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

May 1945 - The war has lasted 68 months. When the war began, Poland had 3.3 million Jews. By May of 1945, only one in ten was still living.

Thirty thousand prisoners are being moved from Austria and Warsaw. At Ebensee, Austria they are ordered into a tunnel containing explosives. They refuse to move. The SS are confused and afraid of the approaching Americans. The prisoners are not killed or harmed.

Germany's Education Minister Bernhard Rust and SS-Obergruppenfuher Hans-Adolf Prutzmann commit suicide. Martin Luther, former foreign ministry deputy, dies of heart failure. Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, is thought to be killed by Soviet troops as he tries to flee Berlin.

* May 1 - In the Fuhrerbunker, Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, poison their six children and the commit suicide. In Sonneberg, Germany a Jew dances when he hears of Hitler's death. He is shot on the spot by a German guard.

* May 2 - Soviet forces move into Berlin, and German troops in Berlin surrender. German armies in Italy surrender. At the Neustadt-Glowen labor camp, the Jewish women find themselves suddenly free when the SS guards do not report for morning duty.

* May 3 - 9400 Jewish prisoners are put on board two ships at Lubeck, Germany. The Germans think they will die on board. British planes, however, believing the ships to be hostile, open fire and both ships are sunk. Survivors that swim for shore are shot by Hitler Youth members. 2400 of the 9400 survive. In Prague, the resistance battles the German openly.

* May 4 - The Allies take Salzburg, Austria. German forces surrender in the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark. Theresienstadt is taken over by the Red Cross. The SS guards flee.

* May 5 - The camp at Mauthausen, Austria is liberated by the U.S. 11th Armored Division. They find 110,000 survivors, 28,000 of which were Jews. A mass grave contains 10,000 bodies. In Norway, German forces surrender.

The presiding bishop of the German-Catholic bishop's conference tells his priests to say a mass in Hitler's memory.

When a brutish German Kapo begs inmates not to turn him in to the Americans at the Ebensee, Austria concentration camp, he is beaten to death by three Jewish boys.

* May 6 - Ebsensee, Austria is liberated by the U.S. Army.

* May 7 - Germany signs an unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters at Rheims, France. The fighting ends at 11:01 P.M. on May 9.

* May 8 - V - E Day (Victory in Europe). The allies accept Germany's unconditional surrender. Hermann Goring is captured by the Allies.

* May 9 - Theresienstadt is liberated by the Soviets. Friedrich Kruger, a man responsible for the mass killings of Polish Jews, commits suicide. Prague is liberated - the last European capital to be free of the Germans.

* May 10 - SS General Richard Glucks, in charge of camp inspections is found dead at a hospital. German troops in Czechoslovakia surrender. Norwegian traitor, Vidkun Quisling is arrested.

* May 11 - The Reich commissioner for Norway, Josef Terboven, blows himself up with dynamite.

* May 19 - Philip Bouhler, an assistant to Hitler and in charge of killing the ill and insane, commits suicide with his wife.

* May 20 - 27 - Four Polish Jews return to their hometown and are killed by Poles.

* May 21 - The founder of the Sobibor death camp kills himself after the British take him prisoner.

* May 23 - Heinrich Himmler disguises himself and tries to sneak out of Germany but is recognized and arrested by a British patrol. Later in the day he kills himself with a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth.

To be continued...