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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. 551 |
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German tanks roll through the streets of Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, while German and pro-Nazi Hungarian soldiers line the street. Deportations of Jews, which had been halted in October 1942, were renewed following the failed uprising in the fall of 1944 against the Hlinka Guard and the Nazis. While some Jews managed to hide, others were discovered and killed. More than 13,000 were sent to Auschwitz and other camps.
Photo: Suddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst
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Completing their long odyssey to freedom, Jews from the "Kasztner train" arrive in Switzerland. Named after Rezso Kasztner, one of the leaders of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest, the trip had been organized by the committee after long negotiations with the Nazis as part of a proposed "Jews for trucks" deal. Although the arrangement to exchange trucks and other goods for the lives of Hungary's Jews fell through, the committee succeeded in bringing this group of 1684 Jews to safety.
Photo: Yad Vashem/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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Jewish Antifascist Committee
Established in Moscow in April 1942, the Evreiski Antifashistski Komitet (Jewish Antifascist Committee) was approved by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin because it tried to gain worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet Union during the war. The committee distributed anti-Fascist propaganda and also addressed specific Jewish needs. Its Yiddish magazine, Eynikeyt (Unity), recounted Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust and offered information about Jewish life in the Soviet Union during and after the Holocaust. Prominent leaders were Yiddish literary and intellectual figures, such as Bernard Mark, a Jewish historian; Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg, author of the The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, which detailed Nazi atrocities against Soviet Jews; Shlomo Mikhoels, director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater; and Peretz Markish (pictured), a prominent writer. The committee was destroyed in 1948 with Stalin's purge and murder of Jewish intellectuals. Many of them were still among the committee's leadership, including Mikhoels and Fefer.
Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive
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August 15-August 25, 1944: A general uprising breaks out in Paris, which is liberated by the Allies on August 25.
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August 16, 1944: A deportation train carrying Jews from the Italian-held islands of Rhodes and Kos arrives at Auschwitz.
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August 17, 1944: The last deportation from Drancy, France, leaves for Buchenwald bearing 51 Jews.
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August 20, 1944: The United States Army Air Force bombs Auschwitz III (oil and rubber plant), three miles from Auschwitz I (main camp) and five miles from Birkenau, the Auschwitz death camp. 127 bombers escorted by 100 fighters (who face only 19 German planes) drop more than 1300 500-pound bombs. Only one bomber is shot down.
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August 22, 1944: The Gestapo undertakes a terror campaign, Operation Thunderstorm, against anti-Nazi German functionaries. Five thousand people are arrested
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August 22, 1944: 261 United States bombers raiding German oil refineries pass within 40 miles of Auschwitz.
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| 1944: Desperate Acts |
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pg. 551 |
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The Holocaust Chronicle
© 2009 Publications International, Ltd.
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