MARCH 7 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MARCH 7

1936

Germany Remilitarization:  Hitler sent German military troops into the Rhineland, violating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact. The Rhineland was designated by the Treaty as a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. Two years later, Nazi Germany invaded its territories and annexed Austria and portions of Czechoslovakia. Then on September 1, 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, starting World War Two.

1944

Emanuel Ringelblum, 43, was executed on this day by the Gestapo.  He was a Polish-Jewish historian and social worker.  Ringelblum and his family had been arrested and confined in the Warsaw Ghetto. But unbeknownst to the other inmates, he led a secret operation, code-named Oyneg Shabbos (Yiddish for "Sabbath delight"). In his association with many other inmates, comprising Jewish writers, scientists and ordinary people, he devoted his days to collecting information such as diaries, documents, commissioned papers, and even preserved the posters and decrees that comprised the memory of the doomed Ghetto. And at night he wrote notes. Among approximately 25,000 sheets preserved there are also detailed descriptions of destruction of ghettos in other parts of occupied Poland, the Treblinka extermination camp, Chełmno extermination camp and a number of reports made by scientists conducting research on the effects of famine in the ghettos. Ringelblum was also one of the most active members of Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna (Polish for Jewish Social Aid), an organization established to help the starving people of the Warsaw Ghetto. On the eve of the Ghetto's destruction in the spring of 1943, when all seemed lost, the archive was placed in three milk cans and metal boxes. Parts were buried in the cellars of Warsaw buildings.  On the night before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Ringelblum and his family escaped from the Ghetto and found refuge on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw, but their whereabouts were quickly discovered by the Gestapo. (they had been hiding at the pre-war address of 81 Grójecka Street)  Ringelblum and his family were arrested and executed in Pawiak Prison, along with the Polish people who had provided them with shelter.

1945

German submarine U-1302 was depth charged and sunk in St. George's Channel ( position 52°19′N 05°23′W ) by depth charges from the Canadian frigates HMCS La Hulloise, Strathadam, and Thetford Mines.