Saturday, July 16, 2022

Thursday, July 16, 1942. The Vel d'Hiv Roundup


Things for European Jews, French Jews in particular, and the French in general took a turn for the much worse when French police in occupied Paris began rounding up Jews in the city under Nazi orders.  While the city was occupied and northern France was under Germany's rule as a practical matter, the fact of that the police were complicit in it is a stain on France's honor and further demonstrates how none of the fascistic regimes of the period were free from guilt.

Those arrested in the sweep, some 13,152 souls, would end up being sent to Auschwitz.  Only 811 survived.

On the same day, Parisian authorities announced that close relatives of "troublemakers" would be shot if they were male, or forced into labor if they were female.

Hitler moved his battlefield headquarters to Vinnytsia, Ukraine.

Hitler would have a variety of headquarters in the East, which perhaps shows the degree to which he had begun to focus on that theater of the war.  Such a focus was, of course, understandable in that the vast majority of German resources were now dedicated to fighting the Soviet Union. In this instance, the location, code-named Werewolf, was used by the Wehrmacht as its headquarters, but was little used by Hitler.  The Germans destroyed it upon their retreat from the region, and the underground portions remain sealed.  Only a swimming pool really remains intact.

The British XXX Corps took another key ridge west of El Alamein.  In the same battle, Australians repelled an attack on Point 24 resulting in 50% German casualties.

The United States severed relations with Finland.

In Italian Harlem, the following took place:

Rare Photos of the “Festa di Madonna di Monte Carmela” of East Harlem-July 16, 1942.

No comments: