December 10, 1942:
- "A transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.
- "At Wola Przybyslawska, Poland, near the Parczew Forest, Nazis shoot seven Poles accused of aiding Jews.
- "The Polish ambassador to Britain informs Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that the Polish government-in-exile can confirm that the German authorities are systematically exterminating the entire Jewish population of Poland and the rest of Europe."
"The first "official" concentration camp in Germany, Dachau housed thousands of prisoners from throughout Europe.
Overcrowding, disease, medical experiments, and unrelenting work led to a high death rate, necessitating the building of a new and larger crematorium, with four furnaces, in 1942.
Baracke X (Barrack 10) also contained a gas chamber (pictured).
Disguised as a shower room, it was never put to use since the Nazis decided it was more efficient to send those judged mentally deficient or unable to work to killing sites, such as Auschwitz or Hartheim, Austria."
"Showing the public hanging of a young man who tried to escape, this drawing represents the brutality of life in the Kovno (Lithuania) Ghetto.
Mass killings in 1941 were followed by quieter days in 1942, a year free of large-scale Aktionen (deportations).
Yet even in these "peaceful" days, the ghetto inhabitants daily encountered Nazi oppression.
As this drawing from November 1942 shows, anyone who was caught breaking the ghetto's rules paid with his or her life."
"More than one million Jews from all corners of Europe were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and killed.
Nearly 440,000 Hungarian Jews died there in mid-1944 alone.
Auschwitz also witnessed the deaths of about 70,000 non-Jewish Poles, 20,000 Gypsies, and 15,000 Soviet POWs."
"Smiling prisoners at the transit camp at Drancy, France, carry large loaves of bread in early December 1942.
This staged photo was taken to assure the Red Cross and Jewish organizations, as well as the French public, that inmates in the camp were being treated well.
Until then, prisoners had suffered badly from malnutrition, surviving on only meager rations."
"Aharon Liebeskind was a leader of the Kraków, Poland, Jewish underground.
Using the pseudonym Dolek, Liebeskind led the vocational training section of the Jewish Self-Help Society.
He was also co-commander of the resistance group He-Haluts ha-Lohem, which attacked the Germans in December 1942.
Liebeskind was killed in the subsequent hand-to-hand fighting."
"The Nazis began the liquidation of the Lvov (Ukraine) Ghetto in December 1942.
About 75,000 Jews had already been deported to Belzec before the final Aktion began.
While the Nazis told the deported Jews that they would be put to work, the Jews realized a worse fate once they reached Belzec, which reeked of decaying flesh.
"The majority knew everything," recalled one witness.
"The smell betrayed it."
In order to kill as many Jews as possible, as many as 800 people were crammed into a gas chamber that was only 192 square meters in size."