JANUARY 24 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JANUARY 24

1934

Jews were banned from the German Labor Front. After Hitler's rise to power, the National Socialist trade union organization which replaced the various independent trade unions of the Weimar Republic. Many of the labor union leaders were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps, and the money in union coffers, which were the workers money, was confiscated by the Nazi party. Membership to the German Labor Front was mandatory, and even a patriotic duty. Jews were excluded.

1939

Hermann Goring was instructed to set up an organization in Germany similar to the Zentralstelle in Austria. The German office was called the Reichzentralstelle fuer Juedische Auswanderung, Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, to organize and supervise the forced expulsion of Jews from Germany, that is, deportation to concentration camps.


SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was ordered by Hermann Göring to speed up the "emigration "of Jews. Heydrich was second in importance to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization and the principle planner of the Final Solution. Goring was one of the most powerful leaders of the Nazi Party and was the C-C of the Luftwaffe, as well as having created the Gestapo.

1944

President Roosevelt issued a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity." In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi persecution, President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board.  Josiah E. DuBois, Jr, Treasury Dept. lawyer of the WRB, found evidence that the U.S. State Department had actively suppressed information about the murder of the Jews from reaching the United States public. To add to the turpitude, in July 1943, the US Treasury had given permission to the World Jewish Congress to send money to Switzerland, but prevented them from doing so for a period of six months. The War Refuge Board was the only major effort undertaken by the US government and had been credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi-occupied countries.  (Editors note:  The efforts of the WRB however heroic, were been tainted by subterfuge at the highest level of government, and an inexcusable degree of bureaucratic red tape.)

1945

The Battle of Poznań began for the German-occupied stronghold city of Poznań in Poland. It was a massive assault by the Soviet Union's Red Army that had as its objective the elimination of the Nazi German garrison in the stronghold city of Poznań in occupied Poland. The defeat of the German garrison required almost an entire month of painstaking reduction of fortified positions, intense urban combat, and a final assault on the city's citadel by the Red Army.

1982

In his weekly noon blessing in St. Peters Square, Pope John Paul II prayed for an end to martial law in Poland and asked the Catholic faithful to "pray for my fatherland". He read from the pastoral letter which was delivered to Polish churches that ''I want to assure my fellow nationals that their wishes are mine as well.'

1993

Polish ferry boat John Heweliusz sank, 52 killed. The ferry capsized and sank in 27 metres of water off Cape Arcona on the coast of Rügen in the Baltic Sea while sailing toward Ystad. Ten bodies were never found. 9 people were rescued. The sinking of Jan Heweliusz is the most deadly peacetime maritime disaster involving a Polish ship.