[size=4]July 2, 1944[/size=4]

American bombers deluge Budapest-in more ways than one

On this day in 1944, as part of Operation Gardening, the British and American strategy to lay mines in the Danube River by dropping them from the air, American aircraft also drop bombs and leaflets on NaziGerman-occupied Budapest.

Hungarian oil refineries and storage tanks, important to the NaziGerman war machine, were destroyed by the American air raid. Along with this fire from the sky, leaflets threatening "punishment" for those responsible for the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz were also dropped on Budapest.

The U.S. government wanted the SS and Hitler to know it was watching. Admiral Miklas Horthy, regent and virtual dictator of Hungary, vehemently anticommunist and afraid of Russian domination, had aligned his country with Hitler, despite the fact that he little admired him. But he, too, demanded that the deportations cease, especially since special pleas had begun pouring in from around the world upon the testimonies of four escaped Auschwitz prisoners about the atrocities there.

Hitler, fearing a Hungarian rebellion, stopped the deportations on July 8. Horthy would eventually try to extricate himself from the war altogether-only to be kidnapped by Hitler's agents and consequently forced to abdicate.

One day after the deportations stopped, a Swedish businessman, Raoul Wallenberg, having convinced the Swedish Foreign Ministry to send him to the Hungarian capital on a diplomatic passport, arrived in Budapest with 630 visas for Hungarian Jews, prepared to take them to Sweden to save them from further deportations.

Eric The(Historical)Hun[>]:)]

Wow, I didn't know that anyone escaped from Auschwitz.

Live and learn.

Yes, it is amazing that anyone could escape Auschwitz!

But remember the death camp at Sobibor?

on October 14th, 1943, it became the site of an amazing act of defiance, as 365 prisoners staged a revolt against the guard, leading to the escape and survival of 47 people.

Sobibor was unique as both the only camp to experience an [u]organized[/u] insurrection, and the only death camp at which SS guards were killed by their Jewish prisoners.

Good news, eh?

Eric The(Historical)Hun[>]:)]

Do you know how Raoul Wallenberg was treated by our noble friends and allies, the Russians?

On January 13, 1945, an advancing Soviet troop saw a man standing and waiting for them in front of a house with a large Swedish flag above the door. In fluent Russian, Raoul Wallenberg explained to a surprised Russian sergeant that he was Swedish chargé d'affaires for the Russian-liberated parts of Hungary. Wallenberg requested, and was given permission to visit the Soviet military headquarters in the city of Debrecen east of Budapest.

On his way out of the capital on January 17th—with Russian escort—Wallenberg and his driver stopped at the “Swedish houses” to say good-bye to his friends. To one of his colleagues, Dr. Ernö Petö, Wallenberg said that he wasn't sure if he was going to be the Russian's guest or their prisoner. Raoul Wallenberg thought he'd be back within eight days--but he has been missing since then.

In November 2000, Alexander Yakovlev, the head of a presidential commission investigating Wallenberg's fate, announced that the diplomat had been executed in 1947 in the KGB's Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.

The Russians released another statement in December admitting that Wallenberg was wrongfully arrested on espionage charges in 1945 and held in a Soviet prison for 2½ years until he died.

The report did unearth evidence that the reason the Soviets arrested Wallenberg was the suspicion that he was a spy for the United States (Washington Post, January 12, 2001).

In 1939 the Jewish population of Ukraine was 1.5 million (1,532,776) or 3% of the total population of Ukraine. When the War started on June 22, 1941 the Soviet Government first of all ordered the execution of all 19,000 Ukrainian political prisoners in western Ukraine (750,000 had already been killed or exiled to Siberia) and then the evacuation of 3.5 million key personnel to the east, to Russia. These evacuees included many Jews who were highly educated, and were scientists, skilled workers, Communist bureacrats, and NKVD secret police. The total evacuated was estimated to be about one-half to two-thirds of the total Jewish population of Ukraine (Reitlinger p. 251).

As the German Army swept east across Ukraine it included German Einsatzgruppen with 500 to 1,000 men which were special mobile killing squads ordered to carry out "The Final Solution" of killing all Jews. Ukraine had been the major part of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire and in the 19th century probably had the most Jews of any country in the world. Within a few days of capturing Ukrainian cities like Lutsk, Zhitomir and Berdichev in the Summer of 1941 thousands of Jews were killed. A total of 600,000 Ukrainian Jews perished. Most of these executions were carried out by the SS Standartfuehrer Paul Blobel who was the officer of the Sonderkommando 4A, Einsatzgruppe C. Only German personnel, no Ukrainians, were members of the Einsatzgruppe C and D which were assigned to Ukraine.

Blobel commanded the killing of the Ukrainian Jews of Kiev at Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) on September 29-30, 1941. Blobel's unit killed 33,771 Jews in less than two days which was not equaled in Auschwitz or any other death camp. Babyn Yar was commemorated on its 50th Anniversary in 1991 by the Government of Ukraine which has also built two monuments for the victims of Babyn Yar. [b]Blobel was tried at Nuremberg and hanged on June 8, 1951 in Landsberg Prison in Bavaria, Germany.[/b]

Eric The(Historical)Hun[>]:)]

Well, this is one of the few times I've ever disagreed with Eric, but Sobibor was NOT the only revolt by death camp inmates.  The 600 members of Treblinka's sonderkommando (work squads) revolted on August 2, 1943, killed most of the SS, burned the camp to the ground, and fled to the forests.  Of that number, only 40 survived the war.

There is also evidence that there were revolts at some of the small camps in Lithuania and Latvia, but wwe can't be sure, because none of the resisters survived the war and the Nazis destroyed all records of the camps.  Only testimony from people who lived in the area was available to report that the camps even existed.

Sorry, [b]shamayim[/b], but I had never heard of the revolt at the Treblinka camp.

Now, insofar as the revolts at some of the Baltic death camps were concerned, that's why I put the word 'organized' in my statement, as it appears that most of those revolts were spontaneous, unorganized revolts!

I will research the Treblinka revolt for my further education on the history of the greatest failure of humanity that has ever occurred on this planet.

If there was ever such a thing as a [b][i]Götterdämmerung[/i][/b], or 'Twilight of the Gods', it surely must have occurred during that late, lamentable period in German history known as the Third Reich!

Eric The(Saddened)Hun[>]:)]

                                     [i]"If there was ever such a thing as a GštterdŠmmerung, or 'Twilight of the Gods', it surely must have occurred during that late,
                                     lamentable period in German history known as the Third Reich!" Eric The Hun[/i]

Dont worry the rise of the 4th Reich aka The Third Way aka NWO via the Euro Union and UN is near...and at least our prez GW is trying to keep them at arms length for now. imo of course

Good book:
Treblinka by Jean-Francois Steiner, about a thousand revolted, 600 escaped and 40 survived through the following year.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center says 750 escaped and 70 survived. 870,000 died at Treblinka.