1943 | Human Rights, Social Justice
Human Rights, Social Justice
Distraught wives of Berlin Jews gather in Rosenstrasse (Rose Street) February 28 and succeed in blocking the deportation of their husbands to Nazi death camps. An estimated 27,000 Jews are married to non-Jewish women, and they have been given jobs in the armaments industry while other Jews were sent to their deaths. The crowd of women protesting the deportation grows to 1,000. "Give us back our men," they shout. "We want to see our men." Nearly 90 soldiers move in March 8, set up machine guns, and order the women to disperse, but they hold fast. Hitler's right-hand man Joseph Goebbels is forced in the end to order the release of 1,500 men, including 25 who have just been tattooed with numbers for Auschwitz.
Italian women observe the 33rd International Women's Day March 8 by demonstrating against the Fascist Mussolini government that has sent their sons to die in battle.
German troops destroy the Kraków ghetto March 13, ending the community that has existed for 600 years (see 1942). Nazi occupation authorities have received orders to move the ghetto's occupants to the forced-labor camp of Plaszow outside the city. Hundreds of Kraków's Jews die in the camp or are removed 60 kilometers away to Auschwitz (Oswiecim), but workers employed by Oskar Schindler continue to work in his factory making enamelware appliances for use in Wehrmacht barracks, returning to Plaszow at night. Schindler tries to help Plaszow's starving inmates by having them put to work in war production, and in August he receives a visit from two employees of the Joint Distribution Committee requesting information about anti-Semitic persecutions (see 1945).
All Dutch gypsies (Roma) are ordered deported to Auschwitz under a decree issued March 29 (see 1942).
The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto that begins Passover Eve, April 18, ends 6 weeks later after 5,000 Jews have been killed defending themselves against German tanks and artillery (see 1940); 5,000 German troops have been killed or wounded. Some 500,000 Jews had been locked into an area that formerly accommodated half that number, and while thousands have escaped to join the Polish resistance, some 20,000 are deported to death camps such as Auschwitz (Oswiecim), Birkenau, Belzec, Chmelno, Maidenek, and Sobibor. Jews at Bialystock, Tarnow, and other Polish cities offer resistance, but few will survive the genocidal Nazi persecution.
Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels announces June 19 that Berlin is now "free of Jews."
Some 37,000 Italian Jews come under Nazi rule September 16; many escape to Switzerland and thousands find refuge in Catholic homes.
The SS in Denmark begins rounding up Danish Jews October 1, having left them untouched since 1940. Gen. Werner Best reports to Berlin October 4 that Denmark has been "de-Jewed," but the German commander in Denmark has flown to Sweden to arrange for safe passage of Jews to that country, he has alerted Denmark's Jewish community, and Danes have helped all but a handful of their 7,220 Jewish compatriots escape to safety in Sweden.
The plan for the "extermination of the Jews" is well advanced, says SS führer Heinrich Himmler October 4 in a speech to his Gruppenführer (lieutenant generals), despite pleas to spare this or that "exceptional" Jew. The Nazi elite force will not be deflected from their objective, Himmler declares, and while he says "we will never speak of it" in public, the destruction of the Jews will remain forever "an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory." Himmler appoints physician Josef Mengele, 32, chief physician to the Birkenau extermination camp near Auschwitz, where he and his staff will select incoming Jews for work detail or extermination (he will also conduct so-called medical experiments on inmates).
Soviet prisoners of war and Jews at the Sobibor labor camp rise up October 14, killing perhaps a dozen SS men and more than a dozen Ukrainian guards. The prisoners were deported to the camp in September along with 2,000 Jews from Minsk; 400 of the 600 Jews remaining in the camp escape, 200 are shot or blown up by minefields in the attempt, 100 are subsequently captured and killed, others join Soviet partisan units, but only 30 will survive the war.
German police seize 1,000 Jews at Rome October 16 and deport them to Auschwitz; by mid-November, 8,360 Italian Jews have been sent to Auschwitz, where 7,749 will perish. An extermination program (code name: "Operation Harvest Festival") launched in November at Maidanek and other concentration camps in Poland ends with the massacre of more than 80,000 Jewish men, women, and children; the SS tries to cover up all traces of the mass annihilation (see 1944).
The U.S. Supreme Court upholds last year's Executive Order 9066 in a unanimous decision handed down June 21 in a case involving a 24-year-old Seattle-born man who defied the order to report to a relocation center (Kiyushi Hirabayashi v. United States). A questionnaire given to the Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps asks those who are not U.S. citizens whether they will agree to renounce allegiance to the emperor, whether they intend to return to Japan after the war, whether they speak fluent Japanese, etc. The Japanese-American Citizens' League (JACL) urges all internees to answer the questions, but if someone renounces his or her Japanese citizenship he becomes stateless, many refuse to fill out the questionnaire, there are widespread protests, and "trouble makers" are relocated to California's Tule Lake camp, where conditions are even more punishing than those at the other camps (see 1989).
Federal troops quell a Detroit race riot June 22 after 34 have died in 2 days of disturbances that have involved thousands.
A Harlem race riot August 1 and 2 leaves five people dead and at least 400 injured. A black ghetto since at least 1920, Harlem has a population of nearly 400,000, unemployment is higher there than elsewhere in New York City, and the war has exacerbated social problems that existed there before the war. Mayor La Guardia calls for reinforcements; the mayor assigns black policemen to the area and deputizes 1,500 civilian volunteers, most of them black, to patrol the streets; hundreds are booked for violence and vandalism, the hospitals are jammed with injured rioters, and the mayor has the armories opened to hold the rising number of prisoners (along with the food and clothing that they have looted); 6,000 policemen, 800 air raid wardens, and the civilian volunteers keep order, and the blackout in the area is suspended for a week to help the police (fires from vandalized stores have made it the brightest spot in the city anyway). Property damage is estimated at $5 million, and Harlem is ruled by martial law for a few days, with a curfew imposed, liquor sales banned, and traffic cleared from many areas. The mayor wins praise for his handling of the situation but comes in for criticism because he has consistently minimized crime and delinquency.