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Click on an image to see a larger, more detailed picture.
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| 1941: Mass Murder |
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pg. 291 |
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This Nazi film still shows something with which all too many Europeans, especially Jews, were familiar: the unexpected knock on the door in the middle of the night. The Germans burst in on their victims, thereby increasing their confusion and reducing the likelihood that they would resist. The tactic had the further advantage of keeping many of the arrests secret.
Photo: SYddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst
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Fearful Jewish women and children huddle together in the cold and in fear on the beach at Liepaja, Latvia, where they await their deaths at the hands of Latvians and SS. They are about to be stripped of their clothing and shot to death. Jewish clothing is to be sent back to Germany to be used by German civilians. (One report from a German soldier's wife indicates that she was angry that a few of the items of Jewish clothing sent back to her had bloodstains on them.) At least 2700 Jews were killed in this Aktion of December 1941.
Photo: Carl Strott/ Novosty Press
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Thea Borzuk Slawner poses with her mother on the occasion of her second birthday party, which was celebrated behind the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. Despite living in appalling conditions, Warsaw's Jews spared no effort to retain their humanity. Religious and family celebrations became symbols of Jewish resistance. Thea and her mother escaped the ghetto just prior to the 1943 uprising. They survived the war, living among gentiles under assumed names.
Photo: Thea Boruzk Slawner / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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December 22, 1941: The United States passes amendments to the Selective Service Act, making men ages 20 to 44 eligible for military service.
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December 29, 1941: A Jewish physician from Prague, Czechoslovakia, Dr. Karol Boetim, dies of spotted typhus while treating patients at a Gypsy camp near the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto.
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December 31, 1941: Abba Kovner, the founder of the United Partisans Organization in Vilna, Lithuania, calls for armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis, proclaiming, "We must not go like sheep to the slaughter!"
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December 1941-January 1942: Six hundred Soviet prisoners of war are murdered in a gas-chamber experiment at Auschwitz.
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Winter 1941-1942: Sixteen thousand Jews are rounded up in Germany and deported to the Riga (Latvia) Ghetto.
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| 1941: Mass Murder |
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pg. 291 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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