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Thomas Doeppner was born in Berlin (Germany):
Thomas Doeppner (my chosen Holocaust victim) was born during this year in Berlin (Germany). Son of a Jewish woman (Ella) and a non-Jewish man (August). -
Appointment of Hitler as chancellor of Germany:
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. -
Reichstag Fire Decree:
Declaration of the state of emergency and suspension of civil liberties. -
Dachau Concentration Camp opened:
Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on this date. -
Enabling Act:
The Enabling Act of 1933 was a law that gave the German Cabinet (most importantly, the Chancellor) the power to make and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or Weimar President Paul von Hindenburg, leading to the rise of Nazi Germany. Critically, the Enabling Act allowed the Chancellor to bypass the system of checks and balances in the government. -
First boycotts of Jewish businesses:
Less than 3 months after coming to power in Germany, the Nazi leadership stages an economic boycott targeting Jewish-owned businesses and the offices of Jewish professionals. The boycott was presented to the German people as both a reprisal and an act of revenge for the bad international press against Germany since the appointment of Hitler’s government in January, 1933. The Nazis claimed that German and foreign Jews were spreading “atrocity stories” to damage Germany's reputation. -
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:
The Editors Law or Press Censorship Law forbids non-“Aryans” to work in journalism. The German Propaganda Ministry (through its Reich Press Chamber) assumed control over the Reich Association of the German Press, the guild which regulated entry into the profession. Under the new Editors Law, the association kept registries of “racially pure” editors and journalists, and excluded Jews and those married to Jews from the profession. -
Adolf Hitler, proclaimed “Führer”:
With the support of the German armed forces, Hitler becomes President of Germany. Later that month Hitler abolishes the office of President and declares himself Führer of the German Reich and People, in addition to his position as Chancellor. In this expanded capacity, Hitler now becomes the absolute dictator of Germany; there are no legal or constitutional limits to his authority. -
Nazi Germany instituted the Nuremberg Race Laws and persecuted Thomas Doeppner:
The Nazi Germany persecuted Thomas Doeppner as he was classified as a "Mischling" (someone who was of a "mixed race"). However, Tom didn't consider himself Jewish. -
Approval of the mandatory military service:
The German government enacted a conscription law, which applied to all men between 18 and 45. After May 1935, drafted soldiers had to show evidence that they were “Aryan.” Jews were forbidden to serve, and Jehovah’s Witnesses
refused to join the military. Hitler also officially announced that Germany would begin rebuilding its
military (which it was already secretly doing). This was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which
had limited the size of Germany’s military after World War I. -
Prohibition of Jehovah’s witness organization
The German government bans Jehovah’s Witness organizations. The ban is due to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to swear allegiance to the state; their religious convictions forbid an oath of allegiance to or service in the armed forces of any temporal power. -
Reinforcement of the prohibition of activities qualified as “homosexual”, being excluded of being accounted as German population:
Gay men, in particular, were subject to harassment, arrest, incarceration, and even castration. In Nazi eyes, gay men were weak and unfit to be soldiers, as well as unlikely to have children and thereby contribute to the racial struggle for Aryan dominance. -
Approval of the Laws of Nuremberg:
The Nuremberg Race Laws consisted of two pieces of legislation: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. These laws institutionalized many of the racial theories underpinning Nazi ideology and provided the legal framework for the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany. The Nuremberg Race Laws did not identify a “Jew” as someone with particular religious convictions but instead as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. -
Thomas Doeppner illegally entered the Netherlands to live with his father (who had moved there from the Nazi Germany):
When Tom's parents divorced his dad moved from Nazi Germany to Amsterdam. In the summer of 1938 (afraid that he would be drafted into the German military); Thomas illegally entered the Netherlands to live with his father. -
On December 1938, Tom wrote to the AFSC (Quaker aid organization), for help escaping to safety:
The AFSC is the American Friends Services Committee (Quaker aid organization). -
Annexation of Austria:
On March 12, 1938, German troops invade Austria and incorporate Austria into the German Reich in what is known as the Anschluss. -
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:
The leaders of Britain, France, and Italy agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace from Hitler. -
Polish Jews deported from Germany:
In October 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews living in Nazi Germany were arrested and expelled. -
Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"):
On November 9–10, 1938, Nazi Party officials set off a series of violent pogroms against Jews in Germany and Austria. This event came to be known as the Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass". The name "Kristallnacht" is a reference to the shattered glass from store windows that littered the streets during and after the riot. -
The AFSC helped Tom obtain a scholarship to McPherson College, Kansas. He was still gathering his visa paperwork in September 1939, when WWII began in Europe:
After the Kristallnacht attacks in November 1938, students at more than 200 American colleges and universities raised money to help refugee students. The AFSC then helped Tom obtain a scholarship to McPherson College. Tom was still gathering his visa paperwork in 1939, when WWII began in Europe. -
Germany annexed Czechoslovakia:
On 15 March 1939, German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. They took over Bohemia, and established a protectorate over Slovakia. -
German-Soviet Pact of Non-Aggression:
In the night of 23-24 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The countries agreed that they would not attack each other and secretly divided the countries that lay between them. Germany claimed Western Poland and part of Lithuania. The Soviet Union was going to occupy Eastern Poland, the Baltic States and part of Finland. -
Germany invaded Poland:
This set up the Beginning of the World War II. -
Approval of the Euthanasia Decree or “Operation T-4”:
It would cause 250,000 deaths. -
Tom obtained a ticket for the SS Pennland and he made it to Kansas before the spring 1940 semester began:
Although the war meant fewer passenger ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Tom finally obtained the ticket for the SS Pennland and made it to Kansas before the spring 1940 semester began. -
Germany invaded Norway and Denmark:
Under the code name 'Operation Weserübung', Nazi Germany attacked Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940. -
Germany invaded Western Europe:
Germany attacked in the west on May 10, 1940. Initially, British and French commanders had believed that German forces would attack through central Belgium as they had in World War I, and rushed forces to the Franco-Belgian border to meet the German attack. The main German attack however, went through the Ardennes Forest in southeastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. German tanks and infantry quickly broke through the French defensive lines and advanced to the coast. -
Italy declared war on Britain and France:
The obvious collapse of France convinced Mussolini that the time to implement his Pact of Steel with Hitler had come, and on June 10, 1940, Italy declared war against France and Great Britain. -
First prisoners arrive at Auschwitz:
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. -
Axis alliance (Germany, Italy and Japan) is definitely formed:
Its principal members were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan. -
Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece:
On 6 April 1941, the German Army, supported by Hungarian and Bulgarian forces, attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. -
Germany invaded the Soviet Union
Under the codename Operation “Barbarossa,” Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. This was the largest German military operation of World War II. -
Jewish badge, mandatory for Jewish population:
During the Nazi era, German authorities reintroduced the Jewish badge as a key element of their larger plan to persecute and eventually to annihilate the Jewish population of Europe. -
Pearl Harbor attack by Japan:
USA entered into the World War II. -
Mass murder began at Chelmno, the first stationary facility where the Nazis used poison gas for mass murder:
SS and police authorities established the Chelmno killing center in order to annihilate the Jewish population of the Wartheland (an area of western Poland directly annexed to the German Reich), including the inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto. -
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:
Operation Torch (8–16 November 1942) was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. -
Allies condemned in an official declaration the mass murder:
The Allied nations, including the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, issue a declaration stating explicitly that the German authorities were engaging in mass murder of the European Jews, and that those responsible for this “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” would “not escape retribution". -
German defeat at Stalingrad:
In February 1943, after months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties, the surviving German forces (only about 91,000 soldiers) surrendered at Stalingrad on the Volga. -
First transport of Gypsies to Auschwitz:
On 26 February 1943, the first transport of Roma and Sinti people from Germany arrived at Auschwitz. -
Beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprise:
German forces intended to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto beginning on April 19, 1943, the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover. When SS and police units entered the ghetto that morning, the streets were deserted. Nearly all of the residents of the ghetto had gone into hiding, as the renewal of deportations of Jews to death camps triggered an armed uprising within the ghetto. -
Invasion of Sicily by Allied forces
The Allied invasion of Sicily was a major campaign of World War II in which the Allied forces invaded the island of Sicily that began on the night of 9-10 July 1943 and took it from the Axis powers (Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany). -
Surrender of Italy
On September 8, 1943, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies. Germany reacted with Operation Axis, the Allies with Operation Avalanche. -
In January 1944, Tom's mum (Ella) was deported from Berlin to Theresienstdat (hybrid ghetto and concentration camp):
She had managed to avoid deportation for so long as she was married to a non-Jewish man, but she survived the Holocaust. -
Thomas graduated in 1944 and joined the US army as interpreter:
After Tom graduated in 1944, he joined the US army as interpreter, interrogating the Germans captured by the Allies. -
Germany occupied Hungary:
In March 1944, German forces occupied Hungary. -
Beginning of the Normandy landings:
On June 6, 1944, under the code name Operation “Overlord,” US, British, and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy, France, on the English Channel coast east of Cherbourg and west of Le Havre. -
Liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops:
The Soviet army enters Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberates around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom are ill and dying. -
Liberation of Buchenwald by American troops:
In early April 1945, as US forces approached, the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the Buchenwald main camp and an additional several thousand prisoners from the subcamps of Buchenwald. -
Surrender of Germany:
End of the World War II in Europe.