It’s 10:30 p.m. and I have updates

I wound up sleeping all day and not waking till 8:00 p.m. I thought I’d just let the day go as far as the Charley Project was considered, awhile later I changed my mind and thought: what the heck, let’s put something together. I decided I didn’t have time to write enough new cases to make it worthwhile — you all know I like to post them in groups of ten or at least five, and I’d like a few of them at least to be actually interesting and not just “few details are available” type cases. But I had time to post updates of existing casefiles, and I have scores of them waiting in the wings.

Right now my “to be posted” updates are in a folder by themselves. The folder contains five folders, marked “A-E” and “F-J” and so on. Well, I tried to add the two oldest updates from each folder. I planned to put in the two oldest updates from each folder, but tonight I found some casefiles that hadn’t been updated and somehow wound up in the folders anyway, and there was only one update in the “U-Z” folder, which never has very much and is often totally empty. So. Anyway. I’m sure all this information is fascinating to you.

All of today’s updates are pretty small; most of them come from NamUs. But they’re there for the picking, and I can at least tell myself that I updated today and did not neglect my responsibility.

Four more executions…

…in a single post of mine on Executed Today. It’s another Holocaust one; you know that’s my specialty. All of them were Polish Jews, and hanged in pairs: two from the Sosnowiec Ghetto and two from the Bedzin Ghetto.

The father and son who died in Sosnowiec 71 years ago today have a cameo in Maus, Art Spiegelman’s famous graphic novel about the his father’s journey through the Holocaust. I read Maus for school over ten years ago, but I’ve just about forgotten it. I ought to pick it up again.

I wrote to the woman whose book was the principal source for the info in today’s entry. I told her about the entry, and also told her about an upcoming one that will cite her book as a source and quote from it. Speaking as the administrator as the Charley Project, thank-you notes mean a lot to me. I get them from family members, police officers, and sometimes even just random people who stumble across my site. I get two or three a week on average, I guess. (These communications far outnumber the critical emails I get or the emails from crazy people, but I don’t write about the thank-yous much because it sounds like I’m bragging or just out for my own glory or something, and I don’t think the thank yous are nearly as interesting to write about.) It boosts my spirits to know that my efforts are appreciated and I’m making a positive difference in the world. This isn’t the first time I’ve contacted a scholar to thank them for helping my Executed Today research; I figure they deserve to know they’re appreciated, too.

Also on executed on this day in 1942: Sergeant Anton Schmid, a German soldier who helped save Jews in Lithuania and was later honored as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. He saved hundreds of lives at the cost of his own. My Executed Today entry for him was posted two years ago.