[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles and the occasional radio broadcast delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

[BroJoeK]

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April 1, 1944:

• April: "At burial pits at Ponary, Lithuania, Isaac Dogim, one of the Jews ordered to exhume and burn the corpses of murdered Jews, uncovers the moldering bodies of his wife, his three sisters, and his three nieces.

• "Former Pripet Marshes, Ukraine, partisan leader Berl Lopatyn, by now a member of the Soviet Army, is killed while negotiating a minefield.

• "Nine hundred Jewish orphans from the Transnistria region of Romania are given safe passage to Palestine.

• "Max Josef Metzger, a German-Catholic priest whose 1942 plea for a new German government had been intercepted by the Gestapo, is executed at Brandenburg, Germany.

• "A synthetic fuel plant at Blechhammer, Poland, staffed with 5500 Jewish slave laborers when it opened in 1942, now has just 4000 left alive.
  This month, Blechhammer is designated Auschwitz IV."

Massacre at the Caves

"The Ardeatine Caves just outside of Rome were the site of the murder of 335 Italian hostages, 78 of whom were Jews.
The slaughter was in retaliation for a partisan attack that had resulted in the deaths of 33 German troops on Via Rasella in Rome.
Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler ordered the massacre on March 24, 1944.

"Five months earlier, on October 16, 1943 ("Black Saturday"), Kappler had ordered the roundup of Roman Jews. More than 1000 were deported to Auschwitz, where over 800 were murdered.
After the war, Kappler was tried by an Italian military court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He escaped in the trunk of his wife's car in 1977 but died shortly thereafter in Germany.

"SS Captain Erik Priebke, who led the Caves massacres, was extradited from Argentina to Italy in 1996.
An Italian court martial tried but refused to convict him of war crimes, arguing that he was only following orders and that the statute of limitations had run out.
Retried by another Italian court martial in 1996, Priebke was sentenced to five years but served only six months."

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[Tax-chick]

I wonder what “Cobra” perfume smelled like. (Listed prices before 20% Federal tax!)

[untenured]

I did not know that in 1947 Cairo still had a chief rabbi. No need of one now, of course.

Interesting too about the strikes in the UK, which have been off and on both there and here for awhile now. I don't know if there was much contemporaneous coverage of what is now depicted as a US domestic war boom. But unions' willingness to act so aggressively both here and in the UK certainly suggests one.