1. The Chronology
1933
30 January: Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) leader (Führer) Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
28 February: German President, Paul von Hindenburg, issues Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil rights and allowing for imprisonment without trial in response to arson attack and burning of the German parliament (Reichstag) the previous day.
22 March: The first SS-managed (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squads) concentration camp comes up outside the city of Dachau, Germany, the only concentration camp to remain in operation from 1933 until 1945.
14 July: German parliament issues the Law against the Founding of New Political Parties, which establishes the Nazi Party as the sole legal political party. Nazi Germany formally becomes a one-party state. Germany passes laws for forceful sterilization of physically and mentally disabled people and revoking the citizenship of naturalized Jewish Germans.
1934
30 June–2 July: Hitler orders purging of top leadership of the Nazi Party paramilitary formation, SA (Sturmabteilungen, Assault Detachments) and the SS murders SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and his top commanders. The SS also murders several present and past critics of the Nazi regime including Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher, and former Bavarian Minister-President Gustav von Kahr. At Hitler’s request, the German parliament (Reichstag) declares these killings to be legal. The incident is known as “Röhm Affair,” or as “Night of the Long Knives.”
2 August: German President von Hindenburg dies. With the support of the armed forces, Hitler becomes President of Germany.
19 August: Hitler abolishes the office of president and declares himself Führer of the German Reich and People, in addition to his position as Chancellor, and becomes the ultimate authority.
1935
17 March: Nazi Germany resumes compulsory male military service.
1 April: German government bans Jehovah’s Witness organizations due to its refusal to swear allegiance to the state; their religious convictions forbid an oath of allegiance to and service in the armed forces of any temporal power.
21 May: German government issues the Wehrgesetz, which stipulates that only “Aryans” could serve in the armed forces, and that persons serving in the armed forces could only marry “Aryan” spouses effectively banning Jews from serving in the army.
15 September: German government decrees the Reich Citizenship Law and Law for the Protection of the German Blood and Honor. Hitler announces the measures at the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. These Nuremberg “Race Laws” effectively make Jews into second-class citizens and prohibit intermarriages and criminalize sexual relations between Jews and “persons of German or related blood.” The German government later applies the laws to Roma (Gypsies) and Afro-Germans.
1936
6 June: Minister of the Interior for the Reich and Prussia issues a decree addressing “the Gypsy plague.” The decree officially recognizes many regulations and restrictions already in place at the local level on Roma (Gypsies) residing in Germany. Under its authority, state and local police forces round up Roma as well as other persons who they deem to be behaving in “a Gypsy-like manner.”
17 June: Hitler appoints Reichsführer-SS (SS chief) Heinrich Himmler as Chief of German Police.
26 June: SS chief Himmler establishes two offices, namely, the Security Police Main Office (Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei, HA Sipo), under command of SS General Reinhard Heydrich; and the Order Police Main Office (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei, HA Orpo), under command of SS General Kurt Daluege. This effectively unifies all uniformed police forces in Germany under Himmler’s command.
12 July: The SS establishes the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg, located to the north of Berlin. By September, German authorities imprison about 1,000 people in the camp.
16 July: German authorities order the arrest and forcible relocation of all Roma (Gypsies) in the Greater Berlin area to a special camp in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn. Beginning in 1938, the authorities began to deport Roma from Marzahn to other concentration camps, such as Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz.
1 August: Summer Olympic Games open in Berlin, attended by athletes and spectators from countries around the world. It proves a propaganda success for the government, as officials remove anti-Jewish signs from public display and restrain anti-Jewish activities. Under pressure, Germany includes a Jew, fencer Helene Mayer, in its Olympic team and also lifts anti-homosexuality laws for foreign visitors for the duration of the games.
28 August: German authorities implement mass arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany and send most of them to concentration camps.
1937
27 February–9 March: German Criminal Police officials round up approximately 2,000 convicted offenders and incarcerate them in concentration camps. This is the first mass roundup of persons not deemed to be political opponents for incarceration.
15 July: Authorities open the Buchenwald concentration camp near the city of Weimar, Germany.
8 November: Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew), a Nazi propaganda exhibition, opens in Munich.
14 December: SS chief and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler passes a decree on Preventive Suppression of Crime by the Police (Grunderlaß über vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei). It authorizes the German Criminal Police to roundup persons suspected of engaging in “asocial” or criminal behavior without evidence of a specific criminal act, to hold them for an indefinite period of time, and to incarcerate them in concentration camps.
1938
11–13 March: German troops invade Austria and incorporate Austria into the German Reich in what is known as the Anschluss. A wave of street violence against Jewish persons and property follows in Vienna and other cities throughout Greater German Reich, culminating in the Kristallnacht riots on 9–10 November.
26 April: The German government requires all Jews to register assets over 5,000 Reichsmarks, which then becomes available to Hermann Göring, the “Commissioner for the Four Year Plan,” for use “in the interests of the German economy.”
3 May: SS authorities open the Flossenbürg concentration camp in northern Bavaria, Germany.
29 May: Hungary adopts comprehensive anti-Jewish laws and measures, excluding Jews from many professions.
6–15 July: Delegates from 32 countries and representatives from refugee aid organizations attend the Evian Conference in France. They discuss options for settling Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany as immigrants elsewhere in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. The United States and most other countries, however, are unwilling to ease their immigration restrictions.
8 August: SS authorities open the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz, Austria.
17 August: The Reich Minister of the Interior decrees that all Jewish men residing in Germany and bearing names not recognizable as “Jewish” must adopt the middle name “Israel.” Jewish women are required to take the middle name “Sarah.”
20 August: Adolf Eichmann, working in the Nazi Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) and a self-styled “expert” on Jews, opens the Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in Vienna.
29–30 September: Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany. German troops occupy these regions between 1 and 10 October.
26–28 October: Germany expels approximately 18,000 stateless Jews of Polish origin who were previously residing within the borders of the Reich.
9–10 November: In a nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), members of the Nazi Party and other Nazi formations burn synagogues, loot Jewish homes and businesses, and kill at least 91 Jews. The Gestapo (police intelligence), supported by local uniformed police, arrests approximately 30,000 Jewish men and imprisons them in the Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps.
12 November: The German government issues the Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life (Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben), barring Jews from operating retail stores, sales agencies, and from carrying on a trade. The law also forbids Jews from selling goods or services at an establishment of any kind.
15 November: German authorities ban the attendance of Jewish children in German public schools. Jewish children can attend only segregated Jewish schools financed and managed by the community.
3 December: Germany issues the Decree on the Utilization of Jewish Property (Verordnung über den Einsatz des jüdischen Vermögens), making “aryanization” of all Jewish businesses compulsory. German authorities force Jews to sell immovable property, businesses, and stocks to non-Jews, usually at prices far below market value.
8 December: Police chief, Heinrich Himmler, issues the Decree for “Combating the Gypsy Plague.” The decree defines gypsies as an inferior race and tasks the German Criminal Police with establishing a nationwide database, identifying all gypsies residing on the territory of the so-called Greater German Reich.
1939
30 January: In a speech to the German parliament, Hitler declares that in the event of another world war, for which he intended to hold “International Finance Jewry” responsible, the result would not be “the Bolshevization of the earth and with that the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
14 March: Under German pressure, Slovakia declares its independence from the Czechoslovak state.
15 March: German troops enter the remaining territory of Czechoslovakia, occupying the Czech provinces and establishing the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”
15 May: SS authorities establish Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women, in north of Berlin, Germany.
23 August: The Soviet and German governments sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact.
1 September: Germany invades Poland, marking the beginning of the Second World War.
3 September: Honoring their guarantee of Poland’s borders, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.
17 September: Soviet troops invade Poland from the East.
21 September: German police authorities issue instructions that (i) Polish Jews should be concentrated in major cities near railroad lines; (ii) all Jews should be transferred from the Reich to Poland; (iii) the remaining 30,000 Roma in Germany be deported to Poland; and (iv) freight cars of the German railways (Reichsbahn) should be used to transport Jews and Roma from the Reich.
20–26 October: German security police officials deport approximately 3,800 Austrian, Czech, and Polish Jews from Vienna, Moravská Ostrava, and Katowice to a makeshift camp in Zarzecze near Nisko, Lublin, Poland.
26 October: Germany annexes the former Polish regions of Upper Silesia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Poznan, Ciechanow (Zichenau), part of Lodz, and Danzig.
23–28 November: German authorities mandate that all Jews residing in Poland over the age of 10 wear white armbands with a Star of David and order the beginning of the deportations of Jews and Poles from Wartheland (an area of western Poland directly annexed to the German Reich). Security police officials initiate deportations on 1 December.
1940
12 February: German authorities deport approximately 1,000 German Jews from Stettin and other eastern German cities to Lublin, Poland.
9 April: German forces invade Norway and Denmark.
30 April: German authorities seal the first major Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
10 May: German forces invade the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. By 22 June, Germany occupies all of these countries except southern France.
20 May: SS authorities establish the Auschwitz concentration camp outside the Polish city of Oswiecim, located in German-annexed Upper Silesia.
10 June: Italy enters the war as an ally of Germany.
15 June–6 August: The USSR occupies and incorporates the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania), as Soviet Republics.
28 June: With German encouragement, the Soviet Union annexes the eastern provinces of Romania, Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia (current Moldova).
16 July–30 July: German authorities expel more than 3,000 Alsatian Jews from Alsace to southern France.
30 August: Axis partners Germany and Italy arbitrate the fate of the Romanian province of Transylvania between Romania and Hungary, awarding northern Transylvania to Hungary.
27 September: Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact, in which these countries promise mutual assistance, if any one of the signatories is attacked by a country not already involved in the war.
15 November: German authorities order the Warsaw ghetto in Poland to be sealed. It is the largest ghetto in both area and population, confining more than 350,000 Jews.
20–24 November: Hungary (20 November), Romania (23 November), and Slovakia (24 November) sign the Tripartite Pact and became Axis partners.
18 December: Hitler signs the first operational order for the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union.
1941
January: At some point in January, German police chief, Reinhard Heydrich, submits a plan to implement a “total solution” to the so-called Jewish question in German-controlled Europe.
1 March: German police orders construction of a large camp to house 100,000 prisoners of war outside the village of Birkenau (Brzezinka), approximately one mile from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact to become member of Axis powers.
3–20 March: German authorities seal the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland.
March: In occupied France, German authorities open the internment camp at Beaune-la-Rolande to incarcerate both French Jews and foreign Jews residing in occupied France. The German authorities often interned Jews in Beaune-la-Rolande and other detention camps before transferring them to Drancy, from where the SS later deports them to the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Sobibor killing center.
6 April: German and other Axis forces invade Yugoslavia and Greece.
7 April: German authorities establish two ghettos in Radom, Poland in which they concentrate the Jewish population of the city.
April: The German chemical conglomerate I.G. Farben begins construction of the Buna factory using concentration camp forced laborers, located near the Polish city of Monowitz, a few miles from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
1 May: The SS inspectorate of concentration camps declares Gross-Rosen, Poland as an autonomous concentration camp.
21 May: SS inspectorate of concentration camps opens Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France.
15 June: Croatia signs the Tripartite Pact and joins the Axis partners.
22 June: Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union in “Operation Barbarossa.”
26–30 June: Romanian military and police officials conduct a program in the city of Iasi, Romania, killing at least 4,000 Jews.
22 June–15 July: Lithuanian military kills nearly 5,000 Jews in Vilna, Lithuania.
19 July: German authorities establish a ghetto in Minsk in German-occupied Belorussia and by 25 July, they concentrate Jews from the city and its environs in the ghetto.
31 July: Reich Marshall Hermann Göring charges Reinhard Heydrich to take measures for the implementation of the “final solution of the Jewish question”—a euphemism for the mass murder of the Jewish population of Europe.
August: Croat authorities establish the first two camps in the Jasenovac concentration camp complex. During the camp’s existence, the Croat authorities kill tens of thousands of prisoners at Jasenovac, including Serbs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and ethnic Croats and Muslims, who were political and religious opponents of the regime.
1 August: German authorities establish a ghetto in Bialystok, Poland.
24 August: Responding in part to the public protest of the Catholic Archbishop of Münster Clemens von Galen, Adolf Hitler orders the cessation of centrally coordinated “euthanasia” killings. Up to this date, German health care professionals murdered approximately 70,000 people at “euthanasia” facilities.
27–29 August: SS and police units, supported by locally recruited auxiliaries and German military personnel, kill more than 23,000 Jews in Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine, in an operation coordinated by Higher SS and Police Leader Ukraine Friedrich Jeckeln.
3 September: At the Auschwitz concentration camp, SS functionaries perform their first gassing experiments using Zyklon B (hydrocyanic acid).
29–30 September: German SS and police units, supported by Ukrainian auxiliaries and German military personnel, shoot approximately 33,000 persons, mostly Jews, at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine.
15 October: After Hitler’s authorization in September, German authorities began deporting German, Austrian, and Czech Jews from the Greater German Reich to ghettos, shooting sites, concentration camps, and killing centers. German authorities task the Lublin District police head Odilo Globocnik with implementing the physical annihilation of the Jews residing in Poland ultimately leading to the killing of nearly 1.7 million Polish Jews, what later becomes known as “Operation Reinhard.”
29 November–8 December: German SS and police units and their Latvian police auxiliaries kill approximately 26,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto in the nearby Rumbuli and Biekernieki Forests.
7 December: Japan attacks the US with the Pearl Harbor attack.
8 December: The US declares war on Japan and enters the Second World War.
11 December: Germany and Italy declare war on the US.
1942
16 January: German authorities begin the deportation of Jews and Roma-Gypsies from the Lodz ghetto to Chelmno.
20 January: Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) chief Reinhard Heydrich convenes the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, where he presents plan to coordinate a Europe-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to key officials from the German State and the Nazi Party.
1 March: German authorities open a second camp at Auschwitz, called Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz II.
26 March: Slovak authorities begin systematic deportations of Jews from Slovakia. Between March and October 1942, they deport nearly 58,000 Slovak Jews into German custody. The Germans ultimately deport nearly 19,000 of them to Auschwitz and 39,000 to Lublin District.
27 March: Germany begins systematic deportations of Jews from France. The first train contains approximately 1,000 Jews from the Compiègne and Drancy detention camps and transports them to Auschwitz concentration camp.
4 July: German authorities begin systematically gassing Jews at Auschwitz.
22 July: Between 22 July and 12 September, German authorities, assisted by auxiliaries, deport nearly 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. German forces kill approximately 35,000 Jews in the ghetto during the deportation operation.
28–31 July: German officials and their auxiliaries kill approximately 9,000 Jews in Minsk ghetto in mass shootings.
5–17 August: German police liquidate the Radom ghetto in German-occupied Poland, deporting about 30,000 Jews, most of them to the Treblinka.
13 August: Croat authorities begin deporting Jews from Croatia into German custody. The German authorities send the Croat Jews to Auschwitz.
15–28 August: Gerhart Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Switzerland, sends a cable through the British Embassy to Rabbi Stephen Wise, the President of the WJC. Riegner explicitly informs Wise of the German implementation of the “Final Solution,” the plan to physically annihilate the Jews of Europe.
28 October: The first transport of Jews from Vienna arrives in Auschwitz from Vienna.
24 November: After receiving confirmation of the report on the German plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe from the US Department of State, WJC President Rabbi Stephen Wise publicizes the contents in media, exposing German implementation of the “Final Solution.”
17 December: The Allied nations, including the governments of the United Kingdom and the US, issue a press release stating explicitly that the German authorities were engaging in mass murder of the European Jews, and that those responsible for this “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” would “not escape retribution.”
1943
5 January: German occupation authorities establish the Herzogenbusch concentration camp in Vught, the Netherlands.
18–22 January: German police deports nearly 6,500 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center, and shoot another nearly 1,400.
5–12 February: German officials and their auxiliaries begin liquidating the Bialystok ghetto and kill approximately 1,000 Jews and deport 10,000 Jews to the Treblinka killing center, where most are immediately killed.
3–22 March: Bulgarian occupation authorities deport more than 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot to German custody. After taking custody of the Jews, Germany deports them to the Treblinka killing center and none survive.
15 March: Germany opens the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp, near Riga, Latvia.
19 April–16 May: In what is called the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Jewish fighters resist the German attempt to liquidate the ghetto. German police shoots nearly 7,000 Jews during the suppression and deport another 7,000 to Treblinka.
21 June: German police chief, Heinrich Himmler, orders the liquidation of all ghettos of the Baltic States and Belorussia and transfer of the remaining Jewish inhabitants who are able to work to concentration camps.
16 August: Germany begins the final liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto. By 21 August, authorities deport nearly 40,000 Jews from the ghetto to killing centers or forced-labor camps.
8 September: Axis partner Italy surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. German military and police units occupy northern Italy.
14 October: Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor killing center begin an armed revolt. German authorities dismantle the camp.
15–18 October: Germany seizes and deports over 1,000 Jews in Rome and its environs. Between September 1943 and 1945, German authorities kill nearly 7,000–8,000 Jews in Italy.
21–23 October: German authorities kill 3,000–6,000 Jews in the Minsk ghetto at the Maly Trostinets killing site.
26 October: Germany deports around 2,700 Jews from Kovno (Kaunas) to the labor camps Vaivara and Klooga, in Estonia, and to Auschwitz.
1 November: German authorities convert the Kovno ghetto into a concentration camp.
2 November: Germany liquidates the Riga ghetto and shoots at least 2,000 residents.
1944
22 January: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues executive order creating the War Refugee Board and instructs it to take necessary measures to rescue Nazi victims.
19 March: German troops occupy Hungary.
16 April: German authorities begin to establish concentration points for the deportation of Jews from Hungary.
29–30 April: Hungarian authorities send the first two transports of Hungarian Jews into German custody.
15 May–9 July: Hungarian police officials deport around 440,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz where majority is killed in gas chambers.
6 June: British and American troops launch an invasion of Nazi-controlled France.
18–22 June: The Auschwitz Report, written by two Slovak Jewish prisoners who escaped on April 7, 1944 goes public through media channels in Switzerland.
22 June–1 August: Soviet troops destroy German Army Group Center in eastern Belorussia and sweep forward to the east bank of the Vistula River from the center of Warsaw, Poland.
6 July: Regent Miklos Horthy of Hungary issues an order that the Hungarian government will cease deporting Jews from Hungary in Germany custody.
8–12 July: As the Soviet army approaches, Germany liquidates the Kauen concentration camp, transferring around 8,000 Jews to the Struthof and Dachau concentration camps.
13 July: The Soviet army liberates Wilno in Lithuania.
23–24 July: Soviet troops liberate Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp.
25 July: Allied forces break out of the Normandy beach head, routing the German defenders.
1 August: The Soviet army liberates the city of Kaunas. The underground Polish Home Army rises against the Germans in an effort to play a role in the liberation of Warsaw.
9–28 August: German police liquidates the Lodz ghetto and deport more than 60,000 Jews and an undetermined number of Roma (Gypsies) to Auschwitz.
23 November: US troops liberate Natzweiler–Struthof concentration camp.
11 December: At Hartheim, German authorities carry out the last gassing of inmates.
1945
12 January: Soviet forces launch a massive offensive from bases on the Vistula and Nida Rivers in central Poland. The offensive clears Polish soil of German troops and brings Soviet forces to the Oder River in Germany, at one point less than 100 miles from Berlin.
17 January: As Soviet troops approach, German police units begin the final evacuation of prisoners from the Auschwitz camp, marching them on foot toward the interior of Germany, which later came to be called “death marches.”
27 January: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz, finding approximately 7,000 prisoners left behind in the main camp and its sub-camps.
13 February: Soviet Army liberates Gross-Rosen concentration camp and accepts the surrender of the last German and Hungarian units fighting in encircled Budapest, Hungary.
7 March: The US troops cross the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, leaving no more natural barriers blocking the advance into central Germany.
4–29 April: The US and British forces liberate many concentrations camps including the Mittelbau-Dora, Bergen-Belsen, Flossenbürg, and Dachau concentration camps.
21 April: Soviet troops encircle Berlin. One day earlier, Adolf Hitler had told his top aids that he would remain in Berlin.
25 April: Soviet and American troops meet at Torgau, Germany.
30 April: Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin. Soviet troops liberate over 2,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück.
2 May: German units in Berlin surrender to Soviet forces.
7–9 May: German armed forces surrender unconditionally in the West (7 May) and in the East (9 May). Allied forces proclaim May 8, 1945 to be Victory in Europe Day. Soviet forces proclaim May 9, 1945 as the day the war ended.
2 September: Japan Surrenders. The Second World War officially ends.
By the end of World War II, Germany and other Axis powers had murdered nearly 6 million Jews in a systematic genocide–the Holocaust.
20 November: The International Military Tribunal (IMT), comprising US, British, French, and Soviet judges, begins trial of 22 Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, Germany. The trial becomes known as Nuremberg trial.
1946
1 October: Nuremberg trial ends; 18 senior Nazi officials are convicted, 3 acquitted, 1 commits suicide, and 11 sentenced to death.
10 September 1952: West Germany accepts responsibility for the Holocaust and signs “Reparations Agreement” with Israel.
11 April 1961: Trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi police officer, begins in Israel on charges of war crimes and helping in extermination of Jews. He is convicted and sentenced to death.
1 June 1962: Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Nitzan–Magen Prison (Ramla, Israel).
21 November 2005: UNGA adopts Resolution A/RES/60/7 that declares 27 January, the day Auschwitz was liberated as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007499.
