AUGUST 27 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

AUGUST 27

1914

The Austrian government gave its official approval for the re-organization of the First Cadre Company (which had been established by Josef Pilsudski on August 3, 1914), and thereafter named the Polish Legions.  On August 6, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on the Russian Empire.  On the same day, the First Cadre set out for the Austro-Hungarian - Russian border and crossed into Tsarist Poland.  In full battalion strength, the First Cadre captured Kielce alongside the Second Company, led by Stanisław Tessaro (pl), and the Third Company, led by Wacław Scaevola-Wieczorkiewicz.  The objective of the First Cadre was to break through Russian lines, continue north, and capture Warsaw. They hoped to set off an uprising in Tsarist Poland against the Russian regime, but the Russians checked the First Cadre just outside Kielce on August 13 resulting in the Cadre's retreat.

1941

The Hungarian Army rounded up Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk.  The city is now located in the western Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. During WW2 it was occupied by German forces during the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.  On August 27 and 28, detachments of Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and troops under the command of the Higher SS and Police Leader for the southern region, SS General Friedrich Jeckeln, carried out mass killings of the Jewish deportees as well as the local Jewish population. A total of 23,600 Jews were massacred.

1942

During the last 15 days in August, 53,750 Warsaw Jews were deported to Treblinka.  Treblinka was a Nazi-German death camp located in a forest north-east of Warsaw. The camp was managed by the Nazi SS and the Trawnikis, also called Hiwi guards, who were the Soviet POWs, enlisted from camps to assist the Germans. Treblinka was composed of two camps; Treblinka I, which was a forced labor camp whose inmates worked the gravel pit or cutting trees in the forest: the other was Treblinka II, the death camp.  The Germans forced a small number of Jewish men to become the Sonderkommandos, slave-labour teams who were forced to bury the victims bodies in mass graves after they had been gassed to death.  In 1943, these bodies were exhumed and cremated on large open-air pyres along with the bodies of new victims.

1947

The I.G. Farben Trial was the sixth  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 August 27, 1947 to July 30, 1948. The accused had all been directors of IG Farben, a German conglomerate of chemical companies.  During World War II, the company Degesch (42.5 per cent  of which was owned by IG Farben) held the trademark of Zyklon B, the poison gas used by the Nazi Germans to exterminate Jews.  The charges included slave labor and plundering.  Of the 24 defendants, 13 were found guilty on one or the other counts, and sentenced to prison terms ranging from one and one half to eight years, including time already served; ten defendants were acquitted of all charges. Max Brüggemann (Farben's chief legal advisor) was excused from the trial and his case discontinued on September 9, 1947 due to medical reasons.