Timeline_of_the_Holocaust
A timeline of the Holocaust is detailed in the events which are listed below. Also referred to as the Shoah (in Hebrew), the Holocaust was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its World War II collaborators. About 1.5 million of the victims were children. Two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe were murdered. The following timeline has been compiled from a variety of sources, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[1][2][3][4][5]
More information Date, Major events ...
| Date | Major events |
|---|---|
| 1879 | Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for political movements promoting constitutional democracy, equality of rights under the law, socialism, and pacifism.[6] |
| April 20, 1889 | Adolf Hitler was born in a small town in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary (now Austria). |
| 1899 | The British-German racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain publishes The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he writes that the 19th century is "the Jewish age" and he also writes that Europe's social problems are the result of its domination by the Jews. The book eventually influences the Nazi Party.[7] |
| 1903 | The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document forged by the Okhrana purporting to reveal the secret plans of a conspiracy of Jewish religious leaders for world conquest through the imposition of liberal democracy, is published in Znamya in the Russian Empire. It is later distributed across the world after 1917 by white Russian émigrés and becomes a popular anti-Semitic tract even after it was proved to have been forged and plagiarized.[7][8] |
| 28 June 1914 | Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in the town of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, triggering World War I. |
| 24 October 1917 | The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin take power in Russia with the October Revolution. The subsequent Revolutions of 1917–1923 cause fears of Communist expansion into Europe that would influence the European far right.[9] |
| 11 November 1918 | World War I ends with the Compiègne Armistice after the German Empire collapses due to the Revolution. |
| 1919 | France deploys African colonial troops in the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, resulting in mixed-race children between the troops and German women. The children, disparagingly called "Rhineland Bastards" are subject to racial discrimination and prejudice.[10] |
| 5 January 1919 | The German Workers' Party is founded by Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer as an offshoot of the Thule Society, one of the many far-right, anti-Semitic, anti-communist and völkisch groups which were formed in Germany after the war.[11] |
| 7 May 1919 | The Treaty of Versailles is presented to the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Most Germans disapprove of the reparations payments and the forced acceptance of German war guilt entailed in Article 231.[12] |
| 16 September 1919 | Adolf Hitler, having joined the German Workers' Party, makes his first endorsement of racial anti-Semitism.[13] |
| 18 November 1919 | Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg gives testimony to the Weimar National Assembly's committee of inquiry into guilt for the war, blaming the loss of World War I on "the secret intentional mutilation of the fleet and the army" and made misleading claims that a British general admitted that the German Army was "stabbed in the back", giving rise to the popular stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory.[14][15] He is later elected President of Germany in the 1925 presidential election. |
| 24 February 1920 | In a speech before approximately 2,000 people in the Munich Festival of the Hofbräuhaus, Hitler proclaimed the 25-point program of the German Workers' Party, later renamed the National Socialist (Nazi) German Workers' Party. Among other things, the program called for the establishment of a Pan-German state, with citizenship, residency, and other civil rights only reserved for ethnic Germans, explicitly excluding Jews and all non-Germans. |
| 1921 | The Nazi Party forms the Sturmabteilung (SA) under the Division for Propaganda and Sports.[7] |
| 20 April 1923 | The first issue of Der Stürmer, a highly anti-Semitic tabloid-format newspaper published by Julius Streicher, is released.[16] |
| 8 November 1923 | Inspired by the March on Rome, Hitler organizes the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coup d'état. Although Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg Prison and the Nazi Party is briefly proscribed, Hitler gains public notice for the first time.[11] |
| 18 July 1925 | Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf. |
| 24 October 1929 | The Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurs, beginning the Great Depression and allowing Hitler to gain support.[7] |
| 1931 | To prevent the transfer of currency out of the country, President von Hindenburg decrees a 25 percent emigration tax, the Reich Flight Tax. The Tax later becomes a hindrance to Jews trying to emigrate out of Germany.[7] |
| July 1932 | Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, capturing 230 of the 608 seats in the German federal election of July 1932. |
| 30 January 1933 | Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany |
| February 1933 | Chancellor Hitler sets his military policy as "the conquest of new Lebensraum (living space) in the East and its ruthless Germanization" in a secret meeting with the Reichswehr.[7] |
| 27 February 1933 | The Reichstag fire. The subsequent Reichstag Fire Decree suspends the German Constitution and most civil liberties. |
| 22 March 1933 | Dachau concentration camp, the first concentration camp in Germany, opens 10 miles northwest of Munich at an abandoned munitions factory. |
| 13 March 1933 | The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is established under Joseph Goebbels.[7] |
| 21 March 1933 | Oranienburg concentration camp is opened at a former brewery in Oranienburg by an SA brigade near Berlin.[17] |
| 23 March 1933 | The Enabling Act of 1933 enacted, allowing Hitler to rule by decree. |
| 31 March 1933 | Hanns Kerrl and Hans Frank issue legislation in the states of Prussia and Bavaria dismissing Jewish judges and prosecutors and imposing quotas for lawyers and notaries.[7] |
| 1 April 1933 | Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses begins. |
| 7 April 1933 | The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, banning most Jews and Communists from government employment, is passed. Shortly after, a similar law affects lawyers, doctors, tax consultants, musicians, and notaries. |
| 22 April 1933 | The Decree Licensing Physicians from the National Health Service passed on the pressure of Dr. Gerhard Wagner excludes Jewish doctors from medical service.[7] |
| 25 April 1933 | The Law for Preventing Overcrowding in German Schools and Schools of Higher Education severely limits Jewish enrollment in German public schools.[18] |
| 29 April 1933 | Gestapo (German Secret Police) established by Hermann Göring. |
| 2 May 1933 | German trade unions banned and replaced by the German Labor Front under the leadership of Robert Ley.[18] |
| 10 May 1933 | Nazi book burnings begin. Books deemed "un-German", including all works by Jewish authors and writers are consumed in ceremonial bonfires, including a large one on the Unter den Linden adjacent to the University of Berlin. |
| 1 June 1933 | The Law for the Prevention of Unemployment provides marriage loans to genetically "fit" Germans.[18] |
| 22 June 1933 | Inmates from Düsseldorf begin arriving at Emslandlager. |
| 14 July 1933 | The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, calling for compulsory sterilization of the "inferior." On the same day German citizenship is revoked from Roma and Sinti in Germany, and the Nazi Party is made the only legal political party in Germany. |
| 20 July 1933 | The Reichskonkordat is concluded after negotiations between Franz von Papen and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later become Pope Pius XII, ensuring Nazi Germany legitimacy with the international community and allowing the government to gain the loyalty of German Catholics.[18] |
| 20 August 1933 | The American Jewish Congress begins the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933.[18] |
| 17 September 1933 | The Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden is established as the legal representative body of German Jews under the leadership of Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch.[19] |
| 21 September – 23 December 1933 | Leipzig trial acquits 3 of 4 men accused of Reichstag fire. Furious, Hitler establishes a People's Court to try political crimes. |
| 22 September 1933 | The Reich Chamber of Culture is established, effectively barring Jews from the arts.[18] |
| 29 September 1933 | German Jews and Germans with any Jewish ancestry dating to 1800 are banned from farming under the Reichserbhofgesetz, and their land is redistributed to ethnic Germans.[18][20] |
| 4 October 1933 | Jews are prohibited from journalism under the Editor Law.[18] |
| 24 October – 24 November 1933 | The government passes a law allowing "dangerous and habitual criminals" – including vagrants, alcoholics, the unemployed, and the homeless – to be interned in concentration camps. The law is later amended to allow for their compulsory sterilization.[18] |
| 1 January 1934 | Hitler removes all Jewish holidays from the German calendar.[21] |
| 24 January 1934 | All Jews are expelled from the German Labor Front.[21] |
| April 1934 | Heinrich Himmler, who had become the leader of the entire German police force outside of Prussia the previous year, is appointed Reichsführer-SS. The Volksgericht is established to prosecute political dissidents.[21] |
| 1 May 1934 | The Office of Racial Policy is established within the Nazi Party.[21] |
| 17 May 1934 | Jews lose access to statutory health insurance. The German American Bund holds a rally in Madison Square Garden.[21] |
| 9 June 1934 | The SD is established as the Nazi Party's intelligence agency.[21] |
| 14 June 1934 | Hitler begins a purge of the SA and the non-Nazi conservative revolutionary movement through the SS under pressure from the Reichswehr. Hitler's colleague Ernst Röhm, the former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr are killed. The move guarantees Hitler military support, quashes his opposition, and enhances the power of the SS.[22] It also begins an increase in the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.[21] |
| 4 July 1934 | The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (IKL) is established under Theodor Eicke.[21] |
| 2–19 August 1934 | Hitler becomes President of Germany upon the death of Paul von Hindenburg, and becomes an absolute dictator by merging the office with the Chancellor to become the Führer.[23] All Reichswehr members swear the Hitler oath.[21] |
| 7 October 1934 | Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany issue letters protesting the persecution of their religion and affirming their political neutrality.[23][21] |
| December 1934 | Himmler gains control of the Gestapo through his subordinate Reinhard Heydrich.[21][23] |
| 1 April 1935 | Anti-Semitic legislation is expanded to the Saarland after the 1935 Saar status referendum.[24] |
| May 1935 | Jews are excluded from the Wehrmacht, military members are banned from marrying "non-Aryans".[25] |
| 26 June 1935 | The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is amended to institute compulsory abortion.[24] |
| 28 June 1935 | Paragraph 175 is expanded to prohibit all homosexual acts.[25] |
| 15 September 1935 | Nuremberg Laws are unanimously passed by the Reichstag. Jews are no longer citizens of Germany and cannot marry Germans. |
| December 1935 | The SS Race and Settlement Main Office establishes the Lebensborn program.[24] |
| 10 February 1936 | The Gestapo is given extrajudicial authority.[26] |
| 3 March 1936 | German Jewish doctors are banned from practicing on German patients.[26] |
| 29 March 1936 | The SS-Totenkopfverbände is established.[26] |
| 6 June 1936 | Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick authorizes the deportation of the Romani people to concentration camps such as Marzahn.[27] |
| June 1936 | Himmler becomes Chief of German Police, and establishes the Orpo, the Sipo, and the Kripo under SS control. |
| 12 July 1936 | Concentration camp inmates are transferred to Oranienburg to begin construction on Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[28] |
| 1 August 1936 | The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, leading to a temporary abatement in open anti-Semitism.[27] |
| 28 August 1936 | Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses begin.[27] |
| 7 October 1936 | A 25 percent tax is imposed on Jewish assets.[26] |
| 1937 | Beginning of the Nazis' policy of seizure of Jewish property through "Aryanization".[29] |
| 27 February 1937 | The Kripo begins the first mass roundup of political opponents.[30] |
| 14 March 1937 | Pope Pius XI publishes an encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, condemning the Nazis and accusing them of violating the Reichkonkordat.[29] |
| 15 July 1937 | Buchenwald concentration camp opens in Ettersburg five miles from Weimar.[31] |
| 8 November 1937 | Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) exhibition opens in Munich.[30] |
| 14 December 1937 | Himmler issues a decree that the German Criminal Police (Kripo) does not have to have evidence of a specific criminal act to detain persons suspected of asocial or criminal behavior indefinitely.[30] |
| 12 March 1938 | Austria annexed by Nazi Germany (the Anschluss). All German anti-Jewish laws now apply in Austria. |
| 24 March 1938 | Flossenbürg concentration camp is opened in Flossenbürg, Bavaria, ten miles from the border with Czechoslovakia.[32] |
| 26 April 1938 | Jews are required to register all property over ℛℳ5,000 under the Four Year Plan.[33] |
| 29 May 1938 | Hungary, under Miklós Horthy, passes the first of a series of anti-Jewish measures emulating Germany's Nuremberg Laws. |
| 13–18 June 1938 | The first mass arrests of Jews begin through Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich.[34] |
| 6–15 July 1938 | U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convenes the Évian Conference in Évian-les-Bains, France, to settle the issue of Jewish refugees, but only Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic allow more refugees.[35] |
| 14 July 1938 | Manifesto of Race published in Fascist Italy, led to stripping the Jews of Italian citizenship and governmental and professional positions |
| 8 August 1938 | The SS opens the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex near Linz, and establishes DEST to operate a stone quarry.[36] |
| 27 September 1938 | The German government completely prohibits Jews from practicing law.[37] |
| 30 September 1938 | The German government completely prohibits Jews from practicing medicine.[37] |
| 30 September 1938 | The United Kingdom and France agree to allow Hitler to seize control of the Sudetenland under the Munich Agreement.[33] |
| 5 October 1938 | Jews are required to have a red J in their passports.[7] |
| 9–10 November 1938 | Kristallnacht "the night of the broken glass" |
| 12 November 1938 | Jews are banned from buying and selling goods under Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life, and are fined $400 million to repair damage from Kristallnacht.[34][33] |
| 15 November 1938 | All Jewish children are expelled from German public schools.[33] |
| December 1938 – August 1939 |
German Jewish child refugees are allowed to emigrate to the United Kingdom and France through the Kindertransport program.[33] |
| 1 January 1939 | All Jewish-owned businesses are closed under the Law Excluding Jews from Commercial Enterprises.[37] |
| 24 January 1939 | Hitler directs Heydrich to establish the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.[38] |
| 30 January 1939 | Hitler declares his January 30, 1939 speech in Reichstag, which states that an outbreak of World War II will result in the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe. |
| 14–16 March 1939 | Czechoslovakia is dissolved as Slovakia declares independence as a satellite state, and the Nazis occupy the remainder as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.[38][39] |
| 21 March 1939 | The Klaipėda Region is annexed by Germany.[39] |
| 13 May 1939 | MS St. Louis sails from Hamburg to Cuba with 937 refugees, mostly Jews. Only 29 are allowed in. The rest, refused by Cuba, the United States and Canada are returned to Europe. |
| 17 May 1939 | Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine is curtailed by the British government through the MacDonald White Paper. |
| June 1939 | The Wagner–Rogers Bill, which would have increased Immigration quotas for German Jewish children, dies in committee despite endorsement from the Roosevelt administration.[40] |
| 18 August 1939 | The Interior Ministry requires midwives and pediatricians to report infants with hereditary disorders.[37] |
| 18 October 1939 | First shipment of Jews to Lublin Reservation |
| 1 September 1939 | The German invasion of Poland starts World War II in Europe. Thousands of Polish Jews are killed by the SS-Einsatzgruppen during Operation Tannenberg. |
| 2 September 1939 | Stutthof concentration camp is established near Danzig.[38] |
| 21 September 1939 | Heydrich orders all German Jews to be shipped to Poland and for all Polish Jews to be concentrated in major cities.[38] |
| October 1939 | Thousands of Jews are shipped from Vienna, Ostrava, and Katowice to the Lublin Reservation in Zarzecze, Nisko County.[38] |
| October 1939 | The Netherlands establishes a refugee camp for Central European Jewish refugees at Westerbork, Drenthe. After the German invasion the camp is converted into a transit camp to transport Jews to death camps. |
| 8 October 1939 | The first Nazi ghetto is completed in Piotrków Trybunalski. |
| 26 October 1939 | All territory not directly annexed by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union is placed under the Generalgouvernment.[38] |
| 28 October 1939 | The Generalgouvernment imposes compulsory labor requirements on Jews.[37] |
| 1940 | Bergen-Belsen is opened near Celle as a prisoner-of-war camp.[41] |
| 30 January 1940 | The German government decides to expel Gypsies to Poland.[37] |
| April 1940 | Rudolf Höss visits Oświęcim to inspect its suitability as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners and as a colony for German settlers in Lower Silesia. Himmler approves construction of Auschwitz concentration camp.[42] |
| 9 April 1940 | The German invasion of Denmark and the Norwegian Campaign begin. |
| 30 April 1940 | The Łódź Ghetto, the first Nazi ghetto, is sealed. |
| 10 May 1940 | The Battle of France begins, and Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg quickly fall under German control. |
| 15 May 1940 | The Netherlands capitulates to the Germans, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart is appointed to lead the Reichskommissariat Niederlande.[43] |
| 28 May 1940 | Belgium capitulates to the Germans |
| May 1940 | Auschwitz I opens |
| June 1940 | The National Assembly votes to surrender with the Armistice of 22 June 1940. Vichy France is established as a collaborationist state under Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval.[44] |
| 4 June 1940 | The IKL designates Neuengamme concentration camp in the outskirts of Hamburg as an independent concentration camp.[45] |
| 14 June 1940 | The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz.[37] |
| 19 June 1940 | All telephones are confiscated from Jews.[37] |
| June 1940 | The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states, Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia with German support.[45] |
| July 1940 | Germany directly annexes Alsace and Lorraine, and 3,000 Alsatian Jews are deported to the zone libre of southern France.[45] |
| 17 July 1940 | Non-French aliens are banned from taking public posts in Vichy France, a measure targeting Jews.[7] |
| 15 August 1940 | Adolf Eichmann proposes the Madagascar Plan.[37] |
| September 1940 | The Vichy government converts Refugee camps established for Spanish Republican and German Jewish refugees, such as Gurs and Rivesaltes, into transit camps.[43] |
| September 1940 | Anti-Semitic legislation is formulated in Slovakia under pressure from the German government.[7] |
| September 1940 | All public officials in the Reichskommissariat Niederlande are forced to attest to their Aryan background, and all Jews are eventually ordered to resign by 31 December.[7] |
| 6 September 1940 | King Carol II abdicates after the Second Vienna Award forces Romania to surrender Transylvania to Hungary. The National Legionary State, a coalition between the Romanian army under Ion Antonescu and the fascist Iron Guard under Horia Simia, comes to power.[45] |
| 20 September 1940 | Breendonk internment camp, a former National Redoubt fortress in Antwerp, is opened for prisoners in Nazi-occupied Belgium.[45] |
| 24 September 1940 | Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß premieres in Germany.[43] |
| 27 September – 24 November 1940 | Germany, Italy, and Japan conclude the Tripartite Pact establishing the Axis powers. Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania accede to the Pact as well. |
| 3 October 1940 | Vichy France issues the Statut des Juifs discriminating against Jews. The law leads to similar anti-Semitic actions in French North Africa.[7] |
| 12 October 1940 | All Jews are deported from Luxembourg on the orders of Gustav Simon.[7] The Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in the General Government, is established.[37] |
| 28 October 1940 | General Alexander von Falkenhausen issues an order prohibiting Jews from working as civil servants, teachers, lawyers, broadcasters, or newspaper editors in the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France.[7] |
| 15 November 1940 | The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed.[45] |
| 28 November 1940 | Fritz Hippler's anti-Semitic pseudo-documentary The Eternal Jew premieres.[43] |
| 18 December 1940 | Hitler approves Operation Barbarossa, the plan for the German invasion of the Soviet Union[45] |
| 21–23 January 1941 | The Iron Guard attempts a coup d'état against Antonescu in the Legionnaires' rebellion. The Army suppresses the coup with aid from the Wehrmacht and the German Foreign Office, and executes a pogrom in Bucharest.[46] |
| 24–25 February 1941 | The February strike is organized by the Dutch Communist Party to protest deportations of Jews. Although suppressed, the strike leads to a temporary abatement of anti-Semitic policy.[7] |
| March 1941 | The Kraków Ghetto is established.[46] |
| 1 March 1941 | Himmler orders the expansion of Auschwitz.[37] |
| 6 April 1941 | Nazi Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.[37] |
| 10 April 1941 | The Independent State of Croatia is established. |
| 21 May 1941 | The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp is established near Strasbourg.[47] |
| 22 June 1941 | Operation Barbarossa commences and the Wehrmacht enters Soviet territory |
| 23 June 1941 | The Einsatzgruppen begin extermination operations.[37] |
| 28 June 1941 | Minsk is captured after the Wehrmacht offensive in Belarus.[37] |
| 1 July 1941 | Riga and Lviv are captured by the Wehrmacht.[37] |
| 11 July 1941 | The Kovno Ghetto is established.[37] |
| 20 July 1941 | The Minsk Ghetto is established.[37] |
| 21 July – 31 August 1941 | Bessarabian Jews are massacred by the Wehrmacht, the Romanian Army, and Einsatzgruppe D.[37] |
| August 1941 | The Drancy internment camp is established by the Sipo near Paris, and is staffed by French gendarmes.[48] |
| 1 August 1941 | Eastern Galicia and Lvov are annexed to the General Government, and the Białystok Ghetto is established.[37] |
| 3 September 1941 | First gassings at Auschwitz using Zyklon B |
| 15 September 1941 | Dutch Jews are prohibited from appearing in public and are deprived of the majority of their assets. The deportation of Romanian Jews to Transnistria begins.[37] |
| 29–30 September 1941 | Babi Yar massacre of 33,771 Jews |
| 10 October 1941 | Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau of the German Sixth Army issues a secret memorandum ordering the Wehrmacht to approve violations of international law in the invasion of the Soviet Union.[49] |
| 11–12 December 1941 | Jews are rounded up in Lublin and interned in Majdanek concentration camp[50] |
| 12 December 1941 | Hitler declares the 'destruction of the Jewish race' to the Nazi Party leadership, orders the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews |
| 20 January 1942 | Wannsee Conference plans "final solution" |
| 27 March 1942 | first of at least 75,721 French Jews deported from France, to Auschwitz |
| 6 July 1942 | Anne Frank and her family go into hiding |
| 22 July 1942 | first deportation from Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka during Grossaktion Warsaw |
| 23 July 1942 – 19 October 1943 | Treblinka death camp operates, 700,000–900,000 Jews murdered |
| 4 August 1942 | Jewish internees at Breendonk are sent to the Mechelen transit camp in preparation for deportation to Auschwitz.[51] |
| 23 October 1942 | Jewish emigration from Nazi-controlled territory is prohibited.[37] |
| 19 November 1942 | first shipment of Jews from Norway |
| 19 April 1943 – 16 May 1943 | Warsaw Ghetto uprising |
| 1943 | Bergen-Belsen is converted into a concentration camp.[41] |
| 2 August 1943 | Treblinka revolt |
| 16 August 1943 | The Białystok Ghetto is liquidated.[37] |
| 2 September 1943 | The Tarnów Ghetto is liquidated.[37] |
| 11–14 September 1943 | The Minsk Ghetto is liquidated.[37] |
| 14 October 1943 | Sobibor revolt and escape |
| 3 November 1943 | German forces commence Operation Harvest Festival, resulting in the deaths of 43,000 Jews in the Lublin District.[37] |
| 9 November 1943 | The 43-nation United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is founded by the Allied Powers at the White House, and is placed under the authority of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force[52] |
| 1944 | Raphael Lemkin, a former law lecturer at Duke University and U.S. War Department analyst, coins the term genocide in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe[53] |
| 19 March 1944 | German troops occupy Hungary |
| early May 1944 | first transport of Hungarian Jews, to Auschwitz, began |
| 9 July 1944 | Miklós Horthy halts deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.[37] |
| 22 June 1944 | Red Cross representatives see elaborately staged Nazi propaganda ruse at Theresienstadt designed to portray camps as benign |
| 20 July 1944 | Attempt to assassinate Hitler fails |
| 22 July 1944 | Majdanek, first major death camp liberated, by the advancing Soviet Red Army along with Lublin. |
| 24 July 1944 | Greek Jews in Rhodes are deported to Auschwitz.[37] |
| 1 August 1944 | Warsaw uprising begins |
| 4 August 1944 | Anne Frank and her family arrested and eventually deported to Auschwitz |
| 16 August 1944 | Nazi authorities flee the Drancy camp, and it is taken by the French Red Cross.[48] |
| 3 September 1944 | The final transport of Dutch Jews from Westerbork leaves for Auschwitz.[37] |
| October 1944 | Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, created the previous summer when Buchenwald inmates were sent to Nordhausen to construct underground aircraft factories to produce V-2 rockets, is made an independent concentration camp. |
| 7 October 1944 | Crematorium IV at Auschwitz destroyed in Sonderkommando uprising |
| 15 October 1944 | Miklós Horthy's government in Hungary is overthrown in Operation Panzerfaust and deportations to Auschwitz resume under the Government of National Unity.[37] |
| 5 November 1944 | Adolf Eichmann authorizes the first death marches to the Budapest Ghetto.[37] |
| 25 November 1944 | Heinrich Himmler orders the gas chambers of Auschwitz destroyed as incriminating evidence of genocide |
| 27 January 1945 | Auschwitz death camp liberated by the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front.[54] Anniversary is observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. |
| February or March 1945 | Anne Frank and her sister Margot die in Bergen-Belsen |
| 4 April 1945 | Ohrdruf of Buchenwald is liberated by the 4th Armored Division, and is the first German concentration camp to be reached by American military forces |
| 11 April 1945 | Buchenwald death camp liberated by the 6th Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army.[55] Dora-Mittelbau is liberated by the U.S. 104th Infantry Division[56] |
| 12 April 1945 | Westerbork transit camp is liberated by the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division[57] |
| 15 April 1945 | Bergen-Belsen death camp is liberated by the 11th Armoured Division of the British Army[58] |
| 19 April 1945 | 9,000 prisoners of Neuengamme are evacuated to Lübeck due to the advancing British Army, while 3,000 prisoners are murdered and 700 German prisoners remain behind to destroy files and are conscripted into the SS. |
| 29 April 1945 | Dachau liberated by the Americans |
| 30 April 1945 | Adolf Hitler suicide and Ravensbrück liberated by the Soviets |
| 3 May 1945 | The SS attempts to evacuate the remaining prisoners on Ocean liners, resulting in the deaths of thousands of prisoners after a Royal Air Force raid sinks the Cap Ancona and the Thielbek.[59] |
| 3–6 May 1945 | Mauthausen liberated by the Americans |
| 4 May 1945 | Neuengamme liberated by the British |
| 8 May 1945 | Theresienstadt liberated by the Soviets and Victory in Europe Day |
| 23 May 1945 | Heinrich Himmler suicide |
| June 1945 | The U.S. State Department commissions a report on UNRRA displaced persons camps by Earl G. Harrison, who protests poor conditions in the camps. The Harrison Report is read by U.S. President Harry S Truman and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and published in The New York Times[60] |
| 20 November 1945 – 1 October 1946 | first Nuremberg trials, of 24 top Nazi officials |
| 20 December 1945 | The Allied Control Council issues Law No. 22 allowing individual courts to try war criminals and Holocaust perpetrators.[37] |
| 22 December 1945 | President Truman issues an executive order mandating that displaced persons from the Holocaust be given preference in the U.S. immigration system.[61] |
| 2 July 1946 | Orson Welles' The Stranger, first feature film with concentration camp footage, released. Hundreds more feature films and documentaries about the Holocaust would be made. |
| 1947 | UNRRA is superseded by the International Refugee Organization[52] |
| 25 June 1947 | The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank's diary, is published in the Netherlands[62] |
| 11 July 1947 | SS Exodus departs France for the British Mandate of Palestine. Her 4,515 passengers, mostly Holocaust survivors, are intercepted by the British Navy and shipped back to camps in Germany. |
| 1948 | The 80th United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act allowing 200,000 displaced persons to enter the United States[63] |
| 14 May 1948 | State of Israel declares independence |
| 9 December 1948 | The United Nations ratifies the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide[53] |
| 1949 | Separate postwar civilian governments in East and West Germany are formed due to the beginning of the Cold War[64] |
| 1950 | The Displaced Persons Act is amended to remove restrictions to Jewish displaced persons.[63] |
| 1951 | West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion begin negotiations for an agreement on reparations.[65] |
| 1952 | The last displaced persons camps in Europe are closed, with most of its inhabitants having been successfully resettled[63] |
| 10 September 1952 | Israel and West Germany ratify the Reparations Agreement in Luxembourg allowing for reparations payments between the two countries between 1953 and 1965.[65] |
| 25 August 1953 | The Knesset founds Yad Vashem.[37] |
| 11 May 1960 | Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, is captured in Argentina, and brought to Israel where he is tried, convicted. |
| 31 May 1962 | Adolf Eichmann executed |
| 20 December 1963 – 19 August 1965 | The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials occur, the first trial of German Holocaust perpetrators by the West German civilian judicial system[65] |
| 1986 | Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and the author of the 1958 semi-autobiographical book Night, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism.[66] |
| 22 August 1993 | The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is founded in Washington, D.C.[37] |
| 1998 | Maurice Papon, a former civil servant who facilitated the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux, is convicted for crimes against humanity by a French court, renewing public awareness of the role of French collaborationists in the Holocaust.[67] |
Close
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