A Select Chronology of the Holocaust

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2001

Jun

A Select Chronology of the Holocaust

3 Jun 2001

A Select Chronology of the Holocaust

1933

1933: Members of the S.A. burning books, Berlin

1934: Mass rally of Nazi party members

January	Appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor (Prime Minister).
March	Establishment of the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany: Dachau. Outbreak of rioting against German Jews by members of the S.A. (Hitler's stormtroops).
April	The "Jüdische Rundschau", a German Jewish newspaper, publishes an article entitled: "Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride".
May	Public burning of books written by Jewish authors and by opponents of Nazism.
July	The Nazi Party proclaimed by law the one and only legal political party in Germany.
August	Boycott of Nazi Germany declared by the American Jewish Congress.
October	Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

1934

June/July

The "Night of the Long Knives", the murderous purge of 2000 S.A. members.

1935

January	Coal-rich Saar region annexed by Germany.
March	Conscription imposed throughout Germany, in open contravention of the Treaty of Versailles.
September	Anti-Jewish racist legislation passed at the Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg.

1936

March

The German Army remilitarizes the Rhineland.

1937

July	Buchenwald concentration camp opened. Used mainly as a forced labor camp, over 56,000 inmates were murdered or had died there by the end of World War II.
October	Germany and Italy sign a political and military treaty, proclaiming a Berlin-Rome "Axis".
November	Germany and Japan sign the "Anti Comintern Pact" against the Soviet Union.

1938

1938: Hitler youth forcing Jews to clean streets, Vienna

1938: Oranienburg Synagogue set on fire during Kirstallnacht, Berlin

March	Annexation (Anschluss) of Austria to the Third Reich.
July	Medical licenses of Jewish doctors declared invalid; extended to lawyers in September.
September	Munich Conference: Britain and France agree to German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia.
October	Over 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship expelled from Germany to the Polish border. All passports and ration cards of Jews marked with a "J".
November	"Aryanization" of property of German Jews begins: Jews required to register with the government all personal property valued at 5,000 marks or more, and later to surrender all gold and silver to the government. Herschel Grynszpan assassinates Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. "Kristallnacht": anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria. Some 30,000 Jews arrested, 191 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 shops looted.

1939

1939: Palestinian Jewish soldiers in the Briitsh army

March	German occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
May	"Pact of Steel": full political and military alliance between Germany and Italy.
July	Hitler's "Euthanasia Program" planned: between January 1940 and August 1941, over 70,000 Germans with hereditary diseases or chronic illnesses, gypsies, foreign laborers, Russian prisoners of war, children from mixed marriages and others "unworthy of life" were gassed to death.
August	Soviet-German non-aggression pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop.
September	Germany invades Poland - beginning of World War II. Britain and France declare war on Germany.
October	All Jewish males forced to do unpaid labor in German factories and farms. The Jewish community of Palestine demands participation in the war against Nazism: 26,000 Jews join the British Army.
November	Armband with a yellow Star of David made obligatory for all Jews in Central Poland - later in the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe. First Polish Ghettos - compulsory quarters for Jews - established in Poland. Jewish soldiers join the British army.

1940

January	First underground activities organized in Polish ghettos.
April	German army occupies Denmark and Southern Norway. Himmler issues directive to establish a concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland.
May	German invasion of Holland, Belgium and France.
June	French army surrenders.
August	Anti-Jewish laws passed in Romania.
October	Anti-Jewish laws passed by French Vichy Government.
November	Warsaw Ghetto sealed off from the rest of the city.

1941

1941: Warsaw ghetto, Poland

April	Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.
May	Romania passes law condemning adult Jews to forced labor.
June	Germany attacks U.S.S.R.
July	Soviet-British military treaty signed. Heydrich appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final Solution" - the Nazi-planned mass murder and total annihilation of the Jews.
October	Gassing to death of Jews in Chelmno begins: this method of mass murder was later employed in Belzec, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Establishment of Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Massacre of 19,000 Odessa Jews.
December	Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Chelmno extermination camp opened near Lodz; by April 1943, 360,000 Jews had been murdered there. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.

1942

1942: Jews boarding deportation trains, Poland

January	Wannsee Conference: details of the "Final Solution" drafted. Underground resistance organizations established in ghettos.
February	The Struma is torpedoed by a Russian submarine after 70 days at sea. The 778 passengers, Romanian and Russian jewish refugees, had been denied entry into Turkey or British Mandatory Palestine. All but one died.
March	Mass murder of Jews begins at Sobibor extermination camp in Poland: by October 1943, 250,000 Jews had been put to death there. Belzec extermination camp, Poland, begins operations: by the end of 1942, more than 600,000 Jews had been murdered there. Deportation of 60,000 Slovakian Jews to Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and Majdanek extermination camps.
June	Treblinka extermination camp opened: 750,000 Jews murdered there by August 1943.
July	Beginning of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto: by September, 300,000 Jews had been deported to Treblinka. Armed resistance by Jews during the liquidation of many ghettos.
November	Allied victory over Germans and Italians at El Alamein, North Africa. ajor counterattack by the Red Army in Stalingrad.

1943

February	10,000 Jews deported from Bialystok Ghetto to Treblinka.
April	Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: fierce revolt of Jews against the Nazis. Nazis liquidate Warsaw Ghetto; 30,000 survivors sent to Treblinka.
June	Himmler orders the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland and the U.S.S.R.
August	Revolt in Treblinka: only 50 inmates manage to escape, but the camp ceases to operate within a few weeks.
September	Rome occupied by the Germans.
October	Order for the expulsion of Danish Jews: Danish underground saves some 7,000 Jews by evacuating them to Sweden. Over 300 prisoners excape from Sobibor extermination camp: Himmler orders its closure.

1944

1944: Aerial view of Auschwitz- Birkenau extermination camp

1944: "Selection" at Auschwitz- Birkenau

January	Jewish underground in Budapest sets up a workshop for forging documents for rescue purposes; by the end of 1944, over 10,000 people had been supplied with such documents.
March	German army invades Hungary.
May	Deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau begins: 380,000 deported by end of June.
June	Allied invasion of Normandy.
July	Soviet troops liberate Madjanek: an estimated 1.6 million Jews were murdered there. Largest recorded execution of Jews take place at Auschwitz-Birkenau: Nazis gas and burn 46,000 Jews in one day.
October	14,000 Jews transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1945

1945: Survivors in barracks at Buchenwald concentration camp, after liberation

January	Evacuation of Auschwitz-Birkenau begins: the remaining prisoners are forced to embark on a "Death March" to concentration camps in Germany and Austria. About 80,000 prisoners die of exhaustion, or are shot on the way. Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau: 57,000 starving inmates found alive. An estimated 1.5 million Jews had been murdered there; however, the total number of victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau is not known because no record was kept of those killed immediately on arrival.
February	Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin attend the Yalta Conference, to plan the final defeat of Nazi Germany.
April	Hitler commits suicide.
May	Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies - the end of the Third Reich.

Photo: GPO

An estimated six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust.

The majority of Holocaust survivors made Israel their home.

1947: Holocaust survivors aboard the "illegal" Hagana ship - Jewish State - in Haifa harbor.

All photos, unless otherwise indicated, courtesy of Yad Vashem.

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