Posted on 09/29/2011 5:30:28 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/sep41/f29sep41.htm
Allied convoy sails for Russian port
Monday, September 29, 1941 www.onwar.com
From Iceland... The beginning of regular convoy traffic from Iceland to Archangel, with convoy PQ-1, comprised of 10 merchant ships, one cruiser and two destroyers. At the same time, convoy QP-1 starts from Archangel to Scapa Flow.
In Moscow... An Allied planning conference continues. Harriman attends from the US, Beaverbrook, from Britain and Molotov heads the Soviet delegation.
Anyway, my last Holocaust related post was September 19, so picking up at Sept 20, I begin by apologizing for the photo.
There are a number of others just as disturbing.
September 20, 1941
"Kovno, Lithuania, Jewish women before their murder by Lithuanian militiamen."
Slaughter at Ejszyszki
"During the autumn of 1941, advancing Einsatzkommando units systematically annihilated Jewish communities in villages and small towns in the Baltic states.
On September 22, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, the squads swept into the Lithuanian town of Ejszyszki, ready to murder each of the 4000 Jews who lived there.
"Some 500 Ejszyszki Jews fled into the countryside, only to be captured by the Germans and their Lithuanian police helpers. Those unable to escape were locked inside three buildings, without food or water.
The next day and night, still denied food and water, the Jews were made to stand in the cattle market.
Finally, at daybreak of September 25, the healthiest men were taken away.
Those remaining were told to not be afraid, that the men were working and preparing a ghetto for the community.
But there was no ghetto, only burial pits where the Jews were taken in groups of 250 and shot.
A survivor recalled hearing the Lithuanian executioners celebrate with boisterous singing and drinking. "
"About 300 Lithuanians voluntarily participated in the killing "actions" undertaken by Einsatzgruppe A in the Baltic region, which annihilated about 90 percent of the Jewish population.
Only 30 Jews from Ejszyszki survived the war."
"All Jews of Litin, Ukraine, are murdered.
"The Einsatzgruppen were especially active in the Ukraine.
Here, soldiers of the Waffen-SS and the Reich Labor Service observe the execution of a Ukrainian Jew by a comrade from Einsatzgruppe D.
In September 1941 the Nazis murdered 28,000 Jews outside of the Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa, burying them in mass graves."
A lot of great reading today.
From Wikipedia:
On September 27, 1941, a week after the appointment of Reinhard Heydrich as the new Reichsprotektor, Eliáš was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death. After Heydrich was assassinated nearly a year later, on May 27, 1942, Eliáš was finally executed at the Kobylisy Shooting Range as a part of the wide German reprisals for Heydrich’s death.
Eliáš was given a state funeral with full honours on May 7, 2006 and was buried at Vítkov Cemetery in Prague.
Humiliation and probably rape before cold blooded murder.
It is horrible these people had to suffer this. I cannot imagine their fear, nor can I imagine the silence of those who knew but looked the other way. Why were people trying to appease the Nazi regime when the people in high places knew this kind of utter brutality was going on?
A little quick off the starting line with the Budenny story.
Are you sure about that? They got pretty specific details from those Russian prisoners.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/29.htm
September 29th, 1941
UNITED KINGDOM: Mr Churchill today told British MP’s about an historic meeting which began yesterday in Moscow between the USSR, Britain and the USA. He told them that although Allied aid to Russia as only now been formally agreed, many desperately needed supplies have already been dispatched. Russia’s relative inaccessibility, hemmed in on all sides by enemies or freezing weather, is a major obstacle.
Destroyer HMS Norman commissioned.
Corvette HMS Montbretia commissioned.
Destroyer HMCS Haida laid down Vickers-Armstrong Ltd. Newcastle-on-Tyne. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY: Rastenburg: Hitler orders that Leningrad be wiped off the face of the earth and its population exterminated.
RAF bombers raid Stettin and Hamburg overnight.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Prime Minister General Alois Elias of Bohemia and Moravia is arrested. This comes two days after the appointment of Heydrich as German Governor. He is tasked with wiping out all opposition to the Nazi occupation. Martial law was declared yesterday and hundreds of Czechs have been rounded up, including, today, the puppet premier Elias. He has been sentenced to death.
GERMANY: Rastenburg: Hitler orders that Leningrad be wiped off the face of the earth and its population exterminated.
RAF bombers raid Stettin and Hamburg overnight.
Convoy PQ-1 leaves ICELAND for Archangel with 10 merchant ships, escorted by one cruiser and 2 destroyers. There is no German attack on this convoy. It will reach Archangel on October 11. Convoy QP-1 leaves Archangel headed for Scapa Flow.
U.S.S.R.: The attacks by Heeresgruppe Süd (von Rundstedt) to force an entry into the Crimea are halted.
Soviet submarine SC-319 disappeared and never located. All crew lost. (Dave Shirlaw)
Ukraine: In the outskirts of Kiev, four strike squads sent by Henrich Himmler begin killing 33,771 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine north of the city. Jews were marched in small groups to the ravine, ordered to strip naked and then were machine-gunned. The massacre is completed tomorrow and the bodies, living and dead, are covered over with dirt and rock.
Moscow, United States and British missions confer to determine Russian defence needs. (Jack McKillop)
CHINA: Relief troops arrive at Changsha, forcing the Japanese to retreat.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: 50 P-40E’s are received at Nichols Field. (Marc Small)
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Mahone commissioned.
Corvettes HMCS Sherbrooke, Chicoutimi, Matapedia and Napanee departed Sydney, Nova Scotia for Convoy SC-47 to Iceland. Convoy SC-47 arrived safely in Liverpool on 20 Oct 41. The early corvettes did not have adequate endurance to complete the trip across the Atlantic and had to divert to Iceland for fuel and stores before returning with a westbound convoy. This necessitated a complicated system of meeting and hand over points between the groups conducting the escort. It also required more escort groups that, as a consequence, were smaller in number. The smaller escort groups resulted in a weak defensive screen that the U-boats were able to exploit successfully. Successful convoys of this period were accomplished by evasive routing that was possible due to intelligence successes. When convoys were intercepted by U-boats, heavy losses resulted. (Dave Shirlaw)
U.S.A.: A crowd estimated at one million jams downtown Brooklyn, New York, to cheer the Brooklyn Dodgers, the National League baseball pennant winners, in a parade.
In Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, the Japanese consulate sends the following message to Tokyo: “The following codes will be used hereafter to designate the location of vessels:
1. Repair dock in Navy Yard: KS.
2. Navy dock in the Navy Yard (The Ten Ten Pier): KT.
3. Moorings in the vicinity of Ford Island: FV.
4. Alongside in Ford Island: FG. (East and west sides will be differentiated by A and B respectively.” (Jack McKillop)
Very few in the West knew what was going on, certainly Nazi sympathizers like Charles Lindbergh didn't know what his pals in Germany were up to.
Nor did any of the isolationist Senators & Congressmen understand the full extent of Nazi brutality.
But they were openly anti-Semitic, and blamed Jews for many ills, especially "beating the war drums" in Hollywood movies.
They also refused to allow more Jewish refugees into the US, despite President Roosevelt's best efforts to help.
Roosevelt, Churchill and a very few others did know something of what was going on in Nazi controlled Europe, and for whatever my opinion may be worth, I think that's one reason FDR was so eager to connive the US into all-out war.
FDR knew the Nazis must be defeated, and only a full US commitment to war could do it.
Why weren't more reports of Nazi atrocities against Jews leaked to the press?
Well, for one reason, most Americans were unlikely to believe such reports, considering them just more war propaganda.
But possibly the more important reason was to keep it from being a "war to save the Jews", which most Americans would not understand.
In Roosevelt's mind, it was important to keep the focus on those Nazi aggressions which which all Americans did understand and oppose.
I will never understand the rabid anti-Jewish sentiment that existed then and even now.
Do some of them behave differently from the rest of us? Yes. But then again, some of the rest of us behave in ways the Jewish people may find distasteful or outright reprehensible.
My own mother-in-law and father-in-law were very anti-Jewish in ways I just do not understand. For these people, it is as if something personal was done to them, but yet it really didn't. It is all in their heads.
Whatever evils the Jewish people were imagined to have done certainly could not be justification for the barbarity inflicted upon them. For people to be so calloused against Jewish people to be repulsed by news of the atrocities in the direction of wanting to stay out so it doesn't become a "war to save the Jews" is in itself an atrocity. This due to the delay and increased carnage it allowed.
I'd say I am glad I grew up and lived in better times, but the things going on now make me think we are on the cusp of more ethnic carnage.
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