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Begins
Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany ( a nation with a jewish population of 566,000) -
Sprout
German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer. -
Laws
Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed. -
German
Heinrich Himmler is appointed chief of the German Police. -
Nazi
Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. Hitler announces Anschluss (union) with Austria. -
arrest
Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry, leaving them in 'No-Man's Land' near the Polish border for several months -
Kristallnacht
November 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass. -
threats
Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech. -
Czechoslovakia
March 15/16 - Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish pop. 350,000). -
Set time
Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer. -
world war 2 begins
World War Two in Europe began on 3rd September 1939, when the Prime Minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, declared war on Germany. -
Yellow star
Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10. -
Concentration Camp
Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as the site of a new concentration camp. -
invasion
Nazis invade France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500). -
armistice
France signs an armistice with Hitler. -
mass killing
Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow. -
Genocide
3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno. -
murders
The Hungarian Army rounds up 18,000 Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk. -
Killings
September 27/28 - 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine. -
anne frank
Anne Frank and family are arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945. -
horrible
Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen. -
evacuation
Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz. -
freedom
Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth." -
camp freedom
Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps. -
world war 2 ends
The War ended in the Summer of 1945 after Germany's surrender. -
justice
Twenty one former SS-Einsatz leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Fourteen are sentenced to death, with only 4 (the group commanders) actually being executed - the other death sentences having been commuted. -
captured
Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by the Israeli secret service. -
april 11-14
April 11 - August 14 - Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962. A fellow Nazi reported Eichmann once said "he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction."
