OCTOBER 29 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

OCTOBER 29

1941

Kovno Pogrom:   The Germans launched what became known as the "Great Action." In a single day, they murdered about 10,000 Jews at the Ninth Fort, which were the remainder of Jews of the Kovno Ghetto. About 500 Jews (part of the Kovno Ghetto underground, named the General Jewish Fighting Organization, managed to escape and joined Soviet partisan forces in the distant forests of southeast Lithuania and Belarus. (On October 4, 1941, the Germans and Lithuanians destroyed the Kovno ghetto and killed many of its inmates at the Ninth Fort.  (From 1942 births were not permitted in the ghetto and women who were discovered to be pregnant faced certain death.  However a number of babies ranging in age from about 9 months to 15 months were smuggled out of the Kovno Ghetto and bestowed  to willing Lithuanian foster mothers.)


Churchill's Famous "Never Give In"  Speech to Harrow School on October 29, 1941. The following is an excerpt "……...when I was here last time we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today.......Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy........Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.......Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.  (nb. Harrow School is an independent boarding school in Harrow, England which was founded in 1572 by John Lyon under a Royal Charter of Elizabeth I.  Winston Churchill attended that school in his youth. Though he didn't particularly enjoy his school days, he was brilliant at memorization. He entered a competition and won a school prize for reciting from memory 1,200 lines from Macaulay’s long poem, Lays of Ancient Rome. This aptitude of oratory served him very well when he entered politics.)

1944

1st Polish Armoured Division liberated Breda, Netherlands.  The Polish forces were successfully led by famous Polish General Stanislaw Maczek, who planned, and out-maneouvred the German forces. There were no civilian casualties.  Throughout the winter of 1944-1045,  the Polish Division were stationed on the south bank of the river Rhine, guarding a sector around Moerdijk, Netherlands. In early 1945,  the Polish forces were transferred to the province of Overijssel and began to advance with the Allies along the Dutch-German border, liberating the eastern parts of the provinces of Drenthe and Groningen including the towns of Emmen, Coevorden and Stadskanaal.

1945

German Forces Failed to Capture Tula:   The Second Panzer Army initially advanced towards Tula with little difficulty because the Mozhaisk defense line did not extend far enough south, and did threaten to block the German advance.   However the German forces eventually slowed down due to bad weather, fuel problems, and damaged roads and bridges. Guderian did not reach the outskirts of Tula until October 26. The German plan initially called for the rapid capture of Tula, followed by a pincer move around Moscow.  But the first attack was repelled by the 50th Army and Soviet civilian volunteers on October, 29.  Finally on October 31, the German Army high command ordered a halt to all offensive operations until they could resolve the overwhelming severe logistical problems, and when the rasputitsa subsided. (The rasputitsa refers to the season in Russia, when unpaved roads become muddy and impossible to navigate.) Tula is located about  193 kilometers (120 mi) south of Moscow.