June 12, 2942: Jewish babies, children, and elderly of Khmel'nik, Ukraine, are shot in a nearby forest.

 

June 13, 1942: Three thousand Jews are deported from the Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia camp/ghetto to their deaths. 

British Ambassador to the Vatican Frances d'Arcy Osborne observes about Pope Pius XII that his 'moral leadership is not assured by the unapplied recital of the Commandments'. 

 

June 14, 1942: Two thousand Jews break out of Dzisna, Belorussia.

 

June 15, 1942: Authorities in Riga, Latvia request a second gassing van.

Charge d'affaires in the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, reports to the State Department that Pope Pius XII is adopting 'an ostrich-like policy towards atrocities that were obvious to everyone'. 

 

June 18, 1942: Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, British-trained Czech partisans who mortally wounded Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, are discovered with several other partisans inside Prague's Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church. The church is besieged by German troops and SS. All partisans perish.

 

June 19, 1942: Jews revolt at Glebokie, Belorussia: 2500 are murdered in the Borek Forest.

 

 

 

Spain and the Holocaust: The fall of France in 1940 unleashed a flood of refugees seeking entry into Spain. Initially, the Spanish government willingly granted transit visas, but then authorities became more hesitant to open frontiers. Still, many refugees slipped across the northern border illegally, trekking over hazardous mountain routes. By the summer of 1942, Jewish aid organizations helped an estimated 7500 pass through Spain to continue their journeys.

Spanish authorities worked to discourage refugees from remaining in the country, and established internment camps for those who did. When border crossings increased again in 1943, refugees were permitted to live in Spanish cities. 

Franco frustrated the SS by declaring descendants of Sephardic Jews eligible for Spanish citizenship, and thus entitled to asylum in Spanish embassies. Spain consequently became a main avenue of escape for Europe's Jews. Some hoped to find asylum within the country, but most intended to embark from Spanish ports for sanctuary overseas. 

 

November 5, 1942: An SS man in Ciechanow, Poland, politely asks a Jewish woman to hand him her baby. When she complies the trooper smashes the baby to the street headfirst, killing it.

Jewish men from Stopnica, Poland, are sent to a slave-labor camp at Skarzysko0Kamienna, while 400 old people and children are shot in the town cemetery.

Three thousand others are put on a forced march: many are shot along the way, and survivors are sent to Treblinka.

Peasants in Siedliszcze, Poland, gather scythes in anticipation of the day's roundup of Jews, for which they'll be paid for each Jew caught.

Six hundred Jews from Borislav, Poland, are deported naked to prevent resistance.

745 Jews, including 35 residents of the Rothschild Old Age Home, are deported from Paris to Auschwitz. After arrival, Jews awaiting entry into the gas chamber spy a truck loaded with corpses but continue on to their deaths.

 

August 7, 1943: The last trainload of Jews from Salonika, Greece, leaves for Auschwitz with 1800 detainees. Most will be killed at the camp. By this date, most of Salonika's prewar Jewish population estimated at 56,000 has been murdered.

 

December 1945: Antisemitic Poles murder 11 Jews in the town of Kosow-Lacki, Poland, which is located less than six miles from the site of the Treblinka extermination camp.

Oliver Cox, an American sociologist, concludes that Christians in the United States regard the Jew as 'our irreconcilable enemy within the gates, the antithesis of our God, the disturber of our way of life and of our social aspirations'. 

 

1945-1950: Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews survive German concentration-camp incarceration. About six million Jews have perished. About 1.5 million nonincarcerated European Jews also survive. During this period, Jews emigrate from Europe en masse; 142,000 to Palestine/Israel; 72,000 to the U.S.; 16,000 to Canada, 8000 to Belgium; and about 10,000 to other countries.

Reactions of governments to the illegal, 1945-47 emigrations vary; the Soviets are mainly disinterested; Great Britain, irrationally jealous of its Palestine Mandate remains fiercely negative; the U.S. armed forces, mindful that pro-Jewish sentiment is taking hold at home, allow the illegal emigration to go forward unhindered. 

 

 

 

"There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." Winston Churchill 

 

"Yet we, the survivors, are not only responsible toward the dead, but also toward the coming generations: We must pass on our experiences to them so that they might learn from them. Information is resistance"

"It is not enough to preserve everything in books, because a book can by contrast to a person not be interrogated. A witness must be a “living” witness. This is why I always admonished at survivors meetings at which I spoke: “You have children, you have grandchildren, your neighbours have children – you must speak with them. You must tell them everything that you experienced, and provoke their questions, so that they can in turn tell of these experiences. It is only in verbal narration that memory stays alive.”"   Simon Wiesenthal 

 

 

THE HOLOCAUST CHRONICLE

Publications International, Ltd.

Lincolnwood Illinois

Louis Weber, C.E.O.