The evil of Nazi fascism was spreading across Europe.
By August 1941 the German ‘euthanasia’ programme to annihilate the disabled had led to the murder of approximately 70,000 adults and children.
In Operation Barbarossa German mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, followed their front-line troops into the Soviet Union to identify, confine and kill Jews and Roma (gypsies) – near to one quarter of European Roma were murdered during World War 2. Nazi racial policy also discriminated against Slavs so Soviet Prisoners of War were often treated brutally or killed – 57% of those taken prisoner were dead by the end of the war.
Male homosexuality was criminalised in Germany and men were castrated, imprisoned or sent to concentration camps where they were among the most abused groups in the camps, suffering a disproportionately high death rate.
In German occupied countries many of the Jews were now confined in crowded ghettos including Warsaw and Kracow in Poland and Kovno in Lithuania. Murderous attacks on Jews were common –more than 13,000 Jews were killed in the Iaşi pogrom in Romania on 29th June. From the beginning of September 1941 all Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David badge in public, facilitating their segregation, control and eventual deportation to concentration camps. By 1945 genocide in the camps had led to the systematic mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Those who spoke out could face a similar fate – communists, Trade Unionists and any political opponents were persecuted.
During the second half of 1941 unconfirmed reports of the mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis were filtering to the west but immigration restrictions on refugees trying to escape to Britain, British controlled Palestine or the US remained strict.
*poem by Martin Niemoller
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