THE HOLOCAUST 1942


June 1, 1942: First mention ever in the press, the underground Warsaw newspaper LIBERTY, of the ‘bloodcurdling news coming out of Chelmno.' 7,000 Jews are sent from Cracow to Belzec. On this day tracks begin to be built connecting to a new death camp, Treblinka, Treblinka has been prepared for the Jews of central Poland.

June 2, 1942: 3,400 Jews from Hurbieszow are sent to Sobibor, where eventually all but 12 were gassed.

June 3, 1942: Warsaw, 110 Jews are shot in the prison on Gesia Street.

June 5, 1942: Cracow; thousands of Jews are rounded up for deportation.

June 5, 1942: Eisengruppen report stating efficiency of Gas vans; "Since 1941, 97,000 have been processed in the three vehicles in operation without any malfunctions in the vehicles."

June 6, 1942: Cracow: Thousands of Jews are rounded up for the second day in a row for deportation. Eichman, worried about appearances asks that the words ‘deportation to the East ‘ not be used, but instead, that ‘people are emigrated elsewhere.'

June 8, 1942: At the urging of the Jewish Council of Pilca, 100s of Jews flee for the forests.

June 9, 1942: Lodz Ghetto; German criminal police report that 95 Jews ‘have been hung publicly here.'

June 10, 1942: Thousands of Jews sent from Prague to ‘an unknown destination in the East' in cattle cars. The destination was Belzec. The Jews of Biala Podlaska are sent to Sobibor.

June 12, 1942: Khmelnik, the Ukraine; Babies, children and old people are ordered to assemble. The children were taken away, never to be seen again.

June 13, 1942: Nine Jews are hanged in Warta, 2 in Lask, and 2 in Lodz Ghetto. All as a tool to scare Jews from resisting deportation.

June 26, 1942: Britain broadcasts for the first time information about the fate of the Polish Jews. It said that 700,000 Jews have been killed in Poland to date.

June 29, 1942: One year anniversary of the founding of the Judenrat in Bialystok. Ephraim Barash's diary; "it is lucky that we cannot foresee the future, for if we could, we would not have lived and reached the present stage. There is no place for optimism in the ghetto."

July 7, 1942: Himmler holds a meeting in Berlin with three high ranking men. It is decided that medical experiments would commence on the Jews. Emphasis would be placed on Jewish women in Auschwitz. Himmler pledges his coconspirators to secrecy.

July 10, 1942: The first Medical Experiments take place at Auschwitz. 100 Women are taken from their barracks and sterilized through a series of hideous experiments.

July 13, 1942: The Einsatzkommando return to daily actions of murder. 7,000 Jews are rounded up in Rowne ghetto. Over the next two days, 5,000 of them would be slaughtered by the SS.

July 15, 1942: The first 2,000 deportees left Holland for Auschwitz. Most of them German Jews who found safety there years earlier. 1,000 Jews from Moczadz are taken to the woods and shot dead. 1,000 Jews are murdered in Bereza Kartuska.

July 16, 1942: Paris; 7,000 Jews are rounded up. The first 1,000 would be deported on an Eichman train three days later.

July 16, 1942: 1,000 Jews are killed in Molxzadz.

July 17, 1942: 2,000 Jews from Holland reach Auschwitz. All but 449 were given their numbered tattoos. The 449 were gassed.

July 18, 1942: 900 Jews flee to the woods near Szarkowszczynzna as the Germans entered the town. 600 did not make it to safety and were killed.

July 19, 1942: Himmler sends a directive to SS lieutenant-General Wilhelm Kruger, head of the German police forces in the General Gouvernment ordering "the resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the Generalgouvernment be carried out and completed by December 31...in the name of the New Order, security and cleanliness of the German Reich."

July 20, 1942: The Jews of Kleck try to revolt as the Germans circled their town. Only a few hundred escaped. The 1,000 remaining Jews were shot dead.

July 21, 1942: 1,000 Jews deported from Paris, reach Auschwitz. Many of them Polish. All but 375 selected for labor, were gassed. 17 of them would survive the war.

July 21, 1942: Resistance. Jews of Nieswiez organize a resistance movement and a plan of escape using kerosine and old guns as their weapons. A desperate battle ensued. Jews set fire to their own homes as a diversionary tactic. Some of those who made it to the woods found other Jews from Kleck and Niewswiez. They set up an underground unit.

July 22, 1942: The railway master at Treblinka is notified of a shuttle line being set up between Warsaw and its railroad station for "Settlers". This day, 6,000 Warsaw Jews were told to gather for deportation. Over the next seven weeks 265,000 Jews would be sent by train to the three gas chambers of Treblinka. THIS WAS THE LARGEST SLAUGHTER OF ANY SINGLE COMMUNITY DURING THE HOLOCAUST.

July 23, 1942: German Foreign minister Martin Luther warns Italy's Chief of Staff, Ribbentrop, that Italy should not continue to resist deportation efforts in Croatia.

JULY 22 - SEPTEMBER 12, 1942: 4,000 Warsaw Jews per day would be gassed in Treblinka. THIS WAS THE LARGEST SLAUGHTER OF ANY SINGLE COMMUNITY DURING THE HOLOCAUST. Men, women, children. Only those with special cards stamped with ‘Operation Reihnard', an eagle and the swastika were saved from deportation. Resisters or those taking flight would be shot on the spot by Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians and German SS officers. Orphanages, children homes, hospitals, were all emptied. Each train was comprised of sixty cars. Each car was packed with human cargo.

July 24, 1942: 3,000 Jews are killed in the Dereczyn action.

July 27v, 1942: German proclamation that any Pole or Ukrainian who tries to help a Jew will be shot.

July 28, 1942: Warsaw, six days into Operation Reinhard, a Jewish resistance group is set up. Two pistols were their arsenal.

July 28, 1942: Minks, 6,000 Jews are brought to pits and shot dead. 3,000 more are killed the next day as well. In Tarnow, the children were taken to the edge of town and shot. The rest of the town's Jews were taken to Belzec.

July 29, 1942: Signs were put up in the Warsaw Ghetto offering free bread for any family volunteering to be deported. A scheme to make the German job of rounding up 6,000 Jews a day a little easier.

July 31, 1942: General Commissar Kube reports that in the East ‘16,000 Jews were liquidated in Lida, 8,000 in Slonim. . . in the previous ten weeks, 55,000 Jews have been liquidated.'

August 2, 1942: Twelve days into the deportation of Warsaw an estimated 75,000 jews have been taken away and sent to their deaths at Treblinka. Countless human tragedy and acts of barbaric cruelty would take place leading up to the gasings as people tried to escape, resist, or just survive.

August 4, 1942: Belgium; The first 998 Jews from Belgium were sent to Auschwitz. 1,000 Jews form Theresienstadt were deported.

August 4, 1942: In Radom, Poland, 10,000 Jews assembled for deportation to Treblinka. The Germans began shooting them as they gathered. 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Warsaw as Operation Reinhard continued into its second month.

August 6, 1942: Minsk, 3,000 Jews are slaughtered in the streets. 100 would escape and form a partisan unit.

August 8, 1942: All 2,000 Jews of Szczebrzeszyn refused to gather for a deportation round up. The Germans commenced a search for them. Only 400 were found. They were all killed.

August 9, 1942: 200 Jews escape into the forests of Mir. During that week, 6,000 would die in Naliboki, Lubcz and Karelicze. 1,500 would be taken from the Krzemieniec.

August 10 - August 23, 1942: LVOV; Thirteen days straight of deportation to Belzec. Over 40,000 Lvov Jews would perish in this action. Another 36,000 from the region would join them in death by the end of the month, bringing the total to

August 10, 1942: 10 German and Ukrainian policemen were killed as they entered the Krzemieniec Ghetto.

August 14, 1942: 1,000 Jews killed in Lenino. 1,000 at Antopol.

August 15, 1942: Germans uproot 500 families from Zagrodski, near Pinsk. Trucked to a pit three miles outside of town, the Jews are ordered to undress. If they refused, they were beaten. Each person was shot dead, falling into the pit. Mother, Father, Grandparent, brother, sister, child, baby. An example of the purges that still were being carried on everywhere despite the huge efficiency and toll of the Death Camps.

August 15, 1942: Jawiszowice opens. Jawiszowice was a labor camp built near Auschwitz. Jews were worked to death in order to support the German war effort.

August 19, 1942: Another 6,000 Jews arrive at Belzec. As they undressed and then marched naked, they are told that the men have to work on houses and roadways, that the women wouldn't need to worry about anything other than housework. Then they were led into the death chambers, seven to eight hundred at a time. A diesel truck's exhaust was funneled into the room. After 30 minutes, each group was dead. Packed together and still standing in death, families holding hands, the Jews were separated. Dentists knocked their teeth out looking for gold.

August 20, 1942: Warsaw; The Jewish Fighting Organization carries out its first action, an attempted assassination of a Polish police commander. He lived, but it was the beginning of a Jewish resistance movement. That night the JFO burned down a building that was warehousing German loot taken from Jewish homes.

August 24, 1942: 1,000 Jews deported from Theresienstadt. Only one would survive the war. 1,100 from Kielce ghetto would be sent to Treblinka. 1,100 would be killed in a cemetery outside of Zdunska Wola.

August 26, 1942: 400 children transported from Paris to meet their death in Auschwitz after a three day trip.

August 28, 1942: Sarny; 14,000 Volhynian Jews were gathered for deportation, when Josef Gendelman led a mass escape. 3,000 ran for the fences, 500 made it to the woods, only 100 would survive the war.

AUGUST 1942: During this month close to 300,000 Jews would be killed on Polish-German soil. 145,000 in Belzec alone. 100,000 Warsaw Jews in Treblinka. 30,000 Random Jews. 13,000 Jews are killed in Auschwitz brought from two nearby towns of Bedzin and Sosnowiec. 22,000 Jews from Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Men, women and little children all met the same fate of death by gassing.

September 1, 1942: Wlodzimierz Wolynski; the Germans ask the Jewish Council to gather 7,000 Jews for transport. One member, Jocob Kogen, commits suicide, not wanting to bear the responsibility of sending people to their death.

September 2, 1942: Over the next three days, 6,000 more Jews from Wlodzimierz would join the 7,000 Jews gathered the previous day for transport to the death camps. Babies were dropped to their death from hospital windows. One enterprising German began catching them with his bayonet.

September 2, 1942: 10,000 Jews in Dzialoszyce are gathered. 2,000 are killed in a bloody purge during the day. 8,000 are deported to Belzec.

September 4, 1942: Lachwa, Poland; Resistance and battle takes place in the ghetto between young Jews and the Gestapo. 1,000 Jews would die that day. 600 escaped to the woods. 100 would survive the war.

September 5, 1942: Birkenau; 800 women are gassed.

September 6, 1942: The mass Warsaw deportations continued. Not all made it to the trains. 1,000 would be shot in the streets over the next two days.

September 7, 1942: Main article on the foreign page of The Time of London was headed "Vichy's Jewish victims, children deported to Germany." Where they were deported was not known or stated.

September 8, 1942: House of Commons; Winston Churchill refers to the deportation of French Jews. No mention about what was happening in the rest of Europe.

September 9, 1942: The Vichy order the arrest of all Catholic priests who were sheltering Jews.

September 9, 1942: 2,000 Jews assembled as Kislovodsk, sent to nearby Mineralnye Vody, marched to a ditch and all shot dead.

September 12, Treblinka; after seven straight weeks of uninterrupted deportation of close to 265,000 Jews from Warsaw and other towns, the transports stop. Being the Jewish New Year (5,703) was only a coincidence. No trains would arrive for another nine days.

September 19, 1942: 3,000 Jews of Tuczyn were ordered into a ghetto. Five days later Germans and Ukrainians raid the ghetto. As resistance is put up by a small band of Jews armed with axes and petrol. 2,000 made their escape to the forests. 1,000 of them were found and shot. 300 starving women and children came back to the ghetto. In all, only 15 would survive the war.

September 23, 1942: 2,004 Jews are deported from Theresienstadt to Maly Trostenents. No one survived the war.

September 24, 1942: At the urging of von Ribbentrop, Martin Luther, of the German Foreign Ministry began plans to set up negotiations between the governments of Bulgariw, Hungary and Denmark ‘with the object of starting the evacuation of the Jews of these countries.

September 25, 1942: 481 French Jews, including Rene' Blum, the brother of the former French Prime Minister are killed in Birkenau. Despite growing resistance, 2,000 Jews from Kaluszyn are sent to be killed at Treblinka. 2,000 more Jews are deported from Theresienstadt.

September 26, 1942: Swiss Police Instructions, "refugees on the grounds or race alone are not political refugees. Thousands of Jews would now be sent back from the border.

September 27, 1942: 897 French Jews killed at Berkenau

September 28, 1942: Several hundred Belgian Jews are killed at Berkenau.

September 28, 1942: New Train Schedule: Direct transports. One train a day from Radom to Treblinka, one train a day from Cracow to Belzec, and one train a day would go from Lvov to Belzec. Each train would consist of 50 cars and carry 2,000 Jews. By November two more direct connections would be complete; From Lublin and Chelmno to Sobribor. THE CENTRALIZATION OF DEATH.

September 29, 1942: 685 French Jews killed at Berkinau, the first of 4,000 who would die that week.

October 1, 1942: Chelmek opens. Chelmek was a labor camp. Jews were again used as slaves for the German war effort.

October 1, 1942: Lukow, near Lublin. 4,000 Jews would be deported this day. 2,000 who were already relocated from Czechoslovakia.

October 3, 1942: Auschwitz, Dr. Kremer's diary. ‘Today I preserved fresh material from the human liver, spleen and pancreas, also lice from persons infected with typhus. The medical experiments continue.

October 5, 1942: 1,000 deported from Theresienstadt to Treblinka. 6,000 more would be sent by the end of the month.

October 5, 1942: 3,000 Jews were killed in Dubno after being rounded up and marched to outlying pits. Silently, without screaming or weeping, they all undressed, bid each other farewell, and then were summarily shot.

October 14, 1942: Piotrkow; in the middle of the night, 1,000 Jews are woken and dragged from their homes. Those too ill or old to move were shot on the spot. The first of eight straight days of terror resulting in the deportation of 20,000 Jews. All sent to Treblinka, all killed.

October 17, 1942: Over 10,000 Jews are transferred from Buchenwald Concentration camp to Auschwitz.

October 18, 1942: 1,594 deportees from Holland are gassed at Auschwitz.

October 21, 1942: Szczebrzeszyn. The final Jews remaining are rounded up in a night of fierce and deadly slaughter. Who wasn't shot was taken to Belzec. In Zwierzyniec, more Jews are rounded up. The guards all carried walking sticks that would pull out a Jew who lagged as they were marched to the town square. Those pulled out where shot on the spot.

October 22, 1942: Two parents in the Lodz ghetto commit suicide together because their children had been deported.

October 24, 1942: Lichtenstein Jews were deported.

October 25, 1942: Oszmiana, Poland; 400 Jews were deported. To save the remaining 600, the head of the ghetto decides to send only the old so to make up the quota.

October 26, 1942: The first deportations from Theresienstadt to Birkenau. 1,866 Jews were sent. Of the 350 Sent to the barracks for labor only 28 survived the war, the rest was sent to the gas chambers.

October 27, 1942: Opoczno, 3,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka.

October 28, 1942: 2,000 children and 6,000 adults from Cracow are deported to Belzec.

October 28, 1942: SS directive orders all children's mittens and stockings to be sent from the death camps to the SS families.

October 29, 1942: London, a protest meeting held by Archbishop of Canterbury against the treatment of Jews by the Germans.

October 29, 1942: Eliyahu Rozanski of the Jewish Fighting Organization assassinates Jakub Lejkin, the new commander of the Jewish police in the Warsaw ghetto. Soon after an additional 13 Jewish police who were very involved with the Warsaw actions of the summer were also killed.

November 2, 1942: Deportation reaches the Bialystock region. 3,200 Jews were deported from Siemiatzycze. Hundreds were shot while trying to revolt against the round up. Hundreds of Jews managed to escape from the actions. Some Poles helped the Jews hide others didn't. Those who were caught assisting a Jew was shot. When the train of Siemiatzycze Jews reached the Treblinka station, one car was heard singing "Hatikcvah'. Some of the people were stripped naked in near freezing temperatures, taken to the fields and shot dead. All the rest but 152 of the 3,200 were gassed.

November 2, 1942: In the Bialystock region, hundreds of small towns would be raided, their Jews rounded up for deportation. The total estimated above 100,000. Too many to be processed immediately. Interim camps were then set up. Eventually most of them would be transported to Treblinka over the next several weeks and months.

November 5, 1942: Ciechanow, deportation of the town.

November 6, 1942: Drancy, 1,000 Jews were deported to Birkenau.

November 9, 1942: Paris, 745 Greek born Jews from Solonica were deported.

November 9, 1942: Majdanek opens up. Another death camp. 4,000 Lublin Jews already deported to two other concentration camps, were sent to open Majdanek. Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec had a new partner equal to the task.

November 15, 1942: Belze, Rudolf Reder diary; he describes the scene after a train was unloaded. The men were stripped naked and sent directly to the gas chambers, the women brought to the barracks to have their head shaven. Then they went to the chambers. The head of the Judenrat was ordered to stay behind and beaten to near death as an orchestra played on. Then the man was shot in the head and pushed into the bundle of gassed Jews.

November 19, 1942: 100 Jews from Potrkow are shot outside of town.

November 25, 1942: Jews hiding in Piotrkow were offered to stay in the ghetto legally if they came out of hiding. Some did, and they were killed by Ukrainians upon doing so.

November 29, 1942: The Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto assassinates the economic head of the Jewish Council, an active German collaborator.

END OF NOVEMBER: To date it was estimated that almost 600,000 Polish Jews have been gassed at Belzec, 360,000 in Chelmno, 250,000 in Sobibor. Treblinka saw the destruction of 840,000 Jews. Only 50,000 Jews remained left in Warsaw. The rest died from cold, starvation, shooting, and the gas chambers. German-occupied Poland was almost entirely wiped out of its Jewish Population. In this area, the next step was for the Germans to hunt down the Jews who had escaped to the woods.

December 1, 1942: Karczew, near Warsaw; 400 laborers were killed.

December 3, 1942: Three escaped young girls, escaped from Poznan labor camp, were shot.

December 4, 1942: Two Polish women set up a Council for Assistance to the Jews.

December 6, 1942: Germans lock 23 Poles suspected of helping Jews in a cell. They then burn it to the ground. In Parczew, the Germans undertake a four day manhunt of hidden Jews.

December 12, 1942: The Jews of Volhunia revolt against the a German round-up.

December 17, 1942: Kruszyna; Jews revolt against the guards upon being told to assemble.

December 20, 1942: 560 Jews are shot in the Rakow forest.

December 22, 1942: The Jewish Fighting Organization of Cracow attack a coffee shop with SS and Gestapo inside.

December 24, 1942: Another German manhunt in the woods of Parczew. Hundreds of Jews are captured.

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