August 25, 1942:
- August 25-26: "Thousands of Jews from Miedzyrzec, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.
- August 25-26: "Nearly 1000 Belgian Jews, including 232 children, are deported to the East."
- Jews of Belgium
"The capitulation of Belgium to Germany on May 28, 1940, brought approximately 65,000 Jews under Nazi domination.
Tragically, many of these Jews had previously fled from Germany and Austria, thinking they had found a safe haven.
For most such Jews, the Nazi shadow of death could not be avoided.
"At the beginning of the occupation, Jewish businesses and individuals were registered.
In 1941 formal Jewish councils (Judenräte) were created.
When Jews were ordered to wear yellow badges in May 1942, the lack of cooperation on the part of Belgian officials enabled many Jews to go into hiding.
"Against a wave of opposition, the deportation of Jews from Belgium began in the summer of 1942.
Public protests raised on behalf of the Jews, coupled with the intervention of Belgium's queen mother, forced the Nazis to focus their efforts on the thousands of foreign Jews living in Belgium.
While many Belgian Jews went underground, others were deported from Belgian soil to the gas chambers at Auschwitz--more than 16,000 from August to October 1942.
"By the time the killings at Auschwitz ended in October 1944, approximately 29,000 of the Jews who had been living in Belgium when the Germans captured the country were dead."
August 26, 1942:
- "After being unloaded at the Treblinka death camp, a Jew named Friedman uses a razor blade to cut the throat of a Ukrainian guard. SS guards retaliate by immediately opening fire on the other newly arrived deportees."
- "518 Jewish children deported from Paris are gassed at Auschwitz."
"Jasenovac, the largest of the Croatian concentration and death camps, was established in autumn 1941.
It became the final destination for some several hundred thousand Gypsies, Serbs, and Jews.
As this man's battered and broken skull shows, the camp, run by the Ustasa, was especially barbaric.
Thousands were murdered outright or simply starved to death as a result of the inhuman conditions.
In 1942 some 12,000 Jewish and Serbian children were executed."
"Founded in the 1920s, the Zionist organization he-Halutz (The Pioneer) taught young German and Austrian Jews the essentials of farming.
After the Nazis gained power, the organization accelerated its training efforts.
Once members qualified for labor permits as skilled farmers, they could obtain permission to join the fortunate few legally permitted to enter Palestine."
August 27, 1942:
- "Eight thousand Jews from Wieliczka, Poland, are killed at the Belzec death camp.
- "When a transport train carrying 6000 Jews from Miedzyrzec, Poland, arrives at the Treblinka extermination camp, guards discover that nearly all of 6000 have died of suffocation during the 75-mile journey.
- "Several thousand Jews from Chortkov, Poland, are assembled in the town square and forced to witness the murders of the community's children; See August 28, 1942.
- "The Soviet defense of Stalingrad stiffens as the German siege intensifies.
- August 27-28: "Fourteen thousand Jews are killed at Sarny, Ukraine."
Breendonck "The concentration camp at Breendonck, Belgium, was a primary internment point for Jews in Occupied Belgium.
Located about 15 miles south of Antwerp, it was a moated fortress that dated from the early 1900s.
"The Nazis turned Breendonck into a place of internment in the summer of 1940, adding cells, gallows, barracks, a torture chamber, a site to drown prisoners and another to bury them alive, and quarters for the camp's SS and Wehrmacht overseers.
The prisoners' food and living conditions were execrable, and extreme physical cruelty was encouraged by the camp's head of forced labor, Artur Prauss.
"On September 24, 1942, Rabbi Dr. Salomon Ullman--chief Jewish chaplain of the Belgian military since 1937--was sent to Breendonck as a warning to resisters.
Ullman was released after 15 days; other Jewish detainees were not as fortunate.
When deportations of Jews from Belgium began in 1942, many Jewish prisoners held at Breendonck were sent to the Jewish transit camp at Mechelen before being condemned to Auschwitz.
"Breendonck's Belgian location and the harshness of its administrators "distinguish" it; Jews were never held there in great numbers, but all who were suffered terribly.
Between 1940 and 1944 the number of Jewish prisoners never exceeded 200, and by 1942 Jews no longer comprised the majority of inmates. The camp was liberated in the summer of 1944."
"This secretly taken photograph shows a transport train at the sta-tion at Siedlce, Poland.
This station was along one of the major routes between Warsaw and Treblinka, and many of the Jews deported during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto passed through the station.
The Nazis tried to select out-of-the-way places for such activities in order to keep them secret from the local population.
But invariably some civilians knew what was going on."
"The Nazis often ordered their victims to prepare bundles for their deportation journeys.
In Drogobych, Ukraine, 3000 Jews were ordered to prepare for resettlement and subsequent work in the Pripet Marshes.
Their bundles (pictured) never made it onto the train.
The 3000 Jews were shipped not to the Pripet Marshes but to the gas chambers at Belzec."