The Holocaust

By hoony2020161

  • Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Von Hindenburg.

  • The first official Nazi concentration camp opens in Dachau, a small village located near Munich (note: some "wild camps" already existed before 1933: Papenburg, Esterwegen, Börgermoor etc...). The first commandant of Dachau is Theodor Eicke.

  • Beginning of the Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

  • Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions

  • The Gestapo ("Geheime Stat Polizei" - Secret State Police) is established by Herman Goering, minister of Prussia.

  • Public burnings of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state.

  • Law excluding East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship.

  • Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him.

  • Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces

  • "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.

  • Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew.

  • Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions.

  • Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.

  • Reichführer SS Himmler (chief of the SS units) appointed the Chief of German Police.

  • Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.

  • Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.

  • Buchenwald concentration camp opens.

  • Flossenburg concentration camp opens.

  • Anschluss (incorporation of Austria): all antisemitic decrees immediately applied in Austria

  • Mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich

  • Evian Conference held in Evian, France on the problem of Jewish refugees

  • Adolf Eichmann establishes the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna to increase the pace of forced emigration.

  • Italy enacts sweeping antisemitic laws

  • Mauthausen concentration camp opens in Austria

  • Munich Conference: Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, previously western Czechoslovakia.

  • Following request by Swiss authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter "J" to restrict Jews from immigrating to Switzerland.

  • 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany expelled; Poles refused to admit them; 8,000 are stranded in the frontier village of Zbaszyn.

  • Assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan.

  • Period: to

    Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen).

  • Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands

  • All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools

  • One billion mark fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht

  • Hitler in Reichstag speech: if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung (extermination) of European Jews

  • Germans occupy Czechoslovakia.

  • Ravensbruck concentration camp opens.

  • Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed: non-aggression pact between Soviet Union and Germany.

  • Beginning of World War II: Germany invades Poland. In the following weeks, 16.336 civilians are murdered by the Nazies in 714 localities. At least 5,000 victims were Jews.

  • Heydrich issues directives to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland.

  • Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland.

  • First Polish ghetto established in Piotrkow.

  • Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or yellow star.

  • Germans occupy Denmark and southern Norway.

  • Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles.

  • Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.

  • Concentration camp established at Auschwitz.

  • Neuengamme concentration camp opens.

  • France surrenders.

  • Battle of Britain begins.

  • Warsaw Ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people.

  • Breendonck concentration camp opens in Belgium.

  • Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

  • Adolf Eichmann appointed head of the department for Jewish affairs of the Reich Security Main Office, Section IV B 4 .

  • Belzec extermination camp opens.

  • Establishment of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for the extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and others were also murdered at the camp.

  • Period: to

    Dozens thousands of Russian and Jews are murdered by the Einzatzgruppen (extermination squads) in the occupied territories

    Statistics:
    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
  • Period: to

    Anti-Jewish riots in Romania, hundreds of Jews butchered.

  • German authorities begin rounding up Polish Jews for transfer to Warsaw Ghetto. 10,000 Jews died by starvation in the ghetto between January and June 1941.

  • Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece; occupation follows.

  • Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp opens in France.

  • Germany invades the Soviet Union.

  • Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the "Final Solution".

  • Period: to

    34,000 Jews massacred at Babi Yar outside Kiev.

  • Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

  • Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943.

  • United States declares war on Japan and Germany.

  • Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered.

  • Jewish partisan units established in the forests of Byelorussia and the Baltic States.

  • Period: to

    Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers; Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin.

  • annsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews.

  • Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered.

  • Germans establish Treblinka concentration camp Summer Deportation of Jews to killing centers from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lachva, Mir, and Tuchin.

  • German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad

  • Liquidation of Krakow ghetto

  • Previously POW camp Bergen-Belsen is under SS control.

  • Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union

  • Armed resistance by Jews in Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnow ghettos

  • Period: to

    Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna, and Riga

  • Period: to

    Rescue of the Danish Jewry

  • Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June

  • Armed revolt in Sobibor extermination camp

  • Last Jews deported from Terezin to Auschwitz.

  • Last Jews deported from Terezin to Auschwitz.

  • Period: to

    Red Army repels Nazi forces.

  • Germany occupies Hungary.

  • Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz.

  • D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy.

  • Group of German officers attempt to assassinate Hitler.

  • Russians liberate Majdanek killing center.

  • Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz; one crematorium blown up

  • Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria.

  • Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria

  • Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof

  • Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march

  • Period: to

    Death march of inmates of Buchenwald

  • Liberation of Buchenwald.

  • Liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

  • Liberation of Sachsenhausen.

  • Liberation of Flossenburg.

  • Liberation of Dachau.

  • Hitler commits suicide, liberation of Ravensbruck.

  • Liberation of Mauthausen.

  • V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich

  • Bombing of Hiroshima

  • Bombing of Nagasaki

  • V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed

  • Japan surrenders; end of World War II

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