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What happened with humanity?

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Landecker Democracy Fellow Tomasz Cebulski recently released two videos for the Jewish heritage and Holocaust sites SKY H. PICTURES YouTube channel.

In the first video, Tomasz talks about the German Nazi created ghetto in Izbica, in the occupied territories of Poland during WW II. Before the war it was a town primarily inhabited by Jewish residents. The Nazis within 1941-1943 converted it into a transitory ghetto, a transfer point for Jews who were then sent to either Bełżec or Sobibór death camps. Alfred Landecker was deported there from Stuttgart area in April 1942.

In the second video, Tomasz talks about the story of Treblinka II, a death camp in German-occupied Poland. Most of the victims of Treblinka were murdered within the first couple of months of camp’s existence, from July to December 1942. In August 1943, Jews in Treblinka organized a revolt, which resulted in over 100 of them escaping the camp. In the video, Tomasz also discusses the stages on the path towards genocide and the crimes of Kurt Franz, who was the deputy commander of Treblinka.

“Discrimination and progressing dehumanization.  We call this phenomena, in the theory of comparative studies of genocides one of the points of no return: once people get taste in physical violence and they feel that it’s verbally, socially and legally legitimate to dehumanize […], we may soon get to place like Treblinka, which means “murder”. ” — Tomasz Cebulski 

Tomasz is one of thirty Landecker Democracy Fellows. This fellowship, a collaboration between the Alfred Landecker Foundationand Humanity in Action, was created to strengthen a new generation of leaders whose approaches to political and social challenges can become catalysts for democratic placemaking and community building. Read more about the fellowship here.