kept a prisoner, alone and abandoned by his friends, family and fellow church members, left freezing and shivering every fall and winter, alone in the dark, until taken to Gestapo torture sessions, where he was taken into a brightly lit heated room where he was BEATEN, TORTURED AND FINALLY BEHEADED. There are reports that Helmuth, other boys and other pacifists were sexually abused, punched and kicked in the nuts, testicles, and anally raped with wooden handles/iron rods, but their screams always fell on deaf ears. The Gestapo Agents/Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel) chosen for torturing inmates, especially children and teens, like Helmuth, were chosen specifically because they were amoral and took pleasure in torturing, sexually abusing and murdering kids.
A footnote: Plötzensee Prison is now a juvenile prison in the Charlottenburg-Nord section of Berlin.
Alone and forgotten by everyone who knew him, except his two friends imprisoned with him, though they never saw each other alive again. For years after the war, no one took up Helmuth's cause or championed his memory, except German Public School Teachers, who, almost immediately, starting in the waning days of 1945, taught postwar German teenagers and children that Helmuth Hubener was a true German Patriot and Hero. Today Hamburg Teachers have placed a huge photo of Helmuth Hubener in their Hamburg School Board HQ.
The Guillotine as it was discovered by American Soldiers, still having the basket attached which was used to catch Helmuth's head after his beheading.
The Guillotine upon which Helmuth Hubener was executed. Since his Mormon Church, his Stepfather and Mother refused to claim his body, 17-year-old Helmuth's head and body were dumped in a mass unmarked grave.
The Hamburg Germany Board of Education has a photo of Boy Scout and Hero Helmuth Hubener in their HQ.
Hamburg Germany also named an Elementary/Primary School for Helmuth Hubener: Stadtteilschule Helmuth Hübener
DISOWNED BY HIS MORMON PARENTS, EXCOMMUNICATED BY HIS MORMON CHURCH, HIS BODY THROWN INTO A MASS GRAVE BECAUSE NO ONE, NOT EVEN HIS FAMILY, CLAIMED IT, Helmuth, you will never be alone, because there is a place for you, Sophie and Hans Scholl, in my heart as long as I live.
DOZIER REFORM SCHOOL, FLORIDA'S BIBLE BELT EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN DEATH CAMP FOR BOYS
In 2009 a federal investigation of Dozier Reform School, prompted by endless reports from boys who had been at the facility of torture, sexual abuse and murder at the facility, found that at least some of the reports were true. Gov. Rick Scott closed Dozier.
Immediately Florida Police Groups, Evangelical Preachers and Republican Politicians began attacking the boys who brought the accusations forward as liars. Then, after Dozier was closed and sold to developers, construction crews found boys' bodies everywhere, many showed signs of beatings and torture. The boys had been telling the truth.
The Evangelical "christian" Bible Belt not only gave us the Civil War and Slavery, they gave us the Sexual Abuse, Torture/Murder of Children at Dozier Reform School in Marianna, Florida.
Only in the Bible Belt would ORPHANS be sent to PRISON TO BE TORTURED AND MURDERED. Judges knew that every kid sent to Dozier Reform School/PRISON meant more jobs and more state money coming in to Jackson County and rural northern Florida. These "christian" judges didn't give a damn about what it did to these ORPHANS.
Jerry Cooper's story, he was sent to Dozier at age 16
"A lot of orphans were sent there because orphanages and children's homes did not have places for them so they were sent to Dozier Reform School in Marianna, Florida instead. They weren't there for any crime whatsoever," Cooper says. "But we had many, many boys who were there for things like smoking in school, incorrigibility, a catch phrase which meant the police couldn't prove you did anything wrong, but decided they didn't like you.... We weren't bad kids. We might have needed help in some respect. But that wasn't the place to find it, I'll tell you that right now."
School staff got him out of bed at 2 a.m. one day and took him to the White House where he says they threw him on a bed, tied his feet and began beating him with a thick wide leather barber's strap.
"The first blow lifted me a foot and a half off that bed," Cooper recalls. "And every time that strap would come down, you could hear the shuffle on the concrete because their shoes would slide. And you could hear the shoosh, shoosh, bam."
Cooper passed out, but a boy in the next room later told him he counted 135 lashes. NPR/National Public Library Interview about one boy's torture session
In 2012, Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott sold Dozier Boy's Reform School to developers. Primarily because Federal Investigators from the Justice Department wrote a devastating report after a 2009 inspection. Dozier was located in Marianna Florida in Jackson County, in rural northern Florida near the Florida/Alabama/Georgia Border, which is over 95% White Evangelical Christian and poor. Immediately after they arrived, horrified construction crews discovered boys' graves everywhere. In 2019, 27 more boys' bodies were located by crime scene investigators. Many of these boys had broken bones, a couple of boys had bullets in their backs. Since the facility opened, until the late 1980's, boys claimed they were tortured and murdered by the local White Evangelical Christian Guards/Police Officers, mostly over 200 pound ex-Army Soldiers/Marines, hired to work at Dozier. Soldiers are taught to kill without guilt or remorse. In the 1970's, Dozier became integrated and black children learned first hand about torture/murder. These guards were hired locally and reflected the community in which they lived.
From the WhiteHouseBoys website, the boys knew who to fear and occasionally they would find a decent human being. You should go to the WhiteHouseBoys website and read their original testimonies/history as to what life was like there. Speaking for themselves is better testimony than anything I could say. http://www.thewhitehouseboys.com/
There were some decent people who gave some of the boys respite from the horror of Dozier:
After leaving Robert Sealander joined the Peace Corps. He stated that he never got over having to "whip" the boys in his care. He never returned to the United States and died in Puerto Rico in 1999. http://www.thewhitehouseboys.com/employeephotos.html
After leaving Robert Sealander joined the Peace Corps. He stated that he never got over having to "whip" the boys in his care. He never returned to the United States and died in Puerto Rico in 1999. http://www.thewhitehouseboys.com/employeephotos.html
Not saying sir, walking on the grass, mumbling under your breath, not finishing a meal, letting a cuss word slip out, being slow, smoking, throwing up, being sick, bedwetting, horsing around, showing perceived "disrespect" to the staff, having diarrhea and soiling your underpants, not attending Evangelical Church Services on Sunday, there was NO freedom of religion at Dozier, running away, all warranted beatings and torture from the guards. But these were not the number one reason for beatings and torture of these boys. Boys were made to work as slaves on neighboring farms, sugar cane fields and orchards, later they became slave labor at local businesses too. The guards from Dozier supervised them as the boys worked, for which they and the warden were paid extra. Guards all wanted this job because of the extra income, most often this assignment went to the torturers, who always got the most work out of the boys, because of the fear and terror they inspired. If a guard felt a boy had not worked hard enough, didn't follow orders, slacked off, he would be taken, immediately, after the 10-12 hour work day was done and they returned to Dozier, their first stop was the "white house," the name guards gave to their torture chamber, where the boy would be beaten and tortured.
The profit motive became more and more important to the warden and guards as the years went along, the boys would be farmed out to farmers and local businessmen as slave labor, to do lawn care, construction, etc. The warden and guards knew a good thing when they found it.
Former students Bryant Middleton, Richard Huntly and Roger Kiser, who all attended, (ATTENDED, who attends a prison?) in the 1950s, told DailyMail.com what they endured during their time
'When I was being beaten it was like I had to holler inside of me. You are panting, you're praying, you're crying and you're screaming inside of you,' Kiser, 73, said
Punishment was meted out in a small squat building known as the White House
Kiser remembers two boys that had been sent there 'were bloody on their buttocks and down the backs of their legs. It, their rear end, was like hamburger meat' Not spanked, not paddled, but struck multiple times with a leather strap, the kind often seen in barber shops. But this strap had a metal insert to increase the painful impact.
Kiser served part of his time in the facility infirmary, he remembers an 8/9-year-old boy who ran away, was chased down by guards and dogs, had the **** beaten out of him by the "christian" guards and was then brought into the infirmary, where no one did a damn thing for him, allowing him to die. What kind of nurses or doctors would allow this to happen? Dr. Mengele comes to mind.
Aged just 11, Huntly chopped the top of his toe off while cutting sugar cane with a hoe and remembers his first beating, 43 vicious licks from a barber's thick leather strap
He said: I know the pain to be made a slave. I didn't know I was a slave but later on I learned it, that is the way to break a slave https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6932095/Surviving-students-hellish-Florida-reform-school-flogged-bits-metal.html
Can you imagine an 11-year-old boy working as a slave 10 to 12 hour days, chopping off part of his toe, instead of hospitalization and humane care, is beaten and tortured with a thick barber's leather strap instead? They were angry because his injury prevented him working as a slave and making them money.
Though through the years reports of the crimes at Dozier were made to the local sheriff and his successors, they never investigated these boys' claims of TORTURE AND MURDER, because they, too, were White Evangelical Christian. And, remember, the guards were probably sitting in the Evangelical, Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God, etc. pews next to him. In rural northern Florida along the Georgia/Alabama State Lines, there were few, if any, Mormons, Catholics, Jews and if you were agnostic, atheist or gay, you made sure that you were the only person who knew.
A boy, who was 12, when he was at Dozier for running away from home after being beaten by his alcoholic parents, told the story of a ten-year-old boy. The boy wet the bed. Kids at his school found out and relentlessly teased, bullied and beat him up. As a result, he stopped going to school.
Boys who wet the bed are victims of a medical condition. These boys sleep too deeply and don't wake-up when they need to pee. These boys have no control over their bed wetting, but eventually, when they are about 13, grow out of it.
A Bible Belt "christian" judge sent him to DOZIER PRISON for being a truant. The first day he was at Dozier, he wet his prison bed. Dozier guards were NOT going to put up with a boy wetting his bed, regardless of cause. The "christian" guards grabbed him, stripped him naked and began hitting him with a paddle for over 15 minutes at first, then 30 minutes, a few days later they hit him with another paddle, this one with studs to rip a boy's flesh, a device for torture, not punishment, later they began punching and kicking him, including punching and kicking him in the "nuts". By the end of the week these "christian" guards had broken his arm, by the end of the month they had beaten the 10-year-old boy to death, they murdered him.
Boys at Dozier said boys' screams filled every night at the facility. Boys knew that if the guards hit them with a baseball bat or bull whip, they were in danger of being murdered. Guards didn't want the boys to get broken bones which would prevent the boys from working as slaves on neighboring farms, sugar cane fields and orchards, unless they were prepared to murder them for being a "problem".
Guards, Staff, the Warden, Cooks, Nurses, Doctors, Teachers all knew that boys were being tortured and murdered at the facility but none of them cared. The facility and its staff had unwavering support from local preachers who constantly praised Dozier and its staff, for the jobs and money it brought to the area, in their sermons. Local Bible Belt "christian" law enforcement, the sheriff, deputies, judges, lawyers, preachers all knew of the torture/murders too. Visiting Evangelical Preachers came to preach at Dozier, they knew too.
A gravestone from Tombstone Arizona's Boot Hill Cemetery, the same name the boys gave their cemetery at Dozier. Cowboys, lawmen and gunslingers in the old west would be proud to welcome these boys into their pantheon of heroes.
The guards had a team of boys grab his naked body and take it to the "garbage pit," as the guards called the boys' cemetery and dig his grave. After the boy's body was dumped in the "garbage pit," the warden would write the boy's parents a threatening FRAUDULENT/CYNICAL letter saying the 10-year-old ran away and that they would be sentenced to prison if they hid him. That one act is pure satanic evil.
The boys called "their" cemetery BOOT HILL, after the famous cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona, where many a lawman and gunslinger lies buried, giving their fallen Dozier comrades a small degree of honor and respect. Boys bodies recovered from the cemetery are mostly naked, only having bloody, filthy sheets as shrouds. Guards would send another set of boys would be sent to the "white house" to wash blood, urine, feces and flesh/brains off the walls. When construction crews began tearing down Dozier, they found traces of BLOOD still present on the "white house" walls.
In 2014, after the preliminary criminal investigation, Florida REPUBLICAN Evangelical Attorney General Pam Bondi announced NONE of the Evangelical TORTURE/MURDERER Guards would be prosecuted. Bondi's explanation, the guards, in their 50's/60's/70's/80's, were too old to be prosecuted; the case would be the boys' word against the guards, the guards were sworn officers of the law, with full police powers at the facility. Although all of these dead boys' bodies proved these kids were telling the truth; Republican Evangelical Attorney General Bondi then added the torture/murders happened too long ago, ending in the 1950's, though the boys themselves report that the torture/murders were still occurring through the Reagan Administration, which ended in 1988. Dozier was THE MAJOR EMPLOYER in the area, more kids in jail meant more employed guards, more state aid and money in the local economy. Everyone in Marianna and Jackson County wanted that; finally, Attorney General Bondi said it would cost too much and take too much time from her office, which had more pressing cases. Do you agree?
14-year-old George Owen Smith was hanging out with a 19-year-old cousin when the older boy "borrowed" a car from a family member. Unfortunately, the car was reported as stolen. Neither boy had a driver's license when they were pulled over by a sheriff's deputy. A judge sentenced George to Dozier. Within a few weeks George would be dead. Before being sent to Dozier, George was described as a happy go lucky kid who always wanted to make people laugh and become a star on the Grand Ole Opry, George was a pretty good guitarist, that ended the day he was given a death sentence by that Evangelical "christian" judge in 1940. Researchers turned up a copy of a letter from the warden to George's family saying he ran away. In 2012, George's body was one the bodies recovered from the guard's garbage pit. His skull has been crushed from repeated massive blows/punches. George had been beaten to death by the guards.
Gov. Ron DeSantis fought prosecuting anyone involved with beatings, torture, sexual abuse and murder at Dozier Reform School/Prison for Boys.
I went to daycare in a remodeled house in Marietta, Georgia. In the playground was a huge tree. Long after I attended, my mom was driving us to eat Rio Vista Restaurant for all you can eat fried chicken when I noticed a huge stack of flowers around the large tree in the playground of my former school. I asked my mom why people had brought flowers and she told me that was the tree from which Leo Frank was hanged. Leo Frank's torture/murderers were so proud of what they had done that they took photos. The hate spewed out by RACIST Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Lester Maddox and George Wallace never came as a surprise to me after that.
Note the Evangelical "christian" men who did this brought their sons to see the torture and murder of Jewish Leo Frank. Southern Christian Family Values?
Thomas Curry an Irish Catholic teenager from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania arrested for hitchhiking to see his grandparents who lived in Miami. He received a year in prison from an Evangelical judge and was immediately sent to Dozier. He didn't last long, disappearing after less than a month in the boys' prison.
One website indicated this may be the trestle, now converted to a public park walking bridge over the Suwanee River in Jackson County. Only question, was Thomas Curry's body planted at the bottom of the trestle to cover-up his torture/murder by Dozier guards or was the whole story made up?
Thomas Curry, 15/16-years-old, had gone to visit family in Florida in 1925. His mom and dad were from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thomas had been arrested for hitchhiking to see his grandparents in Miami and was sent to Dozier. A few weeks later he was reported as a runaway, at which point he/disappeared. Days later his body was reported to have been found in the local paper, from information provided in a statement from Dozier. They described finding his body in a creek at the bottom of a railroad trestle. Records at the facility, indicate he fell off a railroad bridge possibly when a train came.
His family asked for his body to be shipped to them. They received Thomas's body in a wooden casket and a shipping container, after paying for the casket and shipping costs. The wooden casket was tightly sealed with long screws. I wonder if they advised Thomas's family that his body had started to rot, since it was days before it was found in the boiling hot Florida sun and since no one offered to pay for embalming as his body was decaying, to make sure no one would open his casket and examine Thomas's body.
I imagine this was done because a family might request an HONEST Medical Examiner like NYC's Milton Halpern or Pennsylvania's Cyril Wecht would find evidence of rape, torture or murder if they conducted an autopsy.
Questions arose during the Dozier 2009 investigation about all the boys reported to have died there, Thomas's body had a paper trail and cause of death, so a team of forensic scientists was sent to Philadelphia to dig up the body of Thomas Curry and perform an autopsy to verify he fell from a railroad bridge. In the meantime, Thomas' death certificate was found, which indicated he suffered multiple severe blows to the head, with a handwritten note in pencil and apparently added later, "Fell from RR Bridge." Falling from a 75 foot rail road bridge should have broken several bones in Thomas's body but probably would NOT have been limited to MULTIPLE crushing blows to his head, while a horrific beating might. When Dozier investigators dug Thomas's casket up in Philadelphia, PA, they and the press were in for a shock, after opening Thomas's wooden casket they found only wooden planks and rocks, there was NO body.
I have no doubt that "pro-life" Evangelical "christian" Guards took special enjoyment from torturing/sexually abusing the Irish Catholic Yankee 15-year-old boy. I am surprised they let him live that long.
The bodies of boys were never returned to their families if they had been subjected to abuse, to hide their child's beatings, torture, sexual abuse and murder. Dozier investigators report that they have not found Thomas Curry's real grave yet, lending credence to the WhiteHouseBoys claim that the number of tortured/murdered boys buried at Dozier could have been 130 or more.
Now, it must be taken into account, between 75 and 102 boys' bodies found inside Dozier grounds, we know some tortured/murdered boys' bodies were buried offsite, while other boys' bodies were shipped back to their families when estimating the number of murder victims at Dozier. But that isn't the end of the story...
About 200 boys are reported to have run away from Dozier Reform School for Boys and never recaptured. It is now believed that many of these were murdered by police officers/guards/staff at the facility, buried in the swamps off campus or fed to alligators. Worse yet, we know staff doctored and falsified records. There could be more boys than this total.
One 11-year-old boy got up to pee after lights out and walked in on an adult staff member getting oral sex from a 12-year-old boy. He woke up a boy who slept next to him and told him what he had seen. The next day the boy who witnessed the sexual abuse, was reported to have "run away," but in all probability was murdered, then either buried anonymously in the swamps surrounding Dozier or chopped up and fed to the alligators which inhabit those same swamps. It was, after all, the Evangelical Bible Belt.
Gregory shoplifted a candybar and got sentenced to prison by a conservative, Evangelical judge. The last time Gregory Sampson's family visited him at Dozier, he was in a wheel chair, showing massive bruises, obviously in pain, and wearing an eye patch. He wouldn't say what happened to him, but he hinted that was in "living" terror of the guards. Someone was beating and torturing this boy. Did he have a smart mouth? Did he refuse sex with a guard? Did he see a guard stealing or having sex with another boy and threatened to squeal on them. Or it could be even simpler than that, a guard simply may not have liked him and decided to persecute him. No one defended boys in any dispute with guards. There is reason to believe that a guard heard him talking to his mom and dad. In a few days he would disappear. His body has never been found or returned to his family. Believe what you wish, but I believe Gregory had earned the wrath of guards who tortured him, eventually they would murder him. And they would never pay for what they did. His family still is haunted by all that he must have gone thru, especially learning of the beatings, torture, slavery, rape and murder going on at Dozier.
How many "runaway boys" were actually raped, tortured and murdered by staff and guards, sworn police officers, then buried off campus or fed to alligators in the swamps around Dozier? Worse yet, we know police, guards and staff at the facility falsified the boys' records, meaning the number might be much, much higher. We may never know the truth.
At this point, it should be mentioned that EVANGELICAL Florida Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi supervised every step of the investigation and approved all the findings. Bondi served as REPUBLICAN Attorney General from 2011 to 2019. She claimed, without supplying any evidence, that the abuse ended in the early 1950's. She cited the figure of 57, then later revised to 75 as more and more boys' bodies turned up. Then she was PROVEN WRONG again, when 27 more boys' bodies were found in 2019. The White House Boys estimate of tortured/murdered boys is 130 or more, after interviews with survivors and independent research. The surviving White House Boys admitted that too might be an underestimate.
The only problem with Republican Attorney General Bondi's official "opinion"/cover-up, boys, who served time at the facility formed a survivors group called the White House Boys, testified that torture was systematically practiced at Dozier through the late 1980's and the boys claimed a murder by guards occurred at Dozier as late as 1980. Worse yet, individual acts of torture by guards were reported right up until the facility's closing and sale in 2012. Republican Attorney General Bondi obviously believed the guards and not the boys, whatever the truth of the matter. I would argue all the dead boys' bodies prove they told the truth, not the guards.
In the 100 year history of the facility there were occasional, respites, if a reform minded/progressive warden was appointed at the facility. Unfortunately, they usually earned the enmity of guards and staff who liked running the facility their way. The staff/guards would lobby the legislature and governor to replace them with someone more in sync with what they wanted. One or two years of decency and compassion were usually followed by a new reign of TERROR.
A few months ago, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis ORDERED all college professors to clear any testimony before the state legislature with him first and they were warned if he did not like their professional advice or opinions they would be fired immediately. DeSantis made it very clear, he would not allow anyone to testify truthfully if it disagreed with what he wanted them to say.
For those who don't remember, Florida Evangelical Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi dropped Charity Fraud and Tax Fraud investigations of the Trump Foundation and Trump University after Trump donated $25,000 CASH to her re-election campaign for Attorney General. Investigations have determined that the Trump Foundation never did one single act of charity, it was simply a Trump family TAX FREE SLUSH FUND. Trump "university" employed fast food employees on their "faculty" and never qualified as a University.
In fact, the only qualification Trump looked for in his "faculty" were good salesman/woman, with no academic credentials or bona fide experience in the field of real estate, who could get students to purchase extra courses/tutoring whether they could afford them or not. The New Yorker Magazine reports that Trump advertised on Fox News and other right-wing/conservative outlets, targeting people without college/high school degrees or any experience in real estate. These "teachers" actually encouraged students to mortgage their homes to pay for more unaccredited Trump Real Estate courses, which could cost up to $35,000 for a 3 week supplemental course. Trump "university" was shut down for FRAUD by the New York Attorney General. Pam Bondi would later serve as Trump's Impeachment Lawyer. Obviously she has a broken moral compass and is too cheap to get it fixed at SEARS.
Orphanages were few in number in rural Bible Belt communities, especially northern Florida, and totally funded by the local community. Juvenile Prisons were paid for by the state of Florida. So local officials, instead of funding and building more facilities for these kids, used local judges to ship girls to the orphanages that existed, then shipped ORPHAN BOYS, 7 to 18-years-old, to Dozier Juvenile PRISON as a practical and very profitable alternative, since more boys sent to Dozier meant more money for Marianna and Jackson County from the Florida state government. For the boys it was the beginning of their hellish nightmare. Orphan Roger Kiser spent 10 years in prison for the crime of being an orphan.
Not prosecuting Policemen/State Prison Guards who TORTURED and MURDERED children, most of whom were orphans, runaways, truants, kids violating curfews, smoking cigarettes, caught drinking a beer they "lifted" from a convenience store, boys hitchhiking, cussing in public, kids guilty of arguing with parents and/or teachers and petty misdemeanor "criminal" kids, like kids stealing a candy bars or bikes, joy riding in a car, could get you sent to the worst juvenile prison in the Bible Belt or the country, so these kids' torture/murder should come as no surprise to us. And Pam Bondi's cover-up continues the Dozier Torture/Murder crime against humanity.
IMPORTANT AND HORRIFIC UPDATE: Most of the information that I've repeated here came from research I did in 2014 at the time EVANGELICAL Florida Republican Attorney General Bondi REFUSED to prosecute the Guards/Police Officers, they had police powers, even the legal right to beat and torture these boys, who TORTURED AND MURDERED THESE BOYS. I was so angry that I began researching what happened there and reporting the suffering these boys suffered. Going back and doing some more research for an update in 2021, I learned something I had never heard before, but which does not surprise me in the least.
Wikipedia:
In 2015, a multi-year investigation of the cemetery and grounds by the University of South Florida (USF), which was attempting to find undocumented burials on the grounds, revealed details of a secret "rape dungeon," where boys mostly younger than 12 were sexually abused.
Among the allegations of a group of survivors known as the White House Boys, the organization of Dozier Prison Survivors, nicknamed for the building in which they say they suffered the worst abuse, are accounts of youths being beaten unconscious while chained to walls or beds, gang raped by guards (staff?) and some "special" cooperative boys were given sex with younger boys as a reward from the guards/staff in a basement (orchestrated by guards as a reward to favored older boys or as punishment for the rape victim?) or simply disappearing after excessive punishments for minor infractions such as smoking or truancy. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/06/dozier-school-for-boys-abuse-florida-new-allegations
Many women's groups say many rapes have little to do with sex, they are to demonstrate the perpetrator's power over their victim. Sexual abuse at Dozier had to have roots in both sexual gratification and power over these unfortunate children.
Robert Straley was 13 in 1963, he was 5' 4" and weighed 105 pounds, when he was sent to Dozier for running away from home. Almost immediately he became a special target of guards attention. He received several horrific beatings from chief torturer Mr. Tidwell and other guards, who seemed to take sadistic joy in the torture sessions, but then it got many times worse. He spoke in an interview with the Miami Herald, how within a few days he was taken to a hidden room and anally gang raped by a group of guards and other staff. When he started to cry from the pain, the guards would start to beat him. Finally, he mercifully passed out. Throughout his time at Dozier he and other boys were raped 100's of times, passed around from guard to guard. Certain "good looking" boys, 14-years-old and younger were always favorite targets for discipline by the guards and staff and for this "special treatment".
Mr. Straley was a co-founder of the White House Boys support group of Dozier Reform School Survivors. It should be noted that Florida Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi estimates the number of boys buried at Dozier at between 57 and 75,* while most experts estimate the number at more than 100, much more likely considering the 27 boys' bodies found in 2019, Attorney General Bondi's figure is no longer seen as credible. The White House Boys themselves have researched the matter, taking eyewitness testimony from the boys who served time there and survived. They estimate the number of tortured boys in the 10,000's and the murdered boys at about 130 through their eyewitness accounts and independent research. http://thewhitehouseboys.com/
When I brought up about another missing boy that was on recording number three (which was very clear) she acted like she hadn’t even heard it. I told her about Louis getting up one night to use the bathroom and catching his cottage father, Mr. Robinson making a Mexican kid perform oral sex on him. Mr. Robinson slapped Louis in the face and sent the Mexican kid back to bed. The cottage father then hog tied Louis and started to electrocute him with a cut off extension cord. During the course of the torture all of Louis’ teeth got broken.
One night Mr. Robinson took that boy out of the dorm to sexually abuse him, but something went wrong. Mr. Robinson came back into the dorm without the boy and he got two of the bullies to go with him. The cottage father locked the doors into the dorm. He then backed his car up to the rear door and then he drove away. The next morning he told the boys in the cottage that the kid had run away. http://thewhitehouseboys.com/glennraymax.html
Roger Kiser: Dr. Currie, the Dozier Staff Psychologist was molesting me. Of course this was in 1959
Early one morning Doctor Robert Loyal Currie called me to the head office. He told me that I would soon visit the White House, which was a torture room for boys who broke one of their many rules or tried to escape. I was sent to the school for trying to escape from the Children's Home Society orphanage in Jacksonville. I had been incarcerated there for 10 years for the crime of having no parents to care for me.
When I heard that they were taking me to this White House, an extreme fear came over me. I almost passed out and was trembling so badly that my legs collapsed under me. I fell to the floor and lay there. The men told me to "get my sorry butt up" and sit down on the hard, wooden bench outside the office. I waited there for the two men who would take me to the "White House" GUARDS' TORTURE CHAMBER. I knew their routine well, as I had heard about it from many other boys who were taken there. Other than the time I learned that I had cancer and would die within six months, I have never known more fear than when I was told I was going to be taken to this place.
After a wait of about 30 minutes, these two men came to get me. They grabbed me by my arms and lifted me off the bench. There were several other boys in the office with me, so I had to try to act as though I was not scared, but they knew. The two men walked with me across the grass circle that divided the offices from the "White House." We stopped at another office and a man, Troy Tidwell took the place of one of the men holding me. We continued walking toward the mess hall. As we rounded the building, I could see it right in front of me: THE WHITE HOUSE.
My mind was just going crazy with fear. My thoughts seemed to be swimming in a circle, like a cat that had been thrown into a cold river. I was so scared, I could not think straight. Words were coming from my mouth before my mind could think of what it was I was attempting to say. I was trying to decide if I should run and hide or maybe kill myself. Anything was better than what was going to happen in there.
When we reached the door, one of the men took out his keys and stuck one into the lock. I looked back over my shoulder and I saw about 50 boys. They stared in silence. As the door opened, an ungodly odor filled my nose and I could hardly breathe. I remember trying to step through the doorway, but the odor was so overwhelming that I fell in the short hallway inside. One of the men grabbed me by the back of the shirt collar and jerked it up around my neck, choking me. One of the buttons fell off my shirt and hit the floor, rolling very slowly around the corner. Almost everything was happening in slow motion. My whole body was just numb and it was very difficult for me to breathe. I tried to pull the shirt down from around my neck, but the man jerked it once again and hit me on the top of the head with his knuckles. I hit the floor again and bloodied my nose from the impact. At that point, I was not walking at all; my legs would not work.
The two men picked me up and carried me into a small room, which had nothing in it except a bunk bed and a pillow. They put me down on the floor and ordered me to lie on the bed facing the wall. Crying, I pulled myself up onto the edge of the bed and wiped the blood from my nose onto my shirtsleeve. When I looked up at the men's faces, they were plain, cold and hard. They had no expression whatsoever. I did what they told me to do. One of them said to move my hands to the top of the bunk bed and grab the bar at the headboard. I did so as quickly as I could. Not one sound could be heard. I felt one of the men reach under the pillow and slowly pull something out. I turned over quickly and looked at the one who was standing near me. He had a large leather strap in his hand.
"Turn your God damn head back toward the wall!" he yelled.
I knew what was going to happen and it was going to be very bad. I had been told what to expect by some of the boys, who were taken to the White House. I never heard from some of them again.
I also heard that this giant strap was made of two pieces of leather, with a piece of sheet metal sewn in between the halves. Again, everything was dead silent. I remember tightening my buttocks as much as I could. Then I waited and waited, and waited. I remember someone taking a breath, then a footstep. I turned over very quickly and looked toward the man with the leather strap. There was an ungodly look on his face and I knew he was going to beat me to death. I will never forget that look for as long as I live.
I tried to jump off the bed, but I was knocked backward when the leather strap hit me on the side of the face. I jumped to the end of the bunk and began trying to climb up the cement wall but there was nowhere to climb. Mr. Hatton kept beating me with the leather strap about the chest, back and legs. The men grabbed me, pulled me down and held me to the floor. I was yelling to God to save me, begging for someone, anyone, to help. There was blood all over everything. It was everywhere.
"Please forgive me! Please forgive me," I repeated at the top of my voice. "Please forgive me! Dear God, please help me!"
But it didn't do any good; God didn't hear me that day. Maybe He was smart enough not ever to enter the White House, even to save a child.
After about five minutes of begging, pleading and crying, they told me to get back on the bed and grab the top rail again. They warned that if I tried to get off the bed, the whole thing would repeat from the beginning. I slowly pulled myself up off the floor and got back onto the bed. Again, I grabbed the rail and waited; everything became quiet, except for the two men breathing really hard. Once again, I tightened up my buttocks and waited.
Then all of a sudden, it happened. I thought my head would explode. The thing came down on me over and over. I screamed and kicked and yelled as much as I could, but it did no good. He just kept beating me over and over. However, I never let go of that bed rail. Then there was nothing. The next thing I remember, I was walking into Doctor Currie's Office and the secretary asked me who I was. I was so bloodied that she could not recognize me. Minutes later, still in a stupor, I was taken to Mr. Hatton's office. I was sitting on a wooden bench in the one-armed man's office. I remember wiping the slobber and blood from my mouth. My body felt like it was on fire. I stood and found that I hardly could.
God, God, God, it hurt badly. I will never forget that until the day I die.
One of the men in the office yelled at me to sit down. I told him that I had to go to the bathroom really bad. He pointed at a doorway and said that it was the bathroom; he told me to "make it quick."
"I'm gonna tell somebody about what you people are doing around here when I get out of here one day," I mumbled.
"Talk like that around here will have you wake up dead tomorrow morning, sonny boy," said the man, as he squinted his eyes and pointed his finger at me.
Please Consider buying these Roger Dean Kiser Books for the whole story:
The Story of Dozier
The Imaginary Trial of Troy Tidwell
An Investigative Summary
Other books from Dozier Survivor Roger Dean Kiser
* Florida Attorney General Bondi's "investigation" attributes many of the deaths to natural causes, but that is certainly not true. An insurance actuary estimated that 5 boys would have died during the normal course of events at a facility like Dozier during the 100 years it was open. Boys who died from disease or injuries while at the facility were not a problem for the staff, guards and warden, who would happily ship the boy's body back to their family for burial. It was the boys who were tortured, abused and murdered boys who had to be hidden and secretly buried. Funeral homes might detect evidence of sexual abuse, beatings and torture on their bodies while preparing/dressing the boys for burial.
My parenthetical additions come from a scandal a few years ago at Republican Private for Profit Juvenile Prison in the rural West. Boys as young as 10 up to 16-years-old were "given" to 200 pound 16/17/18-year-old boys for sex, they were RAPED repeatedly with full knowledge and approval of prison guards, staff and administrators. These 200 pound boys were used to make sure the prison ran smoothly and their were no troublemakers. Any trouble, the troublemaker would have the **** beaten out of him by these vicious bullies until they got the message. Both of these crimes were ignored by prison guards, staff and administrators. And crimes which the local sheriff, DA's and Judges NEVER allowed in their courtrooms. Later charges of cover-up occurred online when the story disappeared from newspapers after a gag order from a local judge. Evangelical Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi, apparently, is not the only one with a broken moral compass.
THE INNOCENT...
Pictured above is Roger Kiser an orphan from Jacksonville who was sent to Dozier for running away at age 8 from the orphanage because of beatings and abuse, remaining there until his 18th birthday. Roger described his first torture session:
One of four boys let slip the word Sh** and we were immediately grabbed by the guards.
He and four other boys marched to the White House, but he tripped as he got to the door.
'The man behind me grabbed me by the back of the shirt and slugged me as hard as he could in the back of the neck. My face hit the floor, bloodying my nose.
'Then he jerked me backwards and the top button on my shirt fell off and, in slow motion, I watched it roll down the hallway.'
'I was told to lay down on the bed, face the wall, grab the rail and when I did I felt that leather strap with a piece of sheet metal in it slide from under the pillow.
I remember I was shaking so badly. When you're that age you try not to act scared because you are trying to be a man.
'There were little pieces of lip on the bed which boys had literally bitten off as they were being beaten.
'I jumped up and I looked up at him and the look on that man's face told me all I needed to know.
'I knew he was going to beat me to death.'
From an interview with Roger Kiser
Years later Kiser worked with Ed Asner and Michael Landon to make sure this never happens again. Roger made one point in his website emphatically, 90% of the boys who were sent to Dozier were not bad kids, most of whom should NOT have been there, but there were kids, who were either career criminals, drug addicts/alcoholics or violent, possibly mentally ill, teens, 10 to 25% of the boy inmate population, who should have been in prison to protect us. But even so, not even they deserved some of the things which happened at Dozier.
The Good...
A film financed by Ed Asner and Michael Landon made with Roger Dean Kiser called "Bully," to make sure Dozier NEVER happens again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhHIY1CnO-o
That man was Troy Tidwell, who police investigated in 2008/2009, after a former student accused him of either killing a boy or being responsible for disposing the murdered boy's body, which occurred at the boys' prison/school around the late 70's, early 80's.
Police decided not to press charges against the guards, to the surprise of no one. Law Enforcement's first loyalty, Semper Fi, is to each other, not us. He and former director Robert Hatton, who is now dead, were particularly remembered by the boys for their vicious and totally unnecessary cruelty. Vicious "christian" sadism and cruelty for their own sake.
Another boy, an Italian Catholic Orphan from Jacksonville Florida was forced into a Southern Baptist Orphanage after his parents died by an Evangelical "christian" judge. Almost immediately this boy became the subject of the boys and staff's wrath for refusing to convert to their Southern Baptist Faith. These boys and staff weren't asking, they were telling him. After several beatings by staff and the boys, he ran away. For running away, an Evangelical Judge sent him to Dozier Reform School/PRISON, almost immediately he began to be beaten and tortured by the Evangelical "christian" police officers/prison guards there. It was the Bible Belt.
Not all that surprising...
As Baltimore journalist HL Mencken said during the Clarence Darrow/William Jennings Bryant Monkey/Evolution Trial in 1925, the Bible Belt is least Christian place on earth.
I DON'T! I bet the boys tortured and murdered at Dozier, along with Jesus Christ, agree with me, not Evangelical Republican Attorney General Bondi. You can't be a little pregnant or a little dishonest. Once you cross that Rubicon, you've defined yourself for the rest of your life. Who do you see as the VILLAIN in this story?
Boys named the staff and the guards who beat, sexually abused and tortured them. Troy Tidwell, the guard who was accused of being involved in either the murder of a boy or covering it up and disposing of the boy's body around 1980 disproves Florida Evangelical Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi's 2014 claim that the torture/murders all but stopped over 70 years ago, by the beginning of 1950.
Troy Tidwell was born December 19, 1923 to Mary Ocie and Archie Hinson Tidwell. He attended Malone High School and began work at the Florida Farm Colony in Gainesville in 1941. After marrying the love of his life, Lucile Baxter on December 19, 1941, they moved to Marianna in 1943. Troy began working for the Florida School for Boys (later named the Dozier School for Boys) in May 1943. Tidwell retired at the end of the 1980's. Troy Tidwell died April 5, 2021 at the age of 97, he died in his bed surrounded by his family. From Troy Tidwell's obituary in the local newspaper, the Dozier Boys would have a much different obituary for the man who made their lives a living hell. Tidwell TORTURED and terrified boys at the facility for over 45 years because of his inhuman and vicious beatings.
When confronted with accusations against the guards like Tidwell at Dozier, Jackson County Police and DA's refused to investigate or prosecute them. Tidwell's reputation for beating the hell out of kids was horrific. In a 2009 deposition, he said he spanked boys with a paddle a few times. One boy remembered him laughing as he hit the 12-year-old 57 times as hard as he could causing the boy to cry, scream and become drenched in his own blood. Tidwell would scream at the crying boys, BE A MAN, STOP CRYING, as he beat the **** out of them.
But no one cared. Certainly not Pam Bondi, Republican Governors Rick Scott or Ron DeSantis. Even after all the boys' dead bodies were found, police, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Governors Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis refused to arrest or prosecute Mr. Tidwell or any other guard.
From the WhiteHouseBoys Website, the sworn statement of the last Dozier murder, which the Jackson County Sheriff, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Evangelical Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi decided was not worth pursuing or prosecuting. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
Tidwell sat motionless in the front seat. All I could hear was the sound of rustling papers and the other boy somewhat whimpering and cursing. Mr. Tidwell opened his door, walked to the back and opened the door where the boy was laying. Once again the two of them began to curse and scream at one another. I looked over my shoulder when I heard the boy spit. I cringed when I saw Tidwell wiping the spit from his face in the light of the full moon. He lowered his hand and just stood there not saying a word. Suddenly, he reached in, grabbed the boy by his shirt, jerked him out of the car and threw him to the ground. The boy was screaming, every word a curse word. Trying my best to watch them, my legs slipped off the seat. I struggled and finally managed to get back up on the seat, my head now facing the two of them on the driver’s side of the car. Tidwell reached down and grabbed the boy by the handcuffs and jerked as hard as he could, causing the boy to scream out in pain. He un-cuffed the boy’s hands from his feet and jerked him to a standing position. Swinging as hard as he could, he hit the boy (with his right hand) so hard that the boy fell sideways; his head slammed full force into the side of the vehicle. Instantly, everything went silent except Tidwell breathing. I waited for the boy to begin cursing but there was no sound at all. All remained silent except for the thousands of crickets and an occasional bull frog. ‘Maybe the boy finally learned his lesson and was remaining still and quiet,’ I thought.
I lay perfectly still waiting to see what might happen next. The next thing I knew the man walked around the car opened the door and began unlocking my handcuffs from my ankle chains. I was instructed to get out of the car and hop to the back of the vehicle. Only being able to take baby-steps, he jerked me by the shirt forcing me to the back of the vehicle where he opened the trunk.
“DAMN!” he yelled in disgust, as he hit the back of the car with his fist. Still breathing really hard, he bent forward and held onto the vehicle with his one arm. We both stood there looking at the lifeless body on the ground.
“Is he dead Mr. Tidwell?”
“Shut your damn mouth,” he screamed.
I could tell that Tidwell was scared. I had never seen him scared before. He was a rough, tough mean man but never did I ever see him scared of anything or anyone. There was a large hinge bolt which held the door onto the vehicle. I think the side of the boy’s head hit the bolt when Tidwell knocked him into the car. I didn’t see any blood but I knew the boy was deader than a doornail.
“Don’t you say one damn word, do you understand me boy? You get down on the ground and lay flat on your belly,” he demanded. He ordered me to stay quiet and remain totally flat on the ground. I watched his feet beneath the automobile as he walked toward an old tin building. Several minutes later he returned with a shovel in his right hand. I was directed to dig a grave about twenty yards off the road. I immediately began digging. Once in a while I would look up at Mr. Tidwell who was constantly staring at me. I dug the hole until it was about up to my knees and then I stopped.
“Twice as deep,” he ordered.
I knew right then and there he was not going to leave any witnesses.
“Mr. Tidwell, have you ever seen the movie “Cool Hand Luke?”
He didn’t respond.
As I continued to dig, I whispered loudly, “You remind me of Cool Hand Luke, Mr. Tidwell. You’re a big and strong man just like Mr. Luke;”
“I was a good boy myself when I first came to work here; a very good boy. You know what that means? But that’s all changed now,” Tidwell said, in a slow, somber drawn out tone of voice.
“My daddy always beat me real bad Mr. Tidwell, real black and blue too. He tried to smother me and my brother and he shot my mama one time too. I wanted to be strong like Cool Hand Luke but I never could do it. The beatings just hurt too badly. Maybe I could be strong one day just like you Mr. Tidwell. That’s what I want to be one day; to be big and strong just like you.”
Tidwell stood not saying a word.
“I won’t say nothin’ about what happened here, really I won’t Mr. Tidwell.”
“I can’t take that chance son,” he replied.
When I looked up at his face, because of the bright moonlight, I could see tears running down Tidwell’s cheeks. But again, he said nothing.
I looked back down and began to dig. My body began to shake and tremble uncontrollably. I was so scared that I couldn’t even start crying. I tried to think but my mind kept running in a never-ending circle of confusion. ‘Could he kill me? Would he really kill me? Why did he start crying? Mr. Tidwell never cries, ‘cause he’s real strong just like in the movie Cool Hand Luke.’
There was one way for me to save myself. It was real, real bad but not as bad as havin’ to die. I stopped digging, looked directly up at Mr. Tidwell and said, “Mr. Tidwell, please don’t hurt me. I’ll suck your dick really, really good if you don’t hurt me and I’ll do it good to.”
Half a smile came to his face as he pressed his lips together as if he were thinking; but all he did was shake his head “no” as if in a state of disgust. I thought about dropping the shovel and running out into the woods, but I knew that the gators or snakes would get me just like the other boys who ran away and were never heard from again.
When the hole was about up to my waist, Mr. Tidwell ordered me stop digging. I watched as he walked over to the boy, grabbed him by his handcuffed arms and drug him to the waiting hole. I kept saying over and over, “I won’t tell anyone Mr. Tidwell, really I won’t Mr. Tidwell.” He acted as if I were not even there. With one arm he flung the boy’s body into the hole as if it had no weight to it whatsoever. The body landed on me and I fell to the bottom of the damp hole and began crying.
After the boy was thrown into the hole, I was instructed to cover him with dirt. When the hole was about half full, I stopped and looked at the one arm man.
“Keep filling,” he instructed.
After completely filling the hole I began patting down the soil so it wouldn’t leave a big hump.
“Nobody’ll ever find him Mr. Tidwell. No way, not way out here.”
“I’m going to take you to lock-up and you had best keep your damn mouth shut. You keep that mouth of yours shut and every once in a while I’ll take you to town and buy you a soda pop.”
“I gave you my word Mr. Tidwell and I won’t ever go back on that. Really I won’t.”
I knew that I had just saved my own ass from a certain death. To this day I don’t know what it was that touched the heart of one evil and vile man like Troy Tidwell.
It is this story which has led me to believe that many more boys may have been TORTURED/RAPED/MURDERED at the facility than the 100 +/- bodies found on the campus so far might lead us to believe. Swamps and alligators are only a few 100 yards away from the campus, any boy's body dumped there would never be found.
In 2009, Federal Investigators inspected Dozier and immediately called for an official investigation of the facility. They found that over 200 boys claimed that they had been sexually abused/RAPED at Dozier, remember this phenomenon, most boys who are sexually abused and raped will never admit, whether it was by guards/police/preachers/other boys, and 10,000's of boys claimed they had been tortured by the guards.
Troy Tidwell testifying under oath at his deposition, arguing that he only "paddled" a few boys and only when they deserved it, which was good enough for police, the local DA and the Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum in 2009.
Terry Burns recalled spending a month in solitary confinement right after he arrived at age 13 for hitchhiking. He made the mistake of being slow to a meal and was being taught a lesson. He slept naked on a concrete floor and ate three pieces of bread each day. He had a metal bucket for a toilet and was routinely beaten and tortured every day for no reason. Despite the torture, he said he felt blessed to still be alive. Other Dozier boys weren’t as lucky.
Billy Hayes, 12/13-years-old while at Dozier, said during an interview years later, after a few torture sessions, he would pray, like 8-year-old orphan Roger Kiser, to die every night he was there.
Pictured below a Dozier "paddle" with STUDS/SPIKES on it to rip into the flesh of boys 7 to 18-years-old at Dozier Reform School. This was not designed to punish boys, this was designed to TORTURE them. Devices like this explain why the boys were stripped naked by their Bible Belt Evangelical "christian" guards. The guards didn't want blood on the boys' clothes. Then they were kept naked in solitary confinement cell until the boy's wounds healed, at which point, they were put back in the general population---until their next torture session or being carried and buried in the "garbage pit." Many might suspect a sexual sadism motive may be involved as well in the actions of these Bible Belt "christian" guards too. A not unreasonable assumption. I wrote that before learning about the latest finding of systematic sexual abuse of the boys, which seems to have targeted boys under 14-years-old, especially boys 12-years-old and younger, 90% of whom shouldn't have been in prison in the first place.
Staged photo ops showing what a wonderful place Dozier Torture/Murder School was.
I would be curious if anyone is as surprised as I am at how many really young boys, 7 to 14-years-old, were imprisoned at Dozier. I was perplexed what these children could have done to be sent to prison, then I learned that judges would send ORPHAN BOYS, who were NOT Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God or other Evangelical "christians" to Dozier instead of orphanages and foster homes, which were reserved for girls, as a means of keeping the facility full so they could keep Florida Taxpayer money/funds coming in to Marianne and Jackson County. The one thing everyone must realize, these children didn't matter to these "christian" judges at all.
Of course, posed photos for the press presented the story that officials wanted seen.
This photo had a caption: boys sent to Dozier became "SLAVE LABOR" for local farmers and businessmen, again to the profit of the warden and the guards, for the hard labor, beatings and torture of the boys, there is nothing I need to add. There is some reason to believe that Evangelical Sheriffs would raid trailer parks and poor parts of town looking for boys to become slaves.
Slavery and long work days helped you fend off predatory older boys, but did nothing to help with vicious "christian" guards.
By the 1960's and 1970's sports were played between the black and white boys, though their housing was still segregated. As a step towards integration, all boys were tortured in the "white house". Racist Governor Fuller Warren came from Marianna and he lobbied the state legislature to drastically increase the size of Dozier Juvenile Prison in his hometown. Gov. Warren (1949-1953) was a very proud member of the KKK. Through his efforts, Dozier became the largest and worst juvenile prison in the US.
Local Police throughout Northern Florida were encouraged to creatively arrest and DA's to prosecute poor boys under any pretext so the Dozier facility was always full, which served as a boon to the local economy. Judges were active participants and willing accomplices. Justice had NOTHING to do with what was occurring at Dozier. They even sent ORPHANS to Dozier by default. There were burglars, rapists and murderers at Dozier, though few in number. Not even they deserved what happened to them there. As to be expected, greed was the #1 motivation for sending boys to Dozier, far more important than Justice.
White House Boys said life at Dozier was a living hell, but black boys had it worse. Most local guards were vicious racists and never attempted to hide it. Apparently many of them were sexual sadists and child molesters, considering the update reported in Wikipedia of a Boy Rape Dungeon for the Guards and Staff reported in 2015. But always remember it was the Evangelical "christian" Bible Belt.
Note guards supervising meals, looking for any reason to beat/torture the boys.
No matter how horrific it was for white boys, at best black boys had it as bad, if not worse, until the facility was integrated in the 1970's, when every boy was treated equally bad, unless they got a vicious, racist guard.
I think my interest in the Dozier Reform School Scandal came from a movie made by RKO, one of the big studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood, in 1939, called Slave Boys about a Southern Reform School. It tells the horrific hellish life of juvenile delinquents in the Bible Belt, where slavery, torture, beatings and murder were the norm. I remember seeing it on TV once in the 1960's when I was about 10-years-old. Southern Bible Belt Politicians and Evangelical Preachers successfully got it banned from local TV in Atlanta because they said it gave an unfair portrayal of the Bible Belt. I had to go to a Russian Website to find it. Actually, it turns out to be ahead of its time and told the TRUTH. In 2012, Florida sold off Dozier Reform School to developers. Horrified construction crews were discover boys' bodies everywhere they dug. I wrote about Dozier on my blog. I became interested in Dozier when Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi REFUSED to prosecute guards who TORTURED/MURDERED boys at the facility. I posted the movie on YouTube in five parts if you are interested in seeing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7NLCr2slvw
I did a much more in-depth investigation of the TORTURE and MURDER of kids at Dozier on this page, the FIFTH STORY from the top. https://briankeithohara.blogspot.com/2014/11/lamar-potts-honest-georgia-sheriff-and.html
The location of Dozier Reform School, where boys were abused, tortured and murdered.
May the name of REPUBLICAN EVANGELICAL "christian" Pam Bondi LIVE IN INFAMY UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER and may the boys tortured and murdered at Dozier be waiting for her at St. Peter's gate, when it is slammed in her face.
When I was 11-years-old our school principal came over our school PA and announced that Martin Luther King had been murdered. I will never forget a few kids in my class applauded. I was shocked. I knew these kids, they were all from church going Evangelical families. I don't think I ever had a bad opinion of church goers, except the Baptist Preacher and KKK Police Officers who tortured and murdered Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner for registering blacks to vote in Philadelphia Mississippi in 1964. My view of religious people changed forever after I saw that.
Footnote: the hooks on the ceiling were used to hang Gestapo Prisoners by piano wire at Plotzensee Prison, a particularly painful and vicious way to execute someone, many times leading to the incidental beheading of the hanged. This was the fate of the July 20th 1944 plotters led by Count Claus von Stauffenberg. Count von Stauffenberg planted his briefcase bomb under the table in Hitler's Conference Room at Hitler's Prussian Military HQ, Wolf's Lair/Wolfsschanze. Stauffenberg planted the bomb immediately in front of where Hitler always stood during these meetings. Unfortunately, Stauffenberg received a planned telephone call saying it required him to leave the meeting and left the room. Historians believe that Colonel Heinz Brandt, one of the 20 meeting attendees, who was standing next to Hitler, used his foot to move the briefcase aside by pushing it behind the leg of the conference table, thus unwittingly deflecting the blast from Hitler. The blast caused Colonel Brandt to lose one of his legs which caused his own death a few days later. Count von Stauffenberg was arrested that same day and with two compatriots were shot that night in Berlin.
Catholic Count Stauffenberg and his wife Nina. Stauffenberg. Count von Stauffenberg was captured and shot with those arrested immediately after the bomb blast
Count von Stauffenberg's last photo.
The Bendlerblock Courtyard where Stauffenberg and other plotters were shot. Bendlerblock was a group of the Nazi War Department buildings located in the Tiergarten section of Berlin. Stauffenberg, his aide 1st Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, General Friedrich Olbricht and Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim were executed before 1:00 AM, 21 July 1944, by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which was lit by the headlights of a truck. The arrests resulting from the Gestapo investigation in the weeks that followed, led to Plotzensee Prison where the plotters/prisoners were tortured and then hanged from piano wire. No one arrested or questioned by the Gestapo was acquitted or found not guilty, regardless of whether they were in fact guilty.
The street on which the Bendlerblock Defense Buildings, which are still standing, has been changed from Bendlerstraße to Stauffenbergstraße.
Colonel Heinz Brandt the man who saved Adolf Hitler's Life by moving Count Stauffenberg's briefcase/bomb behind a heavy oak table leg.
Surviving the blast, Hitler took Italian Dictator Mussolini on a tour of the bomb wreckage when he arrived days later.
Few things make me as angry as when Donald "Bone Spurs" Trump went to the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree and gave a PARTISAN REPUBLICAN HATE AND GREED ORGY SPEECH. Since learning of Helmuth Hubener story of standing up against the Nazis and for the Boy Scouts, I will never allow such a stain on Helmuth Hubener's Boy Scouts and their honor to stand unchallenged.
Did you know that Donald Trump was EXPELLED from the elite Kew-Forest Prep School and sent to military school at age 12 for being a bully, always beating up kids younger, smaller and poorer than he was. in 60 years, nothing has changed.
Trump paid a doctor to invent a bone spur diagnosis to keep him out of the draft and Vietnam. Trumpeteer and Pro-NRA War Hawk Ted Nugent bragged about what they did to not go to Vietnam with the real men and heroes. Newt Gingrich used an education deferment to avoid service, earning his doctorate. But attacked Bill Clinton for the exact same thing, calling him a coward. Poor kids never had this option.
Here is a photo of 16-year-old French Gay Poet Arthur Rimbaud, manning the barricades of Paris after the German invasion of 1870. Rimbaud was wounded in action. Trump said making money with his dad's money makes him a hero too. I don't think so, I vote that 16-year-old Arthur Rimbaud is a real hero and Trump is a spoiled brat and phony.
In 2017, Trump refused to partake in the Veteran's Day Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers because of light sprinkles/showers on November 11. November 11th is the day WWI ended at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918. Trump could have taken an umbrella, which could have been held by a USMC soldier, while he laid flowers on the graves of the Unknown Soldiers. All of which, would have taken less than 10 minutes. In 1962, President John "JFK" Kennedy stood in the pouring rain for over an hour as he and 70-year-old French President/General Charles de Gaulle honored their fallen WWII fellow soldiers in front of France's tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the base of Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe.
That isn't to say I don't think Boy Scout Scoutmasters, Scout leaders or Scouts should be held accountable for inappropriate behavior, especially sexual misconduct. After years of investigation, it has been determined 7800 Scoutmasters and adult leaders engaged inappropriate behavior, including sexual misbehavior, of whom about 2000 are believed to have engaged in forceful sexual assault and rape. That is out of 1,000,000 men who have served as Scout Leaders. Though the number seems high, it is less than 1% of Scout Leaders. The real anger should be reserved for churches and community groups which sponsored Boy Scout Troops, which, after receiving accusations of inappropriate behavior, then refused to investigate or even after repeated accusations involving the same leader, instead pressured the boys to drop their accusations to protect the accused, the church or community groups. These organizations should have immediately suspended the leader under suspicion, investigated, then called police if warranted and let them determine the legitimacy of the complaint. This almost never happened. That is a crime too.
More shame for Boy Scouts, leaders who lead the boys into vandalism:
In 2014, Mormon Deacon and Boy Scout Leaders, led by Scoutmaster Glenn Taylor, found some "fun" for their boys in Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park. These three Scout Leaders toppled a giant rock formation weighing a couple of tons that was 170 million years old in just 14 seconds, setting an excellent example for the boys they were mentoring. Leader Taylor may have faced more than criminal prosecution.
Turns out Scoutmaster and Mormon Deacon Glenn Taylor was suing another driver and our Social Security Program for 100% DISABILITY because of a traffic accident occurring in 2012. But Glenn Taylor was apparently well enough to PUSH over and knock down a huge 2 ton boulder precariously balanced on a natural pedestal in 2014. This might hurt his claim of 100% disability. But a far worse sin was the corrupt, perverted example he set for the boys of his troop.
Shawn Merriman started like many criminals: he made money for his customers as an investment adviser, then hard times hit and he chose the wrong road to save his business. But it is worse than that, new customers and their funds generated income to pay off old customers, family, friends and fellow Mormons. And then he started spending other people's money on himself and his immediate family on luxuries. He was in over his head and needed to feed the ravenous beast, GREED. For years, Shawn had been a good man to his family, friends and fellow parishioners, He first became a Deacon then a Bishop in the Mormon Church, then he got himself in trouble when temptation became too strong and he gave into greed and couldn't get himself out. While his church may have written him off, what he did was horrifically wrong, betraying people who knew and trusted him, I hope his family is able to forgive him.
Helmuth Hubener followed his conscience, when few others did. Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose Group made the same, right choice, all heroes through time. What the Mormon Church should have done, either defended Helmuth or said nothing. Nazis kept excellent records, recording over 4,000 Catholic Priests/Friars and 2000 Nuns killed, most in Poland and the East. But 100's also killed in France and Germany. In Dachau alone, 1,773 Polish priests were imprisoned, of whom 868 were killed. The Nazis actually had Catholic Priest barracks at their Death Camps. These priests were photographed at Dachau after the Nazi surrender.
I remember seeing this photo in a book I was reading in about 1968, when I was about 11-years-old, called "The Yellow Star". Two photos have been burned into my memory since then . This boy smuggled food into the starving 100,000's of Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto. I learned much later these stills were from a Nazi newsreel about the Warsaw Ghetto. He got caught by a German Soldier. He was 2 minutes from having his brains blown out, summary execution the Nazi price for feeding the starving, a hero for the ages known only to God.
Wandervogel and Edelweiss Pirates, the hippies of the 20's and 30's, in Nazi Germany.
These young Wandervogel boys, the pacifist hippies of the Weimar Republic, with long hair, stood out in 1920's Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler. They left people alone and people left them alone too.
These adolescents, aged between 12 and 17, hang around late in the evening with musical instruments and young females. Since this riff raff is in large part outside the Hitler Youth and adopts a hostile attitude towards the organization, they represent a danger to other young people.
—Nazi Party Report, Dusseldorf, Germany, July 1943
This back to nature movement dates back to the turn of the 20th Century in Germany and a group called Wandervogel, young kids who camped and sang. The militarism of the Nazi Jugend was everything they were against. They were believed to be responsible for anti-Nazi Graffiti and Free Speech Pamphlets which showed up in people's mailboxes, much like the White Rose Movement of Sophie and Hans Scholl and the ones Helmuth Hubener hand typed. Himmler ordered the Gestapo to beat and torture these boys and girls when caught, later he wanted their hair shaved to mark them as dissident teenagers. Later he decided to get tough with them.
While the Nazi policy of capturing Edelweiss Pirates sending them to “re-education camps," where beatings and torture were standing policy, may have proved individually discouraging, Himmler felt the need to broadcast the Reich’s distaste for free thinkers and implement a general, PUBLIC, policy aimed at these malcontents. In October 1944, Himmler captured 13 agitators/dissidents, including seven Edelweiss Pirates, and marched them to the gallows in the middle of Cologne, Germany. All of these prisoners were hung in full view of the public.
Downtown Berlin, Germany January 1930, 1,000,000 Liberals, Socialists, Catholics and Union Members protesting Royalist/Conservative Chancellor von Papen including Nazis Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering in his coalition cabinet. Hitler ordered Interior Minister Goering to prosecute peaceful protesters for TREASON.
Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller
"I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: "There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany."
I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.
I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me."
"We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt/fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934—there must have been a possibility—14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right when Hermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die. I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 Protestant Christians would have had their heads cut off, but I can also imagine that we would have rescued 30,000,000–40,000,000 people, because that is what it is costing us now."
Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller
Pastor Niemoller is most famous for his poem, First They Came. Niemoller wrote different versions, including citing the Mentally Ill, Gays, Mentally Retarded, Invalids, Jehovah's Witnesses and Gypsies as victims, saying that each version was truthful and directed with the most powerful message and relevance that he could convey.
First They Came
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for the Catholics
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Catholic
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945 by Hitler and his Nazis. The original version was given in a speech in 1946, describing the horror of the Nazis and how they could have been stopped had anyone had the courage to stand up to them.
Right-Wing Republicans say the Nazis were Socialists. Well, not quite. Adolf Hitler was a German War Hero, earning the Iron Cross First Class, Germany's Highest Military Honor for bravery under fire. After WWI, Hitler continued to work for the RIGHT-WING German Army in Military Intelligence. Hitler would infiltrate liberal and leftist groups, then testify against their members in treason trials run by the German Military. Summary Execution was always the result in these "trials". Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are the most famous examples, but 1000's of others were victims of these persecutions.
Hitler infiltrated the Nazis, a small group of over 100 racist fanatics. They had no leader and Hitler found history beckoned. He assumed control over the group. He eventually brought in Germany's richest man to his cause, right-wing Billionaire Baron Krupp, the owner of Krupp Werks, the world's largest munitions manufacturer by promising he would destroy unions. When Hitler assumed power as Chancellor in 1933, it was pressure from Baron Krupp on President Hindenburg which got him the job. Hitler's first act was to declare May 1st a holiday, Labor Day, for workers, then, the next day, he sent Goring's GESTAPO to murder and arrest union leaders, followed by an official decree making unions and strikes illegal.
But everyone should have seen it coming. As a member of Chancellor von Papen's 1930 coalition cabinet, Hitler's adjutant, Interior Minister Goring, began arresting gays as status offenders, they didn't have to commit a crime to be arrested, then throwing them in concentration camps, built especially for the purpose of housing dissidents. When no one protested, the Nazis began summary executions of these "offenders".
To show the importance of right-wing billionaire Baron Krupp to the Nazi cause, while everyone else had to come to Hitler in his Berlin Chancellery or Berchtesgaden, his home in the Alps, Hitler would travel to Essen in Northern Germany to honor Baron Krupp on occasion of his birthday and for other meetings.
German boys and Hitler Jugend would hunt Jewish, Gypsy and Gay boys on the streets of Germany and the occupied territories. If they came upon one, they would strip them naked to humiliate them and then beat them to death, usually in front of laughing German Police or Wehrmacht Soldiers. Goring, at the time was head of the GESTAPO, saying we will use persecution of gays to see how much we can get away with, since no one cares about them. No one protested their arrest, no one protested when they were sent to Nazi concentration camps and finally no one protested when they were exterminated. The Holocaust and Wannsee Conference were the logical next step.
Did you know that every German boy was required by law to join the Hitler Youth if he was 10-year-old and older. At 10, Hitler Youth got a vicious Nazi Hunting Knife, at 14-years-old they were given a gun. And they were expected to use them on Jews, Gays, etc... Germany had 60,000,000 people and 80,000,000 guns in civilian hands by 1940. Remember that the next time the NRA or Fox News lies and says Germany had gun control.
A teenage boy known only to God
When allied armies captured Nazi Death camps, everyone was let out except the insane and gays. By then, this boy had been TORTURED/MURDERED years before by "pro-life" "christian" concentration camp guards and no one noticed or cared. For those who do not know, Germany, under Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, made abortion by a German/Aryan woman a capital crime, automatically mandating the death penalty for both the woman and the doctor.
A few days ago North Carolina Black Evangelical Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson called gays "FILTH" in a press conference. Someone in the Republican Party should tell black Lt. Governor Robinson that Hitler, SS Chief Himmler and Adolf Eichmann called gays and Jews "FILTH." Is that something a christian would say? Is that something Jesus would say?
Remember the two petty criminal "christian" young men who tortured and murdered Matthew Shepard? They argued in court that they TORTURED and MURDERED Matthew as "christians" to protect kids from the "faggot," as they called Matt. Jurors were interviewed after they convicted the "boys" of First Degree MURDER. The jurors said the fact that the "boys" stole Matthew's wallet after they TORTURED AND MURDERED him, proved they were robbing him.
If you wonder why children are bullied and beaten up in school or why children commit suicide, start with the vicious words of "christian" "pro-life" Republican Lt. Governor Robinson.
An Evangelical "christian" man just out of prison sees the mom of the 15-year-old Irish Catholic boy he tortured and murdered, Micky-bo McIlveen, on the streets of Ballymena and for no reason begins laughing at her. She turns around and recognizes him, she then walks up to him and slaps him. Micky-bo McIlveen's mom was immediately arrested by a policeman. The TORTURE/MURDERER was sentenced to 8 years in prison, but was let out early for "good behavior," while she and Micky-bo's family got life sentences.
In 2005, 15-year-old Irish Catholic Michael "Mickey-bo" McIlveen went to an amusement center in Ballymena Northern Ireland with a couple of his buddies. Returning home, he stopped by a fast food take out for dinner for his family, as they walked, he and a buddy were attacked by FOUR ADULT EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS who chased them. One friend got away and went for police.
The boys had never met the men before and had no idea who they were. These Evangelical men had deliberately gone to a Catholic section of town to bully and beat up Catholic boys with a baseball bat. The four adult men were able to catch Micky-bo and proceeded to beat him viciously with the bat, while kicking and punching him, as they ignored his screams of pain and agony, which eventually turned to whimpers as he slowly slipped into a coma. Unconscious, Micky-bo was taken to the hospital where he died days later. In 2017, Micky-bo's Mom noticed one of the men who murdered her son on the street when he began laughing at her. Micky-bo's outraged mom slapped her son's torture/murderer, for which she was arrested by a Evangelical Police Officer and convicted of assault by an Evangelical Judge. Is that Justice?
A local Ballymena Evangelical City Councilor Roy Gillespie volunteered, in an interview with a reporter, that Micky-bo's torture/murderers would be welcomed into heaven as heroes while the INNOCENT tortured and murdered boy, Michael "Micky-bo" McIlveen went straight to hell. In response to the boy's death, local Catholic and Protestant teen boys and girls were determined to take a stand against religious hatred by attending Michael McIlveen's funeral together in his hometown of Ballymena in Northern Ireland.
Aaron Wallace, 20 (LT), Mervyn Moon (RT), Christopher Kerr, 22 (BL), and Jeff Lewis, 19, not pictured, were convicted of murder. Mervyn Moon confessed before the start of his trial in September 2008.
The next Saturday, after Michael's funeral, an Evangelical Orange Order Protestant Parade was held, as it turned the corner onto Broughshane Street near the dead boy's home, a tremendous chorus of “Fuck Mickey-Bo” arose among the marchers, most of whom were grown men, who then followed their taunt with death threats aimed at members of the crowd who protested their hectoring of the dead boy's family and friends. Ballymena News
An Evangelical Christian Mayor in rural Mississippi took Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God Preachers into the local public and school libraries, pulling books off the shelves, written by and about gays, including works by Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Wolf, and burning them. Republican President Donald Trump, Mormon Senator Mitt Romney and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich all dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. Poor kids didn't have a choice and served their country, while rich kid "super patriots" like these laughed at them. Here is a photo of 16-year-old gay French Poet Arthur Rimbaud manning the barricades of Paris after the German Invasion of 1870. This boy, 16-year-old poet Rimbaud, was wounded defending his country and Freedom. Question, who is more of a man, DRAFT DODGERS Trump, Romney and Gingrich or this 16-year-old gay boy and poet, Arthur Rimbaud?
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John "JFK" Kennedy laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
On Veterans Day 2017, Trump refused to go to Arlington National Cemetery and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier because of light sprinkles, which every President has done for last 75 years. In 1962, President John "JFK" Kennedy and 70-year-old French President Charles de Gaulle stood in the pouring rain for 2 hours honoring their fallen World War Two comrades.
Trump could have gone and completed the wreath laying in under 10 minutes, with a US Marine holding an umbrella over him the whole time, but chose not to.
A hero is not promoted or recognized because of prejudice in the US Navy. French Catholic Intelligence USN Officer Joseph Rochefort devises the plan which led to the greatest and first victory against the Imperial Japanese Navy in WWII, immediately after their surprise attack on US at Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Chester Nimitz was given command of the Pacific Fleet after Admiral Kimmel was transferred after the disaster at Pearl Harbor Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, a date which will live in INFAMY. Nimitz took a great risk believing in the intelligence and decoding of Lt. Commander Joseph Rochefort's decoding team. The team discovered a Japanese plan to attack "AF". But no one knew what "AF" was. But Commander Rochefort had a hunch. Rochefort's team sent out a fake message that Midway, America's mid Pacific base closest to Japan, had a broken water purification plant. A few hours later the Japanese Navy sent the message that "AF" had no fresh water in a communique to Imperial Navy HQ, Rochefort, his team and Admiral Nimitz knew they were right.
The Nazi Enigma Machine. Czech Intelligence had stolen a machine from the Nazis, costing several lives, after the Nazi take over of Czechoslovakia. Later another machine was seized from a Nazi Submarine which was captured.
Mathematician Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park Military Intelligence Operation broke the extraordinary Nazi Enigma Machine. Franklin "FDR" Roosevelt and Winston Churchill acknowledged their work, as well as Hawaiian code breaker Lt. Commander Joseph Rochefort, were the key to victory in WWII. Rochefort's team broke the Japanese Navy Code which allowed Admiral Nimitz to set the ambush at Midway, which destroyed 4 Japanese Fleet Carriers and returned American Superiority in the Pacific.
From earliest childhood Alan Turing was classified as a genius and chose mathematics as his field of expertise. After the war Alan Turing was persecuted for being gay, finally being driven to suicide. Never has a greater debt been owed and been paid so poorly.
Turing was recruited from Sherborne School, while still in high school, by British Intelligence. The 1968 movie, Good-bye Mr. Chips, starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark was filmed at the Sherborne School. It was a moment of redemption, because students at the school led a movement to rehabilitate Alan Turing, which brought them to the attention of the producers and was the main reason they chose the school to film to honor the students' efforts by including them in the film too.
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Through these Sherborne kids' and alumni's efforts, Alan Turing has finally received the honors that he deserved for his contribution to our efforts in WWII. In 2021, Alan Turing was put on the 50 Pound English Note.
Two bombing raids which PM Winston Churchill, Tory, and Deputy PM Clement Attlee, Labour, knew about in advance thanks to Alan Turing and his Bletchley Staff of Codebreakers cracking the Nazi Enigma Machine, but did nothing to stop, the bombing of London and Parliament and later the massive raid on Coventry, which leveled the centuries old Coventry Cathedral.
This photo is very famous, Winston Churchill on May 11, 1941 toured Parliament after a horrifically destructive bombing raid by the German Luftwaffe. It is famous for another reason, the man in silhouette. The man was the chief British Spy in the US, William Stephenson. He helped Franklin "FDR" Roosevelt and the OSS, future CIA, weed out German Spies in the US. William Stevenson, no relation, wrote a magnificent book "A Man Called Intrepid" outlining his efforts to help FDR and America fight the Nazis, before and after Pearl Harbor.
Coventry Cathedral after the Luftwaffe bombing raid of November 14/15, 1940. Churchill, Attlee, Alan Turing and the Bletchley Park Team decided that if they overused their broken Enigma code, the Nazis would change it. So they decided, strategically, to use it for battle information and D-Day specifically. Their greatest success was in convincing Hitler, Generals Jodl and Keitl that the US, British and French invasion on D-Day, June 6th 1944, would come at Calais, the nearest point to the UK and NOT Cherbourg/Normandy, where it would actually occur. For this purpose they had General Patten fake a massive invasion force, including inflatable tanks along the British Coast facing Calais.
Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower made it up to Gen. Patton by giving him the US 3rd Army which would spearhead the smashing of the Third Reich.
General Bernard Montgomery led the effort against Civil Rights for Gays
"This sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British - thank God."
So decreed Field Marshal Montgomery as he urged the House of Lords not to legalize gay sex starting in 1962 when it was first proposed and warned that the 1967 homosexuality bill would be a "charter for buggery". Buggery is a British term for anal sex.
But there may be more to the story than one might suspect. General Montgomery's wife commented on an odd friendship that he formed with a Swiss boy, Lucien Trueb, who he would take camping, just the two of them, She couldn't fathom the reason for it. We will never know the relationship between these two, Lucien Trueb has refused to speak of it since the Field Marshal's death. I don't know enough information or the truth of the matter, but one is led to think that Shakespeare may have been right, "Me thinkst thou dost protest too much."
Bobby Kennedy once said, "If one is not free, then none are free!" Persecution and silencing opponents are the tools of dictators and the first sign of a dying Republic and the Death of Freedom.
Freedom is something shared by everyone or it is shared by no one.
Another Hero for the Ages, Ames Mayfield
A Colorado Trumpeteer Republican Scoutmaster kicked 11-year-old Cub Scout Ames Mayfield out of his den for asking Colorado Republican State Senator Vicki Marble why she said the reason Medicaid cost so much is that Black People eat too much Fried Chicken. Then he asked Senator Marble why she rammed a law through the legislature allowing physically abusive husbands who had beaten up their wives to get gun permits.
August Landemesser was engaged to marry Irma Eckler, who was Jewish, but the marriage was made invalid by the Nazi Nuremberg Law. They eventually had two children, the 2nd daughter born in a Nazi Concentration Camp, neither of whom survived WWII. After WWII, in 1950, Germany legalized their marriage.. He refused to divorce her after Hitler came to power in January 1933. Irma was arrested and sentenced to a concentration camp, eventually she was executed by the Nazis. Here August is shown at A figure identified as August Landmesser by Irene Eckler is visible in a photograph taken on 13 June 1936, which was published on 22 March 1991 in Die Zeit. It shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg for the launching of the navy training ship Horst Wessel. Almost everyone in the image has raised their arm in the Nazi salute, with the most obvious exception of a man toward the back of the crowd, who grimly stands with his arms crossed over his chest. Wikipedia
Landmesser was drafted into the Wehrmacht and served on the Eastern front fighting Russian soldiers. He was killed October 17, 1944 in the line of duty.
HITLER WAS A CONSERVATIVE RIGHT-WING DICTATOR
World War One was portrayed as the great war. It wasn't, 20,000,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. Poison gas, fired by Mortars and Howitzers looked beautiful on their way to the enemy trenches. Towards the end of the war, both sides would cut corners to fill the trenches, this 14-year-old English boy was burned to death by an incendiary mortar. An English military doctor certified these "Men" as 17-years-old and fit for duty. Obviously, they are closer to 12 and 13-years-old in age. They would be shipped to the front lines, where they would be slaughtered, suffering 80% fatalities.
Adolf Hitler was a War Hero in WWI winning the Iron Cross for Bravery under fire. When the war ended, he continued to work for the Prussian controlled German Army as a SPY. Hitler was sent to infiltrate liberal, socialists and leftist groups and report back to prosecutors so they could try members of these groups for Treason.
Hitler with his buddies from the German Trenches. Soldiers were safer in the trenches than in no man's land. Hitler volunteered to become a courier between the trenches and Army HQ. Hitler was gassed and nearly killed several times. He spent months in the hospital, begging doctors to release him so he could get back to the front.
About a month from the end of WWI, September 28, 1918, Adolf Hitler was carrying a message to HQ when he was confronted by a British Private, Henry Tandey, serving near the French village of Marcoing. Tandey had Hitler in his gun sight.
As Tandey tells the story, during the final moments of that Battle of Marcoing France, German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandey’s line of fire. “I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man,” Tandey remembered, “so I let him go.” The German soldier nodded in thanks, and disappeared.
Hitler with his buddies from the German Trenches. Soldiers were safer in the trenches than in no man's land. Hitler volunteered to become a courier between the trenches and Army HQ. Hitler was gassed and nearly killed several times. He spent months in the hospital, begging doctors to release him so he could get back to the front.
About a month from the end of WWI, September 28, 1918, Adolf Hitler was carrying a message to HQ when he was confronted by a British Private, Henry Tandey, serving near the French village of Marcoing. Tandey had Hitler in his gun sight.
As Tandey tells the story, during the final moments of that Battle of Marcoing France, German troops were in retreat, a wounded German soldier entered Tandey’s line of fire. “I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man,” Tandey remembered, “so I let him go.” The German soldier nodded in thanks, and disappeared.
Adolf Hitler was in the areas on that day in 1918, an intriguing link emerged to suggest that he was in fact the soldier Tandey spared. A photograph of a painting that appeared in London newspapers of Tandey carrying a wounded soldier at Ypres in 1914 was later portrayed on canvas in a painting by the Italian artist Fortunino Matania glorifying the Allied war effort. As the story goes, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Germany in 1938 to engage Hitler in a last-ditch effort to avoid another war in Europe, he was taken by the Führer to his new country retreat in Bavaria. There, Hitler showed Chamberlain his copy of the Matania painting, commenting, “That’s the man who nearly shot me.”
Here is Adolf Hitler in 1922, with the Chief of Staff for the German Army Prussian General Ludendorff. Hitler was spying for military intelligence on leftist groups. In 10 years he would become Chancellor of Germany, thanks to Right-Wing Billionaire Baron Krupp who manufactured weapons and armaments. Hitler made him many times richer.
Ludendorff commanded the Spring German Offensive in which over a 1,000,000 attacked the allies all along the Somme River. It was called two other names, the Kaiserschlat, The German Kaiser's Offensive, or, as some called it after its creator, The Ludendorff Offensive. It began March 21, 1918 and lasted until July 18, 1918. Initially, the Germans inflicted huge losses on the French, British and American troops, the British alone had 7,000 dead and 20,000 wounded within a couple of hours and 10,000 more captured, allowing the Germans to capture huge amounts of Allied territory.
But three things guaranteed failure for the Germans, Allied Commander French Field Marshal Foche brilliantly rallied and counterattacked, driving the German back to their original entrenchments by July, Germany suffered 688,341 killed and wounded and Ludendorff used every reserve that he had. And that is even before the American massive 2nd wave of reinforcements arrived. Though the war would continue until November 11th 1918, it was in every practical sense over.
November 11, 1918, the Armistice is signed at Compiegne France.
World War One was fought almost entirely in France, costing the French 1,400,000 dead soldiers and 300,000 dead civilians, the French lost a generation of men and the post war birth rate plummeted. There were simply too few men for women to marry. France suffered the equivalent of $50 Billion Dollars in Damage. Here the Germans, having defeated the French by violating the neutrality of Belgium and the Netherlands for a 2nd Time, demanded the same Train Car that General Foche signed World War One the Armistice with the Germans be brought back to Compiegne so Hitler could sign the surrender at exactly the same place in the same train car as November 11, 1918.
Now, having lost the Spring Offensive to Marshal Foche, Ludendorff started blaming defeat not on the army, but on Civilians in Germany. His favorite targets Unions, Leftists and Jews. Adolf Hitler had gotten to know Ludendorff during the War and became one of the few soldiers who continued to work for the army after the Armistice. Hitler came to agree with Ludendorff, in direct defiance of the facts, Germany lost because of Liberals and Leftists, not on the Battlefield. He would never forget. Hitler determined to make them pay for their "treachery"
Hitler stumbled upon the Nazi Party in one of his investigations. It had fanatic members and no leader. Hitler saw his roundez-vous with history, infiltrated the membership and took over.
Rosa Luxemburg was a radical and persuasive speaker who was gaining in popularity within Germany after the end of World War One, Hitler and his ex-military militia, the Freikorps weren't going to allow that, The Freikorps executed Rosa Luxemburg on January 15, 1919.
Hitler took over the party and made it a purely Pro-German Aryan Nationalist Party. It was funded by Conservative Billionaire Baron Krupp, who supported its right-wing military policies.
In the 1930, Krupp's financial help allowed the Nazis to gain 33% of the seats in the Reichstag, losing only to the REAL Socialist Party, the Social Democrats.
Baron Krupp used his money and influence to force ROYALIST/CONSERVATIVE Chancellor von Papen to include Adolf Hitler and his Nazis in his cabinet. Von Papen needed the Nazis. His coalitions was a hodge-podge of Royalists, Conservatives, Nationalists and Religious Parties but they were nowhere near a majority of 50% + 1 Reichstag votes, which is what Hitler gave him. 1,000,000 Berliners came out to protest against Hitler's inclusion in the cabinet. Von Papen gave Hitler protégé Herman Goering the Interior Security/Police Ministry. Goering's first act was to create the GESTAPO. Goering and Hitler then declared protests acts of treason and began prosecuting demonstrators. There were no more large protests in Germany.
Hitler and Goering used the Reichstag Fire, set by Dutchman von Lubbe to kick the Communists and other leftists groups out of the Parliament as enemies of the state. Even at the time, Goering was suspected of using the mentally ill young man as a front for a Nazi act of terrorism, one which, allowed Hitler to become Fuhrer.
Hitler's planning worked perfectly, kicking out liberals and leftist from the Reichstag allowed the Nazis to become the largest party in the Reichstag, replacing the Social Democrats, the Socialist Party.
Baron Krupp pressured German President Field Marshal Hindenburg to fire von Papen as ineffective and appoint Hitler Chancellor to see if he could form a government. He did and his first actions show how truly CONSERVATIVE HE WAS.
Hitler ordered the German Army demonstrate military grade weapons in public parks to the public, targeting boys 10-years-old and older after he became German Chancellor January 30, 1933. These boys, 10-years-old and up, were trained to shoot military grade machine guns, manufactured by Baron Krupp's Krupp Works Armament Factory. "Pro-Life," Pro-NRA Republicans claim that the Nazis immediately implemented gun control when they came to power. That is a lie. Every German boy was made to join the Nazi Hitler Jugend/Youth at age 10-years-old. He was given a vicious Nazi hunting knife. When he was 14-years-old he was given a gun. It is estimated that German had 80,000,000 guns in German civilian hands by September 1, 1939, the beginning of World War II, more than any other country on earth. There were approximately 60,000,000 Germans in 1930.
Hitler and Goering used the Reichstag Fire, set by Dutchman von Lubbe to kick the Communists and other leftists groups out of the Parliament as enemies of the state. Even at the time, Goering was suspected of using the mentally ill young man as a front for a Nazi act of terrorism, one which, allowed Hitler to become Fuhrer.
Hitler's planning worked perfectly, kicking out liberals and leftist from the Reichstag allowed the Nazis to become the largest party in the Reichstag, replacing the Social Democrats, the Socialist Party.
Baron Krupp pressured German President Field Marshal Hindenburg to fire von Papen as ineffective and appoint Hitler Chancellor to see if he could form a government. He did and his first actions show how truly CONSERVATIVE HE WAS.
Hitler ordered the German Army demonstrate military grade weapons in public parks to the public, targeting boys 10-years-old and older after he became German Chancellor January 30, 1933. These boys, 10-years-old and up, were trained to shoot military grade machine guns, manufactured by Baron Krupp's Krupp Works Armament Factory. "Pro-Life," Pro-NRA Republicans claim that the Nazis immediately implemented gun control when they came to power. That is a lie. Every German boy was made to join the Nazi Hitler Jugend/Youth at age 10-years-old. He was given a vicious Nazi hunting knife. When he was 14-years-old he was given a gun. It is estimated that German had 80,000,000 guns in German civilian hands by September 1, 1939, the beginning of World War II, more than any other country on earth. There were approximately 60,000,000 Germans in 1930.
The Nazis took Concentration Camp Prisoners, dressed them in Polish Army uniforms, shot and killed them then planted their bodies around a radio station at Gleiwitz Germany faking a Polish attack on Germany and used it as an excuse to start World War II.
German Soldiers tearing down the border gate and checkpoint on September 1, 1939 on the Polish/German Border after the FAKE Gleiwitz Radio Station Attack.
Hitler and a team of German Military Investigators at Gleiwitz looking into the "attack".
With Hitler and the Nazis help, Baron Krupp, already the richest man in Europe, immediately cut wages and profited from MASSIVE INCREASES in the German War Ministry Budget.
A Christmas to remember in the Belgian Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge
And always remember that not all Germans lost sight of their humanity. A story about a a woman and her son of German ancestry doing the right thing during the Battle of the Bulge in the Belgian Ardennes.
During WWII, December 25, 1944, in the last months of the war, American soldiers, with a wounded comrade, came upon a cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney in the Belgian Ardennes along the German border during the Battle of the Bulge. A Belgian woman Elizabeth Vincken and her 12-year-old son Fritz, both, of German ancestry, had fled town and were hiding from the fighting. After a moments hesitation they welcomed the Americans in and offered them their meager potato and chicken soup. Sometime later a German Patrol came upon the cabin asking if they could come in and warm themselves. The woman said yes, as long as you accept our guests in the spirit of Christmas. The German commander figured out their were Americans inside and agreed to leave his troops' weapons outside with the American soldiers' weapons and come inside to celebrate Christmas. The German Patrol had a medic, who looked after the American soldiers wound and quickly staunched the bleeding. The next day both patrols left, heading in different directions. The Germans even gave the Americans the quickest directions to their own lines, bypassing German troops. The boy many years later appeared on Unsolved Mysteries which tracked down one of the Americans from that night, 76-year-old Ralph Blank, only a few years older than Fritz.
One of the most intense and troubling movies ever made about WWII: Come and See (1985)
Fictional movies about real events don't really interest me. There are a few exceptions. The Belorussian movie Come and See (1985) impressed me as much as any movie as I have ever seen. It tells the story of the Nazi Invasion of Belorussia/Belorus, a constituent USSR "republic," which borders Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. It is the story of one boy's fight to survive wanton Nazi persecution. IT IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY. This boy, Aleksey Kravchenko, deserves an Oscar for his brilliant, heartbreaking performance. It was produced during the waning days of the Soviet Union and got lost in the shuffle of international politics. It didn't really achieve notice until the 2010's. If you can handle it, it certainly is worth watching. I ran across Aleksey with the Director and was struck with his smile. After such a heartbreaking performance, it really meant something to see this boy smiling. The movie is available from the wonderful Internet resource Archive.org
Download or watch online at Archive.org
I learn from IMDb.com that the film's title, seemingly so straightforward, has a bleak context. It comes from the Book of Revelation: “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, ‘Come and see.' And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Roger Ebert, who also gave the film four out of four star's said that you can't make an effective anti-war film because war by its nature is exciting, and the end of the film belongs to the survivors. No one would ever make the mistake of saying that about Elem Klimov's "Come and See." This 1985 film from Russia is one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead...
"Another village was burned: the adults were all herded into a barn, but the children were left behind. And later, the drunk men surrounded them with sheepdogs and let the dogs tear the children to pieces.
And then I thought: the world doesn't know about Khatyn! They know about Katyn, about the massacre of the Polish officers there. But they don't know about Belorussia. Even though more than 600 villages were burned there!And I decided to make a film about this tragedy. I perfectly understood that the film would end up a harsh one. I decided that the central role of the village lad Flyora would not be played by a professional actor, who upon immersion into a difficult role could have protected himself psychologically with his accumulated acting experience, technique and skill. I wanted to find a simple boy fourteen years of age. We had to prepare him for the most difficult experiences, then capture them on film. And at the same time, we had to protect him from the stresses so that he wasn't left in the loony bin after filming was over, but was returned to his mother alive and healthy. Fortunately, with Aleksei Kravchenko, who played Flyora and who later became a good actor, everything went smoothly.
I understood that this would be a very brutal film and that it was unlikely that people would be able to watch it. I told this to my screenplay coauthor, the writer Ales Adamovich. But he replied: "Let them not watch it, then. This is something we must leave after us. As evidence of war, and as a plea for peace."
— Elem Klimov, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ales Adamovich, who fought with the Belarusian partisans as a teenager. It was his experiences which inspired this horrific story.
Yul Brynner
Shortly before he died, Oscar Winning Actor Yul Brynner made commercials against smoking, because he was dying of lung cancer. He also made a commercial about Gypsies. Though he was mostly Russian, his family was originally from Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast of Russia, he made another commercial about prejudice against Gypsies, because he had gypsy blood from his mom's side of the family. In the commercial Yul spoke about the fact that there were 1,000,000 gypsies in Europe before WWII. The UN conducted a census after the end of the war, the UN found 6,000,000 Jews had been murdered by the Nazis, but about 3,000,000 survived. But the UN Census couldn't find a single gypsy, not one, in their census. The UN estimated, maybe between 400 to 2,000 children may have been given to Catholic families and hidden, like some Jewish children were, at great peril, but after 6 years of war and the calamity it brought, a baby up to five-years-old would no longer have any memory of their gypsy heritage. Roma, the official name of the gypsies, were wiped out from continental Europe.
