November 4, 1943: “The North Star” Premieres

November 4, 1943: The North Star premieres, directed by Lewis Milestone, with a screenplay by Lillian Hellman.

It's set in the early days of the Nazis' invasion of the Soviet Union, the Summer of 1941. Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Robert Lowery (who would play Batman in a 1949 film serial), Ann Harding (no relation to Warren), Farley Granger (no relation to Stewart) and Dean Jagger (no relation to Mick) are among the Ukrainian villagers who resist.

Erich von Stroheim, the German actor and director billed in the silent film era as "The Man You Love to Hate," plays a Nazi doctor who takes blood from village children, in some cases killing them, to save Nazi soldiers wotj transfusions.

Brennan turned out to be one of the wackier anti-Communists in Hollywood, and probably repudiated this film at some point due to its pro-Soviet propaganda. Hellman would later be blacklisted for her pro-Soviet views. Later rehabilitated, her reputation was ruined again by charges that her memoirs were full of lies. She died in 1984.

The North Star hit differently starting in 2022, with Ukraine being a separate nation, invaded by the one from which it separated, Russia.

*

November 4, 1943 was a Thursday. Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 5-5 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. And the Montreal Canadiens beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-3 at the Chicago Stadium. The New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.

November 3, 1943: Operation Harvest Festival

November 3, 1943: The Nazis carry out Aktion Erntefest -- in English, Operation Harvest Festival. Across Poland and Ukraine, they kill 43,000 Jews.

After a series of Jewish uprisings in ghettos and extermination camps, SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the murder of the remaining Jewish forced laborers in the Lublin District of German-occupied southeastern Poland. Jewish laborers in the camps had to dig zigzag trenches, supposedly for air defense, in late October. Thousands of SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin on November 2. That day, SS and Police Leader Jacob Sporrenberg, who was in charge of the operation, held a conference to plan it.

The killings began on the morning of November 3 at Majdanek, outside Lublin, where Jewish prisoners were separated from non-Jewish prisoners, and encompassed the Lipowa 7 and Lublin airfield camps, which imprisoned Jews in the city. A total of 18,400 people were shot by the early evening. The same day, 6,000 people were murdered at Trawniki, including some from Dorohucza.

After finishing the Majdanek operation, several of the involved units proceeded to Poniatowa, where they murdered the camp's 14,500 prisoners on November 4. In all three camps, Jews were forced to strip naked and walk into the previously dug trenches, where they were shot. Loud music was played to cover the sound of gunfire.

After the operation, about 10,000 Jews were left alive in various labor camps in the Lublin District. The bodies of the victims were burned by other Jews, who had been spared temporarily from death. With around 40,000 victims, Operation Harvest Festival was the largest single massacre of Jews by German forces during the Holocaust.

In May 1945, shortly before V-E Day, Sporrenberg and his staff were captured by British forces. Sporrenberg was extradited to Poland in October 1946, and sentenced to death by a Polish court in Warsaw in 1950. He was hanged on December 6, 1952. He was 50 years old.

*

November 3, 1943 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season had started, there were no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.

October 24, 1941: The Odessa Massacre

October 24, 1941: Romanian troops, overseen by the Nazis, kill between 25,000 and 34,000 Jews in Odessa, in the Ukraine. It was the biggest massacre of the Holocaust to that point.

Before World War II, Odessa had a large Jewish population of approximately 200,000, or 30 percent of the city's total population. By the time the Romanians had taken the city on October 16, following a 2-month seige, between 80,000 and 90,000 Jews remained, the rest having fled or been evacuated by the Soviets. As the massacres occurred, Jews from surrounding villages were interned in Odessa and Romanian concentration camps set up in the surrounding areas.

The order was given by Lieutenant Colonel Mihail Niculescu, of the Jandarmeria Română, Romania's national police force. (It is still called that today.)

I can find no record of what happened to Niculescu after World War II, whether he was punished for his crimes. But since Romania was taken over by Communists, it seems likely that he did not live long thereafter.

*

October 24, 1941 was a Friday. Baseball season ended with the New York Yankees winning the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers, 18 days earlier. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season started 8 days later. So there were no scores on this historic day.

October 5, 1941: The Berdychiv Massacre

Residents of the Jewish ghetto in Berdychiv, before the massacre

October 5, 1941: Nazi Germany's Gestapo conducts a massacre of Jews in the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv. It is yet another horrible page in the story of the Holocaust.

The city already had a history of strife. It was destroyed by Crimean Tatars in 1483, plundered by Cossacks in 1647, and defended from Russians by Kazimierz Pulaski (later "the Father of the American Cavalry") in 1764. It became part of the Russian Empire following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, and suffered greatly under the Stalin-induced famine of 1932-33.

Most civilians from areas near the border did not have a chance to evacuate when the Nazis began their invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Berdychiv was occupied by the Wehrmacht on July 7. An "extermination" German SS unit was established in early July, and a Jewish ghetto was set up.

It was stated in one of the Einsatzgruppen reports that on "Sept. 1, and 2, 1941, leaflets and inflammatory pamphlets were distributed by Jews in Berdychiv. As the perpetrators could not be found, 1,303 Jews, among them 875 Jewesses over 12 years, were executed by a unit of the Higher SS and Police Leaders."

In response to this, the ghetto was liquidated on October 5, when all the inhabitants were murdered. Eyewitnesses stated that Ukrainian auxiliary police aided the 25-member shooting squad in corralling Jews into the ghetto, policing it, and killing those who attempted to escape. One witness to a mass killing of Jews in Berdychiv said, "They had to wear their festivity-dresses. Then their clothes and valuables were taken. The pits were dug and filled in by war prisoners who were executed shortly after."

Most estimates put the death toll between 20,000 and 30,000. A 1973 article about the history of the city stated, "The Gestaopo killed 38,536 people."

The Red Army took Berdychiv back on January 5, 1944. In 1991, it became part of independent Ukraine. A few of its buildings have been destroyed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its population is believed to be around 90,000 -- perhaps 1,000 of them Jewish.

*

October 5, 1941 was a Sunday. It was the day of Game 4 of the World Series, what became known as The Mickey Owen Game. Owen's passed ball on what would have been a game-ending strikeout of Tommy Henrich by Hugh Casey gave the New York Yankees another chance, and they came from behind to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 7-4 at Ebbets Field. I have a separate entry for that event. The Yankees clinched the Series the next day.

There were also NFL games on this day.

* The football version of the New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 37-10 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

* The football version of the Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Washington Redskins, 3-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Cleveland Rams, 48-21 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. (The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946.)

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Cardinals, 14-13 at the Dairy Bowl in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin. The Dairy Bowl was a football stadium built in the infield of a speedway, now known as the Milwaukee Mile, at the Wisconsin State Fair Park.

* And the Philadelphia Eagles and the Detroit Lions had the week off. 

September 29, 1941: The Babi Yar Massacre

The Babi Yar ravine

September 29, 1941: Nazi SS officers kill 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar ravine outside Kyiv, Ukraine. It is believed to be the largest Nazi massacre to that point.

Other victims of massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, Communists and Romani people. It is estimated that a total of between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.

The decision to murder all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor, Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard; the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckein; and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch.

Eberhard was captured by U.S. authorities in November 1945, and detained in Stuttgart, Germany. He killed himself in custody on September 8, 1947. Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in Riga, Latvia, and executed on February 3, 1946. Rasch was indicted, but his case was held over due to Parkinson's disease putting his physical and mental health into decline. He was released in June 1948, and died on November 1.

*

September 29, 1941 was a Monday. Baseball was between the end of its regular season and the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And hockey was out of season. So there were no scores on this historic day.

August 9, 1942: The Kyiv Death Match

August 9, 1942: The Kyiv Death Match takes place. This time, people who say a sporting event is "only a game" were wrong -- dead wrong.

In the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a part from 1922 to 1991, sports clubs were tied to various industries. Clubs with "CSKA" in their name were made up of soldiers in the Central Red Army, "Dynamo" with the secret police, "Lokomotiv" with the railroads, "Torpedo" in the automotive industry, and so on.

But when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in World War II, Ukraine was between them and Russia proper. When people say the Soviet Union suffered more than any other country during the war, the worst of it was in Ukraine. The capital of Kyiv (formerly written in English as "Kiev") looked in 1941 like Berlin would end up looking in 1945.

Dynamo Kyiv is Ukraine's greatest sports team, and already was in 1941. But the war meant that the Soviet league could not continue playing. By 1942, most of Dynamo's players, and most of Lokomotiv Kyiv's players, were working in a bakery, which sponsored a team called FC Start. And on August 6, they played a team of German soldiers, named Flakelf. "Flak Elf," means "Anti-aircraft Eleven." Start won, 5-1.

Flakelf wanted a rematch. Three days later, at the Zenit Stadium in Kyiv, they played again. Apparently, Flakelf had improved their side with what Americans would call "ringers." Flakelf scored first, but, at the half, it was 3-1 to Start.

This is where accounts begin to differ. The official postwar Soviet record said that a German official told the Start players to lose, or else. But those players who were still alive and were interviewed on the 50th Anniversary of the match, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, said that this did not happen. At any rate, Start won, 5-3.

There was a photograph taken of players from both teams. All agreed that the photo was real, which, in the Soviet Union, could never be assumed. What is in dispute is when it was taken: Before the game, or after.

Start played one more game, on August 16, beating Rukh, 8-0. Two days later, the Gestapo arrested 6 Start players in the bakery. Two days after that, 2 more were arrested, so that 8 of the 14 official Start players were in Nazi custody.

Apparently, Rukh trainer Georgi Shvetsov was a collaborator, and told the Gestapo that the former Dynamo players on Start were official members of the NKVD. (Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, or The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, essentially the Soviet version of the FBI, but with extrajudicial power. After the war, they became the MVD, the Ministry of Internal Affairs.) Current Ukrainian historians believe this, rather than defeating (or even humiliating) the German players in the matches, was the reason for the arrests.

Olexander Tkachenko was the 1st Start player to die. He played in the August 9 match, and was arrested. He tried to escape, and was shot by an SS officer. Mikola Korotkyhk apparently was an NKVD agent, and was betrayed by his own sister. He was tortured to death.

Kept in Gestapo custody for 3 weeks, 8 of the remaining Dynamo players from Start were deported to the Syrets concentration camp outside Kyiv. On February 24, 1943, Nikolai Trusevich, Olexi Klimenko and Ivan Kuzmenko were executed. So 5 of the Start players were executed -- but not, apparently, for having won what Soviet propaganda later called "The Death Match."

The match inspired the 1981 film Escape to Victory, even though no escape attempt was made in the real match. The idea of Michael Caine playing an English footballer is fine. The idea of English football legends Bobby Moore, Mike Summerbee and John Wark acting in a film is tolerable.

The idea of Brazil's Pelé playing a black player from the Portuguese colony of Angola, and Argentina's Osvaldo Ardiles playing a Spanish player, when both Iberian nations were neutral in World War II, is bad even if you accept that they could act. The idea of Sylvester Stallone playing an American who had enlisted in the Canadian Army before Pearl Harbor and having a role in helping Allied prisoners of war escape is understandable; the idea of him playing as a goalkeeper in soccer is ridiculous.

*

August 9, 1942 was a Sunday. Comedian, actor and TV director David Steinberg was born on this day. This was also the day the Nazis executed Edith Stein, the nun who became known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. I have a separate entry for that event.

These baseball games were played:

* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, 3-2 and 2-0. Mel Ott went 1-for-8 with an RBI over the 2 games, and won the 1st game with a suicide squeeze bunt, belying his status as the National League's all-time home run leader (until surpassed by Willie Mays in 1966). Bill McGee pitched a 5-hit shutout in the 2nd game.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 and 2-1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Rookie Stan Musial went 4-for-6 with 2 RBIs. The 2nd game was shortened to 8 innings, because of Pennsylvania's curfew for Sunday sports (long since repealed). 

* A doubleheader was split at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds in the opener, 10-8 -- in 18 innings. Stan Hack went 5-for-5 with and an RBI for the Cubs in this game, Phil Cavarretta went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs, and both of them drew 4 walks. For the Reds, Eddie Joost went 4-for-9 with 4 RBIs, and Bert Haas went 5-for-9 (but no RBIs). The Cubs led 4-0 going to the bottom of the 9th, and blew it. Both teams scored 2 runs in the 12th inning. Dom Dallessandro doubled home the winning run for the Cubs in the top of the 18th. The nightcap was shortened to 5 innings by a Sunday curfew. At that point, the Reds led, 2-1.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Indians at Comiskey Park in Chicago, 11-1 and 3-2.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, 9-3 and 3-1.

* The New York Yankees were supposed to play the Philadelphia Athletics at Yankee Stadium, but got rained out. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The A's won the 1st game, 4-1. The Yankees won the 2nd game, 3-2. Joe DiMaggio went 1-for-4 in each game.

* The Boston Red Sox were supposed to play the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington, but got rained out. It was made up on September 8, and the Senators won, 15-11. Jake Early had 5 RBIs for the Senators, Jimmy Pofahl 4, and Bobby Estallela 3. Ted Williams went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers were supposed to play the Boston Braves at Braves Field, but got rained out. The game was rescheduled for September 24, and the Dodgers won, 5-3.

April 26, 1986: The Chernobyl Disaster

April 26, 1986: The Number 4 reactor explodes at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. It is the biggest nuclear accident in human history.

The accident occurred during a test of the steam turbine's ability to power the emergency feedwater pumps in the event of a simultaneous loss of external power and coolant pipe rupture. Following an accidental drop in reactor power to near-zero, the operators restarted the reactor in preparation for the turbine test with a prohibited control rod configuration.

Upon successful completion of the test, the reactor was then shut down for maintenance. Due to a variety of factors, this action resulted in a power surge at the base of the reactor which brought about the rupture of reactor components and the loss of coolant. This process led to steam explosions and a meltdown, which destroyed the containment building.

This was followed by a reactor core fire which lasted until May 4, during which airborne radioactive contaminants were spread throughout the Soviet Union and Europe.

In response to the initial accident, a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius exclusion zone was created 36 hours after the accident, from which approximately 49,000 people were evacuated, primarily from Pripyat. The exclusion zone was later increased to a radius of 30 kilometers (19 miles), from which an additional 68,000 people were evacuated.

Following the reactor explosion, which killed two engineers and severely burned two more, an emergency operation to put out the fires and stabilize the surviving reactor began, during which 237 workers were hospitalized, of whom 134 exhibited symptoms of acute radiation syndrome (ARS).

A United Nations committee found that to date fewer than 100 deaths have resulted from the fallout. Model predictions of the eventual total death toll in the coming decades vary. The most widely cited study conducted by the World Health Organization in 2006 predicted 9,000 cancer-related fatalities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

North America was lucky with Three Mile Island in 1979. Eastern Europe was not so lucky with Chernobyl in 1986.

*

April 26, 1986 was a Saturday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Cleveland Indians, 3-2 at Yankee Stadium. Yankee manager Lou Piniella started Bob Shirley, who gave up a double, a single, another single, hit a batter, walked another, and allowed another double, with a runner pickoff mixed in, before Piniella took him out. Three Yankee relievers then pitched 8 2/3rds innings of 5-hit shutout ball. But it was too late.

Dave Winfield went 2-for-3 with a walk. Don Mattingly went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Rickey Henderson went 0-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-3 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Lenny Dykstra hit a home run in support of Sid Fernandez.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 11-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Eddie Murray went 1-for-4 with a walk. Cal Ripken went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Rick Schu went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs, each on a solo home run, his 1st 2 homers of the season, and he would finish with 8. Mike Schmidt went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-4 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Jerry Hairston hit a sacrifice fly to bring Carlton Fisk home in the top of the 11th inning.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The California Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-6 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Reggie Jackson appeared as a pinch-hitter in the top of the 9th inning, drew a walk, and scored on the winning home run hit by Wally Joyner.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Kansas City Royals, 6-1 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. Bill Buckner hit a home run. George Brett went 1-for-4.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Texas Rangers, 10-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Robin Yount went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Paul Molitor went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Houston Astros beat the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0 at the Astrodome in Houston. Mike Scott pitched a 4-hit shutout, outpitching Bill Gullickson. Barely: The only run of the game came in the bottom of the 9th, with Gullickson pitching to Alan Ashby, the Astro catcher, when his own catcher, Bo Diaz, committed a passed ball, allowing Billy Hatcher to score.

Diaz was in the game because the Reds' manager had pinch-hit for starting catcher Sal Butera. The Reds' manager was Pete Rose. The batter Rose sent in to pinch-hit for Butera was himself. At the time, Butera was batting .200 for the season, and had 121 career hits. Rose had 4,204. At age 45, he hadn't batted that season until the game before, and went 0-for-4. Rose was a terrible manager. He wouldn't get his 1st hit of the season until May 4, batted .219, and played his last game on August 17. He never actually announced his retirement as a player.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 3-2 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Will Clark hit a home run in the top of the 10th inning.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-4 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Andres Thomas singled Ozzie Virgil Jr. home in the top of the 10th inning.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Seattle Mariners, 5-3 at the Oakland Coliseum.

Football was out of season. The NBA was between rounds of its Playoffs. There were 2 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. In "The Battle of Alberta," the Calgary Flames beat their arch-rivals, the Edmonton Oilers, 4-1 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton. And the St. Louis Blues beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-3 at the St. Louis Arena. Mark Reeds scored the winning goal, 7:11 into overtime.

And in English soccer, Arsenal played West Midlands team West Bromwich Albion to a draw, 2-2 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.

February 24, 2022: Russia Invades Ukraine

February 24, 2022: The Russian Federation invades Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has declared that Ukraine has never had the right to exist as a country separate from Russia or the Soviet Union -- as it was from 1917 to 1922, and had been again since 1991 -- had already, in 2014, annexed the Crimea and supported a Moscow-friendly "breakaway republic" in the Donbas.

Now, he has sent his forces in to take the country, launching not only tanks but missiles, targeting the capital of Kyiv, and the port cities of Odessa and Mariupol. The whole world has sided with Ukraine against Russia, but Putin doesn't care.

By the end of this calendar year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine will either be dead, or captured, or victorious. If he somehow survives, he will probably be named Time magazine's Person of the Year, and the olive drab T-shirt he has worn in his public statements may become as iconic as Queen Elizabeth's purse, the Mao suit, the Che beret, the Nehru jacket, Yassir Arafat's keffiyeh, Barack Obama's tan suit, Donald Trump's red tie, or Joe Biden's aviator shades.

UPDATE: At the end of the year, Zelenskyy was still alive and in charge, and Time did, indeed, name him its Person of the Year.

By June 1, 2026, over 4 years into a war that Putin thought would last a few weeks, of Ukraine's 40 million people, 500,000, or 1 in every 80, were believed to have been killed; and another 7 million, nearly 1 in every 6, had been displaced. But U.S. estimates said that a roughly equal number of Russians have been killed, about 20 times as many as Putin's government would admit to.

The Ukrainians' fighting to defend their homeland has been courageous, and has earned the world's admiration. Zelenskyy refuses to give up.

Following viewer demands for a battle with a Russian, a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, featured a five-man "battle royale": "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin; while "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev. This, of course, was before Putin tried to conquer Ukraine, but was already seen as a villain all over the world.

*

February 24, 2022 was a Thursday. Baseball was about to start Spring Training. And football season had recently ended with the Super Bowl. There were 7 NBA games played:

* The Brooklyn Nets lost to the Boston Celtics, 129-106 at the Barclays Center.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 106-103 at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Atlanta Hawks, 112-108 at the United Center in Chicago. DeMar DeRozan scored 37 points.

* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 119-114 at the Target Center in Minneapolis. D'Angelo Russell scored 37.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 124-104 at the the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Sacramento Kings, 128-110 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

* And the Golden State Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 132-95 at the Moda Center in Portland.

There were 8 games in the NHL, and all 3 New York Tri-State Area teams played:

* The New York Rangers beat the Washington Capitals, 4-1 at Madison Square Garden.

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6-1 at the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The New York Islanders lost to the San Jose Sharks, 4-3 at the SAP Center in San Jose. (I said all 3 New York area teams played. I didn't say they all won.) In this game, Zdeno Chára set a new NHL record for most career games played by a defenseman. I have a separate entry for that event.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Minnesota Wild, 3-1 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

* The Nashville Predators beat the Dallas Stars, 2-1 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Florida Panthers, 6-3 at the FLA Live Arena in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida. (It's now named the Amerant Bank Arena.)

* The Boston Bruins beat the Seattle Kraken, 3-2 at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Jake DeBrusk needed just 33 seconds of overtime to score the winner.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Calgary Flames, 7-1 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

February 9, 1943: The Parośla I Massacre

A victims' mass grave in Parośla

February 9, 1943: The Parośla I Massacre takes place in Poland. It began a series of killings known as the Volhynian Massacres. While it was not a strike against Jewish people, it was a part of the Holocaust, since the leaders of Nazi Germany considered the Slavic people, especially those of Poland, to be "an inferior race."

Volhynia stretches over southeastern Poland, southwestern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. In Ukraine, it is roughly equivalent to the Volyn and Rivne Oblasts. (Like Russia, Ukraine calls its sub-regions, what America would call "States," "Oblasts.")

Volhynia has changed hands numerous times throughout history, and been divided among competing powers. For centuries, it was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Russian annexation during the 1772-1795 Partitions of Poland, all of Volhynia was made part of the Pale of Settlement on the southwestern border of the Russian Empire, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. (This is the source of the expression "Beyond the Pale.")

Between 1939 and 1943, the share of Polish population in Volhynia had dropped to about 8 percent, approximately 200,000 inhabitants. Volhynian Poles were dispersed across rural areas, Soviet deportations stripped them of their community leaders, and they had neither own local partisan army nor state power (with exception of the German occupants) to turn to for protection.

On February 9, 1943, a group of the UPA (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia, or Ukrainian Insurgent Army), a Nazi collaborationist paramilitary group, commanded by Hryhory Perehyniak, pretended to be Soviet partisans, and assaulted the Parośla settlement. Estimates of the number of victims range from 149 to 173.

Throughout Volhynia, individuals, often with their families, began to be killed by the UPA. According to historian Timothy Snyder, in late March and early April 1943, the UPA forces killed 7,000 Polish civilians.

Perehyniak never made it out of Volhynia. On February 22, 1943, just 13 days after he launched the massacres, he was killed in combat.

*

February 9, 1943 was a Tuesday. Actor Joe Pesci was born. This was also the day the Allies won the Battle of Guadalcanal. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at the Boston Garden.