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Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany -
"Nuremberg Laws": anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag. Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew -
Buchenwald concentration camp opens -
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen) Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools -
Concentration camp established at Auschwitz -
Warsaw Ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people -
Anti-Jewish riots in Romania, led by the Iron Guard (Romanian fascist organization); hundreds of Jews butchered
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Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943 -
Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered -
Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered -
Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz
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Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria -
April 30 Hitler commits suicide
Sep 2 Japan surrenders; end of World War II!