Day 14: A Treaty is a Treaty is a Treaty?
1939 August 23rd. Ribbentrop and Molotov, respective Foreign Ministers for Germany and Russia, sign the ‘Treaty of Nonaggression’.
This treaty was designed to engage the Territorial demands of Stalin while Hitler prepared to launch an attack on an unsuspecting Poland. Not only that, but Hitler had in mind to make all preparations in readiness for a confrontation with Britain and France. Finally, when Victory in the West had been secured, and he had safely manoeuvred his way through Scandinavia, Hitler would turn his attentions to the major territorial prize, Russia! The World could not have expected anything less if they had managed to claw their way through his missal, his right of passage of Mein Kampf – My Struggle!
1941 August 23rd. 7,523 of Panevezys’s Jewish Men, Women and Their Children are murdered as 17,000 of Lutsk’s Jews are trudged to where they are finally murdered at Polanka Hill. This Lutsk aktion is conducted over a 4 day period. On the War front General von Paulus launches his attack on Stalingrad.
1943 August 23rd. after a week long aktion, 26,000 of Bialystok’s Jews are murdered in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Hitler suffers a reverse of fortunes in Russia when a counter stroke by the Russians mean they retake Kharkov.
Part of that Military victory is tinged with a great deal of sadness as to the pertinent fact in this whole sorry saga that some 14,000 Jews of Kharkov, Men, Women and Their Children were murdered, and this becomes apparent too late for 14,000 Human beings. I tend to labour certain aspects of this tragedy. When it comes down to any critical analysis of the statistical return we tend to argue over, it is more important that we emphasise the fact that hidden amongst the numbers are People. That they are Jewish People, whose very lives have been extinguished in the most senseless, horrible and systematic manner, has no bearing upon my involvement except in knowing what happened to them is WRONG.
My own life has been touched by an inordinate amount of grief, but I cannot begin to imagine the horror facing a Family whose entire existence is on the edge of an open abyss and that abyss is already filled with Bodies? Add to that the trauma of life aboard a Train, locked into Cattle Cars, no form of sanitation! Heat! Children crying! Dying! What can one’s own life experience, let alone tragedy, comprehend?
1944 August 23rd. the Allied forces nearing Drancy come across the Camp, which is finally liberated. Elsewhere, while Romania surrenders to the advancing Russians, Eichmann moves swiftly to deport all of Romanian Jewry.
“..By resettling ..Jews out of ..European economic area to a yet to be determined territory. In ..framework of this ..5,800,000 Jews will be affected.” Adolf Eichmann.
Romania, where some 469,632 Jews will be murdered is a point in question when we seek to discover the True cost of The Tragedy! Statistics exists which show a Pre-existent Jewish population within Romania of between 650,000 and 850,000 Jews. If that isn’t ambiguous enough, the range for those Romanian Jews Murdered varies even more starkly. For between a low estimate of 204,000 Romanian Jews Murdered there is a massive divergence rising to some 469,632 Romanian Jewish Men, Women and Their Children Murdered, or euphemistically termed ‘resettled’. All of this is without delving into that particular void that percentages of those lost against such pre-existing, somewhat unreliable figures, are even entered into? But be mindful of the Fact, 6,000,000 Jews of Europe have disappeared from the Face of Europe and that causal effect has its ramification written into the detailed fabric of The Holocaust!
A Book a Day, or so of suggested reading!
16. Nieuwsman, Milton. J Survivng Auschwitz.
