Germany 1943 (II)The ghettos continue to be emptied and the Jews deported to the death camps. In the Warsaw Ghetto, about 700 Jews staged an ultimately futile resistance, but a number of Germans were killed and wounded. As word spread about the Warsaw uprisings, many Jews were elated that people were fighting back.
The Polish resistance did not assist Polish Jews because so many in the resistance were anti-Semitic. The United States and Britain, although aware of what was happening, were silent.
* April 27 - In Italy, Ezra Pound, the noted American poet, continued to air his anti-Semitic rants. He said the Jews were rats, bedbugs, worms, parasites ... who give off a terrible "power of putrefaction."
* April 29 - While en route from one prison to another near Krakow, Poland, Jewish women attack their male SS guards. Two escape, but most are killed.
* April 30 - 2,000 Jews from Wlodawa, Poland arrive at the the Sobibor death camp and immediately attack the SS guards. All the Jews are killed by machine guns and grenades.
* May 1943 - The Soviet Army advances against the Germans in Eastern Europe. Again, anti-Semitic US State Department officials delay the license necessary to transfer money to allow the escape of 70,000 Jews from Romania.
* May 1 - Inspired by the Warsaw uprisings, a number of Jewish writers and artists get together in the Vilna (Lithuania) Ghetto for an evening of poetry, the theme being "Spring in Yiddish Literature."
* May 6 - The grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, tells the Bulgarian foreign minister to send Bulgarian Jewish children to Poland instead of Palestine.
* May 19 - Eleanor Rathbone, in the House of Commons, attacks the British government for its lackadaisical attitudes toward the Holocaust and says that if the Allies refuse to help, they are complicit in the death of the Jews.
* May 24 - The Germans stop their U-boats from sinking Allied Atlantic convoys.
* May 30 - Dr. Josef Mengele begins his duties at Auschwitz. Known as the "Angel of Death," Dr. Mengele specialized in twins. While anyone with a deformity was immediately killed, twins were sent to Mengele for "painful and grotesque experiments."
* June 5 - 1266 children under the age of 16 are deported from Holland to Sobibor. When they arrive, they are gassed immediately.
* June 21 - Himmler orders that all Jewish ghettos in the USSR be "liquidated." August Hirt, a German professor, rounds up 103 Jewish men and women at Auschwitz. They are sent to a camp near Strasbourg, France where they are gassed. Their bodies' soft tissue is removed and their skeletons are hung in the Reich Anatomical Institute of Strasbourg for the study of the Jewish race.
July 1943 - The American Women's International League for Peace and Freedom says that the American people and the American government are guilty of atrocities "because they are complacent cowards covered 'with a thick layer of prejudice.'"
* July 10 - Allied forces land in Sicily.
* July 11 - Hitler's secretary, Martin Bormann, send out a directive that henceforth all mention of Jews must not mention any "final solution," but rather that Jews are being used for various kinds of labor.
* July 17 - Bishop Theophil Wurm of the Evangelical Church in Wurtemberg transmits a letter to the Nazi headquarters in which he asks that the persecution of "members of other nations and races" be stopped immediately.
[The Nazis set up Jewish orchestras in the death camps. These orchestras would play happy songs as the trains rolled in with their human cargo, which would ease their fears. Auschwitz had six orchestras. In a camp in the Ukraine, the Nazis had a special tune composed called "Tango of Death" which was played as prisoners were marched to the killing ground.]
* July 22 - The plan to help 70,000 Jews escape from Romania is finally shot down because Roosevelt does not want to upset the British who strenuously objected to it.
* July 23 - The Germans lose the biggest tank battle in history at Kursk, Russia.
* July 25 - Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, resigns. He is arrested.
* July 28 - A Polish-Catholic resistance fighter, Jan Karski, who had been in the Warsaw Ghetto, comes to the U.S. to share what he knows with American leaders. He realizes during his interview with President Roosevelt that the latter already knew a great deal about the Holocaust.
1 comment:
This posting shows how not only was little done to rescue Jews from Hitler, but how many plans were actively not implemented due soley to anti Jewish sentiment amongst leaders of the Allies in both Britian and the USA!
Does anyone doubt that we see similar sentiments when discussing the 60 years of Arab terror against Israel? The Jewish state is the only STATE in the UN that is not recognized by all member states! Islamic states are accepted as full members, even though they do not allow Jews and in some cases, Christians to live in their states, yet they are voting members, recognized by all as legitmate. ONlY the Jewish State is asked to negotiate its right to exist with states that do not recognize its existence or its right to exist!
Can it happen again? You bet your Jewish neighbor's life it can!
Bob Poris
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