the existence of Nazi extermination camps and the murder
of two million Jews to date.
1943
February 1943—The Bulgarian government signs an agreement
with the Germans; eleven thousand Jews are deported. Germany
surrenders at Stalingrad; Russia begins reconquest of Ukraine.
March 1943—Liquidation of the Krakow ghetto begins. In northern
Bulgaria, farmers threaten to lie down on the tracks to prevent
the deportation of Jews; the Bulgarian Government rescinds the
deportation order. Crematorium II at Birkenau is activated.
April 1943—Warsaw Ghetto Uprising takes place. seven thousand
Jews are killed in street fighting, thirty thousand deported to
Treblinka, and five thousand perish in flames.
June 1943—Himmler orders the liquidation of all Polish and Soviet
ghettos. Auschwitz reports a sterilization rate of one thousand
women every day.
August 1943—Revolt of Sonderkommando in Treblinka.
October 1943—Orders are given for the expulsion of all Danish
Jews. Thanks to Danish underground operations, only four
hundred fifteen Jews are captured by the Germans and seven
thousand are evacuated to Sweden. Six hundred prisoners of
Sobibor’s Camp revolt and try to escape; one crematorium is
destroyed; most escapees are eventually caught and killed.
November 1943—Within a few days, fifty thousand Jews in
the Lublin region are deported and shot in ditches behind the
Majdanek gas chambers. Jewish underground in Budapest is set
up including a workshop which ultimately supplies ten thousand
with forged documents.
50 | Never Again: A Holocast Remembered