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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 358 |
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On August 25-26, 1942, Jews of Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Poland, were boarded onto cattle cars and deported to Treblinka. One of the jammed trains arrived with nearly all of the passengers dead from suffocation. Abraham Jacob Krzepicki, a Jew who worked in the Treblinka death factory, remembered one of the "survivors": "Among those living I found a baby, a year or a year and a half old, who had woken up and was crying loudly. I left him by the side. In the morning he was dead."
Photo: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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Elderly deportees from the German city of Wiesbaden await the train that will transport them to an unknown location in the East. The deportation of the 1006 "full-blooded" Wiesbaden Jews began in March 1942. In addition to these individuals, other Wiesbaden Jews were deported to the East via Frankfurt. Of the approximately 2800 members of the prewar Jewish community in Wiesbaden, only ten returned to their hometown after the war.
Photo: Yad Vashem / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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Franz Stangl
An Austrian policeman who rose to the rank of SS captain, Franz Stangl commanded two of the six Nazi extermination centers in Poland: Sobibor and Treblinka. Under Stangl's supervision, Sobibor opened in early May 1942. By the end of July, about 100,000 Jews had been killed there. Meanwhile, Stangl went to Treblinka. Between 750,000 and 870,000 Jews were gassed there, most of them during Stangl's administration, which lasted from September of 1942 until the following August. After the war Stangl fled to Brazil. In 1967 he was arrested, extradited to Germany, tried for his crimes, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Journalist Gitta Sereny interviewed him in 1971. "Do you think that that time in Poland taught you anything?" she asked Stangl on June 27. "Yes," he replied. "That everything human has its origin in human weakness." Less than 24 hours later, Stangl died of heart failure.
Photo: American Jewish Archives / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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August 29, 1942: The Jewish community from Olesko, Ukraine, is deported to the Belzec death camp.
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August 29, 1942: Occupation officials in the East inform Berlin that the "Jewish problem" has been "totally solved" in Serbia. Since German occupation, 14,500 of Serbia's 16,000 Jews have been murdered.
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August 30, 1942: Members of the Jewish community at Rabka, Poland, are murdered.
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August 30, 1942: French Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas reminds his parishes that all human beings are created by the same God, Christians and Jews alike, and that "all men regardless of race or religion deserve respect from individuals and governments."
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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 358 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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