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Holocaust
The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.1 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. -
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
German President Paul von Hindenburg dies. With the support of the German armed forces, Hitler becomes President of Germany. Later that month Hitler abolishes the office of President and declares himself Führer of the German Reich and People, in addition to his position as Chancellor. In this expanded capacity, Hitler now becomes the absolute dictator of Germany; there are no legal or constitutional limits to his authority. -
Ban on Jehovah's Witness Organizations
The German government bans Jehovah’s Witness organizations. The ban is due to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to swear allegiance to the state; their religious convictions forbid an oath of allegiance to or service in the armed forces of any temporal power. -
Formation of the Center for Research on Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology
German physician and child psychiatrist Robert Ritter was appointed to lead a new eugenics research center in June 1936. Ritter and his small staff visited Romani communities and the so-called “Gypsy camps” opened by authorities to segregate Roma and Sinti. They collected genealogical information, physical measurements, blood samples, and criminal records. -
Buchenwald Concentration Camp Opens
Together with its many satellite camps, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders. Women were not part of the Buchenwald camp system until late 1943 or early 1944. An electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with automatic machine guns, surrounded the main camp. The SS often shot prisoners in the camp stables and hanged other prisoners in the crematorium area. -
German Annexation of Austria
A wave of street violence against Jewish persons and property followed in Vienna and other cities throughout the so-called Greater German Reich during the spring, summer, and autumn of 1938, culminating in the Kristallnacht riots and violence of November 9-10. -
Reichstag Speech
Amid rising international tensions Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler tells the German public and the world that the outbreak of war would mean the end of European Jewry—the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." -
Samuel Soltz's Visa
Samuel Soltz's papers bear witness to the vast array of bureaucratic stamps and visas that Stoltz, a Polish Jew, needed to emigrate from Europe in 1940–41. A stamp on the top left of the back of the document, dated August 21, 1940, represents a visa from the Japanese consul to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara. Sugihara issued thousands of visas to enable Jews to escape.