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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 321 |
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In 1941 local Lithuanians and Germans carried out murderous campaigns against the Jews of Kovno. In contrast, 1942 was relatively quiet in Kovno. Although the Jews were deprived of adequate food supplies and were subjected to life in a ghetto, the Jewish Council operated a medical clinic, a soup kitchen, and a school. The council even managed to stage concerts and other cultural events.
Photo: Beth Hatefutsoth / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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A German and a local militiaman shoot Jews outside a Ukrainian village. The SS often received help from auxiliary forces to carry out the mass executions that were part of the "Final Solution." In the Ukraine, members of the local populace eagerly participated in these murderous campaigns. The relaxed men in this picture appear as if they are hunting birds, not human beings.
Photo: Archiwum Akt Nowych / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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Hunger and Starvation
Besides shootings and gassings, the Nazis also killed Jews through natural means: slowly starving them to death. In ghettos such as Warsaw, Jews received food rations that were a fraction of normal requirements. Children and the elderly perished first. Bloated corpses littering streets became commonplace. In the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto, journalist Joseph Zelikowicz witnessed thousands of people dragging themselves through streets, rummaging through piles of garbage to find "a piece of broken pot that can still be licked, or a rag that once wrapped food and can still be gnawed at." Zelikowicz described bodies distorted by starvation, with "flabby stomachs, sunken breasts, hollows around their necks," and legs so badly swollen that "if you stick a finger in such a leg, you leave an impression, a sallow gray spot, as in half-baked bread." In concentration camps, inmates also suffered starvation but were additionally forced to work to the point of exhaustion. Utterly desperate for food, prisoners in some camps even ate grass. Many became skeletal figures with dry, ashen skin, their cheekbones almost protruding, with elongated heads. Most also suffered from extreme, dehydrating diarrhea. Totally apathetic to life, for many relief came only through death.
Photo: Yad Vashem
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May 9, 1942: American poet Ezra Pound, who is working for the Fascist Italian government, broadcasts from Italy: "You would do better to inoculate your children with typhus and syphilis" than allow more Jews into the United States. America, Pound continues, is ruled by Jews and their allies, who are "the dirtiest dirt from the bottom of the Jew's ash can."
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May 11-12, 1942: American Zionists participating in the Biltmore Conference at New York City's Biltmore Hotel demand that Jews be given sovereignty over Palestine. The demand is ignored by Britain, which controls Palestine.
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May 11, 1942: Alter Dworetsky, a member of the Jewish Council at Diatlovo, Belorussia, escapes to a nearby forest, only to be shot to death by Soviet partisans after refusing to hand over his pistol.
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May 14, 1942: Noted Jewish Viennese pianist Leopold Birkenfeld is murdered at the Chelmno death camp.
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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 321 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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