MFDJ 12/24/24: Doomed Polish Clergy

Today’s Deported Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

After their invasion of Poland in 1939, the Germans began a reign of terror there. Tens of thousands of people, mainly from the educated classes, were murdered or deported to various camps, thousands to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1940, Poles made up the largest single prisoner group in the camp. Some 600 members of the Polish clergy, including high-ranking dignitaries, were isolated in the “small camp” for many months. Over eighty of the clergymen did not survive. On November 9, 1940, the SS executed 33 Polish prisoners by firing squad. All of them had been brought from the infamous Gestapo prison in Warsaw, “Pawiak”, to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This was one of the first organized mass murders there.

Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz’s Old Market Square on  September 9, 1939.

Culled from: Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936-1945

 

Sideshow “Freak” Du Jour!

IDA WILLIAMS

A fat lady from Columbus, Ohio, Ida Williams weighed 500 pounds when she began touring while still in her late teens. She had gained another 66 pounds by the time she was well established on the circuit at age twenty-two. Sells Brothers Circus booked her in 1884, Ringling Brothers in 1892 and 1893 and the Great Wallace Circus in 1895. At the turn of the century she returned to the Ringling show.

When Ida was in her middle twenties she sat through a protracted session with Chas. Eisenmann. He photographed her looking left and then looking right. He tried several poses face-on. Ida changed her earrings and her dress. She wound pearls in her hair, put on a barrette, wore a cap and then covered it all with a shawl. She couldn’t place her hands so Eisenmann gave her an ostrich plume to hold and then tried a nosegay. Close-up portraits of this kind were not his forte.

Culled from: Monsters: Human Freaks in America’s Gilded Age

 

Garretdom

BLOWN INTO THE RIVER.

Two Men Killed by an Explosion in a Powder Mill Near Scranton.

SCRANTON, Sept. 22.—An explosion occurred in the press mill of the Rushdale works of the Moosic Powder Company this morning, which resulted in the death of Bailey Wage and William Miller, two men who have been employed by the company for a long time. Wage’s body was blown into the river. Grappling irons were procured and the river was dragged. After a couple hours’ work the body was recovered. Miller’s body was found on the railroad track about a hundred feet from the mill. When the explosion occurred, Michael Breen, the pumpman, was at work in the pump-room beneath the mill, but as the whole force of the explosion was upward and outward, the pump-room was not damaged and Breen escaped uninjured.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

 

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