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Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany.
When they came to power in Germany, the Nazis did not immediately start to carry out mass murder. However, they quickly began using the government to target and exclude Jews from German society. -
"Nuremberg Laws"
anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag -
Anschluss (incorporation of Austria
all antisemitic decrees immediately applied in Austria -
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps -
GHETTOS
The largest ghetto in occupied Poland was the Warsaw ghetto. In Warsaw, more than 400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles. Other major ghettos were established in the cities of Lodz, Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Tens of thousands of western European Jews were also deported to ghettos in the east. -
Wannsee Conference in Berlin
Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews -
Deportation of Jews to killing centers
from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lakhva, Mir, Tuchin, and Weisweiz -
Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto
On May 16, 1943, SS and Police Chief Jurgen Stroop proclaimed, "180 Jews, bandits, and subhumans were destroyed. The Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more."