Sorbibór, the notorious German death camp located in Poland. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team: For more details, see this link.
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.
Great Britain on October 8, 1943 — under terms of a treaty signed 570 years earlier, in 1373 — establishes military bases on the Azores, neutral Portugal’s islands about 850 miles west of the Iberian Peninsula. In Greece, the first vestiges of guerrilla warfare give indications of the possibility of a civil war there. In the Atlantic, Polish destroyer ORP Orkan, escorting a convoy between Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Liverpool, England, is torpedoed and sunk by German sub U-378. Only one officer and 43 sailors of its crew of 190 survive.
In Italy, the U.S. Fifth Army’s move northward is stopped at the Volturno River on October 9; all the bridges have been destroyed by the retreating Germans. In the Solomon Islands, the seven-week-long Land Battle of Vella Lavella ends in an Allied victory. Following the island’s capture, the Allies build an airbase there that is used against the major Japanese base at Rabaul, on New Britain Island.
Sensing that the war’s tide is beginning to turn, Spain’s government on October 10 orders its 250th “Blue” Division (of volunteers) home from the Eastern Front, where it had been fighting alongside the Wehrmacht. A few thousand Spaniards, however, refuse to abandon their “struggle against communism” and enlist in a so-called “Blue Legion” that is attached to the German 121st Infantry Division in northern Europe. The German city of Münster is heavily bombed in the first daytime raid by bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. The raid comes at a cost: of the 236 planes sent out, 30 are shot down and 105 are badly damaged, with the loss of 308 aircrewmen.
The Red Army reaches the Kerch Strait on October 11, completing the liberation of the northern Caucasus. In the Soya Strait, near the Sea of Japan, the American submarine USS Wahoo is attacked by Japanese air and sea forces. Depth charges sink the sub with the loss of its entire 60-man crew.
The Allies, as part of “Operation Cartwheel,” begin a bombing campaign on October 12 against the Japanese Pacific Headquarters at Rabaul. 87 B-24 bombers hit the base, sinking a transport ship, damaging two destroyers, destroying or heavily damaging nine planes, and leaving the base’s fuel-storage area in flames. In New York City, the National Broadcasting Company sells its Blue Radio Network for $8 million to the newly organized American Broadcasting Company. NBC continues to operate its Red Radio Network.
Italy declares war against Germany on October 13. In the Pacific, the whole of the New Georgia group of islands in the Solomons is now held by the Allies.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force delivers a heavy attack against German ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt on October 14, but damage is limited. However, of the original force of 291 B-17s, 198 are either shot down or damaged beyond repair, while the Luftwaffe loses only about 40 fighter planes. In Poland, Jewish prisoners at the Sobibór extermination camp launch an uprising. Several Ukrainian guards are killed, as are 11 SS officers, and 300 of the 700 camp inmates escape (all but 50 or so are killed or recaptured outside the camp). Afterward, inmates who did not escape are ordered to raze the camp and obliterate all traces of it. When finished, they are executed.
