(Mirror.)
He remembered acquaintances of Jews sometimes bringing food to those arrested and sneaking it through cracks between the wooden planks that surrounded the ghetto. In the same breath, however, he also described the brutality of the police guarding the ghetto, who did all that they could to prevent the locals from feeding or otherwise helping the Jews.
Noting that the Jews were not permitted to exit the improvised camp, he spoke vividly of those who died, emphasizing the authorities’ lack of respect for the Jews, even after death, reflected in the way the bodies were simply thrown into a truck and hauled away.18
[…]
The bodies of thousands of Bessarabian Jews still lie today in those ditches every ten kilometres along the routes the convoys were forced to tread. The Jews who reached the Dnister crossing points arrived in terrible condition. A Jewish woman deported by train from Bukovyna testified of her encounter with a column of Bessarabian Jews at Otachi (Atachi):
They came on foot, we by train—it made a big difference. They were walking skeletons, dressed in rags, just shreds, and when they saw us […] they tried to leave the column and come toward us to ask for help.
The gendarmes would not permit it and told us that these people were covered in fleas and carrying typhus, which was true. Thus, they extended their hands toward us, and we shied away. […] Some among us, violating every rule and overcoming fear, approached the column and gave them something to eat. […] Meeting this group was horrible because we realized that we could become just like them.33
[…]
If state policy, antisemitic propaganda, the military chain of command, and widespread lack of humanity accounted for the terrible treatment of Jews by [Axis] civil and military authorities early on, an added and accelerating factor that led to many of the camps in Transnistria being transformed into mass killing sites was fear, specifically fear of disease, and most particularly, fear of typhus.
Significantly, while there is little evidence that [Reich] officials, who exercised certain administrative prerogatives that, in fact, infringed on Romanian authority in Transnistria, ever interfered in the formulation of Romanian food policy toward the Jews, they clearly shared the Romanian fear of typhus. They intervened directly to urge extreme action—liquidation of the Jews—in order to remove the danger of the disease spreading to the local population, and, even more importantly, to [Wehrmacht] units transiting the territory and operating east of the Buh.40
[…]
In a postwar testimony, Roza Schachter, a survivor at Mohyliv who came originally from Chernivtsi, also described the appalling deprivation and plight of the children in the Mohyliv orphanage:
The children picked through the garbage cans. […] I think you’ve seen it on film, often they show how children were, at Auschwitz, too, with legs like sticks, bloated bellies, faces drawn; these children were like walking mummies. Unclothed and naked, in winter too, and they were digging for potato peels and whatever else they could find in the garbage cans, even while assistance was coming from inside Romania, from different organizations, for these children.43
[…]
It is frequently asserted that among all of the groups that were persecuted as groups and deported to ghettos or camps by [the] Axis [countries], the treatment meted out to Roma most resembled the treatment of Jews. The similarities could not be more striking than when the issues of food supply, malnourishment, and starvation among deportees to Transnistria are considered. Excerpts from the reports written by [Axis] authorities illustrate this point.
In December 1942, an agent of the Romanian security police who spent two weeks on assignment in the Ochakiv (Oceakov) district of southeastern Transnistria, where many Roma deportees had been taken, reported:
While they were in the barracks at Oleksandrodar (Alexandrudar), the [Roma] were living in indescribable conditions. They were insufficiently fed. Those able to work got 400 grams of bread per day, children and old people got 200. They also got a bit of potato or salted fish, but in extremely small quantities. Due to malnutrition, some of the [Roma]—the majority—have lost so much weight that [they] have become mere skeletons.
Every day, especially recently, ten to fifteen die. They were full of parasites. They received no medical visits. […] They are naked. […] In general the [Roma’s] situation is terrible and almost unimaginable. From this misery many of them have become mere shadows and almost wild. This is due to poor living conditions and poor food, and the cold as well. Because of the hunger to which they are subjected, they have frightened the Ukrainians by stealing. […] (Achim, Documente 2: 24–29)50
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for events that happened today (March 1).
1891: Harald Öhquist, Axis collaborator, existed, which was pretty rude of him.
1899: Erich von dem Bach‐Zelewski, high‐ranking SS commander (in spite of his Polish heritage), was unfortunately born.
1905: Prince Wilhelm Ernst Alexis Hermann, Axis captain, burdened life with his presence.
1932: The Imperialists made Ma Zhanshan the State of Mancuria’s Minister of War, and they declared former Chinese Emperor Puyi its Chief Executive Datong.
1933: Karl Burk joined the SS organization and took the rank of SS‐Hauptscharführer as Tōkyō promoted Kichisaburo Nomura to the rank of admiral.
1934: Berlin promoted Werner Mölders to the rank of Lieutnant; he also transferred to the Luftwaffe. Likewise, the State of Manchuria became the Empire of Manchuria: as the Imperialists reformed it Department of Finance as the Finance Ministry, they named Xi Qia named its first minister, and Zhang Jinghui, already heading its Ministry of Defense since 1932, became the Minister of Defense.
1935: Saar officially became part of the Third Reich after the January 1935 plebiscite. Likewise, fleet escort ship F1 launched at the Krupp Germania Werft yard in Kiel.
1936: Berlin promoted Rudolf Höss to the rank of SS‐Hauptscharführer.
1937: Berlin promoted Hubert Lanz to the rank of Oberstleutnant and was made the Chief of Staff of IX Armeekorps, and Tōkyō named Hideki Tojo the chief of staff of Kenkichi Ueda (Japanese Kwantung Army in northeastern China). Crown Prince Yi Un became an instructor in the Japanese Army Academy and Korechika Anami became the head of the Personnel Bureau of the Army Ministry.
1938: Gabriele D’Annunzio, protofascist par excellence, died. Tōkyō promoted Korechika Anami to the rank of lieutenant general, and named Lieutenant General Kenzo Kitano the chief of staff of the Japanese Chosen Army in occupied Korea.
1939: Odero‐Terni‐Orlando laid down the keels of Maggiore Baracca and Alessandro Malaspina in Liguria and La Spezia, respectively. Meanwhile, an Imperial Japanese Army ammunition dump exploded at Hirakata, Osaka, killing ninety‐four.
1940: Berlin issued a formal war directive for Weserübung, the invasion of Norway and Denmark, and the Regio Esercito formed the Libyan 1st and 2nd Divisions. Budapest named Gusztáv Jány the commanding officer of Hungarian 2nd Army, and Berlin made Hartwig von Ludwiger the commanding officer of 83rd Infantry Regiment of 28th Infantry Division. Yankee Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles arrived in Berlin on a peace mission, and met with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on the first day of his visit.
1941: Heinrich Himmler paid his first visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp. During the visit, he ordered Commandant Rudolf Höss to expand the current camp to hold a total of 30,000 prisoners, expand the camp to Birkenau with capacity for 100,000 prisoners, supply 10,000 prisoners to work for the nearby I.G. Farben factory, and to expand the camp’s agricultural and industrial output. Rudolf Höss and his family hosted Heinrich Himmler for dinner during Himmler’s inspection of Auschwitz. As well, the Wehrmacht officially entered the Kingdom of Romania, and Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov signed the Tripartite Pact, which gave the Reich the option of invading Greece through the Kingdom of Bulgaria. (The Germanic Fascists promised Sofia territories lost to Yugoslavia and Greece after WW1.) Bread rations in Fascist Italy decreased by half in order to increase food export to the Third Reich, and the Axis lost Kufra to the Allies, with 282 Axis troops becoming captives.
1942: Construction for the Sobibór concentration camp in occupied Poland commenced as the Axis sank one Yankee passenger ship and five Netherlandish ships, but the Axis did lose its submarine U‐656 and all forty‐five crew aboard. Aside from that, the Fascists awarded Martti Aho the Mannerheim Cross medal, and Axis forces landed on Java, the main island of the Dutch East Indies, at Merak and Banten Bay (Banten), Eretan Wetan (Indramayu) and Kragan (Rembang). While at Faßberg, III./KG 4 transferred to the Luftwaffe XI. Fliegerkorps in preparation for a new assignment.
1943: The Wehrmacht began falling back from the Rzhev area in Russia, and axis cruiser Köln went out of service and would remain so for one year. On the other hand, Berlin appointed Heinz Guderian Inspector‐General of Armoured Troops.
1944: Thousands of Italian workers in northern Italy went on a strike, stopping production in some factories for a week. Because the Axis found that underground resistance movement organized the strike, the Fascists arrested as many as 2,000 strikers, deporting some out of the country. Apart from that, Axis aircraft dropped six bombs over the Vatican City, littering the Court of Saint Damaso with debris, and three Axis motor torpedo boats assaulted the Allied beachhead at Anzio, Italy before dawn, causing no damage and suffering no losses.
1945: Test pilot Lothar Sieber became the first pilot to launch a Ba 349 aircraft. The aircraft launched from the Lager Heuberg base near Stetten am kalten Markt. After fifty seconds of flight, the aircraft crashed about five miles from the launch site, killing Sieber. The cause was either one of four booster rockets failing to function, or a loose canopy that might have fatally injured Sieber. That aside, rail facilities at Neckarsulm experienced an Allied bombing raid, and the Axis lost its cities of München‐Gladback and Rheydt to the Allies, but Armeegruppe Mitte did recapture Lauban. The Axis’s 56th Panzer Corps and 34th Panzer Corps commenced Operation Gemse in the Silesian region of Germany (now Poland), surprising Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army. The Empire of Japan reorganized its 12th Air Fleet to contain one air group and one base force, and it formed its Navy 10th Air Fleet as a training unit with three carrier air groups with Vice Admiral Minoru Maeda in command and Rear Admiral Chikao Yamamoto as his chief of staff.