off Oran, Algeria by Italian aircraft. February 7 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy SC 118 is attacked by U-boats, who sink 8 ships. February 9 WWII: The Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands ends with United States forces in command of Guadalcanal, the evacuation of Japanese forces in Operation Ke having been completed two days earlier. WWII: Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army begin, with the Parośla I massacre within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Holocaust: Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup – The Gestapo, directed by Klaus Barbie, arrest 86 Jews in Lyon. February 10–March 3 – Mohandas Gandhi (under arrest by forces of the British Raj in Pune as a member of the Quit India Movement) keeps a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. February 13 – WWII: Operation Longcloth: Chindit forces (some 3,000 men) of the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade under Brigadier General Orde Wingate cross the Chindwin River and proceed into Burma. February 14 – WWII: Rostov-on-Don in Russia is liberated. February 14–17 – WWII: Battle of Sidi Bou Zid: In the Tunisia Campaign, German Panzer divisions commanded by Hans-Jürgen von Arnim are victorious over the United States Army. February 16 – WWII: The Soviet Union reconquers Kharkiv, but is later driven out in the Third Battle of Kharkiv. February 18 In a Sportpalast speech in Berlin, German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declares a "total war" against the Allies, tacitly admitting that Nazi Germany faces serious dangers. The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose German Resistance movement. February 19–24 – WWII: Battle of Kasserine Pass: German General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps and other Axis forces launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia; it is the United States' first major battle defeat of the war. On February 22, an Anglo-American force halts the German advance near Thala, forcing the Germans to retreat, US bombers harass the retreating Panzers. February 20 American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies. The Parícutin volcano begins to appear in a cornfield in Mexico. February 21 – WWII: North Atlantic convoy ON 166 is attacked by U-boats, who sink eleven ships. February 22 WWII: RCN corvette HMCS Weyburn sinks east of Gibraltar, after being mined. Members of the White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany. February 23–24 – Cavan Orphanage Fire: 35 girls and a cook from St Joseph's