The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget - Germany 1945 (I)

Adolf Hitler, the madman instigator of so much evil, did not live to see the end of the war. At the end of April, 1945, he and his new bride, Eva Braun, killed themselves in his Berlin bunker.

German general Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional surrender at Rheims, France on May 7, 1945. Unfortunately, between January 1 and May 7, thousands more Jews were murdered by the Nazi machine.

Jews who survived the Holocaust were engulfed in other, enormous dilemmas. Many could not go home as their homes were destroyed. Often Eastern European Jews went home to renewed anti-Semitism and to find that their property was in the hands of hostile gentiles. Most of the Jews were in terrible health, and suffered from horrible nightmares.

These Jews also found that the nations of the world did not want them. In 1945, most of the Holocaust survivors had no choice but to remain in the displaced persons camps set up by the Allies. Conditions in these camps were less than satisfactory. In some camps the Jews were housed with Nazi collaborators and other anti-Semites and were subject to continual abuse.

Gradually the U.S. and other countries relaxed immigration restrictions. Yet, even in 1950, the DP camps housed 250,000 Holocaust survivors. Gradually they moved on: 142,000 to Israel; 72,000 to the U.S., 16,000 to Canada; 8,000 to Belgium; 2,000 to France, 1,000 to Britain, and some 10,000 to Latin America and other places.

* Germany 1945 - Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, suspected of anti-Nazi activity, was executed. The inspector of concentration camps, Richard Glucks died - probably a suicide. In Italy, Jews are given the right to citizenship.

* January 1-16 - The German offensive at the Ardennes Forest is stopped by the Allies, thus ending the Battle of the Bulge and ending any German chance for victory.

* January 4 - Fritz Elsas, the Jewish mayor of Berlin who was arrested in 1933, is executed at Sachsenhausen on this date.

* January 6 - Anne Frank's mother dies at Auschwitz.

* January 11-24 - Hungarian "Fascist Nyilas" thugs storm Jewish "protected" houses in Budapest, murdering Jews and throwing their bodies into the Danube River. Also in Budapest, the Nyilas gangsters attack the Jewish Orthodox Hospital and torture 92 patients, doctors and nurses, killing all but one nurse.

* January 12-14 - The Soviets succeed in breaking through at the Vistula River.

* January 16 - Soviet troops take Czestochowa, Poland.

* January 17 - Soviet forces take Warsaw, Poland and Pest, Hungary. In Budapest, 119,000 Jews are set free by the Red Army. The Reds arrest Raoul Wallenberg, suspecting him of collaborating with the Nazis.

* January 18 - The SS begins a series of huge evacuations of prisoners and slave laborers from various camps to other sites. Many thousands die from exhaustion and abuse on the marches.

* January 27 - The Red Army liberates Auschwitz. Seven thousand prisoners are still alive, including Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father.

* February 1945 - In the Ukraine, Ukranian nationalists hunt down and kill thousands of Jews. In Berlin, an American bomb crashes on top of the People's Court killing a fanatic Nazi judge, Roland Freisler.

* February 4 - Allied leaders, including Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, meet at Yalta to discuss "respective spheres of influence" after the war.

* February 13 - The Germans surrender Budapest. Hungary.

* February 15 - The Soviets liberate the slave-labor camp at Neusalz, Poland.

* February 18 - 500 Jews married to Christians are arrested and sent to Theresienstadt.

* March 1945 - Anne Frank, 15, dies at Bergen-Belsen.

* March 5 - The U.S. Ninth Army arrives at the Rhine River south of Dusseldorf, Germany.

* March 7 - The First U.S. Army crosses the Rhine at Remagen.

* March 12 - SS chief Himmler and his doctor sign an agreement that halts the killing of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps.

* March 19 - Hitler orders a "scorched-earth" policy so that Allied soldiers find a ruined Germany.

* March 29 - The Soviets occupy Danzig.

* March 30 - Russian forces enter Austria.

To be Continued...