March 17, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a commentary noting the escalation of World War II slaughters of Jews after the establishment of the Belzec concentration camp in 1942. Published in History News Network under the heading This March 17, Remember the 80th Anniversary of the Escalation of the Slaughter of Jews at Belzec: https://bit.ly/36oljHp
Thursday, March 17 will be the annual remembrance of St. Patrick’s Day, the Feast of St. Patrick, an observance widely commemorated both in the US and around the globe. The day will be marked with parades, festivals, people wearing green, the display of shamrocks, and, of course, the drinking of much beer and Irish whiskey. A good time will be had by many.
But March 17 is also the remembrance of a tragic anniversary that most people do not know, will not want to remember, and will quickly want to forget upon learning.
On this date in 1942, during WWII and exactly eight weeks after 15 Nazi leaders had met in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, and agreed upon the Final Solution (in which all the Jews of Europe were to be murdered), the first permanent death camp at Belzec, in southeast Poland, began operation.