The Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
German forces surround some 600,000 Red Army troops in the area of Vyazma, Russia, east of Smolensk, on October 10, 1941. Vyazma guards the western approaches to Moscow. Soviet Gen. Georgy Zhukov is called from Leningrad to Moscow to assume command of the defense of the capital city.
On October 11, a fire destroys a Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Fall River, Massachusetts. The blaze, which takes a full day to extinguish, consumes 15,850 tons of rubber, causing a setback to the U.S. defense effort. In the Soviet Union, a mass evacuation from Moscow of children and women not involved in defense work begins. Workers and students remaining in the city are ordered to dig anti-tank trenches on the capital’s outskirts.
The Bloody Sunday Massacre occurs at Stanisławów, Poland, on October 12. Between 8,000 and 12,000 Jews are rounded up there and shot by German SS troops and Ukrainian police. In North Africa, relief operations continue at the besieged British outpost of Tobruk, Libya. Around 7,000 fresh troops are brought in to the city’s harbor by Royal Navy destroyers while some 8,000 troops are taken out. German forces capture Kaluga, Russia, some 93 miles southwest of Moscow.
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler on October 13 directs SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik to begin construction of Bełżec, in Occupied Poland, the first of the “Operation Reinhard” extermination camps for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” On the Eastern Front, the rains stop, the ground hardens and the Germans once again begin moving towards Moscow. The Red Army is forced to retreat from Vyazma, west of the capital, and Soviet resistance in the area is faltering.
The British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal on October 14 delivers a squadron of fighter planes to Malta. On the Moscow front, temperatures plummet and a heavy snowfall temporarily immobilizes German tanks. In Germany, the first order authorizing the deportation of Jews from Berlin to the occupied territories in the East is signed.
On October 15, British submarine HMS Torbay fires on the port of Apollonia, Cyrenaica, in Italian Libya. In the U.S., the first production P-38E Lightning fighter plane made by Lockheed rolls off the assembly line at its facility in Burbank, California. German authorities in Occupied Poland announce that any Jews found outside of the ghettos that have been established for them will be executed on sight. In Ukraine, the Red Army — after enduring a two-month siege — evacuates Odessa, on the Black Sea. Between 100,000 and 120,000 troops are moved to Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula.
The Soviet government on October 16 moves to Kuibyshev (modern-day Samara) on the Volga River, in southeastern European Russia, but Stalin remains in Moscow. Muscovites continue building tank traps and other fortifications for the expected siege of the capital. In Japan, the government of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe collapses and Konoe, who has been working to avoid war with the United States, resigns. His post is assumed by War Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo, who retains that office and also takes on the position of Home Affairs Minister. On the Eastern Front, German and Romanian troops occupy Odessa, Ukraine.
