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Click on an image to see a larger, more detailed picture.
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| 1944: Desperate Acts |
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pg. 521 |
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Max Josef Metzger was a Catholic priest, and a pacifist. A World War I German Army chaplain, he founded and headed the Peace Alliance of German Catholics. During the war he called for a non-Nazi government for Germany. Arrested and condemned for high treason by the vehemently pro-Nazi People's Court, he was executed in April 1944.
Photo: Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst
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On April 13, 1944, one of the final deportations of Jews from the Drancy, France, transit camp left for Auschwitz. Fifteen hundred prisoners arrived in Auschwitz on April 16, including the Brin family (pictured). All but 388 perished in the gas chambers.
Photo: Yad Vashem/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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April 8, 1944: On this first night of Passover, Polish rabbi Mosze Friedman, newly arrived at Auschwitz, grabs an SS lieutenant and excoriates him for his crimes, promising the eternal existence of the Jews and the imminent destruction of Nazism.
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April 10, 1944: Two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Wetzler, age 26, and Rudolf Vrba, age 19, escape from Auschwitz. The pair will later provide the Allies with the first eyewitness accounts of the "Final Solution," as well as a warning about the Nazis' intention to exterminate Hungarian Jewry.
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April 10, 1944: The Red Army captures Odessa, Ukraine.
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April 13, 1944: 1500 Jews are deported from Drancy, France, to Auschwitz. One survivor of this group, 16-year-old Simone Jacob, will grow up to become France's minister of health (as Simone Veil) and, in 1979, president of the European Parliament at Strasbourg, France.
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| 1944: Desperate Acts |
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pg. 521 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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