APRIL 25 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

APRIL 25

1933

Immediately after Hitler came to power in Germany he began to issue edicts to strip the freedom of Jewish citizens. On this day he declared the Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities which limited the number of Jewish students in public schools. During his dictatorship, he issued over 400 edicts.

1938

Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski visited Polish Upper Silesia. Kwiatkowski was a famous Polish economist, deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury. He was credited with great accomplishments such as the construction of Gdynia seaport, the development of the Polish Merchant Navy and sea trade, and the creation of Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy (The Central Industrial Region).  The goal of his 5-year project  was to create a heavy industrial center in the middle of the country, as far as possible from any borders, strengthen the Polish economy and reduce unemployment.  But the COP was interrupted by the outbreak of the WW2 when Germany and Russia invaded Poland in September 1939. At the end of the war in 1945, the COP project was rebuilt by the Soviet-controlled People's Republic of Poland.

1942

Nazi Germans deported Jews from Würzburg to Krasniczyn Ghetto, in Eastern Poland, There were no survivors.  On April 25, 1942,  "852 Jews were marched  from the Platz's garden in Wurzburg to Aumühle station. The transport train DA 49 was ready for transport there. At 13:00 o'clock the delivery driver "properly handed over", the train passed the Würzburg main station in the direction of Bamberg at 15:20 o'clock; here were added another 103 Jews. Via Lichtenfels , Kronach and Saalfeld , through northern Silesia , the transport arrived in Lublin on April 28, 1942 at 2:00. There he reached the destination station Krasnystaw at 5:45 am at 5:45 am. The Würzburg Gestapo recorded the transport, "The transport was handed over completely; Incidents did not happen. A police intervention was not required. "The deportees were transferred on foot to Kraśniczyn. Almost certainly all the survivors were taken to the Sobibor extermination camp June 6th. ( Editors note:  This account is based on Nazi documentation of the deportation of Jews. The remaining documents were probably destroyed by Nazi officials.)  The other transport was dated on April 30, 1942.

1943

Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with Polish Government In Exile in London;  Earlier in April 1943, Nazi Germans discovered mass graves of over 15,000 Polish officers near Smolensk, Russia (Katyn Massacre) who were massacred by the Soviet NKVD at the start of the war. The Soviet government denied all culpability, and claimed that the Germans did it.  The Allied governments believed the Soviets and formally accepted their explanation, however, the Polish Government in Exile refused to accept it and demanded an investigation. Stalin then severed all diplomatic ties with the Polish Government in Exile.

1944

German Nazi agents secretly approached Western allies to propose a trade deal: Adolph Eichmann approached Joel Brand to broker a deal between the SS and the United States or Britain, in which the Nazis would exchange one million Jews for 10,000 trucks for the Eastern front and large quantities of tea and other goods. It was the most ambitious of a series of such deals between Nazi and Jewish leaders. Eichmann called it "Blut gegen Waren" ("blood for goods"). Nothing came of the proposal, which The Times of London called one of the most loathsome stories of the war. Historians believe that Heinrich Himmler and the SS, intended the negotiations as cover for peace talks with the Western Allies that would exclude the Soviet Union and perhaps even Hitler. Whatever its purpose, the proposal was thwarted by the British government. They arrested Brand in Aleppo. (Note: Joel Brand was a leading member of Budapest's Aid and Rescue Committee, which smuggled Jews out of German-occupied Europe. After Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Brand became known for his efforts to save the country's Jews from deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.)

1945

The RAAF conducted its last significant mission of the war with a raid against Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden.  At 5:00 am, 20 Lancasters from squadron 460 began readying for take-off. In the air they would join a force totaling more than 300 Lancasters and 16 Mosquitos of Bomber Command, as well as over 270 B-24 Liberator bombers from the US 8th Air Force, which targeted the railway infrastructure leading to Berchtesgaden. Escorting them were 88 P-51D Mustang fighters from the US 8th Army Air Force. Once the target was found, over 1,400 tons of bombs were dropped, including four 12,000 pound Tallboy bombs. The heavy payload was designed to destroy bunker networks that were believed to exist below the Obersalzberg complex. The SS barracks – the key target – were severely damaged. Houses belonging to Göring (who survived the raid in his bomb shelter) and Bormann were destroyed. The RAF official historian, Hilary Saunders, boasted that a thousand-pounder had made the deep end of Göring’s swimming pool a little bit deeper.)


The East Prussian Offensive and the Samland Offensive ended in Soviet victory. Even after this time, German forces continued to resist on the Vistula Spit, the long sandbar enclosing the Vistula Lagoon, until the end of the war.


Via telephone hookup, President Truman addressed the delegates at the opening session of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) in San Francisco. "You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world," Truman said. "In your hands rests our future. By your labors at this Conference, we shall know if suffering humanity is to achieve a just and lasting peace. Let us labor to achieve a peace which is really worthy of their great sacrifice. We must make certain, by your work here, that another war will be impossible."

1959

Then Bishop Karol Wojtyła (the future Pope John Paul II) had petitioned the communist regime for permission to build a Catholic Church in Kraków's new industrial suburb of Nowa Huta. (Nowa Huta was built by the Soviets as a model socialist workers' community which Soviets intended to be secular.)  Having been denied a church, the citizens erected a large wooden cross without a permit, resulting in violent clashes between the police and citizens.  Bishop Karol Wojtyla supported the local citizens by hosting outdoor Christmas Eve Midnight Masses in 1959, regardless of weather. And every time the regime removed the cross, he would see to it that it was replaced with another cross.

APRIL 7 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

APRIL 7

1884

Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (dob) was a Polish anthropologist, often considered one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists. Malinowski originated the school of social anthropology known as functionalism. In contrast to Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism, Malinowski argued that culture functioned to meet the needs of individuals rather than society as a whole. He reasoned that when the needs of individuals, who comprise society, are met, then the needs of society are met. According to Malinowski, the feelings of people and their motives were crucial factors in order to understand the way their society functions.

1933

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed in Nazi Germany. It restricted employment in the civil service to "Aryans". Consequently, Jews were not allowed to work as teachers, professors, judges, or any other government position. Soon after, Jewish doctors were forbidden to practice medicine. Also passed was The Law on the Admission to the Legal Profession forbidding the admission of Jews to the bar.

1937

Karol Szymanowski was buried at the Skalka Cemetery in Kraków.  Szymanowski was a famous Polish composer and pianist, the most celebrated Polish composer of the early 20th century. He was considered a member of the late 19th-/early 20th-century modernist movement Young Poland and widely viewed as one of the greatest Polish composers. Szymanowski's music received international recognition. In the 1920s and the 1930s, his music was immensely popular and was performed  by celebrated soloists such as Artur Rubinstein, Harry Neuhaus, Robert Casadesus, Paweł Kochański, Bronisław Huberman, Joseph Szigeti, and Jacques Thibaud and orchestras led by famous conductors including Emil Młynarski, Albert Coates, Pierre Monteux, Philippe Gaubert, Leopold Stokowski, Willem Mengelberg. European and American performances of his Stabat Mater were world-scale events. In 1994, a renowned director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Charles Dutoit recorded both of his Violin Concertos.  Karol Szymanowski received many important awards, including: The Officer Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta; The Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy; The Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy; the Knight of Legion d'Honneur; an honorary plaque at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; The Commander Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta; The Academic Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature, Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. He was also a Doctor Honoris Causa of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków and an honorary member of the Czech Academy of Learning, the Latvian Conservatory of Music in Riga, the St Cecilia Royal Academy in Rome, the Royal Academy of Music in Belgrade, and the International Society for Contemporary Music.

1944

Two Jewish inmates escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Alfred Wetzler, and Rudolf Vrba, making it safely to Czechoslovakia.  Rudolf Vrba later submitted a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which was forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June. The report contains a detailed description and sketches of the layout of the camps, gas chambers and their management;  how the prisoners lived and died;  the transports that had arrived at Auschwitz since 1942;  their place of origin,  the numbers "selected" for work or the gas chambers.  Only the prisoners would have known the details, such as the process of discharge forms filled out for prisoners who were to be gassed, indicating that the Nazi Germans falsified the death rates in the camp. In a sworn deposition for the trial of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in 1961, and in his book I Cannot Forgive (1964), Vrba said that he and Wetzler obtained the information about the gas chambers and crematoria from Sonderkommando Filip Müller and his colleagues who worked there. Müller confirmed this in his Eyewitness Auschwitz (1979). Auschwitz scholar Robert Jan van Pelt wrote in 2002 that the description contains errors, but that given the circumstances, including the men's lack of architectural training, "one would become suspicious if it did not contain errors"

1945

German submarine U-1195 was depth charged and sunk southeast of the Isle of Wight by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS destroyer Watchman.  (D26), using a Hedgehog antisubmarine mortar, to the southeast of the Isle of Wight at 50°33′22.26″N 0°56′17.81″W (WGS84) in 30 metres (98 feet) of water. Fifty crew members were alive when she sank; however, only 14 survived.

1989

April Novelization (Polish: Nowela kwietniowa) referred to the constitutional amendments made to the 1952 Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland, agreed upon on April 7, 1989, in the aftermath of the Polish Round Table Agreement.  Key changes were the restoration of the Senate of Poland and the post of the president of Poland (the latter annulling the power of the Polish United Workers' Party general secretary); introduction of the National Court Council; changes to the electoral legislation, in order to make elections more free and fair; powers of the Sejm were adjusted. The 1952 constitution was reformed by the December Novelization and Small Constitution of 1992, and finally replaced in 1997 by a completely new current Constitution of Poland.

FEBRUARY 5 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

FEBRUARY 5

1937

Polish government announced the creation of the Central Industrial Region. (Note: The Central Industrial District (COP) was an industrial region in Poland and one of the largest economic projects of the Second Polish Republic. The project was initiated by Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, a brilliant economist, who was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury.  He planned a heavy industrial center in the very center of the country to strengthen the Polish economy and reduce unemployment.  The development was scheduled to commence September 1, 1936 and be completed by July 30, 1940. But it was interrupted by the German invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, starting World War Two. At the end of the war in 1945,  the COP project resumed and was expanded under the Soviet-controlled People's Republic of Poland.

1938

Nazi Germany passed The Law on the Profession of Auctioneer which excluded Jews from the profession.

1945

Soviet forces crossed the Oder at Brzeg, causing considerable destruction in its path.   (Note:  In accordance with the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, the area was annexed by Poland.  The town's German population was subsequently resettled , and replaced with Polish settlers from the Eastern Borderlands and Central Poland. Since 1950 the reconstructed town has been a part of the Opole Voivodeship in Poland.)

1947

Communist Boleslaw Bierut was elected President of the Polish Republic and held office from 1947 to 1952.  After the abolition of the Presidency, and the creation of the Peoples Republic of Poland, he served as Prime Minister.  He was also the first Secretary General of the ruling Polish United Workers Party from 1948 to 1956.  But he is most known and hated for his role in the outcome of many trials of Polish wartime military leaders, including General Stanislaw Tator and Brig. General Emil August Fieldorf, as well as 40 members of the Wolnosc i Niezawislosc (Freedom and Independence organization),  numerous church officials, and other opponents of the new regime - including the Hero of Auschwitz, Witold Pilecki.  They were all condemned to death during secret trials - to which Bierut signed many of those death sentences.

JANUARY 26 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JANUARY 26

1699

Venice, Poland and Austria signed the Treaty of Carlowitz with Ottoman Empire. It marked the end of Ottoman control in much of Central Europe, with their first major territorial losses after centuries of expansion, and established the Habsburg Monarchy as the dominant power in Central and southeast Europe. The Austrian Empire acquired about 60,000 square miles (160,000 km2) of Hungarian territories at Karlowitz and of the Banat of Temesvár 18 years later, at Passarowitz, thus cementing Austria as a dominant regional power. (Note: Today Austria has 32,386 sq mi or 83,879 km2)

1736

Stanislaw I of Poland abdicated his throne. In compensation, he received the Duchy of Lorraine and of Bar, which was to revert to France on his death. In 1738, he sold his estates of Rydzyna and Leszno to Count (later Prince) Alexander Joseph Sułkowski. He settled at Lunéville, founded there in 1750 both the Académie de Stanislas and Bibliothèque municipale de Nancy, and devoted himself for the rest of his life to science and philanthropy, engaging most notably in controversy with Rousseau. He also published Głos wolny wolność ubezpieczający, one of the most important political treatises of the Polish Enlightenment.

1919

First Sejm Election of the Second Polish Republic: The elections, based on universal suffrage and proportional representation, was the first free election of Poland (after 123 years of oblivion). It produced a parliament balanced between the right, left and center, although the elections were boycotted by the Polish communists and the Jewish Bund. In the territories where the election took place, voter turnout was from 70% to 90%. Right-wing parties won 50% of votes, left-wing parties around 30%, and Jewish organizations more than 10%.

1934

The German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic.  According to the pact, both countries pledged to resolve their problems through bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of ten years. It effectively normalized relations between Poland and Germany, which were previously strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. As a consequence of the treaty, Germany agreed to recognize Poland's borders, and moved to end an economically damaging customs war which existed between the two countries during the previous decade. On April 28, 1939, Hitler unilaterally abrogated the pact, and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

1938

General Tadeusz Kutrzeba, while presenting a plan of possible military conflict with Nazi Germany, emphasized that the Wehrmacht was three times stronger than the Polish Army. During the invasion of Poland in September 1939, General Kutrzeba commanded the Poznań Army,devised the Polish counterattack plan of the battle of Bzura and commanded the Poznań and Pomorze Armies during the battle. In the aftermath, at the behest of major general Juliusz Rómmel (commander of the Warsaw Army), Kutrzeba began capitulation negotiations with the German 8th Army and signed the surrender documents on September 28. He spent the rest of the war in German concentration camps, until the American forces liberated him. In April 1945 he turned down the position of Minister of Defense in the Government-in-Exile. He chose instead to head a commission which focused on the history of the Polish Army’s military campaign in September 1939, and the contributions of Polish soldiers fighting in the West from 1939 to 1945.

 1945

Przyszowice Massacre was perpetrated by the Red Army against civilians of the Polish village of Przyszowice in Upper Silesia (from January 26 to January 28, 1945.) The Soviet soldiers set several dozen houses on fire, looting the village and raping women. They began shooting at the civilians who were trying to extinguish the flames. Over 60 civilians were brutally murdered. Among the victims were four former prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp who had escaped from a death march the previous day. With the exception of an Italian and Hungarian, the remainder of the victims were Polish civilians, including two former soldiers of the Polish Army, who had recently been freed by the Soviets from a POW camp.

JANUARY 24 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JANUARY 24

1934

Jews were banned from the German Labor Front. After Hitler's rise to power, the National Socialist trade union organization which replaced the various independent trade unions of the Weimar Republic. Many of the labor union leaders were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps, and the money in union coffers, which were the workers money, was confiscated by the Nazi party. Membership to the German Labor Front was mandatory, and even a patriotic duty. Jews were excluded.

1939

Hermann Goring was instructed to set up an organization in Germany similar to the Zentralstelle in Austria. The German office was called the Reichzentralstelle fuer Juedische Auswanderung, Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, to organize and supervise the forced expulsion of Jews from Germany, that is, deportation to concentration camps.


SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was ordered by Hermann Göring to speed up the "emigration "of Jews. Heydrich was second in importance to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization and the principle planner of the Final Solution. Goring was one of the most powerful leaders of the Nazi Party and was the C-C of the Luftwaffe, as well as having created the Gestapo.

1944

President Roosevelt issued a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity." In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi persecution, President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board.  Josiah E. DuBois, Jr, Treasury Dept. lawyer of the WRB, found evidence that the U.S. State Department had actively suppressed information about the murder of the Jews from reaching the United States public. To add to the turpitude, in July 1943, the US Treasury had given permission to the World Jewish Congress to send money to Switzerland, but prevented them from doing so for a period of six months. The War Refuge Board was the only major effort undertaken by the US government and had been credited with rescuing tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi-occupied countries.  (Editors note:  The efforts of the WRB however heroic, were been tainted by subterfuge at the highest level of government, and an inexcusable degree of bureaucratic red tape.)

1945

The Battle of Poznań began for the German-occupied stronghold city of Poznań in Poland. It was a massive assault by the Soviet Union's Red Army that had as its objective the elimination of the Nazi German garrison in the stronghold city of Poznań in occupied Poland. The defeat of the German garrison required almost an entire month of painstaking reduction of fortified positions, intense urban combat, and a final assault on the city's citadel by the Red Army.

1982

In his weekly noon blessing in St. Peters Square, Pope John Paul II prayed for an end to martial law in Poland and asked the Catholic faithful to "pray for my fatherland". He read from the pastoral letter which was delivered to Polish churches that ''I want to assure my fellow nationals that their wishes are mine as well.'

1993

Polish ferry boat John Heweliusz sank, 52 killed. The ferry capsized and sank in 27 metres of water off Cape Arcona on the coast of Rügen in the Baltic Sea while sailing toward Ystad. Ten bodies were never found. 9 people were rescued. The sinking of Jan Heweliusz is the most deadly peacetime maritime disaster involving a Polish ship.

JANUARY 11 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

JANUARY 11

1924

Władysław Grabski's monetary reform established the Bank of Poland acting as an issuing bank: The Bank of Poland was founded as a joint stock company, which guaranteed its independence from the government and the state treasury. The Act also abolished the Polish National Savings Union which had acted as an issuing bank. Its functions were taken over by the Bank of Poland. Stanisław Karpiński became the first president of the Bank of Poland. On January 14, the organizing committee of the Bank of Poland was established, and on January 26, the sale of the bank's shares began. Payments could only be made in foreign currencies and in gold. On April,15, during the first shareholders' meeting, the Bank of Poland Joint Stock Company was established.

1936

The Executive Order on the Reich Tax Law (Nuremberg laws ) forbade Jews to serve as tax consultants.(The Nazis decreed an overwhelming number of laws to strip Jews of all civil and human rights. It was the first step in carrying out the "Final Solution".)

1938

General Stanislaw Skwarczynski officially became leader of the Camp of National Unity (OZN). The political party was founded by sections in the leadership of the Sanacja movement. This party advocated authoritarian rule, and that national interest superceded parliamentary democracy. The OZN adopted 13 theses on the Jewish question, based on the Nuremberg laws and labelled Jews as a foreign presence that should be deprived of all civil rights and ultimately expelled altogether.

1944

The Soviet Union responded to the Polish declaration of January 5 with a statement through TASS.  "......The Soviet government has repeatedly declared that it stands for a strong independent Poland and.....friendly Polish-Russian relations founded on mutual respect....The Soviet government disputed Polish territorial claims and insisted that the Soviet-Polish border had been determined through "the plebiscite carried out in 1939 on a broad democratic basis".  The statement also accused the Polish government-in-exile of being "incapable of establishing friendly relations with the USSR, and has also shown itself incapable of organizing active resistance against German invaders inside Poland. Moreover, by its erroneous policy it has often played into the hands of German invaders......"