The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget) - Germany 1943 (IV)

Germany 1943 (IV)

Throughout Europe Jews tried to hide from the Nazis. They hid in basements, in attics, in cupboards, in secret nooks and crannies. They were sometimes assisted by Gentile friends and occasionally by complete strangers.

Most people are familiar with the story of Anne Frank, who, with her family were secreted away in Amsterdam, and supplied with enough essentials to survive by a Gentile, Miep Gies.

Some convents and monasteries hid Jewish children. In the north of Italy, a Father Niccacci assisted Jews with forged identity papers and helped them find work and a place to live. The entire village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France, led by its pastor, Andre Trocme, worked at protecting and hiding Jews.

It was more difficult for Jews to find hiding places in Eastern Europe. The Poles tended toward anti-Semitism and often turned Jews in to the Nazis by revealing their hiding places. Some did help the Jews, however, including Irene Gut Oppyke who hid 12 Jews in the home of a German officer for whom she worked as a maid.

And in Wlodawa, Poland, a Jewish man by name of Yankel, lived for one year in a hole in the floor of a barn while the barn itself was home to German soldiers.


* October 2 - The Danes save about 7,000 Jews from Nazi arrest. The first Jewish paratroopers land in the Balkans. These Jewish paratroopers are ordered to first help organize non-Jewish underground units for the British. When that's complete, they can help other Jews, but without any support.

* October 4 - SS chief Heinrich Himmler, in an address to senior SS officers, says that killing is hard but necessary. However, they should never talk publicly of the killing of Jews.

* October 6 - Helen Manaster is a Jew but posing as a Catholic. She is pregnant and having labor pains when two Gestapo agents get her out of bed for questioning. She remains calm and they tell her to go back to bed.

* October 13 - Italy declares war on Germany. Various weapons--knives and hatchets--as well as warm clothing, are handed out secretly at the Sobibor death camp.

* October 14 - The inmates at Sobibor start a revolt and try to escape. Of the 600 Jews in the camp, 200 are killed by gunfire and exploding mines; 300 escape; 100 are recaptured; 200 flee to join Soviet partisans. The Jews kill 11 SS guards as well as a couple of Ukrainian SS guards.

* October 16 - The Nazis search house-to-house for Jews in Rome. 477 Jews hide in the Vatican. Another 4238 are hidden in convents and monasteries throughout the city.

The German ambassador to the Vatican praises the Holy See for "perfect evenhandedness" in its treatment of Germany and the Allies. He asks what the Pope will do if the Germans continue to deport Jews from Italy. The Vatican Secretary of State says "the Holy See would not want to be put in the position of having to utter a word of disapproval." The Pope would not want the German people to think he had "done or wished to do even the smallest thing against Germany during this terrible war."

* October 20 - The UN War Crimes Commission is established.

* October 25 - Himmler orders the destruction of the Jewish skulls and skeleton collection at Strasbourg.

November 1943 - The anti-Semitic U.S. State Department official, Breckenridge Long, continues his campaign against the Jews by lying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He tells the committee that the U.S. has admitted 580,000 refugees since 1933. He implies most of these are Jews and remain in the U.S. Actually, less than 200,000 remain in the U.S. and many of the refugees were not Jewish!

* November 1 - Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill sign the Moscow Declaration. There's no mention of Jews or gas chambers.

* November 9 - Guy Gillette, a U.S. senator, along with representatives Will Rogers and Joseph Baldwin introduce a resolution calling upon the president to set up a commission to devise a plan to save the Jews still alive in Europe.

* November 28-December 1 - Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill meet at Tehran to begin planning a British/American invasion from the west.

* December 23 - U.S. Secretary Henry Morgenthau's staff tells him that the U.S. State Department's attitude is "no different from Hitler's attitude."

Late 1943 - Himmler orders the Belzec camp be destroyed. Sobibor and Treblinka had been destroyed. At all three camps, the land is plowed under and settled by Ukranians.