Making up for lost time:
August 18, 1942:
- "998 Jews, including 287 children, are deported to the East from Belgium."
- Serbia
Sajmiste became a killing site for Serbian Jews, mostly women and children.
"In retaliation for partisan attacks, the German Army shot 100 hostages for every soldier killed.
Some 4000 to 5000 males, mostly Jews and Gypsies, were killed in reprisal for German losses.
Their wives and children were transported to Sajmiste for detention, where they were housed in rough barracks awaiting deportation.
"Seeking a way to rid themselves of Jews more efficiently and economically, German authorities in Serbia used a mobile killing van in the spring of 1942.
Victims were told they were being relocated, but instead they were gassed and buried near Belgrade.
In 1942 Nazi commanders crowed that Serbia was judenrein (cleansed of Jews)."
August 19, 1942:
- "Nazis murder the children of the Rembertów (Poland) Ghetto.
The town's adult Jews, more than 1000, are assembled for deportation to the Treblinka death camp.
About 300 of the people are ordered eastward along the road to Wesola. Before they walk a mile, the 300 are murdered.
The 700 who remain are ordered to march south, and as the group passes the town of Anin, one woman melts into a crowd of non-Jewish Polish onlookers and escapes.
Forty-five others are machine-gunned at Anin, ostensibly because they attempted escape.
Hours later the marchers reach the ghetto at Falenica, where Jews already have been forcibly assembled; those who are discovered in hiding are shot.
Inside the ghetto, two Jews resist, using an axe to kill the first German who steps through the doors of their apartment. - "At the Belzec extermination camp, 700 to 800 Jews herded into a gas chamber wait in torment for nearly three hours until a balky diesel engine can be started and the chamber filled with deadly exhaust.
SS gas/disinfectant expert but anti-Nazi Kurt Gerstein is on hand to observe; See August 20-24, 1942. - August 19-23: "Seventeen thousand Jews from Lutsk, Ukraine, are taken to Polanka Hill and executed."
"The plan developed at the Wannsee Conference called for a sweeping of Jews from Western to Eastern Europe.
In 1942 the deportations from Occupied Western Europe began in earnest.
These Jews were shipped from the Westerbork transit camp in Holland to Auschwitz.
This deportation, one of the first from Holland, took place from July to October 1942."
"Beginning in July 1942 the Nazis undertook the deportations of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp, where almost all of them were gassed as part of Operation Reinhard.
These Jews were among the over 250,000 deported from Warsaw from July to September 1942.
A further 13,000 would be deported to Treblinka in 1943."
August 20, 1942:
- "The ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) attempts to assassinate Joseph Szerynski, commander of the Jewish police in the Warsaw Ghetto. Later in the day, other ZOB members set fire to several Warsaw warehouses.
- "The Jewish community from Falenica, Poland, is liquidated at the Treblinka death camp.
- August 20-24: "Nineteen thousand Jews of Kielce, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.
- August 20-24: "Gas/disinfectant expert Kurt Gerstein observes gas executions at the Treblinka, one day after witnessing similar deaths at Belzec."
- Judenräte
"Established by Nazi orders, the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Lithuania's Kovno Ghetto was called the Ältestenrat (Council of Elders).
Its deputy secretary, Avraham Tory, kept a diary that illustrates how this council--led by Dr. Elchanan Elkes, a prominent physician--confronted dilemmas faced by hundreds of Jewish councils (Judenräte) in Nazi-occupied Europe.
"Held responsible for implementing German directives, Judenrat leaders (such as the man pictured, from Bochnia, Poland) also tried to relieve community needs.
The councils' conflicting responsibilities required many departments.
Tory's diary entry for August 4, 1942, states how identity cards must be used by nine different offices in the Kovno Ghetto: food administration, labor, social welfare, health, police, registration, housing, economic affairs, and education.
"As the Nazis gradually "liquidated" Eastern Europe's ghettos during 1942 and 1943, the Judenräte led doomed communities.
In autumn 1943 the Germans reclassified the Kovno Ghetto as a concentration camp.
They abolished the Ältestenrat in April 1944.
Kovno was home to about 37,000 Jews when the Nazis occupied the city on June 24, 1941.
Only 2400 survived the war.
After deportation, Dr. Elkes perished at Dachau on July 25, 1944."
"Children were useless from the Nazi point of view because they could not do heavy labor, so they were often among the first to be deported."
"Teenagers were also deported early because they were considered the most likely to partake in resistance.
Pictured here are several Jewish adolescents from the ghetto in the Polish town of Bedzin, home to one of Eastern Europe's most active youth Resistance movements."