Holocaust Timeline - World History

  • Schutzstaffel was established (originally Hitler's personal guards, but later became the elite guard of the Nazi Reich and Hitler’s executive force prepared to carry out all security-related duties without regard for legal restraint).

  • Adolf Hitler got appointed as chancellor in Germany.

  • Adolf Hitler claims "emergency" powers to punish the people who set off the fire in Reichstag.

  • Jewish businesses were targeted and boycotted by the Nazis.

  • Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases.

  • Germany enacted the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals.

  • Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws.

  • Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles after sending German troops into Rhineland (a demilitarized zone).

  • Reichszentrale is created in Germany so the Nazis can fight off homosexuality and abortion.

  • Jews were required to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing in public at all times.

  • Period: to

    Kristallnacht, aka "The Night of Broken Glass", was when Germans killed hundreds of Jews and attacked thousands of Jewish institutions (some Jews were even sent to concentration camps).

  • S.S. St. Louis (the ship was filled with Jews) sailed from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba to escape increasing persecution under the Third Reich in Germany.

  • Germany invades Poland; start of WWII.

  • Auschwitz opens.

  • Germans open the Lodz Ghetto in Lodz, Poland.

  • Period: to

    The Nazi government set in motion a plan to exile all European Jews to Madagascar.

  • Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units of Nazi Germany) conducted mass killings of Jews, Communists, and the disabled in Nazi-occupied areas in the East.

  • Adolf Hitler issues The Commissar Order, an order which states all Soviet commissars were to be shot if found (and identified).

  • Period: to

    Babi Yar massacre occurred; Nazis killed over 34,000 Jews in Kiev.

  • The Wannsee Conference took place — German officials gathered in Berlin to discuss the "final solution" in regards to the "Jewish question" (genocide against the Jewish population in Europe).

  • Last gassing of inmates done at Auschwitz.

  • Dr. Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz.

  • Himmler orders to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps.

  • Himmler orders to demolish the gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz.

  • Liberation of Auschwitz.

  • Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

  • The International Military Tribunal for Germany formally opened in Nuremberg, Germany, where the Allied nations decided the punishment Germany would get for the war crimes they've committed.

  • Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by the Israeli secret service agency, Mossad (they had tracked him down and later took him to Israel).

  • Dr. Josef Mengele is found dead from a stroke off the the Brazilian coast.