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• Japan froze American assets in retaliation of a similar action committed by the US on 26 Jul 1941. ww2dbase [TH]
• German troops began crushing the Smolensk pocket in Russia. ww2dbase [Operation Barbarossa | TH]
• Finland severed diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom. ww2dbase [TH]
• Tatsuta Maru set a new trans-Pacific crossing record. ww2dbase [Tatsuta Maru | CPC]
• The joint US Army and US Marine Corps unit Task Force 18, attached to the US Atlantic Fleet under Major General Holland M. Smith, was redesignated the 1st Joint Training Force. ww2dbase [CPC]

• A special commission created on Heinrich Himmler's orders arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp to select prisoners within the framework of the "Euthanasia Program" for the incurably ill, extended in 1940 to Jews and in the middle of 1941 to prisoners of concentration camps. The 573 selected, most were sick Polish prisoners from Block 15, were told that they were to be transferred to other camps for easier work because of their conditions. At last moment, two German criminals Johann Siegruth and Ernst Krankemann were added to the list. The 575 were sent to Sonnenstein Castle under the supervision of Franz Hössler and were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning in a gas chamber disguised as a shower room. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Oswiecim | CPC]

• The US Congress authorized funding for the construction of the future Pentagon building. ww2dbase [Pentagon | Arlington, Virginia | CPC]

28 Jul 1941 Interactive Map