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Dachau was the first and longest-operating concentration camp built by the Nazis. Dachau would be in operation until April 21, 1945, when it was liberated by the Allied Forces advancing on Berlin. -
The Nuremberg Laws were unanimously passed by the Reichstag. These laws revoked the citizenship of Jewish people and forbade marriage between a Jew and an ethnic German. These laws were one of the first steps in isolating and persecuting the Jewish community. -
The Nazis trashed Jewish businesses, burned synagogues, and arrested around 30,000 Jewish men in the 'Night of Broken Glass'. It was the Nazi response to the assassination of a German ambassador in Paris by a Polish Jew. Kristallnacht would become one of the most notorious pogroms against the Jewish community. -
The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz I camp had been opened in May. Auschwitz would go on to become the single deadliest extermination camp operating during the Holocaust; historians estimate that 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz. -
For the first time, the gas Zyklon B is used in gas chambers at Auschwitz to murder many prisoners at a time. The first gassings were on the primarily Polish and Soviet prisoners in Auschwitz at the time. -
The Wannsee Conference is held by senior government officials of the Nazis and the Schutzstaffel (SS) to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders in various government departments with the implementation of the Final Solution. -
The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto initiate their final act of armed resistance. After the uprising was suppressed, the ghetto was closed down and the Nazis sent the remaining inhabitants to concentration or death camps. -
An armed escape attempt occurs at Sobibor. The plan was to discreetly kill all of the SS members, but only 11 personnel are killed and the prisoners try to flee the gates under heavy machine gun fire. Of the 300 prisoners who initially survive, about 100 die in the surrounding mines or are recaptured. After the revolt, Sobibor camp is shut down. -
Majdanek, one of the largest concentration camp complexes built during the Holocaust, is the first major death camp liberated. It is liberated by the advancing Soviet Red Army, along with the nearby city of Lublin. -
Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, authorizes the first death marches to the Budapest Ghetto in Hungary. Death marches were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one Nazi camp to another location, during which many of the already weakened prisoners perished.