MARCH 27 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MARCH 27 

1933

A series of protest rallies were held in numerous American cities by Jews advocating for the boycott of German products. This was in response against the Nazi German's campaign of anti-semitic violence against German Jews and boycott of Jewish businesses. Over 55,000 Jews crowded inside Madison Square Garden in New York City, with the event being broadcast worldwide. Speakers included a US Senator, a Governor, Christian Clergymen, as well as leaders of Jewish organizations and synagogues. Rallies were also held at Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and 70 other locations.  The Anti Nazi Boycott lasted until America's entry into the war.

1939

Nazi Germany began an anti-Polish propaganda campaign against "oppression of Germans in German lands now controlled by Poles."  In German and Soviet war propaganda, Poles were mocked as inept for their military techniques in fighting the war. Nazi fake newsreels and forged pseudo-documentaries claimed that the Polish cavalry "bravely but futilely" charged German tanks in 1939, and that the Polish Air Force was wiped out on the ground on the opening day of the war. Neither story was true. It was complete fabrication by the Nazi propaganda machine. (see: Myths of the Polish September Campaign). German propaganda staged a fake Polish cavalry charge in their 1941 reel called "Geschwader Lützow". Even today, anti-Polish sentiment continues, but more frequently in derogatory stereotyping and defamation, rather than open discrimination.(Read about Polonophobia, anti-Polonism, antipolonism and anti-Polish sentiment.)

1942

The start of deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz.  Women and children were also targeted. The French police, under the control of the Nazi German authorities, carried out the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup   ( July 16 and 17, 1942) and arrested 13,000 Jews for deportation to German concentration camps. Tens of thousands had also been sent from French internment camps to the extermination camps in German occupied Poland, via Drancy. (PS:  For decades the French government declined to apologize for the role of French policemen in the roundup. On July 16, 1995, President Jacques Chirac, stated that it was time that France faced up to its past and he acknowledged the role that the state had played in the persecution of Jews and other victims of the German occupation.  According to Chirac, those responsible for the roundup were "4500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders [who] obeyed the demands of the Nazis." In 2012, President François Hollande acknowledged that the roundup was committed in "France by France". In July 2017, President Emmanuel Macron denounced France's participation in the Holocaust and the revisionism which followed in the attempt to deny France's guilt for the 1942 roundup and subsequent deportation of the Jews. "It was indeed France that organized this [roundup]", he said, French police collaborating with the Nazis. "Not a single German took part."

1945

The Germans fired their last V-2 rockets from their only remaining launch site in the Netherlands. Almost 200 civilians in England and Belgium were killed in this final attack. German scientists had been developing tests on a long-range missile since the 1930s. Their first successful trial launch was achieved on October 3, 1942, at Peenemunde research center, located off Germany's Baltic coast.  The Germans launched the V-2, a 12 ton rocket which had the capacity to carry a one ton warhead. On its first try it traveled 118 miles but had the potential to travel 200 miles. Germany's missile program was attributed to the genius of Wernher von Braun. The rockets designs comprised the V-1, a pulse jet-powered cruise missile, the V-2, a liquid fueled ballistic missile (often referred to as V1 and V2), and the V-3 cannon.  The V-2 was designed in such a way as to make it impossible to intercept. At point of launching the missile traveled a distance of six miles vertically, then gradually changed trajectory so that it assumed an arced course, and able to cut off its own fuel in accordance with the preferred range.  Then when it reached its target, the nose tipped over and the missile descended at a speed of about 4,000 miles per hour.  The missile hit the target with such force that it partially burrowed several feet into the ground, after which it exploded.  It was impossible for the allies to detect the V-2 because the launch pads used were portable.  Hitler used these weapons against France and the Netherlands, and many towns and cities in England as well as London ( the Blitz). The rockets killed approximately 18,000 people, mostly civilians, and destroyed buildings and streets to a pile of rubble.


U-722 was sunk in the North Atlantic near the Hebrides, Scotland in position 57°09′N 06°55′W, by depth charges from British frigates HMS Fitzroy, HMS Redmill and HMS Byron. All hands were lost.