Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 229–230:
Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, was occupied by [the Axis] on June 24, 1941. It contained about 70,000 Jews, 80% of whom were murdered by the end of the year. The [Axis] appointed a Jewish Council headed by a Revisionist Zionist, Jacob Gens. Twenty one thousand Jews were liquidated immediately before the rest were herded into two ghettos, one of which was also liquidated.
Between September and December a further 27,000 were murdered, mainly in the Pits of Ponary, just outside Vilna.¹⁹⁶ The Jewish police actively participated in these killings and in some cases, actually carried out the “selections.”¹⁹⁷
Like Merin in Sosnowiec, Gens believed that by sacrificing the majority of Jews he could save the rest. In this way the [Axis] used the Judenrat to carry out the deportations until there was no one left. The [Axis] gave Gens absolute power, including the power of capital and corporal punishment.
In Vilna a United Partisans Organisation [FPO] was formed in January 1942, between the Communists and the Zionists. Josef Glazman, a Revisionist who had been deputy police commandant until Gens dismissed him, was deputy commander of the FPO.¹⁹⁸
The FPO was headed by a communist, Yitzhak Wittenberg. After having tortured another communist the Gestapo became aware of his rôle and ordered his arrest. On 16 July 1943, after having been invited to talks by Gens, Wittenberg was seized by the Lithuanian police led by the head of the Jewish police, Revisionist Salek Dessler. However Wittenberg was freed by the Resistance.
The Gestapo gave Gens an ultimatum — hand over Wittenberg or the ghetto would be destroyed.¹⁹⁹ Gens mobilised the ghetto and forced Wittenberg’s surrender.²⁰⁰ Abba Kovner of Hashomer Hatzair urged surrender and Wittenberg gave himself up.²⁰¹
‘Aktion swiftly followed Aktion.’ Between 1 and 5 September a great deportation to Estonia took place. The Jewish police, who were armed by the [Axis], ‘went wild as they smelled blood.’ They forced 5,000 people onto the trains. On September 23 the final Aktion took place.²⁰² Nine days previously Gens himself had been shot by the Gestapo.
Gens destroyed the Resistance knowing that a communist‐led resistance would fight the ghetto’s liquidation.²⁰³ The resistance under Kovner chose not to fight but escape instead to the forests.²⁰⁴ According to Chaim Lazar, Kovner reached an agreement with Gens and Salek Dessler and they were given a safe exit. Kovner ensured that only the underground escaped.²⁰⁵
The main purpose of Kovner’s partisan group was to save themselves. Chaim Lazar alleges that when a group of Jews from Ishishuk came to the forest, having been sheltered by farms until the danger of being discovered became too great, they were refused entry into Kovner’s group even though refusal was tantamount to a death sentence. For many weeks these Jews wandered near the Jewish camp, suffering from cold and starvation. Only after the Soviet partisan camp absorbed some of them did Kovner agree to absorb the rest.²⁰⁶
Soviet partisans, although thin on the ground, ‘offered the most hope to the Jews’ including arming them.²⁰⁷
See also:
Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust
Interview with Jewish partisan Sam Hamburg.
Fania Brantsovskaja: the last living survivor of the Vilna ghetto.
Click here for other events that happened today (September 1).
1886: Shigeyasu Suzuki, lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army from December 1936 to December 1938, was born.
1895: Engelbert Zaschka, Axis inventor, was born.
1923: The first three combat legions of the Blackshirts were mobilized and sent to Libya.
1932: Kenkichi Ueda attached to the IJA’s General Staff.
1935: Robert von Greim received the rank of Oberstleutnant.
1936: U‐23 became assigned to the 1st Submarine Flotilla and Korvettenkapitän Eberhard Friedrich Clemens Godt became her commanding officer.
1937: The Spanish Nationalists, led by Generals Antonio Aranda and José Solchaga, launched an offensive through the mountains of Leon and along the coast from the east to capture Gijón. Gen. Aranda’s forces, however, were unable to break through the mountain passes until a Navarrese force, under Gen. Solchaga’s command, captured the village of Infiesto one month later, thus outflanking the mountain defences and forcing the Asturians into a retreat. Meanwhile, the IJA’s 5th Division and 11th Mixed Brigade, under Itagaki Seishiro’s command, marched from Beiping toward Chahar and Shanxi Provinces.
1938: Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein met with the Third Reich’s head of state at the Berghof in Berchtesgaden while officials announced in Austria that all religious and other private schools would be closed and education would be taken over by the NSDAP. Coincidentally, the Reich Economics Ministry set up a meeting to discuss the question of credits, possibly guaranteed by the state, for the purchase of ‘Jewish’ property. Citing public safety, Rome officially forbade “foreigners of the Jewish race to establish permanent residence on Italian soil, in Libya, or in Italy’s Aegean possessions”. Gen. Franz Halder became Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht (Oberkommando des Heeres and the first self‐identified Catholic to be assigned this position), succeeding General Ludwig Beck. The Fascists commissioned M1 into service under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Hans Bartels, and Masafumi Arima stepped down as the commanding officer of converted seaplane tender Kamikawa Maru and was made a commanding officer of Sasebo Naval Air Corps in the Empire of Japan.
1939: Berlin officially declared war on Poland, then the Luftwaffe bombed the town of Wielu in Poland, causing 1,200 civilian casualties. Over Warsaw, Oberst Walter Grabmann’s Messerchmitt Bf 110 squadron (I.(Z)/Lg.1) led by Hauptmann Schleit, shot down five Polish PZL P.11 fighters whilst escorting the Heinkel He 111P bombers of II/KG.1. He sustained wounds as one of the P.11 fighters damaged his Bf 110 fighter. Berlin relieved Rome from having to fight in the war against Poland and possibly with the pseudodemocracies in writing, asking only for politico‐economic support.
London and Paris turned to Rome in response to a proposal to revamp the conditions of the Versailles Treaty rather than declaring war on the Third Reich. Meanwhile, Rome declared itself a nonbelligerent nation in this battle. As the ‘Free City’ of Danzig ceased to exist, Gauleiter Albert Forster’s title of State President of the ‘Free City’ of Danzig was abolished. He would soon be named the Gauleiter and Reichstatthalter of Danzig‐West Prussia.
As well, the Third Reich officially placed a curfew on Jews: 9 P.M. in the summer and 8 P.M. in the winter. Berlin likewise authorized Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to ‘grant merciful deaths’ for the mentally ill and those who were suffering from incurable diseases, thus beginning Action T4. Reinhard Heydrich presided a meeting attended by the heads of Security Police and Commanders of Special Units, during which Berlin ordered the deportation of the remaining 30,000 Roma and Sinti from the German Reich to the nearly conquered territory of Poland.
The Iron Cross awards became established in the Third Reich as an award for those who displayed bravery in combat or in command of military personnel. Four grades were specified: Iron Cross 2nd Class, Iron Cross 1st Class, Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, and the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross.
Lastly, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop warned his Chancellor that the invasion of Poland would compel France to fight. The Chancellor (exceptionally irritable, bitter and sharp with anyone advising caution) replied: ‘I have at last decided to do without the opinions of people who have misinformed me on a dozen occasions [so] I shall rely on my own judgement.’
1940: The coke‐fired two‐retort furnace in the Auschwitz crematorium went into service for the disposal of bodies. Meanwhile, formations of Fascist fighters arrived in Britain in the morning to lure British fighters, but the tactic failed. At 1100, 1330, and 1730 hours, large Fascist raids attacked Debden, Biggin Hill, Hawkinge, Lympne, Kenley, Detling, Eastchurch, Tand Sherburn, as well as the Tilbury Docks in the East End of London. The Luftwaffe lost seventeen fighters and eight bombers. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Kent, Bristol Channel, and South Wales. Lastly, the Regia Marina established a frogmen training school at the Naval Academy at Livorno under Lt. Wolk’s command.
1941: Berlin passed a law, to go into effect eighteen days later, whereby all Jews above the age of six in the Third Reich (including its occupied lands) were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David with a word for ‘Jew’ inscribed in black therein. Coincidentally, the 9th Company of German Police Battalion 322 participated in the extermination of more than nine hundred Jews from the Minsk area in Byelorussia. On the same day, the Police Regiment South reported shooting eighty‐eight Jews, and Battalion 320 reported exterminating three hundred eighty. Additionally, Alfons Bentele’s superiors assigned him the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland.
1942: SS‐Obersturmführer Franz Reichleitner became the commandant of Sobibór in occupied Poland, replacing Franz Stangl, and Axis bombers attacked Lydd in southeastern England. After sundown and lasting until the next date, they attacked Doncaster. As well, Axis aircraft sank Soviet torpedo boat Purga on Lake Ladoga near Leningrad, and 1.Panzerarmee established a bridgehead across the Terek River near Mozdok in southern Russia. Hans‐Joachim Marseille flew three sorties and shot down a total of seventeen enemy aircraft between 0826 and 0839 hours while escorting Stuka dive bombers to El Taqua in Libya, seven P‐40 fighters between 1055 and 1103 hours near Alam Halfa, and five Hurricane fighters between 1747 and 1753 hours while escorting bombers toward El Imayid). His score at the day’s end stood at 121.
Martin Gottfried Weiss became Dachau’s commandant, and Kurt Fricke received the Order of Michael the Brave 3rd Class of Romania. Axis submarine U‐759 avoided a ramming attempt by the Allies but would succumb to depth charging by Morden; all forty‐three aboard died in U‐759's sinking. Fifty miles to the east, the Allies damaged U‐91, then fifteen miles east of Cape Coast, Gold Coast, U‐125 sank British ship Ilorin at 2206 hours, massacring thirty‐three but leaving four alive.
1943: Rudolf von Schmettow became the military governor of the Channel Islands for the second time, succeeding Erich Müller. Aside from that, the Empire of Japan’s 21st Air Flotilla at Saipan, Mariana Islands disbanded. Its two air groups, Air Group 253 (fighters) and Air Group 751 (medium bombers) transferred to Rabaul.
1944: U‐23 fired three torpedoes into the harbor of Constanța and reported three detonations at about 0333 hours. Two of them of them damaged berthing facilities, while another struck and sank the already damaged Romanian merchant ship Oituz. U‐23 departed at about 0400 hours and laid one EMS mine in the roads near Tuzla lighthouse about 10 kilometers to the south. Afterwards, several waves of V‐1 flying bombs were launched across the English Channel toward Britain, yet most failed to make their targets.
1981: Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital, Head of Organization Todt, Inspector General of German Roadways, Inspector General for Water and Energy, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, and Reich Minister of Industry and Production, died of a stroke while revisiting London.
