1939 September 27 - 28, POLAND SURRENDERED
Warsaw fell. Poland's capital, home to 350,000 Jews, surrendered to German troops after a three-week siege. Out of over 90,000 Polish Jewish soldiers, 32,216 were killed and another 61,000 captured, most of them dying in captivity. The first stage of surrender was the forcing of all Jews into large cities and the establishing of local Jewish councils. The second stage was ghettoization (May 1940) - total separation from other populations, and the final stage (December 1941) was annihilation. At the outbreak of the war there were 3.3 million Jews in Poland. Less than 300,000 would survive.
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