APRIL 6
1940
The French Ministry of Aviation officially created the Polish Fighter Squadron of Warsaw (French: Groupe de Chasse Polonaise de Varsovie), the 3rd 'Dęblin' Squadron was renamed and became the first operational Polish air unit on French soil. By the end of April the unit received the first 20 M.S.406 fighters and started guarding the skies around Lyon, France.
1944
Nazis raided a French home at Izieu for Jewish children. The home was a refuge for children who had come to France to escape Nazi persecution. The entire group of children were sent to Drancy on one of the last transports from France, and then deported to Auschwitz. Only one child survived. Izieu was the site of a Jewish orphanage during the Second World War. Though it was called an orphanage most of the children were only separated temporarily from their parents or sent there purposely; the Savoy mountains was then under Italian rule, and was less oppressive. On April 6, 1944, three military vehicles pulled up in front of the orphanage. The Gestapo, under the direction of the 'Butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie, stormed into the orphanage and forcibly removed the forty-four children and their seven supervisors, throwing the crying and terrified children on to the trucks and shipped directly to the "collection center" in Drancy. From there they were put on a train headed towards the concentration camps in the East. Forty-two children and five adults were gassed at the Auschwtiz death camp. Two of the oldest children and Miron Zlatin, the superintendent, ended up in Tallinn, Estonia, and were executed by a firing squad. The orphanage today has been preserved as a memorial.
1956
Radio Warsaw announced the release from prison of Wladyslaw Gomulka on April 6, 1956. Gomulka was a Polish communist and held in high regard among the Polish people despite his communist beliefs. Foremost Gomulka was a Polish nationalist and a patriot. He fought against the Germans after the Invasion of Poland in 1939. Gomulka had denounced Stalin in 1948 regarding the extent of Soviet influence (and lived to tell about it.) Stalin accused Gomułka of “nationalist deviation,” and in September 1948 Gomulka was replaced as secretary-general of the PPR by Bolesław Bierut. Then in December 1948, after the merger of the communist and socialist parties (into the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; PZPR), Gomułka was dropped from the Politburo. In the next month he was relieved of his government posts, and in November of 1949 was stripped of his membership in the communist party. Eventually, he was arrested in July 1951. Following his release from prison, and the outbreak of the Polish October, Gomulka became First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party from October 21, 1956 to December 20, 1970.
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