Germany - 1942 (II)* June - The New York-based World Jewish Conference tells the world that the whole of Eastern Europe is becoming "a vast slaughterhouse for Jews."
23,000 Jews are gassed at Belzec and Sobibor.
In Sosnowiec, Poland, Germans enter Jewish hospitals, murder newborn babies, and tear patients from operating tables.
In Dabrowa Tarnowska, Poland, Rabbi Isaac gathers with a group of Jews in a Jewish cemetery. They hold hands, dance, and drink "to life." Their Nazi captors are enraged and shoot and disembowel all of them.
The above events are typical of daily events in Europe during 1942.
The items below are but a minute sample of Holocaust-related events in 1942.
* June 1 - 6 - The British Broadcasting Company reports that about 700,000 Jews have been killed by the Nazis.
* June 3 - There is a Jewish revolt in Breslau, Germany.
* June 4 - Heydrich dies of blood poisoning from his wounds. The United States declares war on Romania.
* June 8 - In Pilica, Poland, the Jewish Council urges every able-bodied Jew to run and hide in the nearby forests.
* June 12 - Anne Frank turns 13.
* June 19 - Jews in Glebokie, Belorussia stage a revolt. The Nazis take 2500 of them to the forest and kill them.
* June 28 - The Germans begin their summer offensive in Russia.
* June 29 - In Slonim, Belorussia, Jews launch an armed resistance. It fails and the Germans burn almost 15,000 Jews to death.
* June 30 - The London Daily Telegraph prints this headline: "More Than 1,000,000 Jews Killed in Europe."
* June - July - Articles appearing in The New York Times emphasize Christian victims of the Nazis, rather than Jewish victims, even though the number of Christian victims was very small compared to the number of Jewish victims.
* July 2 - Great Britain and the U.S. agree to invade North Africa.
* July 6 - Anne Frank and family go into hiding in Amsterdam.
* July 10 - 100 women at Auschwitz are chosen for sterilization experiments.
The rest of 1942 continues with the murder of Jews. On the last day of the year, the Family Hostage Law was announced in Occupied France. This law said that the male relatives of fugitive "terrorists" who did not surrender to the German authorities would be killed, female relatives would be transferred to work camps and their children would be sent to political reeducation schools.
Notice how the word "terrorist" is used by the Nazis to define someone opposed to their regime!
The Holocaust, for many Jews, meant the death of God. There can be no God in light of the horrors of the Holocaust. And if there were a God, he would not be worth worshipping.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg though it was futile to argue about the nature of God in the presence of a burning child; the only thing a person could do is jump in the fire and pull him out.
Rabbi Emil Fackenheim found a new commandment: Jewish survival.
Rabbi Yitzhak Missenbaum said Jews in the Warsaw ghetto should do everything they could to save their lives.
More tomorrow...
1 comment:
BY June 1942, my only brother had enlisted in the Air Force. My only male first cousin had enlisted and been killed. Most of my brother’s friends had enlisted. Few waited to be drafted. I enlisted at 17 while still in high school, as did many of my friends. I encountered American Nazis in Boot camp and learned how widespread anti Semitism was before I left Boot Camp in 1944. Once I was accepted in the Submarine Service, I must admit, I personally encountered little anti Semitism, but it was still common in the various services, according to my friends and cousins. Blacks were treated badly and kept as a separate group doing undesirable duty. After the war, I experienced anti Semitism at work and in housing. It was not over, even though 6 million Jews had been murdered in Europe. It is still not over but is better in the US for our children and grandchildren, so there is hope.
By June of 1942, the world knew that huge numbers of Jews were being hunted down and killed, yet there was little done to save Jews, or to condemn the Nazis. Many public figures in much of the free world condemned Jews as enemies of the world, and somehow deserving of their fate. Few Church leaders spoke out. Few political figures spoke out. Many borders were closed to Jews fleeing massacres. Few accepted Jewish refugees to their eternal shame. Ship loads of Jews were refused entry to ports all around the world and sent back to certain death. Neither the US or Britain were accepting large numbers of Jews. Europeans cooperated with the Nazis and arrested and shipped Jews of all ages off to concentration camps which coninued to kill them until the war ended! Jews were murdered in their homes and on the streets. Christianity failed as a movement and as a philosophy. Hitler remained a Catholic as did many Nazis and their sympathizers. The Pope did not publicly speak out; he did not condemn Catholics or shut them off from the Church. Neither did most Christian Church leaders. A few wonderfully brave Christians hid Jews or rescued Jewish children. Many died trying to save Jews but the vase majority did nothing.
I see it happening again with the Jewish State and its six million Jews. There are only between 12 and 13 million Jews left in the entire universe, yet half are still in danger of extermination from an Arab world that will not recognize their right to exist. Israel is the only member of the UN not recognized by all members!
Will the world ever learn that after the Jews, there is always another set of victims?
Bob Poris
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