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Beginning of the Second World War
On 1 September 1939, without a formal declaration of war, Germany invaded Poland with the immediate pretext being the Gleiwitz incident, a provocation staged by the Gestapo claiming that Polish troops had allegedly committed "provocations" along the German-Polish border including house torching, which were all staged by the Germans. -
The Soviet Union invaded Poland
Pursuant to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Poland was attacked by the Soviet Union on 17 September 1939. Before the end of the month most of Poland was divided between the Germans and the Soviets. -
The death camp in Auschwitz founded
In 1942, the Germans began the systematic killing of the Jews, beginning with the Jewish population of the General Government. Six extermination camps (Auschwitz, Belzec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka) were established in which the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the mass murder of millions of Jews from Poland and other countries, was carried out between 1942 and 1944. Of Poland's prewar Jewish population of 3 million, only about 369,000 survived the war. -
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
In April 1943, the Germans began deporting the remaining Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, provoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from 19 April-16 May, one of the first armed uprisings against the Germans in Poland. The Polish-Jewish leaders knew that the rising would be crushed but they preferred to die fighting than wait to be deported to their deaths in the camps. -
The Warsaw Uprising
The uprising began on 1 August 1944, as part of a nationwide plan, Operation Tempest, when the Soviet Army approached Warsaw. Initially, the Poles established control over most of central Warsaw. Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. The Uprising was defeated after two months of fights. -
The end of WWII
WWII finished on 9th May 1945
