JUNE 12
1942
Anne Frank started her diary: For her thirteenth birthday on June 12, 1942, Frank received a book she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front, Anne decided she would use it as a diary, and she began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she listed many of the restrictions that were placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population. On July 5, the the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) ordered the family to report for relocation to a work camp. The next day the Frank family went into hiding. She continued writing regularly until August 1, 1944. The following is an entry dated April 5, 1944: ".....I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ... And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ...I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?........"
1944
John F. Kennedy awarded with medals. On June 12, Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest noncombat decoration for heroism, and the Purple Heart Medal. On the night of August 1–2, PT-109 was performing night patrols near New Georgia in the Solomon Islands accompanied by PT-162 and PT-169. Kennedy spotted a Japanese destroyer, the Amagiri nearby and commenced procedures to attack, but the PT-109 was suddenly rammed and the impact cut the destroyer in half, resulting in the deaths of two of his crew members. Kennedy and the ten remaining men swam to a small island three miles away rather than surrender. Despite an injury that Kennedy sustained in the collision, he towed a badly burned crewman through the water, and later to a second island, where they were eventually rescued. After the war, Kennedy felt that the medal he had received for heroism was not a combat award and asked that he be reconsidered for the Silver Star Medal for which he had been recommended initially.
1980
On this day in 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Stefan Korboński, as Righteous Among the Nations. Korbonski was a founding member of the Polish underground (Union of Armed Struggle, the ZWZ), and then the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). He was also part of the extensive network of the underground Polish Secret State, and leader of the Delegatura. The duties of his government included the coordination and organization of civilian resistance, information and propaganda. During his term at the office, Korboński expanded the responsibilities of the Directorate by including maintaining law and order, organizing underground civil courts, and coordinating and carrying out their verdicts by the National Security Corps. (The court passed death sentences against specific Nazi German officers, which were carried out by the Polish Underground in "Operation Heads") In September 1942 Korbonski became head of Directorate of Civil Resistance, and he informed the Polish Government in Exile, in London, that the Nazi Germans had began to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto of the Jewish prisoners for extermination. Stefan Korbonski authored several books about the history of the Polish underground (in Polish) and a book in English entitled, "The Jews and the Poles in World War II" New York : Hippocrene Books, 1989.
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