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The first concentration camps, Dachau & Buchenwald, were opened and Jews were sent there to become a useful part of Hitler's Third Reich. -
Adolf Hitler passed a set of laws that gave Jews many restrictions. Jews had not political rights and lost citizenship. It was also illegal for Jews and non-Jews to get married or have intimate relationships and non-Jewish Germans under 45 were not allowed to work as maids for Jewish households. -
Kristallnacht (night of broken glass) was the result of a 17-year-old Jewish refugee killing a German diplomat in Paris, France after discovering his parents were expelled from Germany. Nazi officials ordered an attack on Jews in Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland. Mobs of angry Nazis burned synagogues, broke into Jewish homes and businesses, and desecrated Jewish cemeteries. -
937 refugees, almost all of them being Jewish, fled from German occupied territories to Cuba. Unfortunately, only 22 Jews were allowed to stay, and the United States denied the remaining refugees asylum. The ship returned to Europe and the refugees were given sanctuary in Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. As Germany swept through Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, the refugees found themselves back in the hands of the Nazis. 254 of them died in the Holocaust. -
Nazi leaders came up with a "final solution" about what to do with Jews. The first death camps were built in Poland. The camps were named Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobidor, Majdanek, and Treblinka. Jews were sent to these camps and certain parts of their body as well as belongings were repurposed.
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American and British officials met to discuss ideas to help and rescue European Jews. Unfortunately, they ended up doing nothing about it. -
Nazis were sending 5000 Jews each day from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp during the spring of 1943. Jews in the ghetto used a collection of guns and homemade weapons to resist against the Nazis. The Nazis were able to regain control of the ghetto and those that were not killed were sent to death camps. The resistance lead to the closing of ghettos, sending all Jewish inhabitants to concentration or death camps. The ghettos that were not closed were turned into concentration camps
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22 key Nazi leaders were placed on trial. 19 of them were convicted and 3 of them were acquitted. Other lower-ranking Nazi officials were put on trial between 1946 and 1949.
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The death/work camp responsible for the deaths of nearly 1,000,000 Jews was liberated by Soviet forces. About 7,000 prisoners survived and most were wounded or dying. -
The Stutthof concentration camp was liberated by Soviet forces and about 100 of them survived. The rest of the 25,000 prisoners were "evacuated" into the sea and shot dead.