The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget)

[Most of the material in "The Holocaust Journal" is from The Holocaust Chronicle, Publications International, Ltd., 2003. $24.98 from Amazon]

Germany 1942 - (I)

By 1942, the mass murder of Jews had become state policy in Gemany.

Dr. Gerhart Reigner, based in Switzerland, received word from a German anti-Nazi businessman that the Nazis were planning to move 3.5 millions Jews to the East where they would be exterminated "at one blow."

Reigner asked the American consulate in Geneva to send word to Rabbi Steven Wise in the U.S. about these events and to also forward the information to the American and other Allied governments.

The U.S. State Department thought the message a fantasy and it was never delivered to Rabbi Wise. By the time the media was informed, it was too late. Most European Jews were dead.

1942 was the deadliest year of the Holocaust.

The Final Solution was put into motion at the Wannsee Conference on January 20. Fifteen men answered Heydrich's call to attend. These were not thugs or gangsters, but highly educated, cultured men. Many of them held doctoral degrees from German universities.

The plan, according to Heydrich, was to kill a total of 11 million Jews, "from Ireland to the Urals and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean."

The Nazis could kill more efficiently now, as they had built gas chambers in various concentration camps which used either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B. In 1942 alone, the German butchers killed 2.7 million Jews!

Throughout 1942, every day, every week, every month, the torture and slaughter of Jews continued unabated throughout Germany and the rest of Occupied Europe. Jews were killed in their homes, on the streets, in their synagogues, at work, in the woods, on the beach - they were safe nowhere.

Anti-Semitism, overt and covert, still reigned however, in the halls of the Allied governments. When a conference was called at St. James Palace in London by the Allied governments to discuss Nazi war crimes, the specific problem of the Jews did not arise.

In Germany, there was some opposition. Karl Stellbrink, a Protestant theologian, send out anti-Nazi letters written by Bishop Clemens von Galen. Stellbrink was arrested. A Catholic priest, Josef Metzger, wrote a letter pleading for a new German government, and he was arrested also, by the Gestapo.

* January 1 - The CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) is established in the U.S. to locate and arrest Nazi war criminals.
* January 14 - 1800 European countries are blacklisted by the U.S. government which meant that Americans are forbidden to do business with them.
* January 19 - Soviet forces recapture a German held city close to Moscow and Moscow is saved.
* January 20 - The Wannsee Conference sets up the mechanism to implement the Final Solution. The conference lasts 90 minutes.
* January 20 - Hitler commemorates his 9th year in power with a speech declaring that by the end of the war, all Jews will be dead.
* February 15 - The first mass gassing of Jews begins at Auschwitz.
* February 24 - The SS Sturma, a Panamanian ship carrying Jewish refugees bound for Palestine is sunk after Britain pressures Turkey to keep the ship from landing in Istanbul. 700 Jews drown. There is one survivor.
* March 5 - The British War Cabinet says again that "illegal" Jewish refugees will not be admitted to Palestine.
* March 15 - Hitler claims that his army will beat the Soviets in "every direction in the summer."
* March 27 - Jews from France are deported to Auschwitz.
* April 3 - The last Jews are deported from Augsburg, Germany. Jews had lived in Augsburg since the year 1212.
* April 15 - The state Lutheran Church in Norway condemns Nazism and racism.
* April 20 - At Hitler's birthday party in East Prussia, Herman Goring confesses that he's the one who set fire to the Reichstag on February 27, 1933.
* April 26 - Hitler is made absolute dictator by the Reichstag -- he is given total power in executive, legislative and judicial matters.
* May 9 - Ezra Pound, an American poet working for the fascists in Italy, sends a message to America: "You would do better to inoculate your children with typhus and syphilis" than permit more Jews to come to the U.S.
* May 11 - 12 - American Zionists meeting in New York City demand that the British give sovereignty to Jews in Palestine. The British ignore the demand.
* May 26 - England and the Soviets sign a "mutual assistance" treaty.
* May 27 - Jozef Bagcik and Jan Kubis, Czech partisans, ambush Reinhard Heydrich in his car in Prague. Heydrich is killed.
* May 29 - In Vichy France, Jews are locked out of all restaurants and cafes, sporting areas, public squares, and libraries.
* May 30 - Great Britain sends its first bombers on a raid over Cologne, Germany.