Germany - 1940 (II)[The photo shows SS chief Himmler visiting the Dachau concentration camp.]
While the U.S. officially shut down Jewish immigration during 1940-41, there were private organizations that set up rescue operations from America. One of these, based in New York, was the Emergency Rescue Committee.
The ERC was able to help about 2,000 Jewish refugees -- Spanish, German and Czecholslovakian -- who were stranded in France. They were given food, clothing, a place to live and medical care.
One man's efforts were exemplary. Varian Fry, who represented the ERC in Marsailles, France, assisted in the escape of 1,000 Jews. In this group were some of the most important cultural figures in Europe, including the artist, Marc Chagall, and writers Heinrich Mann and Walter Mehring.
Beginning in August, 1940, Fry worked for one year helping refugees escape by setting up "clandestine operations complete with encrypted codes of communication and secret passage routes. He even established contacts with the underworld to obtain forged papers and boat passages."
Fry's plans didn't always work out, though. French officials occasionally stopped ships and arrested their passengers.
Fry himself was expelled from France in 1941.
* 1940 - An American isolationist group, The America First Committee, is formed. This group is infiltrated with Nazis and works to keep America out of European affairs. Anti-Semtisim again rears its ugly head in Congress as members of Congress attack Jews in Hollywood for trying to get America involved in opposing Hitler.
Throughout Romania, brutal, bloody anti-Jewish riots take place.
* July 1 - A Jewish ghetto is set up in Bedzin, Poland.
* July 10 - The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) attacks Britain, starting what came to be known as the Battle of Britain.
* August - A law allowing thousands of British children into the U.S. is passed by Congress. FDR calls these children "visitors."
At the Jozefow, Poland labor camp, 400 Jews are executed because they are sick with bleeding diarrhea.
* August 9 - Hitler orders a military build up in Poland, readying Germany to invade the Soviet Union.
* August 10 - Romania passes anti-Semitic laws.
* August 15 - Adolf Eichmann suggests sending Jews to the island of Madagascar. He says they will eventually die out there.
* August 25 - The British bomb Berlin for the first time.
* August 27 - The French government, led by Marshall Petain, and in cahoots with the Nazis, nullifies the law banning "incitement to race hatred."
* September - A Polish underground officer "penetrates the main camp at Auschwitz with the intention of organizing secret resistance groups inside the camp."
* September 1 - The Japanese consul at Kovno, Lithuania, Sempo Sugihara helps 3500 Jews obtain exit visas. When discovered, the Soviets throw him out of Lithuania.
* September 5 - In Luxembourg, the Germans establish the Nuremberg Laws. Jewish businesses are confiscated and given to Aryans.
Bishop Theophil Wurm, head of the provincial Lutheran Church at Wurttemberg, Germany, writes a second letter to Wilhelm Frick, the German Interior Minister, objecting to "euthanasia killings."
* September 7 - Germany begans the "blitz" bombing of Great Britain.
* September 11 - The Quanza, a Jewish refugee ship, refuels at Norfolk, Virginia. The Quanza was denied entry at New York and at Vera Cruz, Mexico. One of the passengers jumped overboard but was caught by US Army personnel and returned to the ship.
* September 15 - The German Air Force is beaten badly in the skies over London. The RAF (Royal Air Force) takes the lead in the Battle of Britain.
* September 23 - SS chief Himmler establishes a special SS Reichsbank account which will contain gold (including gold taken from teeth), silver, jewelry and money stolen from Jews.
* September 27 - Japan signs a treaty with Germany and Italy. Soon thereafter, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania also join in this pact. These are known as the Axis powers.
* October 3 - France passes anti-Semitic legislation the purpose of which is to force Jews out of public service, teaching, financial occupations, public relations and the media.
* October 4 - Yom Kippur. Germans announce that all Warsaw Jews must move to the ghetto by the end of the month.
* October 28 - Italy invades Greece. The invasion is stopped with the help of 12,000 Greek Jews.
* November 11 - Fifty-five non-Jewish Polish intellectuals are murdered at Dachau.
* November 15-16 - The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed off from the rest of the city.
* November 25 - A ship carrying 2,000 Jewish immigrants is sunk accidentally by the radical Jewish group, Hagana. About 250 people are killed.
* November 26 - British anti-Semitism again raises its ugly head. Lord Lloyd, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, says that people helping Jews by providing illegal transportation to Palestine are "foul people who need to be stamped out."
* December - The Vatican condemns the so-called Nazi "mercy-killings."
* December 5 - A British government official, Sir John Schuckburgh, writes that "the Jews have no sense of humor and no sense of proportion."
* December 12 - When the Salvador, a ship carrying Jewish refugees, sinks in the Sea of Marmora, and 200 Jews drown (including 70 children), T.M. Snow, head of the British Foreign Office's Refugee Section, says "there could have been no more opportune disaster from the point of view of stopping this [Jewish refugee] traffic [to Palestine]."
* December 17 - Drunken SS guards at Sachsenhausen, awaken Jews in the middle of a very cold night and force them to roll in the snow.
A beautiful story from hell: Hala Buchwajc and Motek Lichtensztajin were married in 1940 in the Bedzin Ghetto. They were sent to Auschwitz where they were separated. Then they were transferred to different camps, and they lost touch with each other. Fortunately, both survived the Holocaust, and in 1946 met again, totally by chance, on the streets of London!
More to follow
No comments:
Post a Comment