DOE Lesson Plan - American History: Holocaust Chronology 1933-1945
Holocaust Chronology
1933
January 30 Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany
February 28 Reichstag Fire – German government takes away freedoms
March 20 First concentration camp, Dachau opened for opponents of the Nazis
April 1 Boycott of Jewish businesses
April 7 Jewish Germans are fired from government jobs
May 10 Book burning
July 14 New laws allow forced sterilization of Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) the disabled and Afro-Germans
1934
June 30 Night of the Long Knives - Hitler orders the purge of the leadership of the SA, the Nazi Party paramilitary organization
August 2 President Von Hindenburg dies
August 19 Hitler becomes Führer, absolute dictator of Germany
1935
March 17 Nazis invade the Rhineland
April 1 Ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses
June 28 Paragraph 175 allows persecution of homosexual men
Sept. 15 Nuremberg Race Laws identify who is Jewish and removes rights and citizenship protections from Jews
1936
August 1 Olympic Games open in Berlin. Anti-Jewish signs are temporarily removed
1937
July 15 Buchenwald concentration camp opens
1938
March 13 Anschluss - Germany “invades” Austria and annexes it as part of Germany
July 6-15 Evian Conference - Delegates from 32 countries attend a conference in Evian, France, to discuss the growing refugee crisis; most countries refuse to allow in more Jewish refugees
August 17 New law requires male Jews to add Israel, and females, Sarah, to their names
October 5 Jewish passports are stamped with the letter J
Nov. 9-10 Throughout German controlled territory, Nazis burn synagogues, loot German homes and businesses and arrest nearly 30,000 Jewish men and send them to concentration camps. These pogroms are called Kristallnacht.
Nov. 15 Jewish children are expelled from public schools
December 2 Jewish parents send their unaccompanied children to safe countries to escape Nazi persecution; the first Kindertransport arrives in Great Britain
1939
March 15 German troops invade Czechoslovakia
June The S.S. St. Louis – Cuba and the United States refuse to accept refugees on the ship which is forced to bring most of its passengers back to Europe
Sept. 1 Germany invades Poland; World War II begins
October Hitler, in writing, gives doctors permission to kill disabled people
1940
Spring Germany invades Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France
May 20 Auschwitz Camp is established
October Warsaw Ghetto is established
Nov. 15 Warsaw Ghetto is sealed
1941
March 24 Germany invades North Africa
April 6 Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
June 22 Operation Barbarossa – Germany invades the Soviet Union; The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, begin mass shootings of Jews, Roma and Sinti and Communists
Sept. 1 All Jews over six years old in German controlled territory are required to wear an identifying badge; many are now forced to wear the yellow star
Sept. 28-29 Babi Yar -Over 33,000 Jews are murdered by mobile killing squads near Kiev
December 7 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; The United States enters the war the next day
December 8 Chelmno killing center begins operations, using poison gas for mass murder
1942
January 20 Wannsee Conference – Plans are presented to coordinate the murder of the Jews of Europe, the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"
1942 Nazi killing centers in occupied Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek begin mass murder of Jews in gas chambers
July 15 Deportations of Dutch Jews begins
October 26 Roundups of Norwegian Jews
1943
March 13 Liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto
April 19- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, individuals and small groups of May 16 Jews hid or fought the Germans for almost a month.
Sept. 20 Danes use fishing boats to smuggle Danish Jews to neutral Sweden; 7200 are saved
Oct. 14 Sobibor Uprising - Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor killing center begin an armed revolt
1944
January 27 President Roosevelt sets up the War Refugee Board
March 19 Germany occupies Hungary
May 15 Deportations from Theresienstadt - German authorities deport thousands of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau
May 15 – Hungarian police and German officials deport almost 440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-
July 9 Birkenau, where most of them are murdered in the gas chambers
June 6 D-Day – The Allies invade Western Europe; US, British, and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy, France
July 23 Liberation of Majdanek-Lublin by Soviet troops
August 2 “Gypsy Camp” at Auschwitz-Birkenau is destroyed; over 3000 Roma and Sinti are gassed
August 9 Liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto
October 7 Prisoner revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau; a crematorium is blown up
1945
January 17 Death March - As Soviet troops approach, SS begins the evacuation of prisoners from Auschwitz
January 27 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz
April 11 U.S. troops liberate survivors at Buchenwald
April 12 Canadian troops liberate Westerbork
April 15 British forces liberate Bergen-Belsen
April 29 U.S. forces liberate Dachau
April 30 Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin
May 5 U.S. troops liberate Mauthausen
May 7 Germany surrenders
Sept. 2 Japan surrenders; World War II officially ends
Nov. 20 The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg begins the trial of 21 major Nazi leaders