[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. Also visit our general discussion thread.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
Southern Okinawa: Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru, 1945 – Tenth Army Operations, 10 May-30 June 1945
Okinawa, Ryukyus Islands, 1945: Japanese Thirty Second Army Defensive Dispositions, 1 April 1945
Luzon, P.I., 1941: Final Operations on Luzon, 3 February-20 July 1945
Southeast Asia, 1941: Final Allied Offensives in the Southwest Pacific Area 19 February-1 July 1945
China, 1941: Operation Ichigo, 1945 and Final Operations in the War
Southern Asia, 1941: Third Burma Campaign-Allied Victory, April-May 1945

[BroJoeK]

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May 23, 1945:

• May 20-27: "Four Polish Jews who return to their hometown of Dzialoszyce are murdered by Poles.

• May 21: "Many liberated survivors continue to live at the Dachau concentration camp.

• "Odilo Globocnik, SS-Gruppenführer and founder of the death camps at Belzec, Majdanek, and Sobibór, commits suicide shortly after being taken prisoner by the British.

• May 22: "Polish freebooters stop a train in the Bialystok region of Poland and beat and abduct a Jew named Mejer Sznajder.

• May 23: "A clumsily disguised Heinrich Himmler is recognized and arrested by a British patrol at Bremervörde, Germany.
  During a preliminary interrogation later in the day at Lüneburg Heath, Germany, the SS chief surprises his captors by abruptly committing suicide with a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth."

"Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, had attempted to sell Jews to save his own neck during the final months of the war.
At the end of the war he was among the most-wanted war criminals in Occupied Germany.
He attempted to avoid arrest by shaving his mustache, donning an eyepatch and a Wehrmacht uniform, and traveling under the pseudonym Heinrich Hitzinger.
Nonetheless, he was arrested on May 23, 1945, only to commit suicide almost immediately by biting down on a small glass vial of cyanide he had secreted in his mouth."

"Rivka Tuskolaska, a survivor of Auschwitz, was among the inhabitants of Kibbutz (communal farm) Buchenwald, which was founded in June 1945 near the town of Geringshof, Germany, in the American zone of occupation.
The members of the kibbutz immigrated to Palestine in 1946, where they joined the Kibbutz Afikim, but later established their own kibbutz, Netzer Sereni."

"Residents of the Kibbutz Buchenwald, founded by survivors of the infamous Buchenwald, Germany, concentration camp, dance the hora.
This kibbutz, founded on German soil, was designed to prepare its members --through agricultural training--for immigration to Palestine.
Kibbutz Buchenwald was dissolved in 1947 when its inhabitants immigrated to Palestine on the boat Tel Chai."

"German prisoners of war held in American hands were well treated--a situation in marked contrast to the horrors perpetrated by Nazis against Soviet POWs and helpless Jews and other civilians.
These yet-to-be-repatriated German POWs were assembled at New York's Halloran General Hospital on the morning of June 26, 1945, to view films of German atrocities.
Reactions ranged from keen interest to outright shame and grief."

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