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Period: to
1940-1941 Holocaust
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Spring: The German army invades and defeats Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France.
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Approximately 164,000 Polish Jews are concentrated and imprisoned in the Lódz ghetto which is established and sealed off from the outside world.
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A concentration camp is established at Auschwitz, Poland.
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Anti-Jewish laws are passed by France's Vichy Government.
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The Warsaw ghetto is closed off with approximately 500,000 inhabitants.
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Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
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Gypsy and African-German children are expelled from public schools.
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The German army invades North Africa.
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The German army invades Yugoslavia and Greece.
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Romania passes law condemning adult Jews to forced labor.
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The French Vichy government revokes civil rights of French Jews in North Africa.
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The German army invades the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, begin the mass murders of Jews, Gypsies, and Communist leaders.
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German Jews above the age of six are forced to wear a yellow Star of David sewed on the left side of their clothes with the word "Jude" printed in black.
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Soviet prisoners of war and Polish prisoners are killed in Nazi test of gas chambers at Auschwitz in occupied Poland.
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Nearly 34,000 Jews are murdered by mobile killing squads at Babi Yar, near Kiev in the Ukraine.
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Construction begins on Birkenau, an addition to the Auschwitz camp. Birkenau includes a killing center which begins operations in early 1942.
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First group of German and Austrian Jews are deported to ghettos in eastern Europe.
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Five thousand Gypsies are deported from labor and internment camps in Austria to the Lódz ghetto in Poland.
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Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
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The Chelmno death camp opens near Lódz, Poland and the first gassing of victims in mobile gas vans occurs.
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Germany declares war on the United States.
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Nazi "extermination" camps located in occupied Poland at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek-Lublin begins mass murder of Jews in gas chambers.
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Period: to
1942-1943 Holocaust
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Jews in the Lódz ghetto are deported to the killing center at Chelmno.
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Fifteen Nazi and government leaders meet at Wannsee, a section of Berlin, to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question".
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Approximately ten thousand Jews, who had arrived in the Lódz ghetto some six months earlier from Germany, Luxembourg, Vienna, and Prague, are deported to Chelmno. Their baggage is confiscated before they board the train.
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The German government closes all Jewish schools.
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Treblinka death camp opens.
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Jews in France and the Netherlands are required to wear identifying Stars of David.
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Jewish fighting organizations established in the Warsaw ghetto.
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The inmates at Treblinka rebel.
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Approximately fifteen thousand Jews in the Lódz ghetto are deported to Chelmno, mostly children under ten and individuals over sixty-five, but also others who are too weak or ill to work. By September 16, approximately fifty-five thousand Jews have been
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All Jews in concentration camps in Germany are sent to death camp at Auschwitz.
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A special internment camp for non-Jewish Polish youth is opened in Lódz.
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The Nazis order all of the ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union destroyed.
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All Gypsies in Germany and Nazi occupied countries, with few exceptions, are arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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16 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto initiate resistance to deportation by the Germans to the death camps.
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The Nazis begin deportation of Hungarian Jews. Over 430,000 Jews are sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where most are gassed.
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The Danish citizens smuggle most of the nation's Jews to neutral Sweden.
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The inmates at Sobibor initiate an armed rebellion.
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The War Refugee Board is established by President Franklin Roosevelt.
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Period: to
1944-1945 Holocaust
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The German army invades Hungary.
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The Allied Powers invade Normandy.
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Seven thousand one hundred ninety-six Jews are deported from the Lódz ghetto to
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German officers fail and are caught in an attempt to assassinate Hitler.
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Chelmno where they are killed.
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The Soviet Army liberates the Majdanek death camp.
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The prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebel and blow up one crematorium.
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Nazis empty Auschwitz and start prisoners on "death marches" to Germany.
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The Soviet army liberates Auschwitz.
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Troops from the United States liberate survivors from the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.
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Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin rather than be caught by the advancing Soviet army.
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Troops from the United States liberate Mauthausen concentration camp.
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Germany surrenders and war in Europe is ended.
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The war crimes tribunal is convened at Nuremberg, Germany.
