Click on the dates above to explore the Holocaust timeline.
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January 30 |
Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany |
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March 22 |
Dachau concentration camp opens |
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April 1 |
Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses |
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April 7 |
Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions |
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April 26 |
Gestapo established |
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May 10 |
Public burning of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state |
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July 14 |
Law stripping East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship |
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August 2 |
Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him |
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May 31 |
Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces |
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September 15 |
"Nuremberg Laws": anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag |
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November 15 |
Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew |
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March 3 |
Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions |
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March 7 |
Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty |
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June 17 |
Himmler appointed the Chief of German Police |
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July |
Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens |
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October 25 |
Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis |
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July 15 |
Buchenwald concentration camp opens |
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March 13 |
Anschluss (incorporation of Austria): all antisemitic decrees immediately applied in Austria |
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April 26 |
Mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich |
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July 6 |
Evian Conference held in Evian, France on the problem of Jewish refugees |
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August 1 |
Adolf Eichmann establishes the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna to increase the pace of forced emigration |
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August 3 |
Italy enacts sweeping antisemitic laws |
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September 30 |
Munich Conference: Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, previously western Czechoslovakia |
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October 5 |
Following request by Swiss authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter "J" to restrict Jews from immigrating to Switzerland |
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October 28 |
17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany expelled; Poles refused to admit them; 8,000 are stranded in the frontier village of Zbaszyn |
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November 7 |
Assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan |
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November 9-10 |
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen) |
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November 12 |
Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands |
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November 15 |
All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools |
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December 12 |
One billion Marks fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht |
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January 30 |
Hitler in Reichstag speech: "if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung (extermination) of European Jews" |
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March 15 |
Germans occupy Czechoslovakia |
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August 23 |
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed: non-aggression pact between Soviet Union and Germany |
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September 1 |
Beginning of World War II: Germany invades Poland |
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September 21 |
Heydrich issues directives to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland |
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October 12 |
Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland |
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October 28 |
First Polish ghetto established in Piotrków |
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November 23 |
Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or yellow star |
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April 9 |
Germans occupy Denmark and southern Norway |
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May 7 |
Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles |
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May 10 |
Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France |
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May 20 |
Concentration camp established at Auschwitz |
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June 22 |
France surrenders |
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August 8 |
Battle of Britain begins |
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September 27 |
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis |
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November 16 |
Warsaw Ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people |
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January 21-26 |
Anti-Jewish riots in Romania, led by the Iron Guard (Romanian fascist organization); hundreds of Jews butchered |
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February 1 |
German authorities begin rounding up Polish Jews for transfer to Warsaw Ghetto |
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March |
Adolf Eichmann appointed head of the department for Jewish affairs of the Reich Security Main Office (Gestapo), Section IV B 4. |
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April 6 |
Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece; occupation follows |
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June 22 |
Germany invades the Soviet Union |
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July 31 |
Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the "Final Solution" |
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September 1 |
German Jews required to wear yellow star of David with the word "Jude" |
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September 28-29 |
34,000 Jews massacred at Babi Yar outside Kiev |
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October |
Establishment of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for the extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and others were also murdered at the camp |
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December 7 |
Japanese attack Pearl Harbor |
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December 8 |
Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943 |
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December 11 |
United States declares war on Japan and Germany |
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January 20 |
Wannsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews |
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March 17 |
Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered |
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May |
Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered |
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June |
Jewish partisan units established in the forests of Byelorussia and the Baltic States |
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July 22 |
Germans establish Treblinka concentration camp |
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Summer |
Deportation of Jews to killing centers from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lakhva, Mir, Tuchin, and Weisweiz |
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Winter |
Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers; Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin |
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January |
German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad (Volgograd) |
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March |
Liquidation of Craców ghetto |
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April 19 |
Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June |
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May |
Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. On May 16, 1943, SS and Police Chief Jurgen Stroop proclaimed, "180 Jews, bandits, and subhumans were destroyed. The Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more." |
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June |
Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union |
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Summer |
Armed resistance by Jews in Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnów ghettos |
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Fall |
Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna (Vilnius), and Riga |
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October 14 |
Armed revolt in Sobibor extermination camp |
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October-November |
Rescue of the Danish Jewry |
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March 19 |
Germany occupies Hungary |
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May 15 |
Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz |
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June 6 |
D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy |
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Spring/Summer |
Red Army repels Nazi forces |
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July 20 |
Group of German officers attempt to assassinate Hitler |
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July 24 |
Russians liberate Majdanek killing center |
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October 7 |
Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz; one crematorium blown up |
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November |
Last Jews deported from Theresienstadt (Terezin) to Auschwitz |
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November 8 |
Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria |
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January 17 |
Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march |
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January 25 |
Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof |
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April 6-10 |
Death march of inmates of Buchenwald |
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April 30 |
Hitler commits suicide |
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May 8 |
V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich |
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August 6 |
Bombing of Hiroshima |
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August 9 |
Bombing of Nagasaki |
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August 15 |
V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed. |
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September 2 |
Japan surrenders; end of World War II |
