February 1933

Nazis burn Reichstag building, seat of the German government, to create a sense of panic. As a scapegoat – a young Dutch Communist – is arrested and charged with setting the fire. Hitler is granted emergency powers to suspend all civil rights.

March 1933

Nazis begin to establish concentration camps - The first is established at Dachua. German Parliament passes Enabling Act, giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

April 1933

Hitler orders a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores. This is followed by a series of laws depriving Jews of many rights. Jewish civil servants, including university professors and schoolteachers, lose their jobs. Nazis define non-Aryan with a decree. In this month the Gestapo, a secret police force, created by Hermann Göring is born.

May 1933

Gangs of German students from universities gather in Berlin and other German cities, raid the main library in Berlin and burn many of its books-- burn books with "unGerman" ideas. Books by Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells and many others go up in flames as they give the Nazi salute. In Berlin, Joseph Goebbels gives a speech to the students, stating..."...The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end…”. During the same month, many gay bars, clubs and publications are closed. The Nazis arrest trade union leaders, confiscate union property and ban strikes.

July 1933

Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany. The 'Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring' (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) to “clean” Germany of 'lives not deserving of life' pass. It orders sterilization for certain categories of people including 'Gypsies and Germans of black color' and, Jews, people with disabilities and others described as 'asocial'.

September 1933

Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture, and exclude Jews from the Arts.

October 1933

Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors, and owning land. Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

August 1934

German President von Hindenburg dies on August 2. Hitler becomes Führer.

October 1934

Marks first major wave of arrests of homosexuals throughout Germany.

September 1935

“Nuremberg Race Laws” against Jews decreed. This law remov all rights of citizenship from German Jews, allowing them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich. The public sale of Jewish newspapers is banned.

February 1936

The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

August 1937

Nazis occupy the Rhineland. SS Death's-head (Totenkopf) division is established to guard concentration camps.

October 1937

January 1937

Jews are banned from teaching Germans, being accountants or dentists.

August 1937

A huge concentration camp is opened at Buchenwald, near Weimar in central Germany.

October 1937

The British government restricts Jewish immigration to Palestine.

February 1938

Adolf Hitler declares himself supreme commander of Germany's armed forces.

March 1938

Nazi troops enter Austria, (with Jewish population 200,000). Himmler establishes a concentration camp near Linz Mauthausen.

April 1938

Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property. A Gestapo directive states that men convicted of homosexuality can be incarcerated in concentration camps.

July 1938

League of Nations conference held at Evian in France to discuss how to help Jews fleeing Hitler, but only the Dominican Republic agrees to accept any. Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police.

August 1938

Jewish women must add 'Sarah' and Jewish men must add 'Israel' to their names on all legal documents, including passports.

October 1938

Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J." Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland. Nazis arrest 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany and expel them to Poland, which refuses them entry. They are forced to live in a no-man's-land near the Polish border for several months.

November 1938

Herschel Grynszpan, son of one of the deported Polish Jews, kills Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official in Paris. Nazi gangs respond to the killing by a massive, coordinated attack on Jews, smashing Jewish shops, homes and synagogues throughout the German Reich on the night of November 9, 1938, into the next day, that has come to be known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass. Some 30,000 Jewish men are imprisoned. The Jews are collectively fined 1 billion marks for the murder of vom Rath. In this month, Jewish pupils are expelled from all public schools, and segregated schools are created.

December 1938

Hermann Göring is charged with resolving the "Jewish Question." He fine the Jews one billion marks for damages from Kristallnacht which the Nazis themselves had inflicted.

January 1939

Göring orders to speed up emigration of Jews. Gestapo establishes Office of Jewish Emigration in Austria, headed by Adolf Eichmann. This office is in-charge of issuing permits to Jews who want to leave Austria. Approximately a hundred thousand Austrian Jews leave while handing over all their wealth to the SS.

March 1939

Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish population 350,000).

April 1939

Slovakia passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws. Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses.

May 1939

Cuba, United States and other countries refuse to accept 930 Jewish refugees crowded in St. Louis ship. The ship is turned away and returns to Europe.

July 1939

German Jews lose their right to hold government jobs.

September 1939

Sept 1 Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer and are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets.

Sept 3 England and France declare war on Germany.

Sept 17 Soviet troops invade eastern Poland.

Sept 21 Orders issued to SS in Poland to round up Jews into ghettos near railroads for the future "final goal". Also orders are issued for the establishment of Jewish administrative councils in the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.

Sept 29 Nazis and Soviets divide up Poland. Over two million Jews reside in Nazi controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet area.

October 1939

Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany. By direct order from Hitler "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled is implemented. Euthanasia at first was implemented on new born and children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms. Based on Health Ministry questionnaire, the medical experts --without any examination or without reading any medical records—could decide weather a euthanasia warrant should be issued. Marked children then transferred to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation. Later the program expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Patients had to be reported if they suffered from mental illnesses, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and… or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Blacks, and Gypsies.

During this month Jews evacuated from Vienna. Proclamation by Hitler on the isolation of Jews and forced labor decree issued for Polish Jews aged 14 to 60.

November 1939

All Polish Jews over the age of 10 must wear a yellow star.

January 1940

Nazis set up a new concentration camp --Auschwitz in Poland. And in May Rudolf Höss is chosen to be kommandant of Auschwitz.

February 1940

First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

April 1940

Nazis invade Denmark (Jewish pop. 8,000), Norway (Jewish pop. 2,000), France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500) all within 2 -3 months. At the end of April the Lodz Ghetto in Poland with 230,000 Jews locked inside is closed off to the outside world.

June 1940

Paris is occupied by the Nazis and a month later the first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France. In October, Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

July1940

Eichmann proposes to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

August 1940

Romania introduces anti-Jewish measures restricting education and employment, later begin "Romanianization" of Jewish businesses, paving the way for Hitler. In October, Nazis invade Romania (Jewish pop. 34,000).

October 1940

29,000 German Jews are deported from Baden, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France.

November 1940

Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia become Nazi Allies. In less than two month, a pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed. In this month, The Krakow Ghetto containing 70,000 Jews, and the Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, sealed off.

January 1941

Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."

February 1941

430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.

March 1941

Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish pop. 50,000). Hitler's Commissar Order authorizes execution of anyone suspected of being a Communist official in territories about to be seized from the Soviets. German Jews are ordered into forced labor.

April 1941

Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish pop. 75,000) and Greece (Jewish pop. 77,00). In Croatia, the Jasenovac concentration camp is opened. Its principal victims are Serbs, Gypsies and Jews.

May 1941

In occupied France, Marshal Petain, collaborates with Hitler. 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

June 1941

Nazis invade the Soviet Union (Jewish pop. 3 million). In another pogrom Romanian troops conduct killing of 10,000 Jews in the town of Jassy.

Summer 1941

Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant Höss to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."

July 1941

As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct mass murder of Jews in seized lands. New ghettos are established at Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Zhitomer. In occupied Poland, Majdanek concentration camp, later a death camp, becomes operational. The government of Vichy France seizes Jewish-owned property. 3,800 Jews were killed in a pogrom carried out by Lithuanians in Kovno. At the end of July Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.

August 1941

Jews in Romania are forced into a narrow area along the border between Romania and Ukraine. By December, 70,000 perish. Ghettos established at Bialystok and Lvov.

September 1941

German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars, and general deportation of German Jews begin. The ghetto in the Lithuanian capital Vilna is established, containing 40,000 Jews. By the end of this month, 23,000 Jews are killed at Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine, Nazis take Kiev and SS Einsatzgruppen murder 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev.

October1941

35,000 Jews from Odessa shot. Beginning of the German Army drive on Moscow. Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.

November 1941

Theresienstadt ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes. Mass shootings of Latvian and German Jews near Riga.

December 1941

Japanese attack United States at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. and Britain declare war on Japan. Hitler and Italy declare war on the United States. In occupied Poland near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Prisoners (mainly Jews) are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment. The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who had been deported. Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states - "…We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole..."

In mid-December, the ship "Struma" carrying 769 Jews, leaves Romania for Palestine. British authorities deny permission to passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, while it is sailing back into the Black Sea, it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

January 1942

Wannsee Conference [[[Link to the conf. from Documrent section]]]] to coordinate the "Final Solution." Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow. In a document, SS Einsatzgruppe reports over 229,000 Jews killed.

March 1942

In occupied Poland, Belzec extermination camp becomes operational. This camp is fitted with permanent gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines placed outside the chamber. Later it substitutes Zyklon-B. Deportation of Slovak Jews and French Jews to Auschwitz begins.

May 1942

The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

June 1942

Gas vans used in Riga. SS report 97,000 persons have been "processed" in mobile gas vans. The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

July 1942

12,887 Jews of Paris are rounded up and sent to Drancy Internment Camp located outside the city. A total of approximately 74,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, will eventually be transported from Drancy to Auschwitz, Majdanek and Sobibor. Dutch Jews are deported to Auschwitz. During this month, Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau for two days, inspecting all ongoing construction and expansion, which includes four large gas chamber/crematories. He observes the extermination process from start to finish as two trainloads of Jews arrive from Holland. After the visit, Kommandant Höss is promoted. July also marks the opening of the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, east of Warsaw and the deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to this camp. The camp contained 10 gas chambers, each holding 200 persons. Bodies are burned in open pits.

August 1942

Swiss representatives of the World Jewish Congress receive information from a German industrialist regarding the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. They then pass the information on to London and Washington. The start of deportations of Croatian Jews to Auschwitz. Aug. 23 marks the beginning of German Army attack on Stalingrad.

October 1942

Himmler orders that all Jews in concentration camps in Germany are to be sent to Auschwitz or Majdanek. The SS put down a revolt at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in north Germany by a group of Jews about to be sent to Auschwitz. View preparation for a Mass killing of Jews from Mizocz Ghetto in the Ukraine.

December 1942

Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted. The first transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.

January 1943

Jews in Warsaw Ghetto begin preparing for armed resistance against Nazis.

February 1943

Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.

March 1943

Bulgaria states opposition to deportation of its Jews. The start of deportations of Jews from Greece to Auschwitz, which last until August and total of 49,900 people. Three newly built gas chambers/crematories II, IV and V open in Auschwitz. Another one –III - is built in June. The four new crematories at Auschwitz had a daily capacity of 4,756 bodies.

April 1943

A 27-day armed revolt breaks out in the Warsaw ghetto organized by the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB – 'Jewish Fighting Organisation') – a coalition of Bundists, Communists and Zionists using weapons smuggled into the ghetto. The Waffen SS attacks Jewish Resistance in Warsaw Ghetto. by bringing in tanks and machine guns, burning blocks of buildings, destroying the ghetto and ultimately killing many of the remaining 60,000 Jewish ghetto residents. The Warsaw ghetto uprising is the first large revolt by an urban population in German-occupied territory. On April 19, the Bermuda Conference with representatives from the US and Britain begins to discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries. The conference results in no action.

May 1943

While Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews), German and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allies. Allies land in Sicily. On May 12, Szmul Zygielbojm, representative of the Jewish Workers' Bund in the London-based Polish Parliament-in-Exile, commits suicide in protest at the Allies' indifference to the plight of the ghetto Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.

June 1943

Himmler orders the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland.

August 1943

Jewish paramilitary organizations within the Bialystok ghetto attack the German army. The revolt ends the same day with the death or capture of all the resisters. 200 Jews torch parts of Treblinka death camp and escape during a revolt. Nazis hunt them down. Only a dozen survive. Exterminations cease at Treblinka, after an estimated 870,000 deaths.

September 1943

The inhabitants of the Vilna ghetto in Lithuania revolt. Most of the participants are killed, but some manage to escape and join partisan units. Germans occupy Rome containing in all about 35,000 Jews. In October Jews in Rome are rounded up and more than 1,000 are sent to Auschwitz.

October 1943

The Danish underground helps transport by sea 7,220 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden. On October 7, the Sonderkommando ('special unit', prisoners forced to handle the bodies of gas chamber victims) succeed in blowing up one of the four crematoria at Auschwitz. All the saboteurs are captured and killed. On October 14, a mass escape conducted from Sobibor camp - Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Only fifty will survive and join Soviet partisans.

Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after more than 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are removed and trees are planted.

Early in October Himmler talks openly about the Final Solution at Posen..

November 1943

The Riga Ghetto is liquidated. Nazis carry out Operation Harvest Festival in occupied Poland, killing 42,000 Jews. Der Stürmer, Nazi newspaper indicate: "It is actually true that the Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass."

January 1944

Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, writes in a dairy, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews." Soviet troops reach former Polish border.

March 1944

Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000) and begin deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.

April 1944

Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz–Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia, which is forwarded to the Vatican.

May 1944

Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. One week later, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed.

June 6, 1944 - D-Day

Allied landings in Normandy. A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report

Summer, 1944

Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000.

July 1944

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.' Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered. They publicize the atrocities carried out there. Author Morris Cohen, in his book ‘Legal Claims against Germany” coins the term 'Holocaust' for the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The Gypsies call it the Parajmos, which means 'devouring', or Samudaripen ('mass killing'). The Hebrew word is Sho'ah, meaning 'desolation; in Yiddish, the language spoken by the majority of the Jewish victims, it is Khurban ('catastrophe'). A plot by German officers to assassinate Hitler fails.

August 1944

On August 4, Anne Frank and her family are arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on 15 March 1945.

The last Jewish ghetto in Poland, Lodz, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz. Eichmann reported to Himmler that approximately 4 million Jews had died in death camps and that an estimated 2 million had been killed by mobile units.

The Polish Home Army launches an uprising against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. They are joined by surviving members of the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization), who had been involved in the Warsaw ghetto rebellion.

On August 25

Allied reconnaissance aircraft fly over Auschwitz and take detailed photos of the whole complex. The photos are filed and no Allied bombing of Auschwitz follows. The killing there continues for several more months. See Auschwitz: The forgotten evidence.

October 1944

A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV. The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz. October 30, mark last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

November 1944

Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.

January 1945

Soviets liberate Budapest, freeing over 80,000 Jews. On January 18, the Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz. In late January (Jan 27), Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. An estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there. The Nazis had blown up the gas chambers at Auschwitz before they arrived in an effort to destroy the evidence of mass killings. Warsaw is liberated by the Soviet army. They find 300 Jews still living in the ruined ghetto

April 1945

Ohrdruf camp is liberated, later visited by General Eisenhower. Allies liberate Buchenwald. Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth." U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau. Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker. Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.

May 7, 1945

Germany surrenders unconditionally, papers signed by Gen. Jodl at Reims. The war in Europe is over. SS Reichsführer Himmler commits suicide. Around one million people, including 50,000 Jewish survivors, who refuse to go back to countries where their families and communities were murdered, are deposited in displaced persons (DP) camps under the auspices of the Allied armies and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).

October 1945

Indictments are issued against the surviving Nazi leaders.

November 20, 1945

Opening of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.(War Crimes) The defendants plead 'Not guilty'.

March 11, 1946

Former Auschwitz Kommandant Höss, posing as a farm worker, is arrested by the British. He testifies at Nuremberg, then is later tried in Warsaw, found guilty and hanged at Auschwitz, April 16, 1947, near Crematory I. "History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of all time," Höss writes while in prison, along with his memoirs about Auschwitz.

July 1946

In Kielce, Poland, a pogrom is launched, which leaves 42 Jews dead and 50 wounded.

October 1946

The verdicts against the major war criminals are handed down by the International Military Tribunal: 12 of the 24 defendants are sentenced to death. Göring commits suicide two hours before the scheduled execution of the first group (Oct 16) of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

During his imprisonment, a (now repentant) Hans Frank states, "A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Frank and the others are hanged and the bodies are brought to Dachau and burned (the final use of the crematories there) with the ashes then scattered into a river.

December 9, 1946

23 former SS doctors and scientists go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty, with 7 being hanged.

September 15, 1947

Twenty one former SS Einsatz leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Fourteen are sentenced to death, with only 4 (the group commanders) actually being executed. The other death sentences are commuted.

May 14, 1948

The state of Israel is established.

December 9, 1948

UN General Assembly adopts the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

December 10, 1948

UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

April 1949

War crimes trials in Germany and Japan come to an end.

August 1949

The Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War are revised.

May 18, 1953

The government of Israel sets up Yad Vashem ('A Memorial and a Name'), the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, trace survivors and research the history of the Nazi period.

May 11, 1960

Israeli Security Service agents seize Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had coordinated deportations of Jews to extermination camps, who has been living in Argentina under the pseudonym Ricardo Klement for the past 10 years. He is taken to Jerusalem to stand trial in an Israeli court for numerous crimes, including crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. He testifies from a bulletproof glass booth. Eichmann found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962.