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1933: Hitler comes to power
January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Von Hindenburg.
March 22: The first official Nazi concentration camp opens in Dachau, a small village located near Munich -
1935: Jews no longer considered German citizens
September 15: "Nuremberg Laws": first anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag.
November 15: Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew. -
1937: A concentration camp opens.
July 15: Buchenwald concentration camp opens. -
1938: More concentration camps open
May: Flossenburg concentration camp opens
October 28: 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany expelled; Poles refused to admit them; 8,000 are stranded in the frontier village of Zbaszyn
November 15: All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools -
1941: The killing starts
July - August: Dozens thousands of Russian and Jews are murdered by the Einzatzgruppen (extermination squads) in the occupied territories. Here are some examples:
5,200 Jews murdered in Byalistok
2,000 Jews murdered in Minsk
5,000 Jews murdered in Vilna
5,000 Jews murdered in Brest-Litovsk
5,000 Jews murdered in Tarnopol
3,500 Jews murdered in Zloczow
11,000 Jews murdered in Pinsk
14,000 Jews murdered in Kamenets Podolsk
12,287 Jews murdered in Kishinev -
1942: more jews are killed
March 17: Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered.
May: Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered. -
1943: Previously POW camp Bergen-Belsen is under SS control.
April: Previously POW camp Bergen-Belsen is under SS control.
April 19: Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June
June: Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union -
1945: The end
April 29: Liberation of Dachau.
April 30: Hitler commits suicide, liberation of Ravensbruck
August 15: V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed
September 2: Japan surrenders; end of World War II
