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Blitzkrieg

(lit., "lightning war"), theory of the conduct of war, developed by the German armed forces in World War II, aimed at winning complete victory in as short a time as possible, measured in days and weeks rather than months and years.The term was first used in connection with the German attack on Poland in 1939. In the blitzkrieg, tanks and armored and other motorized vehicles for transporting troops were concentrated, and massive attacks by dive-bombers and self-propelled artillery were directed at selected enemy front-line positions. Dive-bombers also attacked vital enemy localities in the rear....

Blechhammer

(Pol., Blachownia Slaska), concentration camp established in April 1942 near Kozle, a town 18.5 miles (30 km) west of Gleiwitz (present-day Gliwice). In its initial stage, Blechhammer was a forced-labor camp for Jews (a Judenlager).The first group of prisoners, numbering 350, were employed on the construction of the Oberschlesische Hydriewerke (Upper Silesia Hydrogenation Works), a chemical-products plant. After a short time a typhus epidemic broke out, and 120 prisoners who contracted the disease were sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed. That June the remaining prisoners were ...

Biltmore Resolution,

Declaration adopted at a conference of American Zionists in 1942, explicitly advocating the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. In the spring of 1942, Zionist fortunes had reached their lowest ebb. Despite the dire straits of European Jewry, the cooperation of the Yishuv in the British war effort, and the collaboration of the Arabs with the Nazis, the British government adamantly refused to modify its White Paper of 1939, which limited Jewish immigration into Palestine and contemplated a Palestinian state with an Arab majority. Furthermore, American Zionists had failed to mobilize the crucial ...

Bielski, Tuvia

(1906-1987), Jewish partisan commander. Bielski's family were farmers in Stankiewicze, near Novogrudok. At the age of seventeen he joined the Zionist pioneering movement, and in 1928 he was mobilized into the Polish army, where he rose to the rank of corporal. He married in 1930 and settled in the village of Subotnik, where he opened a textile store. In September 1939 the area was annexed to the Soviet Union.With the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Bielski was mobilized. When the Germans invaded the region he fled to the forest, and from there to his village of birth....

Biebow, Hans

(1902-1947), head of the Lodz ghetto administration. Born in Bremen, Biebow was a businessman who had joined the Nazi party. When the Lodz ghetto was established in the spring of 1940, Biebow was put in charge of its food and economic office (Ernahrungs- und Wirtschaftsstelle fur das Ghetto), which in October was re-designated the "Ghetto Administration" (Ghettoverwaltung).The office had a staff of 250 German officials. Thanks to his personal ties with Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), and with Arthur Greiser, governor of the Warthegau, Biebow enjoyed...

Best, Werner

(b. 1903), Nazi official; a senior member of the SS and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), and German plenipotentiary in occupied Denmark from 1942 to 1945. Born in Darmstadt to a family of officials, Best studied law and in 1929 was appointed Gerichtsassessor (judge) in the Hessian Department of Justice. He entered the Nazi party in 1930 and the SS in 1931. In 1933, very soon after the Nazi seizure of power, he was appointed state commissioner for the Hessian police force and police president for the province.He progressed rapidly in subsequent years, becoming legal adviser to the Gestapo...

Bernadotte, Folke

(1895-1948), Swedish statesman; count of Wisborg and nephew of King Gustav V. During World War II Bernadotte represented the Swedish red cross in the exchange of prisoners between Germany and the Allies. In 1943 he became its vice president and in 1946 he was appointed its president.Bernadotte negotiated with Heinrich Himmler on behalf of the Swedish Red Cross, and in March and April of 1945 succeeded in persuading him to release more than seven thousand Scandinavian nationals who were being held in Nazi concentration camps; these included over four hundred Danish Jews imprisoned in...

Bermuda Conference,

Conference convened by the United States and Great Britain on April 19, 1943, ostensibly to find solutions for wartime refugees. In fact, it marked the high point of efforts by officials in both nations to thwart a move for more effective action to rescue European Jewry.The idea of convening a refugee conference grew out of a need, felt first by British authorities in the final months of 1942, to defuse public protest after revelations were confirmed that the Nazi regime had actually begun a policy of systematic liquidation of Jews.The British initiative rekindled a familiar...

Berezhany

(Pol., Brzezany), town in Ternopol Oblast (district), Ukrainian USSR, 31 miles (50 km) west of Ternopol. Between the two wars, Berezhany was part of Poland, and in September 1939 it was incorporated into the Soviet Union, together with the rest of eastern Poland. On the eve of World War II, Berezhany had a Jewish population of over four thousand.On July 7, 1941, two weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans occupied Berezhany. The Ukrainians lost no time in attacking the Jews; on the morrow of the German entry, they killed three Jews, and a few days later, several dozen more,...

Berdichev,

Town in Zhitomir Oblast (district), Ukrainian USSR, known to have been in existence since the fourteenth century. Jews lived in Berdichev from the sixteenth century. The town became a center of Hasidism, the seat of the renowned rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, and, in the nineteenth century, a center of Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).Immediately prior to World War II, Berdichev had a Jewish population of over 30,000, out of a total population of 66,306. When the town was taken by the Germans on July 7, 1941, the Jewish population numbered 20,000. Three days later the military governor...

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