title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: The script was an original by John Fusco, who had long been interested in blues music. He worked as a blues singer and musician but had been warned by a doctor to rest his voice. In 1981 his girlfriend, who was working at a rest home, told him that an old black man with a harmonica had been admitted. Fusco went to visit him and on the way dreamt up a story about what would happen if the player was a legendary blues player. This gave him the idea for the story. He expanded on the myth of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads. Coincidentally, Johnson was inducted to the inaugural class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1986, while the film was in production.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Fusco wrote the script as his Master's Thesis at New York University. It was only his second screenplay. Producer Mark Carliner acted as Fusco's independent adviser on it and later helped get it made. Fusco was paid $250,000.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Jami Gertz was cast as the female lead. "She had the warmth I was looking for", Hill said, "and she was feisty, but I wondered, is she strong enough? She has to put Macchio through the experience of falling in love, and then she has to leave him, to strengthen his character for the movie's final showdown. I decided to go with her, and I was amazed by how strong she seemed on the screen." Guitar specialist Arlen Roth was hired as Macchio's musical coach.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Hill was aware of some surface similarities to "The Karate Kid": "You boil it down, and it sounds like a young kid and a wise old guy and their showdown with evil", said Hill. "But if you really look at 'Crossroads,' it's a completely different movie... I knew my most difficult task would be creating real, believable scenes between Macchio and Seneca. They had to be real characters; with an ongoing reality level, to work at all. You have to set the stage, or when your movie shifts gears to fantasy, you lose your audience."


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Shooting took place on location in Beulah,Mississippi as well as Hollywood. Blues legend Frank Frost makes a cameo.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: "I think the blues still speaks to kids today", said Ry Cooder, who performed the music with Steve Vai. "It's so old that it's new."


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Cooder says the final duel involving Vai "had to be all mapped out, since we had to carefully choreograph the call-and-response of that guitar duel and use it as playback during the filming. Steve Vai is tremendously scientific when it comes to guitar playing, and was able to adapt to that process."


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: The original script ended with Joe Seneca's character dying on a Greyhound bus. Director Walter Hill's father had died shortly before production commenced, and he found filming this scene difficult, so he also shot a happier ending. Both were tested with audiences; the happy ending was chosen.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: "Crossroads" was Robert Judd's final film role. He died of stomach cancer in January 1986, two months before the film's theatrical release.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: That was an easy film to understand. We’ve all looked at that myth about a white kid going South, and I knew the sign posts along the way. Old time players, juke joints, the lonely roads you go down... These things are all wordlessly spoken of in blues music, which is an encyclopedia of experience. I had songs in my head that dealt with every scene in "Crossroads". To mold them into shape for that film was like Blues 101.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Macchio was taught to play guitar by Arlen Roth in preparation for filming. Roth writes that he and Macchio would work together for two hours per day, after which Macchio would work with his karate instructor to prepare for the forthcoming "Karate Kid 2". Macchio initially hoped to be able to play some of the music on screen himself, but came to realise that the difficult pieces the professional guitarists were preparing would be beyond him.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: The climactic guitar duel between Eugene and Butler was originally intended to be a slide-guitar blues contest, with Cooder appearing on screen as Butler, and with Roth dubbing Eugene's part. Director Walter Hill decided to replace Cooder and produce a harder "boxing match" style battle, with Keith Richards, Frank Zappa, and Stevie Ray Vaughan considered for the part of Butler. He settled on Alcatrazz player Steve Vai, hoping that the fashionable shred guitar style would increase the film's appeal to a wider audience. Cooder was disappointed; he and Roth felt the use of a contemporary musical style was not in keeping with the movie's blues theme, and would badly date the film later.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: The director shot an additional duel, which was to appear before the final confrontation. This pitted Vai's Jack Butler against a blues player portrayed by Shuggie Otis; Otis was to lose this, establishing how threatening Butler was. The producers decided not to use this footage in the final film.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Eugene wins the duel by playing a neoclassical metal composition called "Eugene's Trick Bag", which quotes heavily from violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini's "Caprice No. 5". This reprises parts of the classical playing that William Kanengiser had dubbed for Eugene at the film's beginning; in the final duel, Vai dubs "Eugene's Trick Bag" while Macchio mimed on Eugene's Telecaster. The identity of the red superstrat guitar that Butler plays on-screen became something of a mystery. "Guitar World" magazine later uncovered that it was a custom Charvel, built either by Grover Jackson or Charvel builder Mike Shannon, and equipped with DiMarzio pickups and a Floyd Rose tremolo. The guitar was Vai's own and, as Butler drops it heavily to the floor, the production team hastily constructed mock-up instruments for the shot. The original guitar, signed by Vai, it is now in the collection of the Hard Rock Cafe company.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Roth later released a recording of the planned final duel, between himself and Cooder, on his SoundCloud channel.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: A soundtrack album was released alongside the film, featuring 37 minutes of the film's music. The album does not feature Eugene's classical playing (which was performed by William Kanengiser) nor the final duel with Jack Butler. Vai's playing, including the duel, is featured on his album "The Elusive Light and Sound, Vol. 1".


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Farliner said, "This is as tricky a picture to market as anything. I was the first one who tried to sell the story. I know how tricky it is... It could be a classic crossover movie. But you could blow that opportunity real quick with a bad campaign." He thought Columbia had an excellent marketing team and liked that the studio spent $6 million on launching it.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: According to Ry Cooder, the film "went down the tubes". The film managed a domestic total gross of $5,839,031.


title: Crossroads (1986 film)

text: Roger Ebert in his review stated that the movie "borrows so freely and is a reminder of so many other movies that it's a little startling, at the end, to realize how effective the movie is and how original it manages to feel despite all the plunderings." He praised the film's acting and music, giving the movie 3.5 stars out of 4.


title: Haganah

text: Haganah (, lit. "The Defence") was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).


title: Haganah

text: Formed out of previous existing militias, its original purpose was to defend Jewish settlements from Arab attacks, such as the riots of 1920, 1921, 1929 and during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. It was under the control of the Jewish Agency, the official governmental body in charge of Palestine's Jewish community during the British Mandate. Until the end of the Second World War, Haganah's activities were moderate, in accordance with the policy of havlaga ("self-restraint"), which caused the splitting of the more radical Irgun and Lehi. The group received clandestine military support from Poland. Haganah sought cooperation with the British in the event of an Axis invasion of Palestine through North Africa, prompting the creation of the Palmach task force in 1941.


title: Haganah

text: With the end of World War II and British refusal to cancel the 1939 White Paper's restrictions on Jewish immigration, the Haganah turned to sabotage activities against the British authorities, including bombing bridges, rail lines, and ships used to deport illegal Jewish immigrants, as well as assisting in bringing Jews to Palestine in defiance of British policy. After the United Nations adopted a partition plan for Palestine in 1947, the Haganah came into the open as the biggest fighting force among Palestinian Jews, successfully overcoming Arab forces during the civil war. Shortly after Israel's independence declaration and the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Haganah was merged with other groups and reorganized into the official army of the state.


title: Haganah

text: The evolution of Jewish defense organisations in Palestine and later Israel went from small self-defense groups active during Ottoman rule, to ever larger and more sophisticated ones during the British Mandate, leading through the Haganah to the national army of Israel, the IDF. The evolution went step by step from Bar-Giora, to Hashomer, to Haganah, to IDF.


title: Haganah

text: The Jewish paramilitary organisations in the New Yishuv (the Zionist enterprise in Palestine) started with the Second Aliyah (1904 to 1914). The first such organization was Bar-Giora, founded in September 1907. It consisted of a small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. It was converted to Hashomer (; "The Watchman") in April 1909, which operated until the British Mandate of Palestine came into being in 1920. Hashomer was an elitist organization which never had more than 100 members. During World War I, the forerunners of the Haganah/IDF were the Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Legion, both of which were part of the British Army. After the Arab riots against Jews in April 1920, the Yishuv's leadership saw the need to create a nationwide underground defense organization, and the Haganah was founded in June of the same year. The Haganah became a full-scale defense force after the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine with an organized structure, consisting of three main units—the Field Corps, Guard Corps, and the Palmach strike force. During World War II the successor to the Jewish Legion of World War I was the Jewish Brigade, which was joined by many Haganah fighters. During the 1947–48 civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities in what was still Mandatory Palestine, a reorganised Haganah managed to defend or wrestle most of the territory it was ordered to hold or capture. At the beginning of the ensuing 1948–49 full-scale conventional war against regular Arab armies, the Haganah was reorganised to become the core of the new Israel Defense Forces.


title: Haganah

text: After the 1920 Arab riots and 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, to whom the League of Nations had given a mandate over Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront local Arab gangs that frequently attacked Palestinian Jews. Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect Jewish farms and kibbutzim. The first head of the Haganah was a 28-year-old named Yosef Hecht, a veteran of the Jewish Legion. In addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs. In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah "units" were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim.


title: Haganah

text: Following the 1929 Palestine riots, the Haganah's role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment, transforming from an untrained militia to a capable underground army.


title: Haganah

text: Many Haganah fighters objected to the official policy of "havlagah" (restraint) that Jewish political leaders (who had become increasingly controlling of the Haganah) had imposed on the militia. Fighters had been instructed to only defend communities and not initiate counterattacks against Arab gangs or their communities. This policy appeared defeatist to many who believed that the best defense is a good offense. In 1931, the more militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed the "Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi" (National Military Organization), better known as "Irgun" (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced "Etzel").


title: Haganah

text: During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Haganah worked to protect British interests and to quell Arab rebellion using the FOSH, and then Hish units. At that time, the Haganah fielded 10,000 mobilized men along with 40,000 reservists. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Supernumerary Police and Special Night Squads, which were trained and led by Colonel Orde Wingate. The battle experience gained during the training was useful in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.


title: Haganah

text: During the interwar period, as part of its policy of supporting a Jewish state in Palestine in order to facilitate mass Jewish emigration from its territory, the Second Polish Republic provided military training and weapons to Zionist paramilitary groups, including Haganah. Envoys from Haganah headed by Yehuda Arazi received dozens of shipments with military supplies, including 2750 Mauser rifles, 225 RKM machine guns, 10,000 hand grenades, two million bullets for rifles and machine guns, and a large number of pistols with ammunition. The British exerted heavy pressure on the Polish government to stop these deliveries. One of the last purchases of Arazi were two airplanes and two gliders. When he fled Poland to France, around 500 rifles were abandoned in a Warsaw warehouse. Members of the Haganah were also trained in a military camp in Rembertow along with Betar members between the years 1931 and 1937; it is estimated that training courses at the camp were attended by around 8,000 to 10,000 participants during their existence.


title: Haganah

text: By 1939, the British had issued the White Paper, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, deeply angering the Zionist leadership. David Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency, set the policy for the Zionist relationship with the British: "We shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war."


title: Haganah

text: In reaction to the White Paper, the Haganah built up the Palmach as the Haganah's elite strike force and organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Approximately 100,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in over one hundred ships during the final decade of what became known as Aliyah Bet. The Haganah also organized demonstrations against British immigration quotas.


title: Haganah

text: In 1940 the Haganah sabotaged the "Patria", an ocean liner being used by the British to deport 1,800 Jews to Mauritius, with a bomb intended to cripple the ship. However the ship sank, killing 267 people and injuring 172.


title: Haganah

text: In the first years of World War II, the British authorities asked Haganah for cooperation again, due to the fear of an Axis breakthrough in North Africa. After Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1942, the British stepped back from their all-out support for Haganah. In 1943, after a long series of requests and negotiations, the British Army announced the creation of the Jewish Brigade Group. While Palestinian Jews had been permitted to enlist in the British army since 1940, this was the first time an exclusively Jewish military unit served in the war under a Jewish flag. The Jewish Brigade Group consisted of 5,000 soldiers and was initially deployed with the 8th Army in North Africa and later in Italy in September 1944. The brigade was disbanded in 1946. All in all, some 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during the war.


title: Haganah

text: On May 14, 1941, the Haganah created the Palmach (an acronym for "Plugot Mahatz"—strike companies), an elite commando section, in preparation against the possibility of a British withdrawal and Axis invasion of Palestine. Its members, young men and women, received specialist training in guerilla tactics and sabotage. During 1942 the British gave assistance in the training of Palmach volunteers but in early 1943 they withdrew their support and attempted to disarm them. The Palmach, then numbering over 1,000, continued as an underground organisation with its members working half of each month as kibbutz volunteers, the rest of the month spent training. It was never large—by 1947 it amounted to merely five battalions (about 2,000 men)—but its members had not only received physical and military training, but also acquired leadership skills that would subsequently enable them to take up command positions in Israel's army.


title: Haganah

text: In 1944, after the assassination of Lord Moyne (the British Minister of State for the Middle East), by members of the Lehi, the Haganah worked with the British to kidnap, interrogate, and in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action, which lasted from November 1944 to February 1945, was called the "Saison", or the Hunting Season, and was directed against the Irgun and not the Lehi. Future Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was later revealed to be a Jewish Agency liaison officer working with the British authorities who had passed on information that led to the arrest of many Irgun activists.


title: Haganah

text: Many Jewish youth, who had joined the Haganah in order to defend the Jewish people, were greatly demoralized by operations against their own people. The Irgun, paralyzed by the Saison, were ordered by their commander, Menachem Begin, not to retaliate in an effort to avoid a full blown civil war. Although many Irgunists objected to these orders, they obeyed Begin and refrained from fighting back. The Saison eventually ended due to perceived British betrayal of the Yishuv becoming more obvious to the public and increased opposition from Haganah members.


title: Haganah

text: The Saison officially ended when the Haganah, Irgun and the Lehi formed the Jewish Resistance Movement, in 1945. Within this new framework, the three groups agreed to operate under a joint command. They had different functions, which served to drive the British out of Palestine and create a Jewish state.


title: Haganah

text: The Haganah was less active in the Jewish Rebellion than the other two groups, but the Palmach did carry out anti-British operations, including a raid on the Atlit detainee camp that released 208 illegal immigrants, the Night of the Trains, the Night of the Bridges, and attacks on Palestine Police bases. The Haganah withdrew on 1 July 1946, but "remained permanently unco-operative" with the British authorities. It continued to organize illegal Jewish immigration as part of the Aliyah Bet program, in which ships carrying illegal immigrants attempted to breach the British blockade of Palestine and land illegal immigrants on the shore (most were intercepted by the Royal Navy), and the Palmach performed operations against the British to support the illegal immigration program. The Palmach repeatedly bombed British radar stations being used to track illegal immigrant ships, and sabotaged British ships being used to deport illegal immigrants, as well as two British landing and patrol craft. The Palmach performed a single assassination operation in which a British official who had been judged to be excessively cruel to Jewish prisoners was shot dead. The Haganah also organized the Birya affair. Following the expulsion of the residents of the Jewish settlement of Birya for illegal weapons possession, thousands of Jewish youth organized by the Haganah marched to the site and rebuilt the settlement. They were expelled by British shortly afterward while showing passive resistance, but after they returned a third time, the British backed off and allowed them to remain.


title: Haganah

text: In addition to its operations, the Haganah continued to secretly prepare for a war with the Arabs once the British left by building up its arms and munitions stocks. It maintained a secret arms industry, with the most significant facility being an underground bullet factory underneath Ayalon, a kibbutz that had been established specifically to cover it up.


title: Haganah

text: British estimates of the Haganah's strength at this time were a "paper strength of 75,000 men and women" with an effective strength of 30,000. After the British army, the Haganah was considered the most powerful military force in the Middle East.


title: Haganah

text: Research by Amos Perlmutter estimated that the Haganah budget in 1946 was £400,000, and by October 1947 its budget had reached £3.3 million. The same source estimated that the membership of the Haganah was 7% of the Jewish population in Palestine.


title: Haganah

text: In July 1947, eager to maintain order with the visit of UNSCOP to Palestine and under heavy pressure from the British authorities to resume collaboration, the Jewish Agency reluctantly came into brief conflict with the Irgun and Lehi, and ordered the Haganah to put a stop to the operations of the other two groups for the time being. As Palmach members refused to participate, a unit of about 200 men from regular Haganah units was mobilized, and foiled several operations against the British, including a potentially devastating attack on the British military headquarters at Citrus House in Tel Aviv, in which a Haganah member was killed by an Irgun bomb. The Haganah also joined the search for two British sergeants abducted by the Irgun as hostages against the death sentences of three Irgun members in what became known as the Sergeants' affair. The Jewish Agency leadership feared the damage this act would do to the Jewish cause, and also believed that holding the hostages would only jeopardize the fates of the three condemned Irgun members. The attempts to free the sergeants failed, and following the executions of the three Irgun members, the two sergeants were killed and hanged in a eucalyptus grove. However, the campaign soon disintegrated into a series of retaliatory abductions and beatings of each other's members by the Haganah and Irgun, and eventually petered out. The campaign was dubbed the "Little Season" by the Irgun.


title: Haganah

text: After "having gotten the Jews of Palestine and of elsewhere to do everything that they could, personally and financially, to help Yishuv," Ben-Gurion's second greatest achievement was his having successfully transformed Haganah from being a clandestine paramilitary organization into a true army. Ben-Gurion appointed Israel Galili to the position of head of the High Command counsel of Haganah and divided Haganah into 6 infantry brigades, numbered 1 to 6, allotting a precise theatre of operation to each one. Yaakov Dori was named Chief of Staff, but it was Yigael Yadin who assumed the responsibility on the ground as chief of Operations. Palmach, commanded by Yigal Allon, was divided into 3 elite brigades, numbered 10–12, and constituted the mobile force of Haganah. Ben-Gurion's attempts to retain personal control over the newly formed IDF lead later in July to The Generals' Revolt.


title: Haganah

text: On 19 November 1947, obligatory conscription was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25. By end of March 21,000 people had been conscripted. On 30 March the call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40.


title: Haganah

text: "From November 1947, the Haganah, (...) began to change from a territorial militia into a regular army. (...) Few of the units had been well trained by December. (...) By March–April, it fielded still under-equipped battalion and brigades. By April–May, the Haganah was conducting brigade size offensive.


title: Haganah

text: The northern Levanoni Brigade, located in the Galilee, was split on February 22, 1948 into the 1st and 2nd Brigades.


title: Haganah

text: After the British announced they would withdraw from Palestine, and the United Nations approved the partition of Palestine, the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine broke out. The Haganah played the leading role in the Yishuv's war with the Palestinian Arabs. Initially, it concentrated on defending Jewish areas from Arab raids, but after the danger of British intervention subsided as the British withdrew, the Haganah went on the offensive and seized more territory. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on May 15, 1948, the Haganah, now the army of the new state, engaged the invading armies of the surrounding Arab states.


title: Haganah

text: On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the creation of the state of Israel on May 15, the provisional government created the Israel Defense Forces, merging the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi, although the other two groups continued to operate independently in Jerusalem and abroad for some time after. The re-organisation led to several conflicts between Ben-Gurion and the Haganah leadership, including what was known as The Generals' Revolt and the dismantling of the Palmach.


title: Haganah

text: Famous members of the Haganah included Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Rehavam Ze'evi, Dov Hoz, Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.


title: Haganah

text: The Museum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem commemorates the activity of the underground groups in the pre-state period, recreating the everyday life of those imprisoned there.


title: Haganah

text: Some Bedouins had longstanding ties with nearby Jewish communities. They helped defend these communities in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, some Bedouins of Tuba formed an alliance with the Haganah defending Jewish communities in the Upper Galilee against Syria. Some were part of a Pal-Heib unit of the Haganah. Sheik Hussein Mohammed Ali Abu Yussef of Tuba was quoted in 1948 as saying, "Is it not written in the Koran that the ties of neighbors are as dear as those of relations? Our friendship with the Jews goes back for many years. We felt we could trust them and they learned from us too".


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: Lauren Lee Smith (born June 19, 1980) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her television roles, including Emma DeLauro in the syndicated science fiction drama "Mutant X", Riley Adams in the CBS forensics drama "", police Sergeant Michelle McCluskey in the CTV fantasy drama "The Listener" and Frankie Drake in the CBC detective series "Frankie Drake Mysteries".


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: Smith was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. When she was 14, her family moved to Los Angeles, California. There, she began a modelling career. She was born seven months before her cousin, the actor Myles Ferguson, who died in a car crash when Smith was 20.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: At the age of 19, Smith was cast in the remake of "Get Carter". Later that year, Smith was cast in the starring role of Christy Huddleston in the television film "", and its follow-up two-part miniseries "Christy, Choices of the Heart". She starred in the show "Mutant X", where she played the character of Emma deLauro from 2001 to 2003.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: Throughout the 2000s, she guest-starred in episodes of "The Dead Zone", "The Twilight Zone", and "", among others. Smith was also a recurring character in the Showtime drama series "The L Word", playing sous chef Lara Perkins. In 2005, Smith filmed the sexually explicit movie "Lie with Me", where she played the character of Leila. The same year, she was cast in the 2006 romance film "The Last Kiss".


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2006, she had a recurring part on the Canadian drama "Intelligence". In early 2007, she played Kath in the CBC miniseries "Dragon Boys". The same year, Smith was cast in starring roles in the 2008 thriller film "Pathology", and in the 2009 drama film "Helen" with Ashley Judd.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2008, Smith became a series regular in the ninth season on the long-running CBS forensics drama "" playing Riley Adams (originally named Bryce Adams), "a smart, flirtatious, and witty non-conformist who entered law enforcement to rebel against her judgmental psychiatrist father", who joins Grissom's team, to fill the void left by the departure of Jorja Fox's Sara Sidle. She and her character did not return for the tenth season.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2009 Smith was cast in one of the lead roles in the German television film "" by RTL, which aired in February 2011 in Germany and was broadcast by American premium channel Encore in March 2013. In 2010, Smith returned to Canada and joined the cast of the CTV drama series "The Listener" for its second season.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2012, she was cast in the starring role of Grace in the 2013 Canadian comedy film "Cinemanovels" alongside Jennifer Beals, with whom Smith had previously appeared in "The L Word" and the 2010 film "A Night for Dying Tigers".


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2014, Smith played government investigator Samantha Krueger on the CBC/Syfy science-fiction miniseries "Ascension". In 2015, Smith joined the cast of the CBC drama series "This Life", playing Maggie, the sister of the lead character (Torri Higginson) who is suffering from stage four cancer; Smith's portrayal of the character was well received by "The Globe and Mail"'s John Doyle.


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: In 2017, she was cast in the lead role in the CBC drama series "Frankie Drake Mysteries". The series ran for four seasons, and received generally positive reviews from critics. "The Globe and Mail" wrote that Smith played the role "with glorious oomph".


title: Lauren Lee Smith

text: Smith married German photographer Erik Steingröver on April 4, 2009. They have one daughter, born in 2016.


title: General Government

text: The General Government (, , ), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovakia and the Soviet Union in 1939 at the onset of World War II. The newly occupied Second Polish Republic was split into three zones: the General Government in its centre, Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, and Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. The territory was expanded substantially in 1941, after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union, to include the new District of Galicia. The area of the "Generalgouvernement" roughly corresponded with the Austrian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.


title: General Government

text: The basis for the formation of the General Government was the "Annexation Decree on the Administration of the Occupied Polish Territories". Announced by Hitler on October 8, 1939, it claimed that the Polish government had totally collapsed. This rationale was utilized by the German Supreme Court to reassign the identity of all Polish nationals as stateless subjects, with the exception of the ethnic Germans of interwar Poland—who, disregarding international law, were named the only rightful citizens of Nazi Germany.


title: General Government

text: The General Government was run by Germany as a separate administrative unit for logistical purposes. When the Wehrmacht forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the area of the General Government was enlarged by the inclusion of the Polish regions previously annexed to the USSR. Within days East Galicia was overrun and incorporated into the District of Galicia. Until 1945, the General Government comprised much of central, southern, and southeastern Poland within its prewar borders (and of modern-day Western Ukraine), including the major Polish cities of Warsaw, Kraków, Lwów (now Lviv, renamed ), Lublin (see Lublin Reservation), Tarnopol (see history of Tarnopol Ghetto), Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk, renamed ; see Stanisławów Ghetto), Drohobycz, and Sambor (see Drohobycz and Sambor Ghettos) and others. Geographical locations were renamed in German.


title: General Government

text: The administration of the General Government was composed entirely of German officials, with the intent that the area was to be colonized by Germanic settlers who would reduce the local Polish population to the level of serfs before their eventual biological extermination. The Nazi German rulers of the had no intention of sharing power with the locals throughout the war, regardless of their ethnicity and political orientation. The authorities rarely mentioned the name "Poland" in legal correspondence. The only exception to this was the General Government's Bank of Issue in Poland (, ).


title: General Government

text: The full title of the regime in Germany until July 1940 was the "", a name that is usually translated as "General Government for the Occupied Polish Territories". Governor Hans Frank, on Hitler's authority, shortened the name on 31 July 1940 to just "Generalgouvernement".


title: General Government

text: An accurate English translation of "Generalgouvernement", which is a borrowing from French, is "General Governorate", as the correct translation of the term is not "government", but "governorate", which is a type of administrative division or territory.


title: General Government

text: The German designation of was chosen in reference to , a civil entity created in the area by the German Empire during World War I. This district existed from 1914 to 1918 together with an Austro-Hungarian-controlled Military Government of Lublin alongside the short-lived Kingdom of Poland of 1916–1918, a similar rump state formed out of the then-Russian-controlled parts of Poland.


title: General Government

text: After Germany's attack on Poland, all areas occupied by the German army including the Free City of Danzig initially came under military rule. This area extended from the 1939 eastern border of Germany proper and of East Prussia up to the Bug River where the German armies had halted their advance and linked up with the Soviet Red Army in accordance with their secret pact against Poland.


title: General Government

text: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939 had promised the vast territory between the Vistula and Bug rivers to the Soviet "sphere of influence" in divided Poland, while the two powers would have jointly ruled Warsaw. To settle the deviation from the original agreement, the German and Soviet representatives met again on September 28 to delineate a permanent border between the two countries. Under this revised version of the pact the territory concerned was exchanged for the inclusion in the Soviet sphere of Lithuania, which had originally fallen within the ambit of Germany. With the new agreement the entire central part of Poland, including the core ethnic area of the Poles, came under exclusively German control.


title: General Government

text: Hitler decreed the direct annexation to the German Reich of large parts of the occupied Polish territory in the western half of the German zone, in order to increase the Reich's Lebensraum. Germany organized most of these areas as two new Reichsgaue: Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. The remaining three regions, the so-called areas of Zichenau, Eastern Upper Silesia and the Suwałki triangle, became attached to adjacent Gaue of Germany. Draconian measures were introduced by both RKF and HTO, to facilitate the immediate Germanization of the annexed territory, typically resulting in mass expulsions, especially in the Warthegau. The remaining parts of the former Poland were to become a German " (March, borderland) as a frontier post of German rule in the east. A Führer's decree of October 12, 1939 established the General Government; the decree came into force on October 26, 1939.


title: General Government

text: Hans Frank was appointed as the Governor-General of the General Government. German authorities made a sharp contrast between the new Reich territory and a supposedly occupied rump state that could serve as a bargaining chip with the Western powers. The Germans established a closed border between the two German zones to heighten the difficulty of cross-frontier communication between the different segments of the Polish population.


title: General Government

text: The official name chosen for the new entity was the " (General Government for the Occupied Polish Territories), then changed to the "Generalgouvernement" (General Government) by Frank's decree of July 31, 1940. However, this name did not imply anything about the actual nature of the administration. The German authorities never regarded these Polish lands (apart from the short period of military administration during the actual invasion of Poland) as an occupied territory. The Nazis considered the Polish state to have effectively ceased to exist with its defeat in the September campaign.


title: General Government

text: Overall, 4 million of the 1939 population of the General Government area had lost their lives by the time the Soviet armed forces entered the area in late 1944. If the Polish underground killed a German, 50–100 Poles were executed by German police as a punishment and as a warning to other Poles. Most of the Jews, perhaps as many as two million, had also been rounded up and murdered. Germans destroyed Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising. As the Soviets advanced through Poland in late 1944 the General Government collapsed. American troops captured Hans Frank, who had governed the region, in May 1945; he became one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials. During his trial he resumed his childhood practice of Catholicism and expressed repentance. Frank surrendered forty volumes of his diaries to the Tribunal; much evidence against him and others was gathered from them. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. On October 1, 1946, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on October 16.


title: General Government

text: The conversion of Warsaw into a "model city" was planned in 1940 and later, in similar ways like the conversion of Berlin was planned. In March 1941 Hans Frank informed his subordinates that Hitler had made the decision to "turn this region into a purely German area within 15–20 years". He explained: "Where 12 million Poles now live, is to be populated by 4 to 5 million Germans. The "Generalgouvernement" must become as German as the Rhineland." By 1942 Hitler and Frank had agreed that the Kraków ("with its purely German capital") and Lublin districts would be the first areas for German colonists to re-populate. Hitler stated: "When these two weak points have been strengthened, it should be possible to slowly drive back the Poles." Peculiar about these statements is the circumstance that there were not enough German settlers to even make the Wartheland "as German as the Rhineland". According to notes from Martin Bormann German policy envisaged reducing lower-class Poles to the status of serfs, while deporting or otherwise eliminating the middle and upper classes and eventually replacing them with German colonists of the "master race".


title: General Government

text: German bureaucrats drew up various plans regarding the future of the original population. One called for the deportation of about 20 million Poles to western Siberia, and the Germanisation of 4 to 5 million; although deportation in reality meant many Poles were to be put to death, a small number would be "Germanized", and young Poles of desirable qualities would be kidnapped and raised in Germany. In the General Government, all secondary education was abolished and all Polish cultural institutions closed.


title: General Government

text: In 1943, the government selected the Zamojskie area for further Germanization on account of its fertile black soil, and German colonial settlements were planned. Zamość was initially renamed by the government to ' (Himmler City), which was later changed to ' (Plough City), both names were not implemented. Most of the Polish population was expelled by the Nazi occupation authorities with documented brutality. Himmler intended the city of Lublin to have a German population of 20% to 25% by the beginning of 1944, and of 30% to 40% by the following year, at which time Lublin was to be declared a German city and given a German mayor.


title: General Government

text: Nazi planners never definitively resolved the question of the exact territorial reorganization of the Polish provinces in the event of German victory in the east. Germany had already annexed large parts of western pre-war Poland (8 October 1939) before the establishment of the General Government (26 October 1939), and the remaining region was also intended to be directly incorporated into the German Reich at some future date. The Nazi leadership discussed numerous initiatives with this aim.


title: General Government

text: The earliest such proposal (October/November 1939) called for the establishment of a separate "Reichsgau Beskidenland" which would encompass several southern sections of the Polish territories conquered in 1939 (around 18,000 km), stretching from the area to the west of Kraków to the San river in the east. At this time Germany had not yet directly annexed the Łódź area, and Łódź (rather than Kraków) served as the capital of the General Government.


title: General Government

text: In November 1940, Gauleiter Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland argued that the counties of Tomaschow Mazowiecki and Petrikau should be transferred from the General Government's Radom district to his Gau. Hitler agreed, but since Frank refused to surrender the counties, the resolution of the border question was postponed until after the final victory.


title: General Government

text: Upon hearing of the German plans to create a "Gau of the Goths" (') in the Crimea and the Southern Ukraine after the start (June 1941) of Operation Barbarossa, Frank himself expressed his intention to turn the district under his control into a German province called the ' (Gau of the Vandals) in a speech he gave on 16 December 1941.


title: General Government

text: When Frank unsuccessfully attempted to resign his position on 24 August 1942, Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann tried to advance a project to dissolve the General Government altogether and to partition its territory into a number of Reichsgaue, arguing that only this method could guarantee the territory's Germanization, while also claiming that Germany could economically exploit the area more effectively, particularly as a source of food. He suggested separating the "more restful" population of the formerly Austrian territories (because this part of Poland had been under German-Austrian rule for a long period of time it was deemed more racially acceptable) from the rest of the Poles, and cordoning off the city of Warsaw as the center of "criminality" and underground resistance activity.


title: General Government

text: Ludwig Fischer (governor of Warsaw from 1939 to 1945) opposed the proposed administrative streamlining resulting from these discussions. Fischer prepared his own project in his Main Office for Spatial Ordering ("") located in Warsaw. He suggested the establishment of the three provinces "Beskiden", "Weichselland" ("Vistula Land"), and "Galizien" (Galicia and Chełm) by dividing the Radom and Lublin districts between them. "Weichselland" was to have a "Polish character", "Galizien" a "Ukrainian" one, and the "Beskiden"-province to provide a German "admixture" (i.e. colonial settlement). Further territorial planning carried out by this Warsaw-based organization under Major Dr. Ernst Zvanetti in a May 1943 study to demarcate the eastern border of "Central Europe" (i.e. the Greater German Reich) with the "Eastern European landmass" proposed an eastern German border along the "line Memel-Odessa".


title: General Government

text: In this context Zvanetti's study proposed a re-ordering of the "Eastern Gaue" into three geopolitical blocs:


title: General Government

text: The General Government was administered by a General-Governor () aided by the Office of the General-Governor (; changed on December 9, 1940 to the Government of the General Government, ). For the entire period of the General Government's existence there was only one General-Governor: Dr. Hans Frank. The NSDAP structure in General Gouvernment was "Arbeitsbereich Generalgouvernement" led by Frank.


title: General Government

text: The Office was headed by Chief of the Government (), also known as the State Secretary () (or Deputy Governor) Josef Bühler. Several other individuals had powers to issue legislative decrees in addition to the General Governor, most notably the Higher SS and Police Leader of General Government (Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger; from October 1943: Wilhelm Koppe).


title: General Government

text: The General Government had no international recognition. The territories it administered were never either in whole or part intended as any future Polish state within a German-dominated Europe. According to the Nazi government the Polish state had effectively ceased to exist, in spite of the existence of a Polish government-in-exile. The General Government had the character of a type of colonial state. It was not a Polish puppet government, as there were no Polish representatives above the local administration.


title: General Government

text: The government seat of the General Government was located in Kraków (German: ""; ) rather than in Warsaw for security reasons. The official state language was German, although Polish continued in use by local government. Useful institutions of the old Polish state were retained for ease of administration. The Polish police, with no high-ranking Polish officers (they were arrested or demoted), was reorganised as the Blue Police and became subordinated to the Ordnungspolizei. The Polish educational system was similarly retained, but most higher institutions were closed. The Polish local administration was kept, subordinated to new German bosses. The Polish fiscal system, including the zloty currency, remained in use but with revenues going to the German state. A new bank was created; it issued new banknotes.


title: General Government

text: The Germans sought to play Ukrainians and Poles off against each other. Within ethnic Ukrainian areas annexed by Germany, beginning in October 1939, Ukrainian Committees were established with the purpose of representing the Ukrainian community to the German authorities and assisting the approximately 30,000 Ukrainian refugees who fled from Soviet-controlled territories. These committees also undertook cultural and economic activities that had been banned by the previous Polish government. Schools, choirs, reading societies and theaters were opened, and twenty Ukrainian churches that had been closed by the Polish government reopened. By March 1941, there were 808 Ukrainian educational societies with 46,000 members.


title: General Government

text: A Ukrainian publishing house and periodical press was set up in Cracow, which – despite having to struggle with German censors and paper shortages – succeeded in publishing school textbooks, classics of Ukrainian literature, and the works of dissident Ukrainian writers from the Soviet Union. "Krakivs'ki Visti" was headed by Frank until the end of World War II and had as editor Michael Chomiak. It was "the leading legal newspaper" of the General Government and "attracted more (and better) contributors among whom were the most prominent Ukrainian cultural figures of the (early) 20th century."


title: General Government

text: Ukrainian organizations within the General Government were able to negotiate the release of 85,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war from the German-Polish conflict (although they were unable to help Soviet POWs of Ukrainian ethnicity).


title: General Government

text: After the war, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal declared that the government of the General Government was a criminal institution.


title: General Government

text: Other than summary German military tribunals, no courts operated in Poland between the German invasion and early 1940. At that time, the Polish court system was reinstated and made decisions in cases not concerning German interests, for which a parallel German court-system was established. The German system was given priority in cases of overlapping jurisdiction.


title: General Government

text: New laws were passed, discriminating against ethnic Poles and, in particular, the Jews. In 1941 a new criminal law was introduced, introducing many new crimes, and making the death penalty very common. The death penalty was introduced for, among other things:


title: General Government

text: The most numerous OrPo battalions focused on traditional security roles as an occupying force. Some of them were directly involved in the pacification operations. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, this latter role was obscured both by the lack of court evidence and by deliberate obfuscation, while most of the focus was on the better-known "Einsatzgruppen" ("Operational groups") who reported to RSHA led by Reinhard Heydrich. On 6 May 1940 "Gauleiter" Hans Frank, stationed in occupied Kraków, established the "Sonderdienst", based on similar "SS" formations called "Selbstschutz" operating in the "Warthegau" district of German-annexed western part of Poland since 1939. "Sonderdienst" were made up of ethnic German "Volksdeutsche" who lived in Poland before the attack and joined the invading force thereafter. However, after the 1941 Operation Barbarossa they included also the Soviet prisoners of war who volunteered for special training, such as the "Trawniki men" (German: "Trawnikimänner") deployed at all major killing sites of the "Final Solution". A lot of those men did not know German and required translation by their native commanders. Ukrainian Auxiliary Police was formed in Distrikt Galizien in 1941, many policemen deserted in 1943 joining UPA.


title: General Government

text: The former Polish policemen, with no high-ranking Polish officers (who were arrested or demoted), were drafted to the Blue Police and became subordinated to the local Ordnungspolizei.


title: General Government

text: Some 3,000 men served with the "Sonderdienst" in the General Government, formally assigned to the head of the civil administration. The existence of "Sonderdienst" constituted a grave danger for the non-Jewish Poles who attempted to help ghettoised Jews in the cities, as in the Mińsk Mazowiecki Ghetto among numerous others, because Christian Poles were executed under the charge of aiding Jews.


title: General Government

text: A Forest Protection Service also existed, responsible for policing wooded areas in the General Government.


title: General Government

text: The Germans used pre-war Polish prisons and organised new ones, like in Jan Chrystian Schuch Avenue police quarter in Warsaw and Under the Clock torture centre in Lublin.


title: General Government

text: German administration constructed a terror system to control Polish people enforcing reports of any illegal activities, e.g. hiding Roma, POWs, guerilla fighters, Jews. Germans designated hostages, terrorised local leaders, applied collective responsibility. German police used sting operations to find and kill rescuers of the Germans' quarries.


title: General Government

text: Through the occupation Germany diverted a significant number of its military forces to keep control over Polish territories.


title: General Government

text: The propaganda was directed by the "Fachabteilung für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda" (FAVuP), since Spring 1941 "Hauptabteilung Propaganda" (HAP). Prasą kierował "Dienststelle der Pressechef der Regierung des Generalgouvernements", a w Berlinie "Der Bevollmächtige des Generalgouverneurs in Berlin".


title: General Government

text: Propaganda newsreels of "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" (The German Weekly Review) preceded feature-film showings. Some feature films likewise contained Nazi propaganda. The Polish underground discouraged Poles from attending movies, advising them, in the words of the rhymed couplet, ""Tylko świnie / siedzą w kinie"" ("Only swine go to the movies").


title: General Government

text: In occupied Poland, there was no Polish film industry. However, a few Poles collaborated with the Germans in making films such as the 1941 anti-Polish propaganda film "Heimkehr" ("Homecoming"). In that film, casting for minor parts played by Jewish and Polish actors was done by Igo Sym, who during the filming was shot in his Warsaw apartment by the Polish Union of Armed Struggle resistance movement; after the war, the Polish performers were sentenced for collaboration in an anti-Polish propaganda undertaking, with punishments ranging from official reprimand to imprisonment.


title: General Government

text: All Polish theaters were disbanded. A German theater "Theater der Stadt Warschau" was formed in Warsaw together with a German controlled Polish one "Teatr Miasta Warszawy". There existed also one comedy theater "Teatr Komedia" and 14 small ones. The Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Cracow was used by Germans.


title: General Government

text: Poles were not allowed to use radio sets. Any set was to be handed over to local administration by 25 January 1940. Ethnic Germans were obliged to register their sets.


title: General Government

text: German authorities installed megaphones for propaganda purposes, called by Poles "szczekaczki" (from pol. "szczekać" "to bark").


title: General Government

text: Germans killed thousands of Poles, many of them civilian hostages, in Warsaw streets and locations around Warsaw (Warsaw ring), to terrorize the populationthey shot or hanged them. The executions were ordered mainly by Austrian Nazi Franz Kutschera, "SS" and Police Leader, from September 1943 until January 1944.


title: General Government

text: Warsaw was to be reconstructed according to Pabst Plan. The governmental quarter was situated around the Piłsudski Square.


title: General Government

text: The capital of GG Kraków was reconstructed according to "Generalbebauungsplan von Krakau" by Hubert Ritter. Hans Frank rebuild his residence Wawel Castle. < Dębniki (Kraków) was the planned Nazi administrative quarter. German-only residential area was constructed near Park Krakowski.


title: General Government

text: For administrative purposes the General Government was subdivided into four districts ("Distrikte"). These were the "Distrikt Warschau", the "Distrikt Lublin", the "Distrikt Radom", and the "Distrikt Krakau". After the Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets in June 1941, East Galicia (part of Poland, annexed by the Ukrainian SSR on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), was incorporated into the General Government and became its fifth district: "Distrikt Galizien". The new German administrative units were much larger than those organized by the Polish government, reflecting the German lack of sufficient administrative personnel to staff smaller units.


title: General Government

text: The five districts were further sub-divided into urban counties ("Stadtkreise") and rural counties ("Kreishauptmannschaften"). Following a decree on September 15, 1941, the names of most of the major cities (and their respective counties) were renamed based on historical German data or given germanified versions of their Polish and Soviet names if none existed. At times the previous names remained the same as well (i.e. Radom). The districts and counties were as follows:


title: General Government

text: A change in the administrative structure was desired by Finance Minister Lutz von Krosigk, who for financial reasons wanted to see the five existing districts (Warsaw, Kraków, Radom, Lublin, and Galicia) reduced to three. In March 1943 he announced the merger of the Kraków and Galicia districts, and the split of the Warsaw district between the Radom district and the Lublin district. (The latter acquired a special status of "Germandom district", "Deutschtumsdistrikt", as a "test run" of the Germanization according to the "Generalplan Ost".) The restructuring further involved the changing of Warsaw and Kraków into separate city-districts ("Stadtdistrikte"), with Warsaw under the direct control of the General Government. This decree was to go into effect on 1 April 1943 and was nominally accepted by Heinrich Himmler, but Martin Bormann opposed the move, as he simply wanted to see the region turned into "Reichsgaue" (Germany proper). Wilhelm Frick and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger were also skeptic about the usefulness of this reorganization, resulting in its abolition after subsequent discussions between Himmler and Frank.


title: General Government

text: The General Government was inhabited by 11.4 million people in December 1939. A year later the population increased to 12.1 million. In December 1940, 83.3% of the population were Poles, 11.2% Jews, 4.4% Ukrainians and Belarusians, 0.9% Germans, and 0.2% others. About 860,000 Poles and Jews were resettled into the General Government after they have been expelled from the territories 'annexed' by Nazi Germany. Offsetting this was the German genocidal campaign of liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia and other elements considered likely to resist. From 1941 disease and hunger also began to reduce the population.


title: General Government

text: Poles were also deported in large numbers to work as forced labor in Germany: eventually about a million were deported, of whom many died in Germany. In 1940 the population was segregated into different groups. Each group had different rights, food rations, allowed strips in the cities, public transportation and restricted restaurants. They were divided from the most privileged, to the least.


title: General Government

text: After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Jews over the age of 12 and Poles over the age of 14 living in the General Government were subject to forced labor. Many Poles from other regions of Poland conquered by Germany were expelled to the General Government and the area was used as a slave labour pool from which men and women taken by force to work as laborers in factories and farms in Germany. In 1942, all non-Germans living in the General Government were subject to forced labor.


title: General Government

text: Parts of Warsaw and several towns (Wieluń, Sulejów, Frampol) were destroyed during the Polish-German war in September 1939. Poles weren't able to buy any construction materials to reconstruct their houses or businesses. They lost their savings and GG currency, nicknamed "Młynarki", was managed by German-controlled Bank Emisyjny w Polsce.


title: General Government

text: Former Polish state property was confiscated by the General Government (or by Nazi Germany in the annexed territories). Notable property of Polish individuals (ex. factories and large land estates) was often confiscated as well and managed by German "trusts" (). Jewish population was deported to the Ghettos, their dwelling and businesses were confiscated by the Germans, small businesses were sometimes passed to the Poles.


title: General Government

text: Farmers were required to provide large food contingents for the Germans, and there were plans for nationalization of all but the smallest estates.


title: General Government

text: German administration implemented a system of exploitation of Jewish and Polish people, which included high taxes.


title: General Government

text: While scholars debate whether from September 1939 to June 1941 the mass-starvation of the Jewish people of Europe was an attempt to conduct mass murder, it is agreed upon that this starvation did kill a large amount of this population. There was a shift in the amount of resources that were being used by the Generalgouvernement from 1939 to 1940. For example, in 1939, seven million tons of coal were used but in 1940 this was reduced to four million tons of coal used by the Generalgouvernement. This shift was emblematic of the shortages in supplies, depriving the Jews and Poles of their only heating source. Although before the war, Poland exported mass quantities of food, in 1940 the Generalgouvernement was unable to supply enough food for the country, nonetheless exporting food supplies. In December 1939, the Polish and Jewish reception committees, as well as the native local officials, all within the Generalgouvernement, were responsible for providing food and shelter to the Poles and Jews that evacuated. In the expulsion process, the help provided to the evacuated Poles and Jews by the Generalgouvernement was considered a weak branch of the overall process. Throughout 1939, the Reichsbahn was responsible for many of the other important tasks including the deportations of Poles and Jews to concentration camps as well as the delivery of food and raw materials to different places. In December 1940, 87,833 Poles and Jews were deported which added stress to different administrations which were now responsible for these deportees. During the deportations, people were forced to reside on the trains for days until a place was found for them to stay. Between the cold and lack of food, masses of deportees died due to transport deaths caused by malnutrition, cold, and moreover unlivable transportation conditions.


title: General Government

text: The prices for food outside of ghettos and concentration camps had to be set at a reasonable price in order for them to align with the black market; setting prices at a reasonable rate would ensure that farmers did not sell their crops illegally. If the prices were set too high in cities there was a concern that workers would not be able to afford the food and protest the prices. Due to the price inflation which was occurring in the Generalgouvernement, many places relied on the barter system (exchanging goods for other goods instead of money). "Introducing rationing in September 1940, Marshal Petain insisted that ‘everyone must assume their share of common hardship.’" There was clearly food instability not only in the ghettos, but also in cities, which caused everyone to be conscious about food rationing, and caused conditions for Jewish people to worsen. While workers in Norway and France protested the new rationing of food, Germany and the UK, where the citizens supported war efforts were more supportive of the rationing therefore it was more effective. Cases, where a country was being occupied, caused the citizens to be more hesitant about the rationing of food and it was overall not as effective. In December, 1941 it was recognized by the Generalgouvernement that starving the Jewish people to death was an inexpensive and expedient solution. In August 1942, the Reich decided to decrease the food supply from the Generalgouvernement, deciding that 1.2 million Jews that were not completing jobs that were "important to Germany" would no longer be given food. The Nazis knew the effects of depriving the Jewish people of food, yet it continued; the ultimate revolt against the Jewish race was mass murder due to starvation. The Food and Agriculture Ministry administered the rations of food in concentration camps. Each camp's administration got food from the open market and depots of the Waffen-SS (Standartenführer Tschentscher). Once the food arrived at a camp, it was up to the administration how to distribute it. The diet for the Jews in these camps was "watery turnip soup drunk from pots; it was supplemented by an evening meal of sawdust bread with some margarine, ‘smelly marmalade,’ or ‘putrid sausage.’ Between the two meals inmates attempted to lap a few drops of polluted water from the faucet in a wash barracks."


title: General Government

text: During this environment of food scarcity Jews turned to the black market for any source of sustenance. The black market was important both in and outside of the ghettos from 1940 to 1944. Outside of the ghettos, the black market existed because rations were not high enough for the citizens to remain healthy. In the ghettos of eastern Europe in August 1941 the Jewish population recognized that if they were forced to remain in these ghettos they would eventually die of hunger. Many people that were in ghettos made trades with the outside world in order to stay alive. Jewish people were forced to reside in ghettos, where the economy was isolated and there were large food shortages, which caused them to be seen as a source for cheap labor; many were given food that was purchased on the Aryan side of the wall in exchange for their labor. The isolation of the people forced into ghettos caused there to be a disconnect between the buyer and seller, which added in another player: the black market middleman. The black market middleman would make a profit by creating connections between sellers and buyers. While supply and demand was inelastic in these ghettos, the selling of this food on the blackmarket was extremely competitive, and beyond the reach of most Jews in ghettos.


title: General Government

text: Resistance to the German occupation began almost at once, although there is little terrain in Poland suitable for guerrilla operations. Several small army troops supported by volunteers fought till Spring 1940, e.g. under major Henryk Dobrzański, after which they ceased due to German executions of civilians as reprisals.


title: General Government

text: The main resistance force was the Home Army (in Polish: "Armia Krajowa" or "AK"), loyal to the Polish government in exile in London. It was formed mainly of the surviving remnants of the pre-War Polish Army, together with many volunteers. Other forces existed side-by-side, such as the communist People's Army "(Armia Ludowa" or AL) parallel to the PPR, organized and controlled by the Soviet Union. The AK was estimated between 200,000 and 600,000 men, while the AL was estimated between 14,000 and 60,000.


title: General Government

text: In April 1943 the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19 to May. 16 That was the first armed uprising against the Germans in Poland, and prefigured the larger and longer Warsaw Uprising of 1944.


title: General Government

text: In July 1944, as the Soviet armed forces approached Warsaw, the government in exile called for an uprising in the city, so that they could return to a liberated Warsaw and try to prevent a Communist take-over. The AK, led by Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, launched the Warsaw Rising on August 1 in response both to their government and to Soviet and Allied promises of help. However Soviet help was never forthcoming, despite the Soviet army being only 18 miles (30 km) away, and Soviet denial of their airbases to British and American planes prevented any effective resupply or air support of the insurgents by the Western allies. They used distant Italian bases in their Warsaw airlift instead. After 63 days of fighting the leaders of the rising agreed a conditional surrender with the Wehrmacht. The 15,000 remaining Home Army soldiers were granted POW status (prior to the agreement, captured rebels were shot), and the remaining civilian population of 180,000 expelled.


title: General Government

text: All universities in GG were disbanded, many Kraków professors imprisoned during the "Sonderaktion Krakau".


title: General Government

text: Germans plundered Polish museums. Many of the pieces of art perished. Germans burned a number of Warsaw libraries, including National Library of Poland, destroying about 3.6 million volumes.


title: General Government

text: Hans Frank was an avid chess player, so he organized General Government chess tournaments. Only Germans were allowed to perform in sporting events. About 80 football clubs played in four district divisions.


title: General Government

text: During the Wannsee conference on January 20, 1942, the State Secretary of the General Government, "SS-Brigadeführer" Josef Bühler encouraged Heydrich to implement the "Final Solution". From his own point of view, as an administrative official, the problems in his district included an overdeveloped black market. He endorsed a remedy in solving the "Jewish question" as fast as possible. An additional point in favor of setting up the extermination facilities in his governorate was that there were no transportation problems there, since all assets of the disbanded Polish State Railways (PKP) were being managed by "Ostbahn", the Kraków-based "Deutsche Reichsbahn" branch of the "Generaldirektion der Ostbahn" ("General Directorate of Eastern Railways", Gedob). This made a network of death trains readily available to the "SS-Totenkopfverbände".


title: General Government

text: The newly drafted Operation Reinhard would be a major step in the systematic liquidation of the Jews in occupied Europe, beginning with those in the General Government. Within months, three top-secret camps were built and equipped with stationary gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, based on Action T4, solely to efficiently kill thousands of people each day. The Germans began the elimination of the Jewish population under the guise of "resettlement" in spring of 1942. The three Reinhard camps including Treblinka (the deadliest of them all) had transferable SS staff and almost identical design. The General Government was the location of four of the seven extermination camps of World War II in which the most extreme measures of the Holocaust were carried out, including closely located Majdanek concentration camp, Sobibor extermination camp and Belzec extermination camp. The genocide of undesired "races", chiefly millions of Jews from Poland and other countries, was carried out by gassing between 1942 and 1944.


title: Moses Hacmon

text: Hacmon studied cinematography and fine art at the Avni Institute of Art and Design and attended the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In 2006, he completed his Bachelor of Architecture, with the AIA honors award, from the Southern California Institute of Architecture.


title: Moses Hacmon

text: Faces of Water was Hacmon's first project that was released in 2013. It is the debut of his technique that captures water's invisible forms. Kyle VanHemert of "Wired" says "Hacmon worked out a technique involving a special type of film with a layer of liquid that records the movement of the water itself. The film leaves Hacmon with a full-size negative, which he then develops into pictures like the ones here–an analog process from start to finish."


title: Moses Hacmon

text: Hacmon was born in Tel Aviv, Israel and moved to the US in 2002. He completed a Bachelor of Architecture with AIA honors, from Southern California Institute of Architecture. Hacmon married Trisha Paytas in December 2021. In February 2022, Paytas announced that she was pregnant. The couple later welcomed their first child in September 2022.


title: Korn discography

text: The discography of American nu metal band Korn consists of 14 studio albums, three live albums, eight compilation albums, seven video albums, three extended plays, 46 singles, 10 promotional singles and 51 music videos. Seven official releases have gone Platinum, and one Gold. 12 releases have charted top 10 in the United States. As of 2022 Korn has sold 60 million albums worldwide, including 24 million in the United States.


title: London postal district

text: The London postal district is the area in England of to which mail addressed to the London post town is delivered. The General Post Office under the control of the Postmaster General directed Sir Rowland Hill to devise the area in 1856 and throughout its history it has been subject to reorganisation and division into increasingly smaller postal units, with the early loss of two compass points and a minor retraction in 1866. It was integrated by the Post Office into the national postcode system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC postcode areas. The postal district has also been known as the London postal area. The County of London was much smaller, at , but Greater London is much larger at .


title: London postal district

text: By the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to operate efficiently as a single post town. A Post Office inquiry into the problem had been set up in 1837 and a House of Commons committee was initiated in 1843. In 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand to investigate how London could best be divided for the purposes of directing mail. In 1856, of the 470 million items of mail sent in the United Kingdom during the year, approximately one fifth (100 million) were for delivery in London and half of these (50 million items) also originated there.


title: London postal district

text: The General Post Office under the control of the Postmaster General devised the area in 1856. Sir Rowland Hill produced an almost perfectly circular area of radius from the central post office at St. Martin's Le Grand in central London. As originally devised, it extended from Waltham Cross in the north to Carshalton in the south and from Romford in the east to Sunbury in the west — six counties at the time if including the City of London. Within the district it was divided into two central areas and eight compass points which operated much like separate post towns. Each was named "London" with a suffix (EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW) indicating the area it covered; each had a separate head office. The system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858.


title: London postal district

text: During the 1860s, following an official report by Anthony Trollope, the E division subsumed the original NE division (which became defunct) and the S division was split between the SE and SW divisions. In 1866, NE was abolished; large districts transferred to E included Walthamstow, Wanstead and Leytonstone. The remaining eight letter prefixes (excluding all numbers) were not changed. In 1868 the S district was abolished and split between SE and SW.


title: London postal district

text: At the same time, the London postal district boundary was retracted in the east, when some Essex areas, including around Ilford, became part of other postal towns.


title: London postal district

text: The NE and S codes have been re-used in the national postcode system and now refer to the NE postcode area around Newcastle upon Tyne and the S postcode area around Sheffield.


title: London postal district

text: In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district. This was achieved by designating a sub-area served most conveniently by the head office in each district "1" and then allocating the rest alphabetically by the name of the location of each delivery office. Exceptionally, W2 and SW11 are also 'head districts'.


title: London postal district

text: The boundaries of each sub-district rarely correspond to any units of civil administration: the parishes and hamlets/chapelries with chapels that traditionally define settlement names everywhere in England and Wales or the generally larger boroughs; despite this, postal sub-districts have developed over time into a primary reference frame. The numbered sub-districts became the "outward code" (first half) of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s.


title: London postal district

text: Ad hoc changes have taken place to the organisation of the districts, such as the creation of SE28 from existing districts because of the construction of the high-density Thamesmead development.


title: London postal district

text: Owing to heavier demand, seven high-density postcode districts in central London have been subdivided to create new, smaller postcode districts. This is achieved by adding a letter after the original postcode district, for example W1P. Where such sub-districts are used elsewhere such as on street signs and maps, the original unsuffixed catch-all versions often remain in use instead. The districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC (EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4) SW1, W1, WC1 and WC2 (each with several subdivisions). Similarly, there are solely non-geographic suffixed sub-districts for PO boxes in NW1 (e.g. NW1W) and SE1 (e.g. SE1P).


title: London postal district

text: The London postal district has never been aligned with the London boundary. When the initial system was designed, the London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The wider metropolitan postal area covered parts of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire.


title: London postal district

text: In 1889 a County of London, which was smaller than the postal district, was created from parts of Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. The bulk of 40 fringe sub-districts (having been numbered in 1917) lay outside its boundary including, for example: Leyton, Ealing, Totteridge and Wimbledon


title: London postal district

text: In 1965 the creation of Greater London boundary went beyond these postal districts except for part of the parish of Waltham Holy Cross. The General Post Office was unwilling to follow this change and expand the postal district to match because of the cost. Places in London's outer boroughs such as Harrow, Barnet, Wembley, Enfield, Ilford, Romford, Bexleyheath, Bromley, Hounslow, Richmond, Croydon, Sutton, Kingston and Uxbridge are therefore covered by parts of twelve adjoining postcode areas (EN, IG, RM, DA, BR, TN, CR, SM, KT, TW, HA and UB) from postal districts of 5 different counties including Middlesex whose county council was abolished upon the creation of the Greater London Council.


title: London postal district

text: Royal Mail has a seemingly settled policy of changing postcodes only if there is an operational advantage to doing so, unlike the postal services of other countries , and so has no plan to change the postcode system to correlate with the Greater London boundary . In 2003 the then Mayor of London expressed support for revision of postal addresses in Greater London. Equally organisations on the fringes of the London postal district have lobbied to be excluded or included in an attempt to decrease their insurance premiums (SE2→DA7) or raise the prestige of their business (IG1-IG6→E19). This is generally futile as Royal Mail changes postcodes only in order to facilitate the delivery of post, and not to illustrate geographical boundaries like the postal services of other countries.


title: London postal district

text: The London postal district includes all of the City of London, Camden, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Westminster. Almost entirely included are Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham and Waltham Forest, except for a few streets. Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Harrow, Hounslow, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Redbridge, and Richmond upon Thames are partly in the postal district. Havering, Hillingdon and Sutton are completely outside the postal district. Sewardstone, in postal district E4 and in the Epping Forest District of Essex is anomalously the only place to be outside Greater London but in the London postal area.


title: London postal district

text: Under early abandoned price differentials it formed the inner area of the London postal region, one now obscure definition of Inner London — the term has however lost economic significance from the consumer viewpoint with the standardisation of Royal Mail pricing.


title: London postal district

text: It is common to use postal sub-districts as placenames in London, particularly in the property market: a property may be described as being "in N11", especially where this can be synonymous with a desirable location but also covers other less prestigious places. Thus sub-districts are a convenient shorthand indicator towards social status, such that a 'desirable' postcode may add significantly to the value of property, and property developers have tried to no avail to have Royal Mail alter the boundaries of postal districts so that new developments will sound as though they are in a richer area, whether in capital, personal income or both.


title: London postal district

text: Parliament, which first established the London postal district, then created the narrower County of London (1889–1965) and replaced it with the much larger Greater London. However, there has been very little change in London postal district boundaries. Being in a London postcode inaccurately gives a broad definition of Inner London.


title: London postal district

text: All London postal districts were traditionally prefixed with the post town 'LONDON' and full stops were commonly placed after each character, e.g. LONDON S.W.1.


title: London postal district

text: Use of the full stops ended with the implementation of the national postcode system . In addition, integration of the London postal districts into postcodes means that as postcodes should be on a separate address line (in line with other postcodes in the national system) the postal district should not now appear after LONDON on the same line but as the first part of the full postcode.


title: London postal district

text: The presentation of the postal districts on street signs in London is commonplace, although not universal as each borough is individually responsible for street signs . Current regulations date from 1952 and were originally for the County of London, but were extended to Greater London in 1965. The section relating to postal districts reads "The appropriate postal district shall be indicated in the nameplate in signal red".


title: London postal district

text: The E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC postcode areas (the eight London postal districts) comprise the "inner area of the London postal region" and correspond to the London post town.


title: London postal district

text: The BR, CM, CR, DA, EN, HA, IG, SL, TN, KT, RM, SM, TW, UB, and WD (the 15 outer London postcode areas) comprise the "outer area of the London postal region".


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Known for his excellent skills in catch wrestling and unorthodox fighting style, he is considered to be one of the greatest mixed martial art fighters of all time, and also holds notable victories over 7 UFC champions, 3 Pancrase Champions, a DREAM champion, a King of the Cage champion and Battlecade Extreme Fighting champion; former Welterweight Champion Carlos Newton, two former Light heavyweight champions Vitor Belfort and Quinton Jackson, former Heavyweight Champion Kevin Randleman, 3-time UFC Tournament champion Royce Gracie, former Superfight champion and King of Pancrase Ken Shamrock, former King of Pancrase Masakatsu Funaki, DREAM Super Hulk Tournament Champion Ikuhisa Minowa, former King of the Cage Light Heavyweight champion Vernon White, and former Battlecade Extreme Fighting champion Marcus Silveira. He is also the first of only two Japanese champions in UFC history. Sakuraba's Pride fights routinely draw more than viewers in Japan. Sakuraba is the founder of the submission wrestling promotion Quintet, where he has competed since 2018.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Sakuraba became a fan of Japanese professional wrestling on his childhood thanks to the "Tiger Mask" manga, with the eponymous New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestler Tiger Mask being his favorite. After being convinced against dropping out of high school to pursue professional wrestling, Sakuraba began a career in amateur wrestling at the age of 15, hoping to gain a useful background to achieve his childhood dream. A high school stand-out, he finished as high as second in the nation before joining the freestyle wrestling squad of Chuo University, a team which had counted Olympic gold medalists Shozo Sasahara and Osamu Watanabe amongst its ranks. He won the East Japan Freshman championship in his first year and served as their team captain thereafter. In his senior year, he finished fourth place in the All-Japan tournament. Amongst his notable wins was one over future Olympic bronze medalist Takuya Ota. Upon graduating from college, Sakuraba initially thought about remaining with Chuo University as a coach. However, at the last minute, he decided to continue his road to professional wrestling.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Having weighed for most of his amateur wrestling career, Sakuraba was encouraged by his peers to gain weight, as it would be difficult to compete as a smaller fighter in pro wrestling. After working to gain the weight needed to compete, he never wanted to lose it anymore, something that would be reflected in his MMA career. Finding himself attracted by the shoot wrestling movement, which had been by his childhood idol Sayama, Sakuraba considered joining the mixed martial arts organization Pancrase, but he ultimately chose the promotion Union of Wrestling Forces International, a professional wrestling league that was nonetheless known for its highly technical and realistic-looking bouts.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: His time in the UWF-i would prove to be a formative experience for Sakuraba. He received his initial instruction in both grappling and striking under main trainer Yoji Anjo, later honing his catch wrestling skills under the tutelage of Billy Robinson. He also trained in muay thai under master Bovy Chowaikung, the main UWF-i striking teacher. Those disciplines would serve as the base of the unorthodox game that would later lead him to success in the Pride Fighting Championships. Over time he became one of Takada's four main trainees, along with Kiyoshi Tamura, Yoshihiro Takayama and Masahito Kakihara.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: In spite of his amateur pedigree, Sakuraba was forced to work his way up from the bottom of the UWFi's rung, as it is traditional in puroresu. Sakuraba lost his debut on August 13, 1993 to Steve Nelson and went winless through his rookie year with the league. It is also popularly alleged that under the eye of Kiyoshi Tamura, he was made to perfectly perform menial chores about the dojo. Still undeterred, Sakuraba steadily built a working knowledge of submission holds upon his freestyle wrestling base until his efforts were at last rewarded with a win over Mark Silver in October 1994.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Though his record remained below .500, Sakuraba continued to edge his way closer to mid-card status through the rest of the year. Then, in 1995, the UWFi began an interpromotional feud with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. The vast majority of UWF-i workers came out on the losing end of the booking to the larger and more mainstream promotion and Sakuraba was no exception. He was defeated in high-profile bouts to Tokimitsu Ishizawa, Koji Kanemoto and Shinjiro Otani, bringing Sakuraba a new level of exposure to the public. The ring psychology and technical prowess he displayed in the bouts also impressed the management of the UWF-i enough that he was finally pushed towards main event status.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: New Japan's dominance in the feud injured the marketability of the UWFi promotion, which had pressed the perception that their athletes boasted legitimate skill in real fighting. In a bid to regain credibility, Yoji Anjo travelled to California to perform a dojo challenge on Rickson Gracie, only to be swiftly and brutally defeated before the assembled Japanese press that had followed him there. With the UWFi's formerly fearsome reputation in tatters, its attendance numbers swiftly decreased, with the federation closing its doors once and for all in December 1996. In their final show it was Sakuraba who at long last headlined, defeating Anjoh by submission.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Following the close of the UWFi, Nobuhiko Takada, the most popular of the UWFi workers amongst the mainstream public founded Kingdom Pro Wrestling, taking in Sakuraba and the majority of his fellow UWFi alumni. In the vein of its predecessor, Kingdom was primarily a league devoted to shoot-style realistic-looking works. Having by now established his ability, Sakuraba was this time booked as a main-eventer from the outset. However, unlike the UWFi, Kingdom struggled from the beginning to draw substantial crowds. Mixed martial arts was growing in popularity, and the dominance of the Gracie family and their fellow Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners over the field and more specifically over professional wrestlers, left the Japanese public ever more unconvinced as to the fighting ability of Kingdom's stable of athletes.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: On August 12, 2012, Sakuraba, alongside Katsuyori Shibata, started appearing in New Japan Pro-Wrestling. It was Sakuraba's first work for the company since 1995, and the first ever as a free agent instead of a representative from another promotion. Sakuraba and Shibata wrestled their first match on September 23, defeating Hiromu Takahashi and Wataru Inoue in a tag team match. Sakuraba and Shibata, collectively dubbed Laughter7, continued their winning ways at the following two pay-per-views, King of Pro-Wrestling on October 8 and Power Struggle on November 11, both times defeating the team of Togi Makabe and Wataru Inoue. Also at Power Struggle, Shinsuke Nakamura nominated Sakuraba as the next challenger for his IWGP Intercontinental Championship. On December 2, Sakuraba won his first exchange with Nakamura, when Laughter7 defeated Nakamura and Tomohiro Ishii in a tag team match to remain undefeated since their return. On January 4, 2013, at Wrestle Kingdom 7 in Tokyo Dome, Sakuraba suffered his first defeat since his return to professional wrestling, when he unsuccessfully challenged Shinsuke Nakamura for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. Sakuraba and Shibata returned to their winning ways at the following pay-per-view, The New Beginning on February 10, where they defeated Hirooki Goto and Wataru Inoue in a tag team match. On April 7 at Invasion Attack, Sakuraba and Shibata suffered their first tag team loss, when they were defeated by Hirooki Goto and Yuji Nagata via referee stoppage, when Sakuraba injured his right elbow, after taking a belly-to-back suplex from Nagata, and unable to continue the match. New Japan later announced that Sakuraba would be sidelined for two to three months. Sakuraba wrestled his return match on July 20, defeating Yuji Nagata via submission. On September 8, Sakuraba and Shibata took part in the Wrestle-1 promotion's inaugural event, defeating Masakatsu Funaki and Masayuki Kono in a tag team match. Sakuraba continued his rivalry with Yuji Nagata at the September 29 Destruction pay-per-view, where he and Shibata defeated Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi with Sakuraba pinning his rival for the win.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: On October 14, Sakuraba was defeated by Nagata in a singles rematch between the two. Following the match, Sakuraba and Nagata came together to accept a challenge issued by Daniel and Rolles Gracie On January 4, 2014, at Wrestle Kingdom 8 in Tokyo Dome, Sakuraba and Nagata defeated the Gracies via disqualification, after Nagata was choked out with a gi. A rematch between the two teams took place on February 11 at The New Beginning in Osaka and saw Rolles submit Sakuraba for the win. Sakuraba suffered another loss against the Gracies on May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2014, where he teamed with Shinsuke Nakamura. On May 25 at Back to the Yokohama Arena, Sakuraba ended the Gracies' win streak by defeating Rolles in a singles match. Sakuraba then started a new rivalry with Minoru Suzuki, while also forming a partnership with Toru Yano, who was also involved in his own rivalry with Suzuki's Suzuki-gun stable. The partnership led to Sakuraba becoming an associate of Yano and Nakamura's Chaos stable, eventually becoming a full-time member. The rivalry between Sakuraba and Suzuki culminated in a match on January 4, 2015, at Wrestle Kingdom 9 in Tokyo Dome, where Sakuraba was defeated.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: On April 5 at Invasion Attack 2015, Sakuraba submitted Katsuyori Shibata in a tag team match, where he and Yano defeated Shibata and Hiroshi Tanahashi, igniting a rivalry between the former Laughter7 partners. The two faced off on July 5 at Dominion 7.5 in Osaka-jo Hall in a match, where Shibata was victorious.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: After wrestling sporadically for independent promotions for a few years, Sakuraba returned to wrestling full-time for Pro Wrestling Noah, aligning himself with the Sugiura-gun faction headed by Takashi Sugiura. On 30 August 2020 Sakuraba and Sugiura defeated AXIZ (Go Shiozaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima) for the vacant GHC Tag Team Championship, Sakuraba's first ever pro-wrestling title. In September Sakuraba entered the annual N1-Victory tournament as a singles competitor, finishing on 4 points with 2 wins and 3 losses. As of 22 November Sakuraba and Sugiura have successfully defended the GHC tag titles on two occasions.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Though sources often cite Sakuraba's match with Kimo Leopoldo on July 14, 1996 as his first experience with mixed martial arts, there is debate about whether it was a shoot or a worked match. Sakuraba himself has stated that he doesn't remember it. However, his first contact with MMA can be traced to his different style fight at 26 June 1996 against Dutch kickboxer Rene Rooze, which was won by Sakuraba via ankle hold.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: In an attempt to gain attention for the embattled Kingdom Pro Wrestling league, Hiromitsu Kanehara and Yoji Anjoh signed on to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship's Ultimate Japan tournament. Kanehara was injured in his training for the tournament, and Sakuraba wound up as his late-hour substitute. The tournament was intended for heavyweights, but Sakuraba who weighed 183 pounds (middleweight by modern standards), was nearly twenty pounds beneath the UFC's 200 pound designation for the weight class. Having reported himself as 203 pounds (Light heavyweight by modern standards) in order to gain entry, Sakuraba was paired off against the 240 pound Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt and former Extreme Fighting champion, Marcus Silveira.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: The match saw the two grapplers exchanging leglocks without any decisive movement. Following a barrage of light blows by Silveira, Sakuraba dropped for a low single leg takedown, but referee John McCarthy stopped the fight before Sakuraba could complete it, believing he had been knocked out by the punches. A loud protest followed from the crowd and an angry Sakuraba attempted unsuccessfully to take the microphone and address the Japanese audience. However, after reviewing tape, McCarthy changed his decision to a no-contest. As Tank Abbott, who had earlier defeated Anjoh, had dropped from the tournament due to an injured hand, it was ruled that Sakuraba and Silveira faced off once more that night in what would be the championship bout of the tournament.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Silveira opened their second match taking Sakuraba's back, which the Japanese wrestler answered by attempting to apply a Kimura lock. After freeing his arm, Silveira capitalized on another Kimura attempt by Saku to try to twist it into an armbar from his guard, only for the Japanese to escape to his knees. Silveira then tried his own Kimura, but at that moment Sakuraba reversed it in the same way and locked the armbar, making the Brazilian submit. Afterwards, in the post-fight interview, Sakuraba famously stated, . With the victory Sakuraba remains one of the last UFC tournament champions to date.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: With Nobuhiko Takada having left Kingdom to challenge Rickson Gracie in an event called Pride Fighting Championships, the still struggling promotion capitalized on Sakuraba's newly found popularity establishing him as Kingdom's top talent. He embarked on a winning streak against several foreign mixed martial arts competitors including Paul Herrera, Rene Rooze, Mark Hall and Orlando Weit. However, Kingdom continued to flounder and finally folded in March 1998.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Entering the Pride Fighting Championships on the heels of a defeat of stablemate Nobuhiko Takada at the hands of Rickson Gracie in the organization's initial event, Sakuraba was paired off against Vernon White, then a veteran of 32 bouts in Pancrase who also boasted a 20-pound weight advantage. Showcasing a balance of wrestling and submission prowess, Sakuraba came after White with constant takedowns and unceasing submission attempts. White held Sakuraba off for the first two rounds, but was ultimately submitted by armbar towards the end of the third round.


title: Kazushi Sakuraba

text: Next, in Pride 3, Sakuraba was matched against Ultimate Fighting Championship veteran Carlos Newton. Though relatively new to mixed martial arts, Newton had recently disposed of the reigning Shooto light heavyweight champion Erik Paulson with a swift armbar victory and already developed a reputation as a talented grappler. Accordingly, the match was a back and forth grappling affair between the two fighters. At the second round, after several exchanges on the mat, Newton looked to capture Sakuraba's back, but the Japanese trapped him in a rolling kneebar and finished him.