This Date in History: April 18

On April 18, 1943 at 2:00 p.m., the SS and Police Leader for Warsaw, SS-Brigadeführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, placed SS and German Police on alert in the city.  At 6:00 p.m., the Polish police surrounded the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto and began heavy patrolling outside the Ghetto wall in preparation for the attack into the Ghetto by the SS on the following morning.  (The Ghetto Men: The SS Destruction of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto April-May 1943)

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Heinrich Müller, SS-Gruppenführer, born April 18, 1900 in Munich, winner of the Iron Cross 1st Class in World War I, chief of the Gestapo, major participant in the Wannsee Conference on the Final Solution, winner of the Knight’s Cross of the War Service Cross, fate not certain, on interrogations: “I’ve never had a man in front of me yet whom I did not break in the end.”  (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1000-Year Reich)