Download chronology of the holocaust

CHRONOLOGY OF THE HOLOCAUST
JUNE 28, 1919
The Treaty of Versailles ends The Great War (World War I). Germany is forced to sign
the “War Guilt Clause) humiliating the new German Weimar Republic. Furthermore,
Germany is stripped of all its colonial territories, military and much of its territory.
Moreover, the $33 billion in war reparations would further destroy the German economy.
The seeds of resentment and humiliation are set into motion, ultimately leading to the rise
of National Socialism, Adolf Hitler in January 1933 and the Third Reich.
JULY 18, 1925
Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published and outlined his racial ideology.
OCTOBER 29, 1929
The New York Stock Exchange crashes setting off a series of events triggering the
beginning of the Great Depression. As American banks call their loans on the German
Weimar Republic for repayment of war reparations, Germany plunges into the Great
Depression beginning with six (6) million unemployed.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1930
Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party gained 107 seats in the new German Reichstag
(18% of the vote). The Nazis became the second largest political party in Germany.
APRIL 10, 1932
In the run-off election of the German presidency, Hitler lost to President Hindenburg.
However, he did get 37% of the vote and termed the results “victory for National
Socialism.”
JULY 31, 1932
The Nazi party doubled its seats in the Reichstag over 1930, from 107 to 229, emerging
as the largest party in the Reichstag.
JANUARY 30, 1933
German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. At the time,
Hitler was leader of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi party).
Sterilization (of inferiors) Laws were enacted and implementation began three weeks
later.
FEBRUARY 27-28, 1933
The German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down under mysterious
circumstances. The government treated it as an act of terrorism.
FEBRUARY 28, 1933
Hitler convinced President von Hindenburg to invoke an emergency clause in the Weimar
Constitution. The German parliament then passed the Decree of the Reich President for
the Protection of Nation (Volk) and State, popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree.
The decree suspended the civil rights provisions in the existing German constitution,
including freedom of speech, assembly and press, and formed the basis for the
incarceration of potential opponents of the Nazis without benefit of trial or judicial
proceeding. Furthermore, leading communists were arrested.
MARCH 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as President of the United States.
MARCH 5, 1933
Hitler received the support of the German voters (44%) in the Reichstag elections.
MARCH 22, 1933
The SS (Schutzstaffel), Hitler’s “elite guard,” established a concentration camp outside
the town of Dachau, Germany, for political opponents of the regime. It was the only
concentration camp to remain in operation from 1933 until 1945. By 1934, the SS had
taken over administration of the entire Nazi concentration camp system.
MARCH 23, 1933
The German parliament passed the Enabling Act, which empowered Hitler to establish a
dictatorship in Germany, bypassing the Reichstag and the constitution.
MARCH 27, 1933
A mass anti-Nazi rally was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
APRIL 1, 1933
The Nazis organized a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned business in Germany. Many
local boycotts continued throughout much of the 1930s.
All religious literature printed by Jehovah’s Witnesses was banned from circulation.
APRIL 7, 1933
The Nazi government passed the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service, which excluded Jews and political opponents from university and governmental
positions. Similar laws enacted in the following weeks affected Jewish lawyers, doctors
and teachers.
Laws Regarding Admission to the Bar. “Persons who according to the law of Restoration
of the Professional Civil service of April 7, 1933, are of non-Aryan descent may be
denied admission to the bar.”
APRIL 21, 1933
Ritual slaughter of animals in accordance with Jewish dietary laws (Kathruth) is
prohibited in Germany. There are about 500,000 Jews living in Germany, less than 1%
of the population.
APRIL 24, 1933
The first SA and police raid on Magdeburg office of Jehovah’s Witnesses and much of
their literature was confiscated.
APRIL 25, 1933
Laws Against the Crowding of German Schools and Institutions of Higher Learning.
“In new admissions, care is to be taken that the number of Reich Germans who,
according to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7,
1933, are of non-Aryan descent, out of the total attending each school and each faculty,
does not exceed the proportion of non-Aryans within the Reich German population.”
APRIL 26, 1933
The Gestapo was established.
MAY 2, 1933
Dissolution of Free Trade Unions in Germany. The Nazi-controlled labor union, The
German Labor Front was established. German workers lost the right to strike.
MAY 10, 1933
Nazi party members, students, teachers and others burned books written by Jews,
political opponents of Nazis and the intellectual avant-garde during public rallies across
Germany.
MAY 1933
A “Theological Declaration” against the use of force and coercion of conscience by Nazis
vis-à-vis the Protestant churches was issued by an alliance of clergymen called the
“Confessing Church.”
JUNE 1933
Hitler secured the cooperation of the Vatican by guaranteeing the liberties of the Catholic
Church in Germany. In return, the Vatican promised to stay out of German politics.
JUNE 22, 1933
The Social Democratic Party was outlawed, making Hitler’s Nazi Party the only political
party in Germany.
JUNE 24, 1933
Prussian State Police banned the work and organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
JUNE 25, 1933
Declaration of Facts was sent to Hitler, explaining the politically neutral position of the
Witnesses and insisting on their right to teach the Bible to the German people. Two
million copies were distributed. Some witnesses were arrested and sentenced to terms in
labor and concentration camps.
JUNE 28, 1933
Second raid and closure of Watch Tower office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Magdeburg.
JUNE 30, 1933
Decree for the Coordination of All Activities. “…all of the following are transferred to
the jurisdiction of the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Joseph
Goebbels):…general public enlightenment on the domestic scene, the Academy of
Politics, setting up and celebrating national holidays and state ceremonies…the press, the
radio, the German Library in Leipzig, art, music, including philharmonic orchestras,
theater, cinema…”
JULY 14, 1933
The Nazi government enacted the Law on the Revocation of Naturalization, which
deprived foreign and stateless Jews as well as Roma (Gypsies) of German citizenship.
The Nazi government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary
Diseases, which mandated the forced sterilization of certain physically or mentally
impaired individuals. The law institutionalized the eugenic concept of “life undeserving
of life” and provided the basis for the involuntary sterilization of the disabled, Roma
(Gypsies), “social misfits,” and black people residing in Germany.
Law Concerning the Formation of New Parties. “The National Socialist German
Workers’ Party is the only political party in Germany. Anyone who seeks to maintain the
organization of another political party or to organize a new political party is to be
punished by confinement in a jail.”
JULY 20, 1933
Concordat was signed with the Roman Catholic Church.
AUGUST 1933
At the opening ceremony for the state medical academy in Munich, Walter Schultze,
Bavarian Commissioner of Health, declares sterilization insufficient and argued for
euthanasia. He added, “This policy has already been initiated in our concentration
camps.”
AUGUST 16, 1933
The Golden Age magazine (published by Jehovah’s Witnesses) mentioned the existence
of concentration camps within five months of Dachau’s opening.
AUGUST 20, 1933
Boycott of Nazi Germany declared by the American Jewish Congree.
AUGUST 21-24, 1933
25 truckloads of confiscated Watch Tower (Jehovah’s Witnesses) publications were
burned.
AUGUST 29, 1933
Official confirmation that the Nazis were sending Jews to concentration camps on a
variety of charges from “consorting with German girls” to “imitating the Nazi salute.
OCTOBER 19, 1933
Germany withdrew from the League of Nations.
NOVEMBER 12, 1933
Jehovah’s Witnesses were fired from their jobs and arrested for refusing to participate in
a mandatory vote.
NOVEMBER 24, 1933
Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals was passed which allowed beggars,
homeless people, alcoholics and un-employed persons to be sent to concentration camps.
DECEMBER 1, 1933
Hitler declared legal unity of the German state and the Nazi party.
JANUARY 8, 1934
The German Social Democratic Party in exile issued their “Prague Manifesto” calling for
a revolutionary struggle against the Nazi dictatorship.
JANUARY 26, 1934
The German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed.
JUNE 10-JULY 1, 1934
In what came to be called “the Night of the Long Knives,” on Hitler’s orders members of
the Nazi party and police murdered members of the Nazi leadership, (including Ernst
Roehm, head of the SA), army and others. Hitler declared the killings legal and
necessary to achieve the Nazi party’s aims. The murders were reported throughout
Germany and in other countries.
JULY 13, 1934
Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS, assumes command of all Nazi concentration camps.
Himmler and his “black shirts” are now responsible for policing Germany.
AUGUST 2, 1934
German President von Hindenburg died. Hitler became Fuhrer in addition to his position
as chancellor. Because there was no legal or constitutional limit to Hitler’s power as
Fuhrer, he became absolute dictator of Germany. Furthermore, all military personnel
were required to take Armed Forces Oath of Personal Loyalty.
OCTOBER 7, 1934
In standardized letters sent to the government, Jehovah’s Witness congregations from all
over Germany declared their political neutrality but also affirmed defiance of Nazi
restrictions on the practice of their religion.
OCTOBER 1934
The first major wave of arrests of homosexuals occurred throughout Germany, continuing
into November.
JANUARY 13, 1935
The Saar region was annexed to Germany.
MARCH 11, 1935
Nazi race hygienists and civil servants planned the sterilization of the “Rhineland
Bastards.”
MARCH 16, 1935
Germany resumed conscription into military service in violation of the Versailles Peace
Treaty.
MARCH 17, 1935
The German Army invaded the Rhineland.
APRIL 1, 1935
The Nazi government banned the Jehovah’s Witness organization. The Nazis persecuted
Jehovah’s Witnesses because of their religious refusal to swear allegiance to the state.
MAY 31, 1935
Jews were barred from serving in the German Armed Forces.
SUMMER 1935
Juden Verboten (No Jews) signs increased significantly outside towns, cities, restaurants
and stores.
JUNE 26, 1935
Law Regarding Labor Service. All young Germans of both sexes are obligated to serve
their country in the Reich Labor Service. Its purpose is to educate German youth in the
spirit of National Socialism so that they may obtain a true national community sentiment,
a free conception of labor and above all, a due respect for manual work.
JUNE 28, 1935
The German Ministry of Justice revised Paragraphs 175 and 175a of the criminal code to
criminalize all homosexual acts between men. The revision provided the police broader
means for prosecuting homosexual men.
JUNE 30, 1935
A general strike occurred of Polish Jews in protest against anti-Semitism.
JULY 26, 1935
Justice Minister Frick orders marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans be stopped.
JULY 30, 1935
Nazis intensify repression of Jews. Physical violence against Jewish citizens reaches a
new peak in Berlin’s fashionable Kurfurstendamm. In Breslau, 24 Jewish males and
“Aryan” girls are arrested as “race defilers” and taken to concentration camps.
SEPTEMBER 1935
Hitler expressed his intention to eliminate the “incurably ill” at the Nuremberg Party rally
to Dr. Gerhard Wagner.
SEPTEMBER 6, 1935
Public sale of Jewish newspapers is banned.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1935
The seventh National NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) Congress
convenes at Nuremburg.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1935
Nazi Congress adopts the swastika as the Reich’s national flag.
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. “Marriages between Jews
and subjects of German kindred blood are forbidden…Extramarital intercourse between
Jews and subjects of German or kindred blood is forbidden…Jews are forbidden to fly
the Reich and national flag and to display Reich colors…whoever violates the
probation…will be punished by penal servitude.”
Reich Citizenship Law. “A Reich citizen is only that subject of German or kindred blood
who proves b y his conduct that he is willing and suited loyally to serve the German
people and the Reich.”
These Nuremberg “racial laws” made Jews second-class citizens. The Nazi government
later applied the laws to Roma (Gypsies) and to black people residing in Germany as
well.
OCTOBER 18, 1935
Addendum to the sterilization law forbids marriages between “hereditary ill” and
“healthy” people. In addition, it forces the abortion of children of the “hereditary ill” up
to the sixth month of pregnancy.
NOVEMBER 14, 1935
First Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law. “A Jew cannot be a Reich citizen. He is not
entitled to the right to vote on political matters; he cannot hold public office…A Jew is
anyone descended from at least three grandparents who are fully Jewish as regards to
race…Also deemed a Jew is a Jewish mischling subject who is descended from two fully
Jewish grandparents and…who belonged to the Jewish religious community…who was
married to a Jew…who is the offspring of a marriage concluded by a Jew…who is the
offspring of extramarital intercourse with a Jew.” Jews that held public office were
retired by December 31, 1935.
FEBRUARY 4, 1936
David Frankfurter, a young Jewish student, assassinated Wilhelm Gustloff, leader of the
Nazi Party in Switzerland.
MARCH 3, 1936
Jewish doctors in Germany were barred from practicing medicine in government
institutions.
MARCH 7, 1936
The German Army marched into the Rhineland which had been demilitarized according
to the Versailles Peace Treaty.
Jews no longer had the right to participate in German elections.
MAY 5, 1936
Italy invaded Ethiopia.
MAY 10, 1936
Mass book burnings of books written by Jews.
JUNE 1936
The Central Office to “Combat the Gypsy Nuisance” was opened in Munich.
JUNE 17, 1936
Himmler appointed as Chief of the German Police.
JULY 12, 1936
Prisoners and civilian workers began construction of the concentration camp
Sachsenhausen at Oranienburg near Berlin. By September, German authorities had
imprisoned about 1000 people in the camp.
German Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) were arrested and deported to Dachau.
JULY 16, 1936
The Spanish Civil War began.
AUGUST 1936
Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).
AUGUST 1-16, 1936
Athletes and spectators from countries around the world attended the Summer Olympic
Games in Berlin, Germany. The Olympic Games were a propaganda success for the Nazi
state. The Nazis made every effort to portray Germany as a respectable member of the
international community and soft pedaled their persecution of the Jews. They removed
anti-Jewish signs from public display and restrained anti-Jewish activities. In response to
pressure from foreign Olympic delegations, Germany also included Jews or part-Jews on
its Olympic team.
AUGUST 28, 1936
Mass arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Several thousand were sent to concentration camps
and many were detained there until 1945.
SEPTEMBER 9, 1936
The Four-Year Plan (the economic plan to prepare Germany for war) was unveiled.
OCTOBER 25, 1936
Hitler and Mussolini formed the Rome-Berlin Axis based on common political interests.
NOVEMBER 1936
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins a landslide re-election against. Alfred Landon,
Republican nominee from Kansas. Nearly all American Jews support FDR’s re-election.
NOVEMBER 25, 1936
Germany and Japan signed a military pact.
DECMEBER 12, 1936
Jehovah’s Witnesses secretly distributed 200,000 copies of the Lucerne Resolution
protesting Nazi atrocities.
SPRING 1937
Sterilization of the “Rhineland Bastards” began.
APRIL 22, 1937
Gestapo order directed that all of Jehovah’s Witnesses released from prisons were to be
taken directly to concentration camps.
JUNE 20, 1937
Jehovah’s Witnesses secretly distributed an open letter supplying detailed accounts of
Nazi atrocities.
JULY 1, 1937
The Rev. Martin Niemoller, outspoken Protestant critic of the Nazi regime, was arrested
and jailed.
JULY 16, 1937
Buchenwald Concentration Camp was opened.
AUGUST 4, 1937
An official teacher’s manual is issued in Berlin stressing the importance of teaching
Antisemitism.
AUGUST 7, 1937
The massive concentration camp was opened at Buchenwald under the of SS Colonel
Karl Koch.
OCTOBER 20, 1937
The British government restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine.
NOVEMBER 16, 1937
Jews were prohibited from obtaining passports or traveling abroad except in special
cases.
NOVEMBER 25, 1937
Germany and Japan signed a political and military treaty.
JANUARY 1, 1938
Jewish doctors in Germany lost insurance under the Nuremburg Laws.
FEBRUARY 4, 1938
Adolf Hitler promoted himself to Supreme Commander of Germany’s Armed Forces and
took total control of foreign policy.
MARCH 12-13, 1938
German troops invaded Austria and Germany incorporated Austria into the German
Reich in what was called the Anschluss. Hitler then controlled 70 million German
speaking people. The Nazis applied anti-Semitic laws in Austria as well.
MARCH 15, 1938
Mass anti-Nazi rally was held in New York City under the auspices of the Joint Boycott
Council.
APRIL 26, 1938
Decree on the Reporting of Jewish Assets. All Jews in Germany were required to register
all their property with the authorities.
JULY 6-15, 1938
Delegates from 32 countries and representatives from refugee aid organizations attended
the Evian Conference at Evian, France, to discuss immigration quotas for refugees fleeing
Nazi Germany. However, the United States and most other countries were unwilling to
ease their immigration restrictions.
JULY 22, 1938
Effective January 1, 1939, all Jews had to carry a special identity card.
JULY 25, 1938
Jewish doctors restricted to treating Jewish patients only.
JULY 27, 1938
All Jewish street names were replaced with German names.
AUGUST 1, 1938
Adolf Eichmann established the Office of Jewish Emigration to speed up the pace of
forced emigration out of Germany.
AUGUST 17, 1938
For official purposes, all Jews had to add “Sarah” or “Israel” as their middle name.
SEPTEMBER 28-30, 1938
Britain, France, Italy and Germany signed the Munich Pact, forcing Czechoslovakia to
cede its border areas to the German Reich.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1938
Jewish physicians lost their license to practice medicine.
OCTOBER 1938
The confiscation of property of German Jews began.
OCTOBER 1-10, 1938
German troops occupied the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia under the stipulation of the
Munich Pact.
OCTOBER 2, 1938
Watch Tower Society President, J. F. Rutherford, spoke over a network of 60 radio
stations, denounced the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
OCTOBER 5, 1938
Following a request by the Swiss authorities, Germans ordered all Jews’ passports
marked with a larger red “J” to prevent Jews from smuggling themselves into
Switzerland.
OCTOBER 28, 1938
Jews with Polish citizenship living in Germany were expelled to the Polish border. Poles
refused to admit them. Germans refused to allow them back into Germany. 17,000 Jews
were stranded in the frontier town of Zbasyn.
NOVEMBER 7, 1938
Herschel Grynszpan whose parents were deported from Germany to Poland, assassinated
Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.
NOVEMBER 9-10, 1938
In a nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”), the Nazis and
their collaborators burned 191 synagogues, looted 7500 Jewish homes and businesses,
and killed at least 91 Jews. The Gestapo, supported by local uniformed police, arrested
approximately 30,000 Jewish men and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. Several hundred Jewish women were
also imprisoned in local jails.
NOVEMBER 12, 1938
Decree forced Jews to transfer all retail businesses into Aryan hands. Furthermore, Jews
are held responsible for the destruction resulting from Kristallnacht and ordered to pay
reparations of one billion Reichsmarks.
NOVEMBER 15, 1938
All Jewish students were expelled from German schools. They must attend schools
specifically for Jews. Furthermore, Jews are forbidden to attend plays, movies or
concerts.
DECEMBER 8, 1938
Jews were forbidden to attend German universities.
Heinrich Himmler issued the directive for “Combating the Gypsy Plague,” ordering
Registration, identification and round-up of Sinti and Roma people within the Reich.
DECEMBER 13, 1938
Compulsory expropriation (confiscation) of all Jewish businesses and industry.
JANUARY 30, 1939
Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag – threatened that if international Jewry plunged the world
into war, the Jews of Europe would be annihilated.
FEBRUARY 22, 1939
22,000 American Nazis held a rally in New York Cities Madison Square Garden,
denouncing American Jews. Synagogues in the city were faced with Nazi swastikas.
FEBRUARY-JUNE, 1939
In the United States, the Wagner-Rogers Bill proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee
children into the U.S. However, the bill died in committee.
MARCH 14, 1939
Slovakia declared itself an independent state under protection of Nazi Germany.
MARCH 15, 1939
German troops occupied the Czech lands and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia.
MARCH 22, 1939
The Germans occupied the port of Memel.
APRIL 18, 1939
Anti-Jewish racist laws were passed in Slovakia.
MAY 1939
The British government issued a White Paper which restricted future Jewish immigration
to Palestine to 75,000 over the subsequent five years.
MAY 3, 1939
Hungary adopted anti-Jewish legislation and called for the deportation of 300,000 Jews.
MAY 13-JUNE 17, 1939
Cuba and the United States refused to accept more than 900 refugees-almost all of whom
were Jewish-aboard the ocean liner St. Louis, forcing its return to Europe.
MAY 17, 1939
The British government issued the “White Paper” that established, in effect, immigration
quotas into Palestine.
MAY 22, 1939
Germany and Italy sign “The Pact of Steel” treaty in which the two countries are bound
together economically, politically and militarily. At this time approximately 215,000
Jews remained in Germany.
JULY 26, 1939
Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of the Prague Office of Emmigration.
AUGUST 18, 1939
Directive sent ordering the Euthanasia program for deformed and retarded children.
AUGUST 23, 1939
The Soviet and German governments signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression
Pact in which they agreed to divide up eastern Europe, including Poland; the Baltic states
of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia; and parts of Romania.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
German troops invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1939
Britain and France fulfilled their promise to protect Poland’s border and declared war on
Germany.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1939
The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1939
Ghettos to be established in occupied Poland each under a “Judenrat” or Jewish Council,
by order of Reinhard Heydrich.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1939
All Jews in German-occupied Poland were forced to wear the distinguishing white
armband with a blue Star of David.
Warsaw surrendered to the Nazis.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1939
In a secret amendment to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the German and Soviet
governments outlined their plans to partition Poland.
SEPTEMBER 1939
Mental patients first shot to make room for soldiers throughout the Greater Reich.
OCTOBER 1939
Hitler initialed an order to kill those Germans whom the Nazis deemed “incurable” and
hence “unworthy of life.” Health care professionals sent tens of thousands of
institutionalized mentally and physically disabled people to central “euthanasia” killing
centers where they killed an estimated 275,000 by lethal injection or in gas chambers.
OCTOBER 4, 1939
Adam Czerniakow ordered by the Gestapo to form a Jewish Council, Judenrat, in
Warsaw within twenty-four (24) hours.
OCTOBER 6, 1939
Hitler announced his resettlement policy, including Jewish isolation.
OCTOBER 8, 1939
The first ghetto established by the Nazis was set up in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland.
Decree reincorporating pre-1918 German provinces, as well as Lodz, into the German
Reich.
OCTOBER 12, 1939
The deportation of Austrian and Moravian Jews to Poland began.
OCTOBER 1939
Children’s Specialty Institution (euthanasia center) at Gorden was established.
The T4 Project for adult “euthanasia” established.
The Jewish Community of Palestine demanded participation in the war against Nazism:
26,000 joined the British Army.
OCTOBER 15, 1939
First gassing of Polish mental patients at Posen.
OCTOBER 1939 -1941
Over 30 Children’s Specialty Institutions/Therapeutic Convalescent Institutions (adult
euthanasia centers) were established and operated.
OCTOBER 26, 1939
Germany annexed the former Polish regions of Upper Silesia, Pomerania, West Prussia,
Poznan and the independent city of Danzig. Those areas of occupied Poland not annexed
by Germany or the Soviet Union were placed under a German civilian administration and
was called the General Government (Generalgouvernement).
OCTOBER 28, 1939
The Jewish badge, Star of David was imposed on all Jews in Wroclawek, Poland.
OCTOBER 30, 1939
A British report revealed atrocities against Jews and non-Jews at the Buchenwald
concentration camp.
NOVEMBER 1939
Census shoed 359,827 Jews living in Warsaw, Poland.
Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum convened a conference in Warsaw with representatives of
underground parties in order to discuss provision of aid to Polish Jews.
The Germans killed more than 16,000 Polish civilians in the first six (6) weeks of the
war. Five (5) thousand of them are Jewish.
NOVEMBER 8, 1939
An attempt on Hitler’s life in Munich failed as a bomb exploded but left him uninjured.
NOVEMBER 12, 1939
German authorities began the force deportation of Jews from West Prussia, Poznan,
Danzig and Lodz (also in annexed Poland) to locations in the General Government.
NOVEMBER 15, 1939
The Germans were forced to readmit Jews formerly deported across the Soviet border as
part of the Non-Aggression Pact signed with the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939.
NOVEMBER 23, 1939
German authorities required that, by December 1, 1939, all Jews residing in the General
Government wear white armbands with a blue Star of David (Judenstern).
NOVEMBER 30, 1939
The Soviet Union attacked Finland.
DECEMBER 28, 1939
The Lodz Ghetto was established.
EARLY 1940
Gas first used as killing method as part of the T4 Project.
First underground activities by Jewish Youth movements in Poland.
JANUARY 1940
The Jewish ghetto established at Jendrzejew, Poland.
JANUARY 24, 1940
Jewish property in the Generalgouvernement was registered.
JANUARY 26, 1940
Jewish congregational worship and ritual slaughter (kosher) is prohibited in Warsaw,
Poland.
FEBRUARY 12, 1940
Germany began deportation of German Jews to concentration camps.
MARCH 1940
The Katyn Massacre: The Soviets execute thousands of Polish officers in the Sovietcccupied part of Poland.
The Jewish ghetto established in Czestochowa, Poland
MARCH 12, 1940
The Soviet Union makes peace with Finland.
APRIL 1940
The Jewish ghetto at Deblin, Poland was established.
APRIL 9-JUNE 10, 1940
German troops invaded, defeated and occupied Denmark and Norway.
APRIL 14, 1940
Hans Frank, Governor General of the occupied Polish Generalgouvernement, declared
that Krakow would be Judenrein, (free of Jews).
APRIL 27, 1940
Himmler issued a directive to establish a concentration camp near Krakow, Poland at
Oswiecim (Auschwitz).
.
MAY-JUNE 1940
Gas vans were first used to kill mental patients.
MAY 4, 1940
Rudolf Hoes was officially appointed commandant of Auschwitz.
MAY 6, 1940
The Jewish ghetto established at Siedlce, Poland.
MAY 10, 1940
German troops invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. By June 22,
Germany occupied all of these regions except for southern (Vichy) France.
Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister of Great Britain to be replaced by
Winston Churchill.
MAY 15, 1940
Holland surrendered to the Germans.
MAY 18, 1940
Nazi Germany deported 2800 Roma (Gypsies) to Lublin, Poland. In November 1940,
5000 Roma were deported to the Lodz ghetto.
MAY 20, 1940
SS authorities established the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz I) outside the
Polish city of Oswiecim.
JUNE 1940
Tomaszow, Poland Jewish ghetto was established.
Warsaw Judenrat, (Jewish Council) limited to carrying out German orders.
JUNE 4, 1940
The British Army evacuated its forces from Dunkirk, France as they were overpowered
by the German army, thus leaving the European continent to the mercy of the Nazis.
JUNE 10, 1940
Italy entered World War II as Germany’s ally.
JUNE 14, 1940
The first transport of 728 Polish political prisoners arrived at Auschwitz from Tarnow
Prison.
JUNE 18, 1940
Hitler presented Mussolini with the Madagascar Plan, to deport all Jews to the island off
of the east coast of Africa.
JUNE 22, 1940
France fell. They surrendered to the Nazis.
JUNE 30, 1940
German authorities ordered the first major Jewish ghetto, in Lodz, to be sealed off,
confining at least 165,000 people in a 1.6 square mile area. Henceforth, all Jews living in
Lodz had to reside in the ghetto and could not leave without German authorization.
JULY 12, 1940
Hans Frank, Governor General, claimed to have persuaded Hitler to stop deporting Jews
into the Generalgouvernement.
JULY 16, 1940
The Vichy government in France (formed on July 10th) denied citizenship to naturalized
Jews.
JULY 19, 1940
Hitler offered peace to Great Britain.
AUGUST 1940
The Jewish ghetto at Plonsk, Poland was established.
AUGUST 8, 1940
Germany began its Battle of Britain.
AUGUST 10, 1940
Anti-Jewish racist laws passed in Romania.
AUGUST 17, 1940
Mass demonstrations by starving people began in the Lodz ghetto.
Organization of “Forteresse Juive” begins in France.
Germany declared the “total blockade of Britain.”
SEPTEMBER 1940
Zdunska, Poland Jewish ghetto was established.
Quarantine area, later the Warsaw ghetto, contained 240,000 Jews and 80,000 Christians.
SEPTEMBER 7, 1940
The German “blitz” on England reaches a climax with massive bombings on London.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1940
The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis was consummated.
OCTOBER 3, 1940
Anti-Jewish laws (Statut des Juif) passed by Vichy (France) government.
OCTOBER 5, 1940
Germany invaded Romania.
OCTOBER 16, 1940
Decree in Warsaw gave Christians two (2) weeks to move from the quarantine area; and
Jews two (2) weeks to move in.
OCTOBER 22, 1940
Jewish businesses in occupied Netherlands are registered.
Germany deports 15,000 from the Rhineland in internment camps in France.
OCTOBER 28, 1940
Jewish property in Belgium is registered.
NOVEMBER 1940
The Jewish ghetto was established in Wroclawek, Poland.
NOVEMBER 15, 1940
German authorities ordered the Warsaw ghetto in the Generalgouvernement sealed off. It
was the largest ghetto in both area and population. The Germans confined more than
350,000 Jews – about 30 percent of the city’s population – in about 2.4 percent of the
city’s total area. With Jews from other parts of Poland being forced into the Warsaw
ghetto, the total population soared to about 500,000.
NOVEMBER 20-24, 1940
Hungary, Rumania and Slovakia joined the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.
DECEMBER 1940
Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum founded “Oneg Shabbat” secret archives in the Warsaw ghetto.
JANUARY 1941
The Jewish Council of the Warsaw ghetto reports 378,979 Jews in the ghetto.
JANUARY 11, 1941
Hans Frank, Governor General, obtained a postponement to deport all Jews to the
Generalgouvernement in Poland.
JANUARY 21-26, 1941
Anti-Jewish riots occurred in Rumania spearheaded by The Iron Guard. Hundreds of
Jews were cruelly butchered.
JANUARY 22, 1941
Iron Guard revolt in Romania.
JANUARY 31, 1941
First attempt to create a Jewish Council in France.
FEBRUARY-APRIL 1941
An additional 72,000 Jews deported to the Warsaw Ghetto.
FEBRUARY 17, 1941
Romania entered World War II allied with Germany.
FEBRUARY 18, 1941
The Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council was granted a loan from German banks, using
blocked Jewish accounts as collateral.
FEBRUARY 22, 1941
Dutch Jews were deported from Amsterdam.
FEBRUARY 25, 1941
A strike protesting the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands began in the Amsterdam
shipyards and soon spread throughout the city.
MARCH 1941
Adolf Eichmann was appointed head of the Gestapo section for Jewish affairs.
MARCH 1, 1941
10,000 inmates were interned at Auschwitz. Heinrich Himmler visited the camp with
officials of I.G. Farben Company. Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded to hold
30,000 inmates.
Bulgaria entered World War II allied with Germany.
MARCH 2, 1941
Hitler outlined plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union to his generals.
MARCH 4, 1941
Construction of Bunawerk (Auschwitz III, Monowitz) factory at Auschwitz was
authorized. The facility was owned and operated by I.G. Farben of Germany.
MARCH 20, 1941
The Krakow (Poland) ghetto is sealed.
MARCH 30, 1941
The Vichy Government of France appointed a Commission on Jewish Questions.
British troops landed in Greece.
APRIL 1941
Schools licensed for 5000 of the 50,000 children of the Warsaw Ghetto permitted.
The Joint Distribution Committee (an international aid organization) was allowed to set
up an office in Warsaw.
APRIL 6, 1941
German and other Axis forces (Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary) invaded Yugoslavia and
Greece.
APRIL 9, 1941
Germany occupied Salonika, the largest Jewish community in Greece.
APRIL 24, 1941
The Lublin (Poland) ghetto is sealed.
MAY 1941
Census of the Warsaw Ghetto states 430,000 Jews as residents.
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) were formed in Germany.
MAY 2, 1941
Anti-British revolt headed by Rashed Ali, and encouraged by Nazi Germany, in Iraq.
MAY 15, 1941
France – The Vichy government sent 5000 Parisian Jews between the ages of 18 and 40
to labor camps.
Romania passed a law condemning adult Jews to forced labor.
JUNE 1941
The Vichy government of France deprived Jews of French North Africa of their civil
rights and revoked their French citizenship.
New rules in the U.S. cut refugee immigration to about 25% of the relevant quotas.
More than 13,000 Jews died of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto since January.
In Kovno, Lithuania, twenty-eight (28) German instigated pogroms against the Jewish
population were staged.
SUMMER 1941
Heinrich Himmler ordered Rudolf Hoes to make Auschwitz the center of the “Final
Solution to the Jewish Question,” – the Nazi euphemism for the systematic extermination
of Jews.
JUNE 6, 1941
“Commissar Order”: Prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht
high command authorized its soldiers to murder any “suspect” of opposition, mainly Jews
and Communists, thereby making the German army involved in war crimes in the
occupied territories.
JUNE 7-8, 1941
Palmach units from Palestine took part in an Allied invasion of Syria.
JUNE 13, 1941
Vichy reported the deportation of 12,000 French Jews to concentration camps for
interfering with Franco-German cooperation.
JUNE 22, 1941
Germany and its Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. German
mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen were assigned to identify, concentrate, and
kill Jews behind the front lines. By the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had killed
about 1.25 million Jews and an undermined number of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and
officials of the Soviet state and the Soviet Communist party. In 1941-42, some 70,00080,000 Jews fled eastward, evading the first wave of murder perpetrated by the German
invaders.
JUNE-DECEMBER, 1941
The Nazi Einsatzgruppen (special mobile killing units) carried out widespread mass
murder of Jews in areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the German army.
JUNE 25, 1941
The Romanian “Iron Guard” killed 1500 Jews in Iasi, Romania.
JUNE 30, 1941
Germany occupied Lvov, Poland; 4000 Jews were killed by July 3rd.
JULY 1941
New York Yiddish daily newspapers revealed that thousands of Jewish civilians had been
massacred by Nazi soldiers in Minsk, Brest-Litovsk, Lvov and other places.
The murder of the Jews of Vilna (Lithuania) began at Ponary, south of Vilna.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, 17,800 refugees, including 3300 children, were classified as
destitute.
JULY 8, 1941
Wearing of the Star of David is decreed in the German-occupied Baltic States.
JULY 12, 1941
Military treaty signed between the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain.
JULY 20, 1941
German authorities established a ghetto in Minsk in the German-occupied Soviet
territories and, by July 25, concentrated all Jews from the area in the ghetto.
JULY 24, 1941
The Kishinev (Romania) ghetto was established; 10,000 Jews were murdered.
JULY 31, 1941
Reich Marshal Hermann Goring charged SS-Gruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of
the Security Police and the SD (Security Service), to take measures for the
implementation of the “final solution of the Jewish question.” The “Final Solution” was
a euphemism for the mass murder of the Jewish population of Europe.
AUGUST 1941
Due to public protests led by Catholic Bishop Count von Galen, the killing of mental
patients was temporarily suspended, however it continued in a less centralized manner.
3000 Jews became employed in cooperative workshops in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The puppet government in Slovakia dispersed the Jewish ghetto in Bratislava.
AUGUST 1, 1941
50,000 Jews were confined in the Bialystok (Poland) ghetto.
AUGUST 5, 1941
Murders in Pinsk (Belorussia): 10,000 Jews killed in three days.
AUGUST 15, 1941
By order of German authorities, the Kovno ghetto, with approximately 30,000 Jewish
inhabitants, was sealed off.
AUGUST 21, 1941
The first German soldier was killed in Paris, France, by a member of the French
resistance.
SEPTEMBER 1941
Explosives were tried as a method of mass killings of mental patients.
Hans Frank, the Governor General, announced a reduction of food rations in the Warsaw
Ghetto. Furthermore, the post office was forbidden to handle foreign mail.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1941
All Jews above the age of six in Germany, Slovakia and the protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia were obligated to wear the badge of a yellow Star of David to distinguish them
for Aryans. The same announced policy prohibited Jews from leaving their residential
areas without police permission.
Massacre of Hungarian Jews at Kamenets-Podolski.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1941
At the Auschwitz concentration camp, SS functionaries performed their first gassing
experiments using Zyklon B. The victims were Soviet prisoners of war and non-Jewish
Polish inmates.
SEPTEMBER 6, 1941
German authorities established two ghettos in Vilna in German-occupied Lithuania.
German and Lithuanian units killed tens of thousands of Jews in the nearby Ponary
woods.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1941
The siege of Leningrad, Russia began.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1941
150,000 Jews were deported to Transnistria between Romania and the Soviet Union;
90,000 die.
Slovakia adopted Nuremberg Race Laws.
All Jews throughout the Greater Reich required to wear the “Jewish Badge.”
SEPTEMBER 19, 1941
Germans occupy Kiev, Ukraine.
The Zhitomir Ghetto in Ukraine was liquidated.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1941
Experimental gassing at Auschwitz.
SEPTEMBER 29-30, 1941
German SS, police and military units shot an estimated 34,000 persons, mostly Jews, at
Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev (in Ukraine). In the following months,
German units shot thousands of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet prisoners of war at
Babi Yar.
OCTOBER 1941
Vast massacres occurred at Riga and Dvinsk, Latvia and Vilna and Kovno, Lithuania.
OCTOBER 2, 1941
Paris synagogues were blown up by the Gestapo.
OCTOBER 5, 1941
Death edict issued for leaving the Warsaw Ghetto without permission and for sheltering
of hiding Jews.
OCTOBER 8, 1941
The Vitebsk, Belorussia ghetto is liquidated; Germans murdered more than 16,000 Jews.
OCTOBER 10, 1941
The Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia) ghetto was established.
OCTOBER 11, 1941
The New York Times reported on massacres of thousands of Jews in Galicia (province in
Poland).
OCTOBER 12, 1941
The capital of the Soviet Union, Moscow, was partially evacuated due to advancing
German army approaching.
OCTOBER 15, 1941
German authorities began the deportation of Jews from the German Reich to the ghettos
of Lodz, Riga and Minsk.
OCTOBER 23, 1941
19,000 Jews are murdered in Odessa, U.S.S.R. (Ukraine).
34,000 Jews are murdered in Kiev, U.S.S.R. (Ukraine).
Liquidation of the “small” Warsaw ghetto began.
OCTOBER 24, 1941
20,000 Jews were transported to Dalnik, Ukraine; Germans and Romanians murdered all
of them.
OCTOBER 28, 1941
After requiring all Kovno ghetto inhabitants to assemble at Demokratu Square, German
and Lithuanian units took more than one-third of the ghetto’s population – some 9200
people – to Fort IX and shot them in what was called the “great Action.”
OCTOBER 29, 1941
The first Jewish inmates arrived at Buna Camp (Auschwitz III), factories owned and
operated by I.G. Farben Company.
OCTOBER 1941
Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was established. It became the most prolific of the Nazi killing
centers. Mass murders of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Soviets and others numbered in the
millions.
The first transport of prisoners of war reached Majdanek (Poland) extermination camp.
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1941
SS functionaries began preparations for Einsatz Reinhard (Operation Reinhard; often
referred to as Aktion Reinhard), with the goal of murdering the Jews in the General
Government. Preparations included construction of the killing centers Belzec, Sobibor
and Treblinka in the territory of the General Government.
NOVEMBER 1941
The first massacre at Rostov.
Threat to the capture of Moscow over.
NOVEMBER 4, 1941
Lodz deportations completed.
NOVEMBER 6, 1941
15,000 Jews murdered in Rovno, U.S.S.R. (Ukraine).
The first Reich Jews arrived in ghettoes located in Riga, Minsk and Kovno.
NOVEMBER 24, 1941
German authorities established the Thereseinstadt (also known as Terezin) ghetto, in the
German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It was established, in part, to
deceive the world about the Nazi program of mass murder. Czech Jews were the first
prisoners.
NOVEMBER 26, 1941
SS authorities established a second camp at Auschwitz, called Auschwitz-Birkenau or
Auschwitz II. The camp was originally designated for the incarceration of large numbers
of Soviet prisoners of war but later was used as a killing center.
NOVEMBER 30, 1941
30,000 Jews of Riga, Latvia were arrested and subsequently shot at Rumbuli.
DECEMBER 1941
Formation of an underground Zionist Youth Movement in France (Mouvement de
Jeunesse Sionieste).
Armed underground organization established in the Minsk ghetto: the first Jewish
partisan group operated in the area.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish cemetery was walled off, and coffins were used for
smuggling. Furthermore, free soup kitchens supported 100,000 people in the ghetto.
DECEMBER 1, 1941
Einsatzkommando 3, a subunit of Einsatzgruppe A that operated in Lithuania, reported
that its members had killed 136,442 Jews since June 1941.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, receipt of food packages was forbidden under the pretense of
epidemic prevention.
DECEMBER 6, 1941
The Soviets launched a counteroffensive at Moscow.
DECEMBER 7, 1941
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next morning, the United States declared war
on Japan. (At that time, approximately 130,000 Jews remained in Germany).
The Pearl Harbor bombing led to the withdrawal of the Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee from Warsaw.
The German army issued the “Night and Fog” order prescribing repressive measures
against resistance movements in the German-occupied countries of Western Europe.
The Riga Massacre was concluded.
DECEMBER 8, 1941
Gassing operations began at Chelmno, one of six Nazi killing centers. Situated in the
Polish territory annexed by Germany, Chelmno closed in March 1943 and resumed its
killing operations during two months in the early summer of 1944. SS and German
civilian officials killed at least 152,000 Jews and an undetermined number of Roma
(Gypsies) and Poles at Chelmno using special mobile gas vans.
DECEMBER 11, 1941
Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
DECEMBER 12, 1941
The ship “Struma” left Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but was later denied
permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In February
1942, it sailed back to the Black Sea where it was intercepted by a Soviet submarine and
sunk as “an enemy target.”
DECEMBER 16, 1941
Han Frank, Governor General, reported that about 2.5 million Jews in the General
Gouvernement must be “gotten rid of.”
DECEMBER 17, 1941
German post office refused to accept mail from the Warsaw Ghetto with the excuse of the
possibility of a spread of epidemic.
DECEMBER 21, 1941
Romanians murdered more than 40,000 Jews at the Bogdanovka (Romania) camp.
DECEMBER 22, 1841
Massacre in Vilna, Lithuania (German occupied) – 33,500 dead.
DECEMBER 30, 1941
The Crimea Massacres were completed.
DECEMBER 31, 1941
The first permanent gassing camp was opened at Chelmno, Poland.
JANUARY 1942
Jewish underground organizations were established in the Vilna ghetto and Kovno ghetto.
Tuvia Bielski organized the first partisan base in the Naliwiki forests, Western
Byelorussia.
JANAURY 1, 1942
In accordance with Nazi plans, the majority of all new arrivals to Auschwitz were Jewish.
This also marked the beginning of mass murder using Zyklon B.
JANUARY 14, 1942
The concentration and expulsion of Dutch Jews began.
JANUARY 16, 1942
German authorities began the deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto to Chelmno.
JANUARY 20, 1942
Senior Nazi officials met at a villa in the outskirts of Berlin at the Wannsee Conference to
discuss and coordinate implementation of the “Final Solution,” the official plan to murder
all of European Jewry.
JANUARY 21, 1942
A unified resistance organization was established in the Vilna ghetto. Jewish resistance
groups expanded in numbers throughout Eastern Europe.
JANUARY 31, 1942
A total of 229, 052 Jews were reported killed in the Baltic States and Belarus (White
Russia).
First deportations to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1942
First experiments on prisoners in low pressure chambers in Dachau.
FEBRUARY 15, 1942
Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp began utilizing Zyklon-B gas for mass murder of
Jews. By June 1943, their crematorium burned more than 8000 victims per day.
FEBRUARY 24, 1942
The Germans deported more than 30,000 Jews from Lodz to their deaths in Chelmno.
MARCH 1942
A Jewish aid organization reported that eyewitness accounts indicated the Nazis had
already massacred 240,000 Jews in the Ukraine alone.
The Nazis began the forced evacuation of Slovakia’s Jews. They were the first Jews
taken to Auschwitz.
Belgian Jews established a mutual aid organization “Comite de Defense Juive.”
MARCH 1, 1942
Sobibor killing center began operations.
MARCH 15, 1942
Hitler promised the annihilation of the Soviet Union by the summer of 1942.
MARCH 17, 1942
At the Belzec killing center, an SS special detachment began using gas chambers to kill
people. Between March 17 and December 1942, approximately 600,000 people, mostly
Jews but also an undetermined number of Roma (Gypsies), were killed at Belzec.
MARCH 26, 1942
58,000 Slovakian Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
MARCH 27, 1942
German authorities began systematic deportations of Jews from France. By the end of
August 1944, the Germans had deported more than 75,000 Jews from France to camps in
the East, above all, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in occupied Poland, where
most of them perished.
MARCH 30, 1942
The first women inmates arrived at the women’s camp at Auschwitz, including 999
German women from Ravensbruck and 999 Jewish women from Slovakia.
MARCH-APRIL 1942
German SS and police units deported Jews from Lublin, in the General Government to
Belzec, where they were killed. The Lublin deportations carried out under Operation
Reinhard, the code name for the German plan to kill more than 2 million Jews living in
the General Government of occupied Poland.
APRIL 8, 1942
The Einsatzgruppen reported that there are no Jews left in the Crimea.
APRIL 12, 1942
In the Warsaw Ghetto, rumors of an extermination brigade began.
APRIL 14, 1942
News of the Lublin Ghetto Massacre is received.
APRIL 18, 1942
In the Warsaw Ghetto: Bloody Friday execution of the printers and distributors of the
undercover press.
APRIL 26, 1942
The German Reichstag (Parliament) approved Hitler’s abrogation of German law.
MAY 1942
After trial gassings in April, an SS special detachment began gassing operations at the
Sobibor killing center in early May. By November 1943, the special detachment had
killed approximately 250,000 Jews at Sobibor.
The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland compiled a summary of verified massacres and
transmitted it to the Polish government-in-exile in London.
MAY 1, 1942
A successful one-day general strike of ghetto workers in the Bialystok ghetto in eastern
Poland was organized by the ghetto resistance.
MAY 3, 1942
Jews in Holland were ordered to wear the Jewish Badge, further isolating and humiliating
their victims.
MAY 4, 1942
SS officials performed the first selection of victims for gassing at the AuschwitzBirkenau killed center. Weak, sick and “unfit” prisoners were selected and housed in an
isolation ward prior to being killed in the gas chambers. Between May 1940 and January
1945, more than one million people were killed or died at the Auschwitz camp complex.
Close to 865,000 were never registered and most likely were selected for gassing
immediately upon arrival. Nine out of ten of those who died at the Auschwitz complex
were Jewish.
MAY 18, 1942
Members of the Herbert Baum resistance group set fire to an anti-Soviet propaganda
exhibition in Berlin.
MAY 27, 1942
The Czech underground assassinated Reinhard Heydrich; in retaliation, the Germans
obliterated the Czech village of Lidice.
MAY 31, 1942
German authorities opened the I.G. Farben labor camp at Auschwitz III (also known as
Monowitz or Buna), situated near the main camp complex at Auschwitz.
First large-scale air raids by the allies of Germany began at Cologne.
JUNE 1942
A Jewish partisan unit was established in the forests of Byelorussia.
News received of massacres at Pabianice and Biala Podlaska in Poland.
JUNE 1, 1942
The Treblinka death camp in Poland opened. 700,000 Jews murdered there by August
1943.
The wearing of the Star of David was decreed for Jews in Nazi-occupied France and
Holland.
JUNE 2, 1942
The BBC announced 700,000 Jews had been killed in Poland.
JUNE 14, 1942
Thirteen-year-old Anne Frank began to write her diary several days before her family
went into hiding to avoid deportation from the Netherlands.
JUNE 23, 1942
Auschwitz opened as a death camp and work camp.
JUNE 29, 1942
At a press conference in London, the World Jewish Congress estimated that the Nazis
had already killed over one million Jews.
JUNE 30, 1942
All Jewish schools were closed in Germany.
JUNE 30/JULY 2, 1942
The New York Times reported via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews
had already been killed by the Nazis.
JULY 1942
Himmler’s second visit to Auschwitz included an inspection of Birkenau, where he
witnessed the gassing of inmates in two cottages that had been converted to improvised
gas chambers. Orders were issued to the Topf and Soehne Company to construct four
large crematoria with adjoining gas chambers.
Members of the “White Rose” resistance movement began to distribute anti-Nazi leaflets
in Munich.
Massacres extended to Minsk, Lida, Slonim and Rovno.
JULY 1, 1942
The Germans reached El Alamein, Egypt and the Don River in the Soviet Union.
JULY 6, 1942
Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam to avoid deportation.
JULY 15, 1942
German authorities began deportations of Dutch Jews from the Westerbork transit camp
in the Netherlands to Auschwitz. By September 13, 1944, over 100 trains had carried
more than 100,000 people to killing centers and concentration camps in the German
Reich and the General Government.
JULY 16, 1942
Nazis began deportation of Jews from France.
JULY 19, 1942
Himmler ordered the elimination of all Jews in the Generalgouvernement by the end of
1942.
JULY 21, 1942
Twenty (20) thousand people gathered in New York City’s Madison Square Garden to
protest the Nazi atrocities.
JULY 22, 1942
Between July 22 and September 12, German SS and police authorities, assisted by
auxiliaries, deported approximately 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to killing
centers and concentration camps. Of that number, about 265,000 Jews were sent to the
Treblinka killing center where they were murdered. In protest, Adam Czerniakow,
Judenrat of the Warsaw Ghetto takes his own life.
Residents of the Nieswiec ghetto in eastern Poland resisted a German deportation with
knives, axes, clubs and a handful of firearms. A few Jews managed to escape to join the
partisans.
JULY 23, 1942
Gassing operations began at the Treblinka killing center. Between July 1942 and
November 1943, SS special detachments at Treblinka murdered an estimated 700,000
Jews and at least 2000 Roma (Gypsies).
JULY 28, 1942
The Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) was established in the Warsaw ghetto.
AUGUST 1942
The news of the Nazi plan to annihilate Jews of Europe reached Gerhard Reigner, the
World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland.
Germans and Croatians began deporting Croatian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Hans Frank, Governor General announced “1.2 million Jews will no longer be provided
with food.”
AUGUST 4, 1942
German authorities began systematic deportations of Jews from Belgium. The
deportations continued until the end of July 1944. The Germans deported more than
25,000 Jews, about half of Belgium’s Jewish population, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau
killing center in occupied Poland, where most of them perished.
AUGUST 5, 1942
An extermination squad arrived in Warsaw and their operation lasted about a week
AUGUST 8, 1942
Gerhard Reigner informed the U.S. consulate in Geneva about a Nazi plan to murder all
of Europe’s Jews.
AUGUST 10-29, 1942
“Aktion” in Lvov ghetto. 40,000 Jews deported to extermination camps.
AUGUST 11, 1942
The U.S. Legation in Switzerland passed information received from Gerhard Reigner to
the U.S. State Department regarding the Nazi plan to murder European Jewry.
AUGUST 15, 1942
Cold Shock experiments on prisoners began at Dachau.
AUGUST 21, 1942
President Roosevelt warned the Axis powers that the perpetrators of war crimes would be
tried after their defeat and face “fearful retribution.”
AUGUST 26, 1942
7000 “stateless” Jews were rounded up in Vichy, France.
AUGUST 28, 1942
After receiving details of Gerhard Reigner’s report regarding the Nazi plan to annihilate
Europe’s Jews, a British politician cabled the information to American Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise.
AUGUST 30, 1942
Leaders of the “Rote Kapelle” (Red Orchestra), a German Communist resistance group
working with Soviet intelligence from 1939, were arrested. They were subsequently
executed in December.
SUMMER 1942
The deportation of Jews to extermination camps from the Netherlands, Poland, France
and Croatia occurred. Furthermore, the armed resistance by Jews in ghettos occurred in
Kletzk, Wieswiez, Mir, Lackwa, Krements and Tuchin.
SEPTEMBER 1942
U.S. Representative Emanuel Celler introduced a bill in the House of Representatives
calling for the opening of U.S. doors to refugees in France who can prove they are facing
persecution. However, the bill died in committee.
U.S. State Department granted permission for five thousand (5000) Jewish children in
France to ender the U.S. The initiative failed because of the Vichy government stalling.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1942
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise contacted the U.S. State Department about Nazi plans to kill
European Jewry. Wise agreed to remain silent until the information was confirmed.
The residents of Lachva, Belorussia, stubbornly resisted German attempts to massacre
them. About 700 Jews were killed in the struggle, enabling some to flee into the forests
to join partisan groups.
SEPTEMBER 10/11, 1942
Meir Berliner, a Jewish prisoner at Treblinka, killed SS officer Max Bialis in an act or
resistance. In retaliation, Ukrainian guards massacred many Jews awaiting death in the
camp’s gas chambers.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1942
The Battle of Stalingrad, Russia began.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1942
On Yom Kippur, the Warsaw Ghetto was reduced in area by 50%. More than 75% of the
ghetto population was already gone. Two thousand (2000) Jewish policemen were
deported.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1942
In the Warsaw Ghetto, the SS and SD took over administration of Jewish affairs.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1942
Following a German order to assemble for deportation, Jews in the Tucczyn ghetto in
western Ukraine set fire to the ghetto’s houses, offering strong resistance. About 2000
Jews escaped into the forests.
SEPTEMBER 30, 1942
Hitler publicly repeated his prophecy of annihilation of world Jewry.
OCTOBER 4, 1942
All Jews held in German concentration camps were ordered transported to Auschwitz.
OCTOBER 10, 1942
Ordinance lists thirteen (13) ghettos and forty-two (42) Jewish quarters in the
Generalgouvernement of occupied Poland.
OCTOBER 17, 1942
Allied nations pledged to punish Germany for their policy of genocide.
OCTOBER 18, 1942
Jews and “Easterners” in the Reich were given to the Gestapo by the German Ministry of
Justice.
OCTOBER 20, 1942
In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Coordinating Committee of the resistance movement was
formed.
OCTOBER 23, 1942
The British began a counteroffensive at El Alamein, Egypt.
OCTOBER 28, 1942
The first deportations from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau began.
Fifty (50) ghettoes are recognized as existing in occupied Poland.
OCTOBER 29, 1942
16,000 Jews were murdered in Pinsk.
NOVEMBER 1942
The Allied forces land in North Africa.
A Jewish member of the Polish government informed the press that one million Polish
Jews had perished since the war began.
NOVEMBER 7, 1942
The Allies landed in North Africa.
NOVEMBER 11, 1942
Germany occupied Vichy France.
Italy occupied Nice, France.
NOVEMBER 24, 1942
For the first time, reports of Jews being methodically murdered at Auschwitz reached the
outside world. Jan Karski, representing the Polish government-in-exile, arrived in
London to report Nazi atrocities of mass murder of Jews reported by eyewitnesses.
The U.S. State Department confirmed reports of the Nazi plans to slaughter the Jews in
Europe. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise held a press conference.
NOVEMBER 25/26, 1942
A massive round-up of Norwegian Jews by Germans and Norwegian collaborators began.
NOVEMBER 26, 1942
The Soviet counteroffensive began.
WINTER 1942
The deportation of Jews from Norway, Germany and Greece to extermination camps took
place. A Jewish partisan movement was organized in the forests near Lublin, Poland.
DECEMBER 1942
Deportations to Belzec stopped.
DECEMBER 4, 1942
The Jewish Fighting Organization – Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or Z.O.B. – was
founded in Poland.
DECEMBER 8, 1942
U.S. Jewish leaders met with President Roosevelt and handed him a twenty page
summary of the Holocaust.
DECEMBER 16, 1942
Himmler ordered the “final solution of the Gypsy question.”
DECEMBER 17, 1942
The Allies issued a statement condemning “in the strongest possible terms this bestial
policy of cold-blooded extermination,” by the Nazis. Meanwhile, the League of Nations
pledged punishment for the extermination of European Jewry.
DECEMBER 19, 1942
The United Nations Information Office in New York released a report that authenticated
the accounts of the Holocaust.
JANUARY 1943
The U.S. State Department received information from Switzerland that disclosed that
6000 Jews a day were being killed at one location in Poland.
JANUARY 14, 1943
The Allies agreed on German unconditional surrender at the Casablanca meeting.
JANUARY 18-22, 1943
SS and police units deported more than 5000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the
Treblinka killing center. Members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska
Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB) fought against the Germans in armed revolt as Jews were
rounded up for deportation.
FEBRUARY 1943
Some 200-300 Christian women in inter-faith marriages protested for nearly one week
outside several Berlin assembly centers after their Jewish husbands were arrested.
FEBRUARY 2, 1943
The German advance in the Soviet Union was stopped at Stalingrad. The German Sixth
Army surrendered and this marked the turning point in the war.
The Soviets began a slow re-conquest of the Ukraine.
FEBRUARY 5-12, 1943
“Aktion” in Bialystok ghetto: 1000 Jews killed on the spot and 10,000 deported to
Treblinka.
FEBRUARY 10, 1943
The U.S. State Department asked the legation in Switzerland to discontinue sending
reports about the mass murders of Jews to private citizens in the U.S.
FEBRUARY 13, 1943
The New York Times reported that Romania was willing to help move 70,000 Jews from
Transnistria to a safe haven chosen by the Allies.
FEBRUARY 18, 1943
Hans and Sophie Scholl and other leaders of the “White Rose” resistance movement were
arrested for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich. They were both executed on
February 22, 1943.
FEBRUARY 26, 1943
The first transport of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) reaches Auschwitz-Birkenau.
FEBRUARY 27, 1943
A roundup of Berlin Jews to be deported to Auschwitz to work in munitions occurred.
MARCH 1943
The Jewish ghetto at Krakow was liquidated.
MARCH 1, 1943
An estimated 75,000 people showed up at a “Stop Hitler Now” rally in New York’s
Madison Square Garden. The Garden only seats 20,000!
Transports of Dutch Jews from Holland to Sobibor were sent. Furthermore, Jews from
Vienna, Prague, Luxembourg and Macedonia were sent to Treblinka.
MARCH 4, 1943
Jews of Thrace, Greece were deported to Treblinka.
MARCH 9, 1943
The Committee for a Jewish Army presented a pageant in New York called “We Will
Never Die” in memory of the murdered Jews of Europe.
MARCH 13, 1943
The Auschwitz death camp is greatly enlarged. It was referred to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
MARCH 15, 1943
German SS, police and military units began the deportation of Jews from Salonika,
Greece, to Auschwitz. Between March 20 and August 18, more than 50,000 Greek Jews
arrived at the Auschwitz camp complex. SS staff killed most of the deportees in the gas
chambers at Birkenau.
APRIL 19-MAY 16, 1943
In what is call the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jewish fighters resisted the German attempt
to liquidate the ghetto. German SS and police units deported many of those who survived
the armed revolt to Treblinka, and sent others to Majdanek and forced labor camps at
Trawniki and Poniatowa in the General Government. Some resistance fighters escaped
from the ghetto and joined partisan groups in the forest around Warsaw. The Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising was the first mass revolt in Nazi-occupied Europe.
APRIL 19, 1943
British and U.S. officials opened a twelve day conference in Bermuda to discuss the
possibility of rescuing European Jewish refugees.
Three members of the Committee for the Defense of Jews in Belgium cooperated with
the Belgian resistance to attack a deportation train leaving the transit camp of Malines
going to Auschwitz. Their success allowed several hundred Jews to flee into the night
while the three young men were gunned down. It was the only attempt during the
Holocaust to stop a transport.
APRIL 20, 1943
The U.S. State Department received a message from Gerhard Reigner outlining a plan to
rescue Romanian and French Jews.
APRIL 21, 1943
Jews convicted of crimes were transported to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz.
It was not difficult for a Jew to be convicted of a crime. Beginning in the middle of
1941, it was a criminal offense to use public transportation, keep pets, visit a barber shop,
possess a typewriter, possess electrical appliances or possess any woolen or fur clothing.
MAY 4, 1943
An ad in the New York Times taken out by Jewish activists assailed the Bermuda
Conference as: “a mockery and a cruel jest.”
MAY 8, 1943
The leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising die at Mila 18.
MAY 30, 1943
Josef Mengele became the camp doctor at Auschwitz.
SUMMER 1943
Armed resistance by Jews occurred in the ghettos of Czestochowa, Lvov, Bedzin,
Bialystock and Tarnow.
JUNE 1943
The Chief of the U.S. Visa Division admitted that Spanish consulates were withholding
visas from refugees who had advisory approval.
JUNE 1, 1943
The Lvov ghetto was liquidated.
JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1943
Hundreds of underground fighters leave the Vilna ghetto for the forests to become
partisans.
JUNE 21, 1943
Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, ordered the liquidation of all ghettos in the Baltic
States and Belorussia (Reich Commissariat Ostland) and the deportation of all Jews to
concentration camps.
JUNE 28, 1943
Four crematoria were completed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
JULY 1943
Jan Karski, a courier for the Polish resistance, meets with FDR, and gave him an
eyewitness account of the Holocaust.
JULY 10, 1943
The Allies invade Sicily.
JULY 16, 1943
The U.S. Treasury Department was prepared to issue license allowing the transfer of
funds from Jewish organizations in the U.S. to Switzerland. The money would be used to
help rescue the Jews of Romania and France.
JULY 20-25, 1943
The Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe took place in New York
City with 1500 attending.
JULY 24, 1943
Mussolini was toppled from power in Italy.
AUGUST 1943
A report by Jewish leaders in the U.S. advised that the death toll of European Jews killed
had reached four million.
The Soviet Red Army advanced westward toward Germany.
Lodz Ghetto survivors were transferred to Auschwitz.
AUGUST 2, 1943
Jewish prisoners revolted at the Treblinka killing center. Although more than 300
prisoners escaped, most were caught and killed by German SS and police units assisted
by army troops. The SS special detachment forced surviving prisoners to remove all
remaining traces of the camp’s existence. After the killing center was dismantled in
November 1943, the special detachment shot the remaining prisoners.
AUGUST 3, 1943
A ghetto uprising occurred at Bedzin.
AUGUST 8, 1943
The first of five organized groups left the Vilna ghetto to join the partisans.
AUGUST 15, 1943
A revolt in the Bialystok ghetto occurred as the ghetto was being liquidated. 40,000 Jews
were deported in the coming weeks.
SEPTEMBER 1943
A bill was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow refugees
who didn’t endanger public safety to come to the U.S. temporarily. The bill didn’t reach
the floor of either house.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1943
The Vilna (Lithuania) underground uprising failed as the ghetto was ordered to begin
liquidation. Lacking arms, only a few fighters managed to fight to the death. Others
escaped to join partisans outside the city.
The Tarnow Ghetto Uprising began.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1943
Italy secretly signed an armistice with the Allies.
Belgian Jews were arrested for deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1943
SS authorities converted the Kovno ghetto into a concentration camp (Concentration
Camp Kauen) under the direction of SS Captain Wilhelm Goecke.
AUTUMN 1943
The Jewish ghettos of Minsk, Vilna and Riga were liquidated.
SEPTEMBER 20, 1943
Rome occupied by Germans. German Army was in command of most of Italy.
SEPTEMBER 23, 1943
SS authorities ordered the final deportation of Jews from the Vilna ghetto. SS and police
units in Vilna deported 4000 Jews to the Sobibor killing center and evacuated
approximately 3700 to labor camps in German-occupied Estonia.
OCTOBER 1943
Danish citizens helped 7200 Jews in Denmark escape to Sweden.
OCTOBER 6, 1943
Four hundred Orthodox rabbis gathered outside the White House to present a petition to
FDR calling for a rescue agency. The president declined to meet them.
OCTOBER 14, 1943
Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor killing center began an armed revolt. Approximately 300
escaped. German SS and police units, with assistance from German military units,
recaptured more than 100 and killed them. After the revolt, SS special detachments
closed and dismantled the killing center. (At this time, only 15,000 Jews remain in
Germany).
OCTOBER 18, 1943
Jews of Rome were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pope Pius XII remained silent and
did not speak out.
OCTOBER 20, 1943
The United Nations War Crimes Commission was established.
OCTOBER 21, 1943
German authorities declared the Minsk ghetto officially liquidated after they murdered
the remaining 2000 Jews.
OCTOBER 25, 1943
Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine was liberated. Only 15 of 80,000 Jews remained.
An uprising at the Czestochowa Ghetto occurred.
NOVEMBER 3-4, 1943
German SS and police units implemented Operation Harvest Festival. The purpose of
Harvest Festival was to liquidate several labor camps in the Lublin area. During Harvest
Festival, German SS and police units killed at least 42,000 Jews at Majdanek, Trawniki
and Poniatowa.
NOVEMBER 9, 1943
Identical resolutions were introduced into the House and Senate calling on the president
to create a government rescue agency for the refugees.
NOVEMBER 10, 1943
FDR suggested setting up refugee camps in North Africa and Southern Europe. The
State Department disapproved the plan.
NOVEMBER 17, 1943
Jewish partisans liberated Jews in Borshchev, Ukraine.
NOVEMBER 26, 1943
Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long testified in the House on the rescue
resolution.
NOVEMBER 28, 1943
Teheran Conference – Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet.
DECEMBER 1943
By the end of 1943, the majority of inmates at Auschwitz are Jews.
DECEMBER 22, 1943
Krakow’s underground Jewish Fighting Organization carried out a daring attack on
German officers sitting in the city’s Cyganeria café. Eleven Germans were killed and
thirteen wounded in this act of resistance.
JANUARY 1944
The Jewish underground in Budapest set up a workshop forging documents for rescue
purposes. By the end of 1944, over 100,000 people had been supplied with such
documents.
JANUARY 13, 1944
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau, Jr. received “Report to the Secretary on the
Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”
JANUARY 16, 1944
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau, Jr. proposed to FDR that a rescue
commission be established.
JANUARY 22, 1944
President Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board.
JANUARY 27, 1944
The German siege of Leningrad ended.
JANUARY 29, 1944
The Nazis announce a plan to breed a Aryan elite by encouraging unmarried women to
bear children of German SS officers.
MARCH 1944
The War Refugee Board helped organize the evacuation of 1200 Jewish refugees from
Romania aboard three tiny Bulgarian vessels.
The War Refugee Board convinced Romania to move 48,000 Jews from Transistria, out
of the path of retreating German troops.
MARCH 7, 1944
Emmanuel Ringelblum and his family (in the Warsaw ghetto) were executed by the
Germans. After the war, his “Oneg Shabbat” histories were discovered and published
chronicling life in the Warsaw ghetto.
MARCH 19, 1944
German military units occupied Hungary.
MARCH 24, 1944
President Roosevelt issued a war-crimes statement.
APRIL 1944
The Nazis began concentrating Jews into central locations in Hungary preparing to
transport them to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination.
A Gallop poll showed 70% of Americans approved setting up emergency relief camps in
the U.S.
Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two escapees from Auschwitz provided Jewish
underground in Slovakia with a full description of the death camp.
Daniel Trocme of Le Cambon-Sur-Ligon, France, died at Buchenwald. The entire
French town successfully hid, rescued and saved 5000 Jews between 1941 and 1944.
APRIL 16, 1944
The Hungarian government registered Jews and confiscated their property.
MAY 1944
The War Refugee Board opened its first refugee camp at Fedala in North Africa.
MAY 11, 1944
Allied forces mounted a major offensive in Central Italy.
MAY 15-JULY 9, 1944
Hungarian gendarmerie (rural police units) under the guidance of German SS officials,
led by Adolf Eichmann, deported nearly 476,000 Jews from Hungary. Most were
deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Four trains departed per day, each carrying 3000 Jews
to their death.
MAY 16, 1944
Gypsies at Auschwitz resisted the destruction of the Gypsy family camp.
SUMMER 1944
The liquidation of Jewish ghettos in Kovno (Kaunas), Shavil (Siauliai) and Lodz (all in
Poland) were liquidated. All inmates were sent to extermination camps.
JUNE 1944
Appeals from the Jewish underground in Slovakia to bomb the deportation routes to
Auschwitz reached Switzerland. However, the U.S. War Department turned down those
appeals.
JUNE 1, 1944
FDR agreed to allow 1000 refugees from Italy to come to a camp in the U.S.
JUNE 4, 1944
The Allies liberated Rome.
JUNE 6, 1944
D Day. The Allied invasion of Europe. British and American troops launched an
invasion of France.
JUNE 22, 1944
A massive Soviet offensive destroyed the German front in Belorussia.
JUNE 25, 1944
Pope Pius XII made a plea to the Hungarian Head of State, Miklos Horthy, to save
Hungarian Jews.
JULY 1944
The War Refugee Board secured a Romanian commitment to accept Jews fleeing the
Nazis from Hungary.
JULY 4, 1944
Minsk, Belorussia was liberated; few of the 80,000 Jews survived.
JULY 8-12, 1944
As the Soviet army neared, SS authorities liquidated the Kovno concentration camp,
transferring 6000 Jews to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps in the German
Reich.
JULY 13, 1944
Jewish partisans helped to liberate Vilna; 2500 of 57,000 Jews survived.
JULY 20, 1944
A group of German military officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The plot
failed.
JULY 22, 1944
SS authorities evacuated most of the remaining prisoners from Majdanek westward to
evade the advancing Soviet army.
Lvov was liberated; 110,000 Jews were killed.
JULY 23, 1944
Soviet troops liberated Majdanek. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans
failed to destroy the camp and the evidence of mass murder.
The Red Cross visited Theresienstadt.
JULY 31, 1944
The American Jewish Conference sponsored a rally at Madison Square Garden in New
York City to draw the attention to the plight of Hungarian Jews.
AUGUST 1944
In large part because of the efforts of a War Refugee Board official in Turkey, Ira
Hirschmann, Bulgaria abolished its anti-Jewish laws.
982 refugees, most of them Jewish, arrive at Fort Ontario in upstate New York.
As a result of the Soviet Red Army’s advances on the Eastern Front, orders were given to
phase out the activities at Auschwitz and to eliminate all traces of its operations.
AUGUST 1, 1944
The Warsaw uprising began as Polish resistance forces occupied important parts of the
city. The fighting continued until October 2, 1944, when remnants of the Polish forces
surrendered. Tens of thousands of Polish citizens and fighters were killed.
AUGUST 7-30, 1944
SS and police officials liquidated the Lodz ghetto and deported approximately 74,000
Jews and an undetermined number of Roma (Gypsies) to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
AUGUST 14, 1944
The U.S. War Department wrote that bombing Auschwitz would divert air power from
“decisive operations elsewhere.”
AUGUST 20, 1944
127 Flying Fortresses dropped high-explosives on the factory areas of Auschwitz
(Auschwitz III – I.G. Farben – Buna - Monowitz), less than five miles from the gas
chambers.
AUGUST 28/29-OCTOBER 27, 1944
Members of the Slovak resistance revolted against the German-supported Slovakian
government. Between September and October, German SS and police officials, assisted
by German military units and Slovak fascist paramilitary units, deported approximately
10,000 Slovak Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1944
Antwerp, Belgium was liberated; fewer than 5000 Jews survived.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1944
Italian partisans seized the Val d’Ossoloa near the Swiss border. They proclaimed a
republic, which lasted for five weeks, until the Germans recaptured the area.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1944
U.S. heavy bombers rain destruction on factory areas of Auschwitz (Auschwitz III – I.G.
Farben – Buna – Monowitz), but not on the crematoria only a few miles away at
Auschwitz-Birkenau.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1944
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the formation of a Jewish Brigade.
OCTOBER 3, 1944
The Polish uprising in Warsaw was crushed by the Nazis.
OCTOBER 6, 1944
At Auschwitz/Birkenau, the Sonderkommando (special detachment of Jewish prisoners
deployed to remove corpses from the gas chambers and burn them) blew up Crematorium
IV and killed the guards. About 250 participants of the revolt died in battle with SS and
police units. The SS and police units shot 200 more members of the Sonderkommando
after the battle was over.
OCTOBER 20, 1944
Belgrade was liberated by Yugoslav partisan units and Soviet troops.
OCTOBER 23, 1944
Paris was liberated by the Allies, led by French General Charles De Gaulle and American
General George Patton.
OCTOBER 30, 1944
The last transport of Jews from Theresienstadt (Terezin) arrived at Auschwitz. During
October, SS officials deported approximately 18,000 Jews to the Auschwitz camp
complex. Most of them were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau.
NOVEMBER 8, 1944
40,000 Jews were moved from Budapest to Austria in what was called a “death march.”
NOVEMBER 25, 1944
The SS began to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Himmler ordered the destruction as the Nazis tried to cover up the evidence of death
camps.
DECEMBER 16, 1944
The Germans began the Battle of the Bulge, their last major offensive of the war, as a
way of striking back at U.S. forces.
JANUARY 1945
Death marches into the German interior began, taking 250,000 Jewish lives.
A group including Abba Kovner established Bricha (Flight) an underground organization
that smuggled Jewish survivors into Palestine.
JANUARY 6, 1945
Four women prisoners – Roza Robota, Ella Gaertner, Esther Wajcblum and Regina
Safirsztain were hung in the women’s camp at Auschwitz. They had smuggled the
explosives that were used during the Sonderkommando revolt of October 7, 1944.
JANUARY 16, 1945
The Soviets liberated half of Budapest, Hungary.
A revolt at Chelmno took place.
JANUARY 17, 1945
As Soviet troops approached, SS units evacuated prisoners in the Auschwitz camp
complex, marching them on foot toward the interior of the German Reich. The forced
evacuations came to be called “death marches.” 66,000 prisoners from Auschwitz left on
the death march, with 15,000 dying along the way. 7000 sick and dead prisoners were
left behind to be liberated by the Soviet Red Army.
The Red (Soviet) Army liberated Warsaw.
JANUARY 19, 1945
The Soviets liberated Lodz, Poland.
JANUARY 25, 1945
This was the beginning of the death march of the Stutthof inmates.
JANUARY 27, 1945
Soviet troops, under Jewish Colonel, Grigori Elishawetzki, liberated about 8000
prisoners left behind at the Auschwitz camp complex.
FEBRUARY 1, 1945
40,000 prisoners were marched out of Gross-Rosen, Poland on a death march.
The U.S. State Department announced that perpetrators of all crimes against Jews and
other minorities would be published.
FEBRUARY 2, 1945
During the night, about 570 prisoners, many of them Soviet prisoners of war under death
sentences, revolted and escaped from a barrack in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
All but seventeen were later caught and killed.
FEBRUARY 4-11, 1945
The Yalta Conference held in the Crimea (U.S.S.R.), attended by “The Big Three” –
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (United States), Winston Churchill (Great Britain) and Joseph
Stalin (U.S.S.R.).
FEBRUARY 13/14, 1945
RAF and USAF air raids devastated Dresden, Germany.
Soviet forces captured Budapest and saved the lives of 120,000 Jews.
MARCH 5, 1945
The Allies entered Germany from the west. American troops reached the Rhine River.
APRIL 1945
The Red Army entered Germany from the East, Allied Army from the West.
APRIL 6-10, 1945
The death march of Buchenwald inmates.
APRIL 9, 1945
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at Flossenberg concentration camp.
APRIL 11, 1945
Prisoners at Buchenwald revolted to forestall the planned evacuation of the camp as the
Allies drew near. Some 150 Germans were taken prisoner a few hours before units of the
American forces entered and liberated the camp. Approximately 32,000 prisoners were
liberated at Buchenwald.
APRIL 12, 1945
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 63. Harry
S. Truman succeeded as the new U.S. President.
APRIL 15, 1945
British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen death camp.
APRIL 20-MAY 3, 1945
Twelve-day death march from Sachsenhausen. Some 26,000 prisoners began the march
of 200 kilometers with barely more than 15,000 surviving to be liberated by the Allies.
APRIL 25, 1945
American and Soviet troops met at the Elbe Rive.
APRIL 28, 1945
Former Italian Dictator, Benito Mussolini and his mistress were executed in Milan.
APRIL 29, 1945
Hitler finally married Eva Braun in his bunker in Berlin.
APRIL 30, 1945
Adolf Hitler, along with his new bride, Eva Braun committed suicide in their Berlin
bunker.
U.S. forces occupied Munich.
MAY 2, 1945
German units in Berlin surrendered to Soviet forces.
MAY 5, 1945
U.S. troops liberated more than 17,000 prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp and
more than 20,000 prisoners at the Gusen concentration camps in the annexed Austrian
territory of the German Reich.
MAY 7-9, 1945
German armed forces surrendered unconditionally in the West on May 7 and in the East
on May 9. Allied and Soviet forces proclaimed May 8, 1945, to be Victory in Europe
Day (V-E Day).
MAY 28, 1945
Acting Secretary of State J. Grew informed President Truman that Japanese were willing
to surrender if the emperor’s safety was guaranteed.
JULY 1, 1945
The U.S. visa system reverted to pre-war procedures, ending Washington’s complex
security-screening machinery.
JULY 13, 1945
President Truman was informed that the Japanese Emperor had joined the effort to
negotiate the surrender.
JULY 16, 1945
The Potsdam Conference convened to determine how to deal with Germany after its
defeat. Attendees: U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and
British Prime Minister Clement Atlee.
AUGUST 3, 1945
United States special envoy Earl Harrison made public a report to President Truman on
the treatment of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in Germany. Following World War II,
several hundred thousand Jewish survivors were unable or unwilling to return to their
home countries. Harrison’s report contained a strong indictment of Allied military
policies, underscored the plight of Jewish DPs, and led eventually to improved
conditions for them in the American zone of occupied Germany.
AUGUST 6, 1945
Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
AUGUST 9, 1945
Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1945
Japan signed terms of unconditional surrender. World War II officially ended.
NOVEMBER 20, 1945
The International Military Tribunal (IMT), made up of United States, British, French and
Soviet judges, began a trial of 21 major Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, Germany. It would
conclude in October 1946.
DECEMBER 22, 1945
President Truman issued a directive giving Displaced Persons (survivors of the
Holocaust) preference in receiving visas under the existing quota restrictions on
immigration to the United States.
JULY 4, 1946
A mob attacked Jewish survivors in Kielce, Poland. Following a ritual murder
accusation, a Polish mob killed more than 40 Jews and wounded dozens of others. This
attack sparked a second mass migration of Jews from Poland and Eastern Europe to DP
camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.
AUGUST 1, 1946
The IMT passed judgment on the major Nazi war criminals on trial in Nuremberg,
Germany. Eighteen were convicted, and three were acquitted. Eleven of the defendants
were sentenced to death.
SEPTEMBER 1946
Ten canisters of Emmanuel Ringelblum’s “Oneg Shabbat” archives were excavated from
the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.
OCTOBER 16, 1946
In accordance with the sentences handed down after the convictions, ten defendants were
executed by hanging. One defendant, Hermann Goring, escaped the hangman by
committing suicide in his cell.
DECEMBER 8, 1946 – APRIL 11, 1949
Military court in Nuremberg tried 177 German people, including doctors who took part in
the Nazi euthanasia program and industrialists who utilized slave labor/victims of the
Holocaust to operate their businesses.
JULY 11, 1947
The Exodus 1947 ship carrying 4500 Jewish refugees sailed for British-administered
Palestine from southern France, despite British restrictions on Jewish immigration. The
British intercepted the ship and forced it to proceed to Haifa in Palestine and then to the
French port of Port-de-Bouc, where it lay at anchor for more than a month.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1947
Ultimately, the British took the Jewish refugees from the Exodus 1947 to Hamburg,
Germany, and forcibly returned them to DP camps. The fate of the Exodus 1947
dramatized the plight of Holocaust survivors in the DP camps and increased international
pressure on Great Britain to allow free Jewish immigration to Palestine.
NOVEMBER 29, 1947
As the postwar Jewish refugee crisis escalated and relations between Jews and Arabs
deteriorated, the British government decided to submit the status of Palestine to the
United Nations. In a special session on this date, the United Nations General Assembly
voted to partition Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The
decision was accepted by the Jewish and rejected by the Arab leadership.
MAY 14, 1948
David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Jews of Palestine, announced the establishment of the
State of Israel in Tel Aviv and declared that Jewish immigration into the new state would
be unrestricted. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel,
including more than two-thirds of the Jewish DPs in Europe.
JUNE 1948
Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, authorizing 200,000 DPs to enter the United
States in 1949 and 1950. Though at first the law’s stipulations made it unfavorable to
Jewish DPs, Congress amended the bill, and by 1952, thousands of Jewish DPs entered
the United States. An estimated 80,000 Jewish DPs immigrated to the United States with
the aid of American Jewish agencies between 1945 and 1952.
DECEMBER 1, 1950
Two rubber-sealed milk cans of Emmanuel Ringelblum archives were excavated. These
Documents covered the history of the Warsaw Ghetto through March 1943.
MAY 11, 1960
Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, who had been smuggled into Argentina after the war
by the Vatican. In 1961, the Israeli Supreme Court tried, convicted and hung him for his
culpability in the Holocaust, especially the murder of Hungarian Jews between late spring
and early summer of 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1979
Setting an example for the rest of the world, the United States established the Office of
Special Investigations to prosecute former Nazis, if and when they would be located.
MAY 11 – JULY 4, 1987
Former Gestapo chief in Lyons, France, Klaus Barbie, was tried. Accused of the
deportation of French Jews, including 44 children to Auschwitz, Barbie was found guilty
and sentenced to a term of life in prison.