Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
Ludvipol and the Holocaust: A Chronology 1938
November 9, 10. During the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ludvipol’s future commissar, Franz Norgall, breaks into an apartment in Heilsburg, Germany and murders a sleeping couple; he is later singled out by the Nazi Party’s Supreme Court for excessive anti-Semitism and violations of Nazi Party discipline. Concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen are expanded by Jewish slave laborers deported from Austria and elsewhere. By November, over thirty thou- sand Jews, many of them exiled from their own coun- tries and not allowed into any other country, are round- ed up and incarcerated there. Thousands of Jewish refugees flee from western Poland into the eastern parts of the country, and some of them passing through or settling in Ludvipol. They warn the residents about the brutality and anti-Semitism of the Nazis.
1939
Germany and Russia sign the Molotov- Ribben- trop Non-Aggression Pact. Germany attacks Poland, which has 3,500,000 Jews.
August 23
September 1
September 3 Britain and France declare war on Germany. September 10 The Polish forces retreat to the outskirts of Lvov to try to regroup. Canada declares war on Germany. September 17 Russia abandons its neutrality, attacks Poland from the east, and occupies Ludvipol and neigh- boring towns. September 18 The Polish government flees to Romania. Poland is occupied by Germans in the west and Russians in the east. November 1 The entire western Ukraine (population 41,900,000) is annexed by Russia.
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