March 24-25 March 25 March 26 March 27 March 28 March 29 March 31 have at least found a haven from death in Hungary and the Balkans, are now threatened with annihilation as Hitler's forces descend more heavily upon these lands. That these innocent people, who have already survived a decade of Hitler's fury, should perish on the very eve of triumph over the barbarism which their persecution symbolizes, would be a major tragedy.” FDR warns Hungary against collaboration with Germany, declaring that "none who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished." Greek, stateless, and foreign Jews in occupied Greece (reportedly 4,700 per- A transport of 184 Jews, who had been denounced and caught in hiding, arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau from the Hague. The Hungarian Council of Ministers approves several anti-Jewish decrees, including a law requiring Jews to wear the yellow Star of David by April 5. Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia and Transylvania are declared military operational Eighteen hundred elderly Jews and children are killed in the Kovno The seventieth deportation convoy leaves Drancy for Auschwitz, arriving About three hundred patients from two hospitals and one psychiatric institution in Trieste are deported to Auschwitz; sixty-two prisoners die during the journey, and 103 are gassed on arrival at Auschwitz on April 4. The Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish underground organization in Palestine, admits responsibility for bomb explosions in police headquarters in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa but denies responsibility for street shootings. The Germans refuse to give safe conduct for a Turkish ship carrying Jewish children to Palestine. The Hungarian decree (No. 1.240/1944) "Concerning the Marking of Jews for Purposes of Their Differentiation" is published in Budapesti Közlöny: Hivatalos Lap (The gazette of Budapest: Official journal). Other decrees require travel restrictions, expropriation of bicycles and cars, a night curfew, Also in March: and confiscation of telephones; in general, they exclude Jews from economic life in Hungary. The construction office at Auschwitz renames the prisoner-of-war camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, previously known as KGL (Kriegsgefangenenlager), as Lager II Birkenau. At the same time, the Political Department at Auschwitz I reviews all prisoner records; those prisoners designated "SB" (Sonderbehandlung, or special treatment) and "GU" (gesonderte Unterbringung, or separated housing) are driven to the crematoria, where they are killed. German Minister Jenke reports to the Foreign Office from Ankara about negotiations with the Red Cross regarding the emigration of about fifteen hundred Romanian Jews to Palestine, for which Turkey has made a ship available. The Turkish foreign minister requests German agreement and recommendations concerning a place of embarkation along the Black Sea. The German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop subsequently informs the Turks that the venture is not possible because of the risk of espionage and for naval strategic reasons. The Germans promulgate a new law in France, punishing anyone who helps APRIL 1944 April 1 Production of V-2 rockets with prisoner forced labor begins at Dora, an underground subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. Elements of the Twelfth SS Panzer Division massacre eighty-seven residents, between the ages of fifteen and seventy-six, of the town of Ascq in northern France in reprisal for the derailment by the resistance of a military train coming from Russia. April 3 April 4 April 5 April 6 American aircraft bomb Budapest; Eichmann and Peter Hain, head of the Hungarian security police, demand that the Jewish Council provide five hundred apartments for Christian victims of the raid. SS Brigadier General Veesenmayer observes that on the occasion of the next Allied raid on Budapest, he "would not object" to having ten Jews shot for every Hungarian killed, cautioning however that "once initiated, such an action will have to be carried out in a resolute fashion." The SS Milca, a ship registered in Bulgaria, arrives in Turkey from Constanza, Romania, with 239 "illegal" refugees after protracted negotiations with the Turkish government by Ira Hirschmann, representative of the War Refugee Board. The refugees are transferred to Palestine within a few days. (See February 12.) The twenty-fourth deportation convoy leaves Malines, Belgium, with 625 Jewish prisoners for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it arrives on April 7. On arrival 206 men and 146 women are registered for labor, and 273 Jews are gassed. Daniel Trocmé, the Huguenot headmaster from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who had protected his Jewish students, is gassed and cremated at the Majdanek concentration camp and killing center. The decree requiring all Hungarian Jews above the age of six to wear a yellow Star of David is implemented. Budapesti Közlöny publishes a list of persons exempted from wearing the star: decorated and disabled World War I veterans, their widows and orphans; converts married to Christians; and foreign nationals living in Hungary. Additional restrictions on movement are also announced: Jews are not allowed to use automobiles; are not permitted to travel on trains, boats, or buses without written permission; and are forbidden to perform in or attend theater performances. SS Obergruppenführer (SS Lieutenant General) Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Central Office for Economy and Administration (WVHA), reports to Reichsführer SS Himmler that there are twenty major concentration camps with 165 subcamps for forced labor under the direct control of the WVHA. The Czech-Jewish prisoner Siegfried Lederer escapes from AuschwitzBirkenau with the help of a Romanian SS guard. He is able to reach Czechoslovakia and, with the help of the resistance movement, is smuggled back into Theresienstadt. However, he fails to convince Jewish leaders there about the consequences of their transfer to Auschwitz. Eight hundred thirty-five Jews from several camps in northern Italy are deported to Auschwitz. SS First Lieutenant Klaus Barbie, commander of the Lyon Gestapo, leads an early morning raid, liquidating the home for Jewish children at Izieu-Ain, a remote, isolated village in the hills above the Rhône River valley in France. Forty-one children, ages three to thirteen, three older children, and their seven adult guardians are jailed on April 7 at Fort Montluc in Lyon and then transferred to Drancy. One week later most are deported to AuschwitzBirkenau and a few to Tallinn (Estonia). Only one teacher survives. The SS raids Jewish hospices in Florence; twenty-one aged men and women patients are imprisoned for two months and then deported via Fossoli to Auschwitz. April 7 April 8 April 9 April 10 April 11 At a secret meeting, the Hungarian Minister of Interior informs attendees that all Jews are to be concentrated in ghettos, although the decree ordering the confinement is not published until April 26. Two Slovakian Jews, Walter Rosenberg (later known as Rudolf Vrba), then a prisoner-clerk in the quarantine block, and Alfred Wetzler, escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau. After a ten-day journey, they reach Slovakia. The detailed reports written by Vrba and Wetzler about the operations of Auschwitz-Birkenau are corroborated by two later escapees, Arnost Rosin, a Slovakian from Snina, and the Polish prisoner Czeslaw Mordowicz from Mlawa, both of whom escape on May 27. The Wetzler-Vrba reports are published in November 1944 by the War Refugee Board. A transport with 240 Jews from the transit camp at Westerbork in Holland The Bulgarian-registered SS Maritza arrives in Istanbul from Constanza Thirteen homosexual prisoners from the Buchenwald subcamp of Dora- Gurs is reactivated as an internment camp after being deserted for seven The Hungarian Ministry of Internal Affairs orders the deportation of Jews in The first transport of 1,725 prisoners evacuated from Majdanek arrives in A transport of 935 Italian Jews from Fossoli transit camp, Mantua, and Odessa, a seaport in the Ukraine, is liberated. Six hundred ninety-eight ill prisoners at Gusen concentration camp are sent A transport of twenty-five hundred Greek Jews from Athens arrives at The construction of compound BIII in Birkenau, dubbed "Mexiko" by the April 13 April 14 April 15 April 16 The seventy-first convoy, which carries fifteen hundred Jews, departs Drancy for Auschwitz, arriving there on April 16. The transport includes some of the children arrested at Izieu the week before. (See March 27 and April 6.) German troops kill 589 people, including two hundred children, after retaking the town of Staryi Krym in the Crimea, which was liberated earlier by partisans. First Allied air-reconnaissance photographs are taken of Auschwitz I, the town of Auschwitz (Oświęcim), the I.G. Farben factories, and the Auschwitz III complex (also known as Monowitz). The Draft Convention on the Trial and Punishment of War Criminals is issued. Mass arrests of Jews in France are ordered. Incentives include the payment of rewards to informers. SS Brigadier General Veesenmayer reports that Hungarian Prime Minister Sztójay promised that by the end of April at least 50,000 Hungarian Jews fit for work will be made available to the Germans, beginning with 5,000 Jews effective immediately and 5,000 more every three to four days until the number of 50,000 has been reached. An additional 50,000 Jews are to be made available in May, and the number of Jewish labor draftees inside Hungary is to be raised to 100,000 to 150,000. A transport of five hundred prisoners is sent from Stutthof concentration camp to Neuengamme concentration camp. Fifteen Jewish men from among the last thousand prisoners at Ponary killing center escape to Vilna; eleven of them survive and join Soviet partisans in the Rudniki forest. Four hundred seventy-three Roma and Sinti women prisoners are transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau BIIe (the Gypsy family camp) to Ravensbrück concentration camp; 884 male Roma and Sinti are sent from Auschwitz II to Buchenwald concentration camp. The final draft of the British Labour Party's International Post-War Settlement is approved and will be published later in the month. It includes a call for the swift punishment of war criminals and for the destruction of the German military and industrial hierarchies. A Hungarian decree requires Jews to declare all real estate and personal property with the exception of furniture, clothing, and household equipment. All funds in excess of 3,000 pengö per family member, as well as gold, platinum, jewelry, and precious stones, are confiscated; bank accounts are blocked. The roundup of 320,000 Jews in the military operational areas of Germanoccupied Hungary begins. In time seventeen ghettos are established in Ruthenia for 144,000 persons, while in Transylvania 97,000 persons are concentrated in seven ghettos. After deportation via Brest-Litovsk, 407 male and 445 female German and Polish Gypsies from Prussia and the Masurian region of East Prussia arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Three hundred Jews are arrested in Pristina, Yugoslavia. |