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The Book Theif

  • Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany - a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

  • Period: to

    Holocuast

  • Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany,

  • Enabling act passes, giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

  • Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

  • Burning of books in Berlin and throughout Germany.

  • Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land. Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors. Jews not allowed nationalhealth insurance. Jews are prohibited from getting legal qualifications.

  • Hitler receives a ninety percent “Yes” vote from Germany voters approving his new powers.

  • Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military.

  • Nazis troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. Hitler announcesAnschluss (union) with Austria.

  • Nazis destroy the synagogue in Nuremberg.

  • Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland, which refuses thementry, leaving them in “no-mans land” near the Polish border for several months.

  • Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass.

  • Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for damages related to Kristallnacht.

  • Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

  • Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish population, 350,000).

  • Nazis invade Poland (Jewish population 3.35 million), the largest in Europe.

  • Hitler declares war on the United States.

  • First train-loads of Jews from Paris arrive at Auschwitz.

  • German Jews are banned from using public transportation.

  • Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler’s armies.

  • Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews).

  • Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

  • Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have beenmurdered there.

  • Berlin reached by Soviet troops.

  • Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.

  • Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.

  • Opening of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.