OCTOBER 18 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

OCTOBER 18

1672

Poland & Turkey sign Peace of Buczacz:    On October 18, 1672, representatives of the Polish Commonwealth were forced to sign the Peace of Buczacz with the forces of the Ottoman Empire. As a result Poland had to cede part of the Ukraine ( the right-bank Braclaw Voivodeship, the Podole Voivodeship and part of the Kiev Voivodeship) as well as pay an annual tribute of 22,000 ducates.   When the Ottoman forces, numbering 80,000 men, led by Ahmed and Mehmed IV, invaded Polish Ukraine in August, they captured the Commonwealth fortress at Kamieniec Podolski and besieged the city of Lwów. The Polish Commonwealth was not prepared for war due to internal political strife by King Michael I, the szlachta nobility and the Sejm. At issue was the inability of the Sejm to raise taxes in order to gather a larger army. This instability lay the groundwork for a greatly weakened Commonwealth.

1815

Free City of Krakow was proclaimed on this day:  The Free City of Krakow was a city republic established by the Congress of Vienna, on October 18, 1815, and included the city of Kraków and its surrounding areas. It was under the control of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, hence the area became a hotbed of agitation against foreign occupation, and a struggle for an independent Poland. In 1846, in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Kraków Uprising, it was annexed by the Austrian Empire. It was a remnant of the Duchy of Warsaw, which was partitioned between the three states in 1815.  It was an overwhelmingly Polish-speaking city-state, in which 85% of the population were Catholics, 14% were Jews while other religions constituted less than 1%.  (However the city itself had a Jewish population of almost 40%, while the rest were almost exclusively Polish-speaking Catholics.)

1939

Over 120,000 Jewish refugees flocked to Kaunas from Wilno. This influx rivals that of Jews from Nazi-held territory in Poland to areas controlled by the Soviet forces.  Poland and Lithuania both considered the city of Wilno as their own, and it has been a cultural center of Polish Jewry. Wilno was formally transferred to Lithuania on October 22, 1939.

1944

Viktor Ullmann died on October 18, 1944 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ullmann was a Silesian-born Austrian composer, conductor and pianist. Two years earlier, while imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he composed numerous choral works, song cycles, stage music, and most significant were his last three piano sonatas, the Third String Quarted, and the chamber opera, "The Emperor of Atlantis, or "The Refusal of Death". The premiere of the latter was planned for Theresienstadt in the autumn of 1944.  But the Nazi SS suppressed it due to perceived similarities between the role of the Emperor of Atlantis and Hitler.  Before Ullmann was deported to Auschwitz, he left his works in the safekeeping of his friend Emil Utitz, who, after the war, gave them to H. G. Adler in Theresienstadt in 1945. Adler then brought the scores to England in 1947. While imprisoned at Theresienstadt, Viktor Ullmann wrote, "By no means did we sit weeping on the banks of the waters of Babylon. Our endeavor with respect to arts was commensurate with our will to live."

1981

Polish General Jaruzelski was elected party leader on October 18, 1981 and held the post until July 29, 1989. He was also Prime Minister (1981-1985), Polish head of state (1985-1990), and  President (1989-1990) and the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's Army.  On December 13, 1981, Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, and ordered the  borders sealed, closed airports, and imposed curfew.  Pro-democracy movements, in particular Solidarnosc, were banned, and their leaders, including Lech Walesa, arrested and jailed.  Thousands of soldiers in military vehicles swarmed the streets of every major city.  Telephone service was disconnected, the mail was censored, all independent organizations were outlawed, and classes in schools and universities were suspended.  Jaruzelski resigned after the Polish Round Table Agreement in 1989, (read about Solidarnosc, ie Solidarity) which led to democratic elections in Poland.  Jaruzelski died of a stroke on May 25, 2014.  Lech Wałęsa and Komorowski, who were among the thousands imprisoned during the crackdown on Solidarity in 1981, both stated that judgement against Jaruzelski "would be left to God".

JULY 6 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JULY 6

1938

Evian Conference:  Representatives from 33 nations convened at Évian-les-Bains, France, to discuss the Jewish refugee problem and the plight of the increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution by Nazi Germany. The conference was organized and led by President Franklin Roosevelt who anticipated that other nations would accept more Jewish refugees . Roosevelt used the conference as a way to deflect attention and criticism away from American policy for its severe quota restrictions of Jewish refugees admitted to the US.  The conference was attended by representatives from 32 countries, and 24 voluntary organizations also attended as observers, presenting plans either orally or in writing. Golda Meir, the attendee from British Mandate Palestine, was not permitted to speak or to participate in the proceedings except as an observer. Some 200 international journalists gathered at Évian to observe and report on the meeting. The conference was ultimately doomed, as delegations from the 32 participating nations refused to come to any agreement about accepting the Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. Only two countries, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, increased their quotas. The result of the failure of the conference was that many of the Jews had no escape and were ultimately the target of Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" - the Holocaust.  Two months after Évian, in September 1938, Britain and France granted Hitler the right to occupy the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and as a result 120,000 Jews became stateless. In November 1938, on Kristallnacht, a massive pogrom across the Third Reich was accompanied by the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues, massacres and the arbitrary arrest of tens of thousands of Jews. In March 1939, Hitler occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which now took in a further 180,000 Jews. In May 1939 the British issued the White Paper which barred Jews from entering Palestine or buying land there.  Following their occupation of Poland in late 1939 and invasion of Soviet Union in 1941, the Germans embarked on a program of systematic deportation, and murder of millions of Jews from throughout Europe.  The only way that Nazis could have accomplished this treachery was with the assistance of local authorities, military and police, who organized the identification and removal of the Jews.

1942

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding. They intentionally left their apartment in disarray to give the impression that they "left in a hurry" and Otto, her father, left a note that they were going to Switzerland. The Frank family had to walk to the their shelter,  a building which housed the Opekta office on Prinsengracht, where they hid inside a three storey space (a few of the employees in the building knew about it) A week later the van Pels family joined them, which created some friction in an already confined space, something that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary. This hiding place became known as the Achterhuis (translated as "Secret Annex" in English editions of the diary). On August 4, 1944, their Achterhuis was stormed by the SS, arrested them and interrogated them at the police headquarters where they were kept overnight. The SS treated them as if they were criminals and they were sent to a work camp to do hard labour.

1950

German Democratic Republic agreed to accept the Oder-Niesse boundary with Poland. (The Treaty of Zgorzelec (Full title The Agreement Concerning the Demarcation of the Established and the Existing Polish-German State Frontier, also known as the Treaty of Görlitz and Treaty of Zgorzelic) The agreement was signed under Soviet pressure by Otto Grotewohl, prime minister of the provisional government of the GDR (East Germany) and Polish premier Józef Cyrankiewicz. It recognized the Oder-Neisse line implemented by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement as the border between the two states. The treaty was worded as a declaration and was not initially recognized by West Germany as a legitimate international treaty.  It wasn't until 1990 when a reunified Germany recognized the Oder-Niesse boundary, in the German-Polish Border Treaty.