JULY 8 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JULY 8

1947

The Hostages Trial was the seventh of 12 trials of the United States Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (not to be confused with the Nuremberg Trials). It was also called the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials". The trial was held from July 8, 1947 to February 19, 1948. This case was also referred to as the "Southeast Case" because the defendants were Nazi German generals who commanded their troops in south-eastern Europe during the Balkans Campaign ( in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia). The accused were charged for taking civilians as hostages, the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians and "partisans", the plundering and destruction of villages, torture of prisoners and their deportation to concentration camps. Of the 12 defendants indicted, Franz Böhme committed suicide before the arraignment, Maximilian von Weichs was excused from the trial due to alleged medical reasons. Of the remainder two were acquitted and the rest of them received sentences ranging from seven years to lifetime imprisonment. 

1980

The first strike in Poland started on July 8, 1980 in the State Aviation Works in Świdnik. Though they lacked any coordinating center, the workers were still able to spread their news through an information network.  The Workers Defence Committee, (a dissident group set up in 1976 to provide aid to victimized workers) attracted the support of many small groups of workers from industrial centers.  At the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, the firing of Anna Walentynowicz, a popular crane operator and activist, galvanized the enraged workers to take action.

1997

NATO invited Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic to join. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana extended the official invitation following a three-hour meeting where NATO chiefs debated how far and how fast to expand the organization..  "The day when Poland is invited to negotiations on NATO membership has a chance of going down in history as the end of the Yalta order in Europe," PAP news agency quoted Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz as saying.