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Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.
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40,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as auxiliary police.
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Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere.
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The Nazi regime in Germany begins construction of concentration camps. Dachau is first camp, soon followed by others.
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The Nazis decree a boycott of Jewish owned shops and businesses.
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The Nuremburg Race Laws against the German Jews.
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Kristallnacht. Destructions of Jewish Synagogues and other communmity property by rampaging gangs. German Jews forced to pay a 1 billiion mark fine for the damage inflicted on them by the Nazi mobs.
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Germany conquers Poland. The German S.S. immediately begins action against Polish Jews. The Nazi Reichskommisar for Jewish affairs, Reinhard Heydrich, orders that Polish Jews be gathered into ghettos near railways for fuure "final goal"
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Nazis begin extensive euthenasia of sick and disabled in Germany. There is almost no public protest. (Note: most victims were non-Jews; this was a general policy.)
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Beginning of an extensive concentration camp complex (eventually including more than thirty camps) near Oscwieczin (Auschwitz) in eastern Poland. In January, the Nazi racist newspaper, Der Sturmer, predicts: ". . . . the time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the world's criminal — Judah — from which there will be no resurrection."
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Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, summons Rudolf Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, to Berli and tells him that "the Fuhrer [i.e, Hitler] has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. We, the S.S., have to carr out the order . . . . I have chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."
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First test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.
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Wannsee Conference in Berlin. Officials of German government departments, the SS, and oter organizations meet to coordinate the planning and implementation of the Final Solution.
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Detailed information that the Nazis are systematically implementing the extermination of Europe's Jews is leaked to the World Jewish Organization by a German business man. This is forwarded to the British and American governments. In December, 1942 (for exmple, by a statement of the British Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden, to the House of Commons) the British and Americna governments make this public in general terms and warn that these crimes will be punished.
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Uprisining of the Warsaw Jewish ghetto, crushed by German troops. The most notable of many acts of Jewish attempts at resistance in ghettos, by partisan groups, and even in concentration camps, against overwhelming odds.
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As the Allied troops advance in the east (from Russia) and in the west (from the Normandy landings of June, 1944) the Nazis force concentration camp survivors to march away from the advancing armies. Many prisoners die during these marches.
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Russian troops overrun Auschwitz. An estimated 2 milllion people (including 1.5 millliion Jews) have been murdered in the complex of camps around Auschwitz alone. Till the end of the war agianst Germany, other concentration camps are liberated in the East and in the West. Film is taken of the survivors at the time of liberation, of dead and dying that have not been disposed of, and of the horrible conditions in the camps and these films, when they are shown (as parts of newsreels
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Surrender of Germany.
