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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 395 |
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The Nazis began the liquidation of the Lvov (Ukraine) Ghetto in December 1942. About 75,000 Jews had already been deported to Belzec before the final Aktion began. While the Nazis told the deported Jews that they would be put to work, the Jews realized a worse fate once they reached Belzec, which reeked of decaying flesh. "The majority knew everything," recalled one witness. "The smell betrayed it." In order to kill as many Jews as possible, as many as 800 people were crammed into a gas chamber that was only 192 square meters in size.
Photo: Federation Nationale des Desportes et Internes Resistantes / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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"Gestapo" Müller
With the nickname "Gestapo" Müller, Heinrich Müller embodied to many Germans the feared Secret State Police. A decorated fighter pilot in the Great War, Müller afterward joined the Munich police department, becoming the department's authority on communism and left-wing movements. His zeal and knowledge of the Communist Party brought him recognition from Reinhard Heydrich, who advanced Müller's career within the Bavarian police. In 1936 Heydrich appointed him chief of Gestapo Division II and charged him with finding internal enemies of the Reich. In 1939 Müller succeeded Heydrich as Gestapo chief, a position he held until the Nazis' defeat. A participant at the Wannsee Conference, Müller was deeply involved in the mass extermination of Jews. In October 1939 he commissioned Adolf Eichmann to begin the deportation of Austrian Jews to the Lublin-Nisko region. Devoted to Hitler, Müller was relentless in tracking down those who had participated in the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt against the Führer. Müller was at Hitler's side during his last days in the Berlin bunker, but he disappeared at the end of the war. Thinly supported rumors maintained that Müller found sanctuary in South America or the Middle East.
Photo: Bilderdienst Suddeutscher Verlag / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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December 4, 1942: Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Filipowicz establish Zegota, a secret name of the Rada Pomocy Zydom (Council for Aid to the Jews), a non-Jewish group based in Warsaw. Zegota is run jointly by Jews and non-Jews.
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December 4, 1942: Three hundred citizens of Slonim, Belorussia, are killed. Another 500 escape to join local partisan groups.
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December 6, 1942: SS men lock 23 Christian Poles in a barn at Stary Ciepielow, Poland, and burn them alive on suspicion of aiding fugitive Jews.
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December 6-10, 1942: Nazis marshal troops, armored vehicles, and artillery to undertake a massive manhunt for more than 1000 fugitive Jews in the Parczew Forest in Poland; See December 7, 1942.
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December 7, 1942: German troops enter the Polish village of Bialka and murder 96 villagers suspected of shielding Jews fleeing the anti-Jewish Aktion in the nearby Parczew Forest.
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December 7, 1942: United States State Department official G. Robert Borden Reams, an "expert" on the Jews in the Division of European Affairs, advises that the United States government remain silent concerning details of the Holocaust.
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| 1942: The "Final Solution" |
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pg. 395 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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