Reichstag Fire Decree: declaration of the state of emergency and suspension of civil liberties.
Dachau Concentration Camp opened.
Enabling Act.
first boycotts of Jewish businesses.
Approval of Civil Service Law: it removed Jews and political opponents of the Nazis from civil service positions and government jobs.
Approval of the Education Law: it stated that Jewish students could not be more than 5% of the student population of any public school or university, being forced to leave public schools.
Approval of the Sterilization Law: it allowed the Government to forcibly sterilize people with physical or mental disabilities not to have children.
Approval of the Press Censorship Law.
Adolf Hitler, proclaimed “Führer”.
Annexation of Austria.
Approval of the mandatory military service.
Prohibition of Jehovah’s witness organization.
Reinforcement of the prohibition of activities qualified as “homosexual”, being excluded of being accounted as German population.
Approval of the Laws of Nuremberg.
Jewish Name Law: it forced the Jews who did not have a Jewish first name to take the middle names “Israel” for men and “Sara” for women.
Sudetenland, ceded to Germany.
Polish Jews deported from Germany.
Kristallnacht.
Germany annexed Czechoslovakia.
German-Soviet Pact of Non-Agression.
: Germany invaded Poland. Beginning of the World War II.
Approval of the Euthanasia Decree or “Operation T-4”. It would cause 250,000 deaths.
Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.
Germany invaded Western Europe.
Italy declared war on Britain and France.
First prisoners arrive at Auschwitz.
Axis alliance (Germany, Italy and Japan) is definteliy formed.
Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Jewish badge, mandatory for Jewish population.
Pearl Harbor attack by Japan. USA ented into the World War II.
Mass murder began at Chelmno, the first stationary facility where the Nazis used poison gas for mass murder.
Ruth’s mother learned that some of her family in Slovakia had been taken to Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp
Wannsee Conference: approval of mass murder of Jews (“Final Solution”).
Beginning of “Operation Reinhard”, name of the plan to murder approximately two million of Jews in German-occupied Poland.
Allied forces invaded North Africa.
Allies condemned in an official declaration the mass murder.
German defeat at Stalingrad.
First transport of Gypsies to Auschwitz.
Beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprise.
Invasion of Sicily by Allied forces.
Surrender of Italy.
Germany occupied Hungary.
Beginning of the Normandy landings.
In late October 1944, Ruth and her sister were sent in a transport to a concentration camp in Nuremberg
Liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.
By February 1945, the camp was destroyed from constant bombing. Ruth and Teresa were sent to Holleischen
Liberation of Buchenwald by American troops.
Surrender of Germany. End of the World War II in Europe.
May 1945, Ruth and Teresa were first liberated by partisans and then by American soldiers.
Ruth and Teresa made their way back to their hometown where they reunited with their father
Ruth and Herman immigrated to the United States on April 24, 1948
She met Benjamin Cohen there and married him in 1952
Today Ruth lives in the Washington, DC area and is a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
