Helen and Sol Krawitz Holocaust Memorial Education Center

• 1933

  January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Von Hindenburg.

  March 22: 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.

  April 1: Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

  April 7: Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions

   

   

• April 26: The Gestapo (“Geheime Stat Polizei” – Secret State Police) is established by Herman Goering, minister of Prussia.

• May 10: Public burnings of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state.

• July 14: Law excluding East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship.

1934

• August 2: Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him.

1935

• May 31: Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces

• September 15: “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.

• November 15: Germany defines a “Jew”: anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew.

1936

• March 3: Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions.

• March 7: Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.

• June 17: Reichführer SS Himmler (chief of the SS units) appointed the Chief of German Police.

• July 12: Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.

• October 25: Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.

1937

• July 15: Buchenwald concentration camp opens.

1938

• March 13: Anschluss (incorporation of Austria): all antisemitic decrees immediately applied in Austria

• April 26: Mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich

• May: Flossenburg concentration camp opens.

• July 6: Evian Conference held in Evian, France on the problem of Jewish refugees

• August 1: Adolf Eichmann establishes the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna to increase the pace of forced emigration.

• August 3: Italy enacts sweeping antisemitic laws

• August 8: Mauthausen concentration camp opens in Austria

• September 30: Munich Conference: Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, previously western Czechoslovakia.

• October 5: Following request by Swiss authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter “J” to restrict Jews from immigrating to Switzerland.

• October 28: 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany expelled; Poles refused to admit them; 8,000 are stranded in the frontier village of Zbaszyn.

• November 7: Assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan.

• November 9-10: 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).

• November 12: Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands

• November 15: All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools

• December 12: One billion mark fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht

1939

• January 30: Hitler in Reichstag speech: if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung (extermination) of European Jews

• March 15: Germans occupy Czechoslovakia.

• May 18: Ravensbruck concentration camp opens.

• August 23: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed: non-aggression pact between Soviet Union and Germany.

• September 1: 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.

• September 21: Heydrich issues directives to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland.

• October 12: Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland.

• October 28: First Polish ghetto established in Piotrkow.

• November 23: Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or yellow star.

1940

• April 9: Germans occupy Denmark and southern Norway.

• May 7: Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles.

• May 10: Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France.

• May 20: Concentration camp established at Auschwitz.

• June 4: Neuengamme concentration camp opens.

• June 22: France surrenders.

• August 8: Battle of Britain begins.

• September 20: Breendonck concentration camp opens in Belgium.

• September 27: Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

• November 16: Warsaw Ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people.

1941

• January 21-26: Anti-Jewish riots in Romania, hundreds of Jews butchered.

• February 1: 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.

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

• April 6: Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece; occupation follows.

• April 21: Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp opens in France.

• June 22: Germany invades the Soviet Union.

• July 31: Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the “Final Solution”.

• July – August: Dozens thousands of Russian and Jews are murdered by the Einzatzgruppen (extermination squads) in the occupied territories. Here are some examples:

  • 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

• Hundreds of other massacres are perpetrated by the Nazies in Russia, i.e. 148,000 Jews are murdered in Bessarabia between July and October 1941.

• Fall: Belzec extermination camp opens.

• September 28-29: 34,000 Jews massacred at Babi Yar outside Kiev.

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

• December 7: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

• December 8: Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943.

• December 11: United States declares war on Japan and Germany.

1942

• January 20: Wannsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe’s Jews.

• March 17: Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered.

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

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

• July 22: 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.

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

1943

• January: German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad

• March: Liquidation of Krakow ghetto

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

• April 19: Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June

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

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

• Fall: Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna, and Riga

• October 14: Armed revolt in Sobibor extermination camp

• October-November: Rescue of the Danish Jewry

1944

• March 19: Germany occupies Hungary.

• May 15: Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz.

• June 6: D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy.

• Spring/Summer: Red Army repels Nazi forces.

• July 20: Group of German officers attempt to assassinate Hitler.

• July 24: Russians liberate Majdanek killing center.

• October 7: Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz; one crematorium blown up;

• November: Last Jews deported from Terezin to Auschwitz.

• November 8: Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria.

1945

• January 17: Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march

• January 25: Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof

• April 6-10: Death march of inmates of Buchenwald

• April 8: Liberation of Buchenwald.

• April 15: Liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

• April 22: Liberation of Sachsenhausen.

• April 23: Liberation of Flossenburg.

• April 29: Liberation of Dachau.

• April 30: Hitler commits suicide, liberation of Ravensbruck.

• May 7: Liberation of Mauthausen.

• May 8: V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich

• August 6: Bombing of Hiroshima

• August 9: Bombing of Nagasaki

• August 15: V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed

• September 2: Japan surrenders; end of World War II

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