Holocaust Timeline

  • Hitler Takes Power

    Hitler Takes Power
    In March 1933, Hitler addressed the first session of the Reichstag, after his appointment as chancellor.
  • Nazi Race "Science"

    Nazi Race "Science"
    In the Nazi Ideology, the German people were part of the Aryan race, which stood at the top of their racial Hierarchy. Their ideal was the Nordic type, blond hair, blue eyes, and tall stature. This was taught to people, especially the Hitler youth, starting around 1933-
  • Enemies of the State

    Enemies of the State
    Concentration camps were created, to contain primarily, Jews, but also Roma, people with mental and or physical disabilities, and poles. Millions more, including homosexuals,
    Jehovah's witnesses, soviet prisoners of war, and
    political dissidents also suffered oppression and death.
  • Nazi Race Laws

    Nazi Race Laws
    The Nazis enforced new race laws that excluded Jewish people and Roma people from German citizenship. This also restricted relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish people.
  • Night of Broken Glass

    Night of Broken Glass
    Within only 2 days, synagogues were vandalized and burned, 7500 Jewish businesses were damaged and destroyed, 96 Jewish people were killed, and nearly 30000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
  • The Ghettos

    The Ghettos
    Ghettos were enclosed districts within cities, where Germans concentrated Jewish people, and in one of these ghettos in Warsaw, German authorities closed off the ghetto, severely restricting supplies for nearly 300,000 Jewish people.
  • The Mobile Killing Squads

    The Mobile Killing Squads
    Roughly one-quarter of all Jewish people who died in the Holocaust were killed by SS mobile killing squads and police battalions after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The squads murdered Jews, Roma, and Communist officials.
  • Liberation

    Liberation
    As Germany fell, U.S. soldiers encountered concentration camps, where the Nazis evacuated, leaving few survivors, General Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the Ohrdruf concentration camps to see the atrocities himself.