Holocaust

Hitler appointed to chancellor of Germany

Jan 30, 1933

Hitler appointed to chancellor of Germany.

First concentration camp Dachau

Mar 23, 1933

Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück

Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses

Apr 1, 1933

Burning of books in Berlin and throughout Germany.

May 10, 1933

Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land.

Sep 29, 1933

Hitler becomes Fuhrer

Aug 2, 1934

Jews banned from serving in Gerrman armies

May 1, 1935

Numbering Laws enacted

Nov 1, 1935

The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

Feb 10, 1936

Buchenwald concentration camp opened

Jul 16, 1936

Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property.

Apr 26, 1938

Nazis order Jewish-owned businesses to register.

Jun 14, 1938

Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.

Jul 23, 1938

Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine.

Jul 25, 1938

Jews are prohibited from all legal practices.

Sep 27, 1938

First Polish Jews deported from Germany

Oct 1, 1938

Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a big red "J."

Oct 5, 1938

Kristallnacht.

Nov 9, 1938

Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

Nov 15, 1938

Nazis force Jews to hand over all gold and silver items.

Feb 21, 1939

Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

Sep 3, 1939

Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

Nov 23, 1939

Some time in January a pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed.

Jan 1, 1940

Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as the site of a new concentration camp.

Jan 25, 1940

First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

Feb 12, 1940

Rudolf Höss is chosen to be kommandant of Auschwitz.

May 1, 1940

France signs an armistice with Hitler.

Jun 22, 1940

Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

Sep 27, 1940

Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

Oct 3, 1940

German Jews ordered into forced labor.

Mar 7, 1941

Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.

Jun 29, 1941

3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.

Jul 25, 1941

German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars.

Sep 1, 1941

The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.

Sep 3, 1941

Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse).

Jan 1, 1942

In occupied Poland, Belzec extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with permanent gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

Mar 1, 1942

Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania ordered to wear yellow stars.

Jun 1, 1942

At Auschwitz, a second gas chamber, Bunker II (the white farmhouse), is made operational at Birkenau due to the number of Jews arriving.

Jun 30, 1942

Open pit burning of bodies begins at Auschwitz in place of burial. The decision is made to dig up and burn those already buried, 107,000 corpses, to prevent fouling of ground water.

Sep 9, 1942

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

Feb 2, 1943

D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy on the coast of northern France.

Jun 6, 1944

Russian troops liberate the first concentration camp, at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.

Jul 24, 1944

Last use of the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Oct 30, 1944

Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.

Apr 30, 1945

Americans also free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.