1. The Plight of Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe – 1933-1945
The Holocaust
The Plight of Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe –

3. 1933 30 January – Hitler appointed Chancellor
22 March – Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in Central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbruck for women.

4. 1933 1 April – Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses
11 April – Nazi’s issue a decree defining a non-Ayran as “Anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan…especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith.”
14 June – Nazis pass law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of German citizenship.

5. 1933 September – Jews excluded from the Arts
29 September – Jews prohibited from owning land
4 October – Jews prohibited from being newspaper editors
24 November – Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps

6. 1934 17 May – Jews not allowed national health insurance
22 July – Jews prohibited from becoming lawyers

7. 1935 21 May – Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military
26 June – Nazis pass law allowing forced abortions on women to prevent them from passing on hereditary diseases
15 September – Nuremberg Race Laws passed against Jews decreed

8. Nuremberg Laws
Citizenship Law – Restricted citizenship to those who were of “German or related blood.” Only citizens could enjoy “full political rights in accordance with the law.” Jews could not be citizens – only “subjects”. Those who were citizens were stripped of it.

9. Nuremberg Laws
Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour – Expressed that the “purity of German blood” was essential for the ongoing existence of the German people.
Marriage between Jews and Aryans was forbidden, as were extramarital sexual relations.
Punishable by prison term

10. Nuremberg Laws
It was unlawful for Jews to “employ in their households female subjects of German or kindred blood who are under 45 years old.
Jews were not allowed to fly the German flag or display the Reich colours.
The law took effect the day after it was enacted.

11. Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg laws were race laws.
They found Jewish blood to be inferior and dangerous. Jews could never be Germans. On the contrary, Jews were considered threats to German purity; their presence on German soil threatened the nation’s well-being.

12. 1936
March – SS “Death's-head” division is established to guard concentration camps
August – Nazis create Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women)

13. 1937
January – Jews are banned form many professional occupations including teaching Germans and from being accountants or dentists. They are also denied tax reductions and child allowances.

14. 1938
March 12 – Nazi troops enter Austria, with a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna.

15. 1938
Adolph Eichmann established Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna. Heinrich Himmler establishes Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz

16. 1938
22 April – Aryan “front-ownership” of Jewish businesses is forbidden
26 April – Jews ordered to register wealth and property
14 June – Jewish-owned businesses ordered to register

17. 1938
July – The Evian Conference (France): US convenes a meeting to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but results in inaction as no country will accept them.
Canada refuses to attend the conference.
23 June – Jews overage 15 must apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer

18. 1938 25 July – Jewish doctors prohibited from practicing medicine.
11 August – Nazis destroy the Synagogue in Nuremberg
17 August – Nazis require Jewish women to add Sarah and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports.

19. 1938
5 October – Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red “J”

23. 1938
28 October 1938 – Nazis arrest 17,000 Polish Jews living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry – leaving them in ‘no-man’s land’ near the Polish border for several months.

24. 1938
7 November – Ernst von Rath, a German Embassy official in Paris, is shot and killed by Herschel Grynszpan, the 17 year old son of one of the deported Polish Jews.
9-10 November – Kristallnacht: The night of Broken Glass

25. Kristallnacht
Jewish synagogues, cemeteries, hospitals, schools, businesses and homes were looted, wrecked and often burned. Many Jews were killed, thousands were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The Jew’s German neighbours inflicted much of the damage. The police were under orders not to interfere. Fire brigades were under orders to let torched synagogues burn but to protect Aryan property nearby.

28. 1938
12 November - Nazis fine Jews one billion Deutschemarks for damages related to Kristallnacht
15 November – Jewish students expelled from non-Jewish schools
14 December – Herman Goering takes charge of resolving the “Jewish Question.”

29. 1939
30 January – Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech

30. 1939
“Europe will not have peace until the Jewish question has been disposed of. The world has sufficient capacity for settlement, but we must finally break away from the notion that a certain percentage of the Jewish people are intended, by our dear God, to be the parasitic beneficiary of the body, and of the productive work of other peoples. Jewry must adapt itself to respectable constructive work, as other peoples do, or it will sooner or later succumb to a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

31. 1939
“If the international finance-Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

32. 1939 21 February – Jews forced to hand over all gold and silver items
30 April – Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses

33. 1939
May – The “St. Louis,” a ship crowded with 937 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the USA and Canada. It returns to Europe. Only 240 would survive the Holocaust.

34. 1939 4 July – German Jews denied the right to hold government jobs
1 September – Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop million – largest in Europe)

35. 1939
1 September – Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8pm in winter and 9pm in summer
21 September – SS Einsatzgruppen (special death squads) issued instructions in Poland regarding treatment of Jews: they are to be gathered in Ghettos near railroads for the future “final goal”

39. 1939
23 September – German Jews are forbidden to own wireless radio sets
September – Quotation in Nazi newspaper (Der Sturmer) says: “The Jewish people ought to be exterminated root by branch. Then the plague of pests would have disappeared in Poland at one stroke.”

42. 1939 Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany
26 October – Forced labour decree issued for Polish Jews aged 14-60
23 November – Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews

43. 1940
January – Quotation from Der Sturmer: “The time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the worlds criminal – Judah – from which there will be no resurrection.”
12 February – First deportation of German Jews into Poland
30 April – The Lodz Ghetto in Poland is sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.

44. 1940 November – Krakow Ghetto is sealed off containing 70,000 Jews
15 November – The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed off containing 400,000 Jews

45. 1941
Quotation from Der Sturmer: “Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth.”
1 March – Auschwitz-Birkenau opens
7 March – German Jews ordered into forced labour

46. 1941
26 March – SS Einsatzgruppen begin mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland
July – Himmler tells Auschwitz commander “The Fuhrer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question.”
21 July – Majdanek concentration camp becomes operational in Poland

47. 1941
3 September – first use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz

48. 1941
27 September – 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine
30 September - SS Einsatzgruppen murder 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev
October – 35,000 Jews from Odessa shot
23 October – Nazis forbid Jews from emigrating out of Germany

49. 1941
8 December – Chelmno camp opens in Poland. Jews taken there are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them.

52. 1941
The ship “Struma” leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is denied permission by British authorities for passengers to disembark. While is is sailing back to Romania, it is sunk by the Russian Navy

53. 1942
January – Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow
20 January – Wannsee Conference to coordinate the “Final Solution”
31 January – SS Einsatzgruppen reports 229,052 Jews killed

56. 1942 March – Belzec extermination camp becomes operational in Poland
March – Jews from Polish Ghettos, Slovakia, and France arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau
20 April – German Jews are banned from using public transportation

57. 1942
1 June – Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, and Romania ordered to wear yellow stars
By this point approximately 1,000,000 Jews have been killed by the Nazis
19 July – Operation Reinhard; mass deportations of Jews in Poland to extermination camps

58. 1942
23 July – Treblinka extermination camp opens in Poland. It has 10 gas chambers each holding 200 persons.
5 October – Himmler orders all Jews in concentration camps in Germany to be sent to Auschwitz
25 October – Jews from Norway arrive at Auschwitz

63. 1942
November – Mass killing of 170,000 Jews in the area Bialystok, Russia
28 December – Sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin

64. 1943
The number of Jews killed by SS Einsatzgruppen passes 1,000,000. Nazis then use special units of slave labourers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.
29 January – Nazis order all Gypsies arrested and sent to extermination camps

65. 1943
February – The Romanian government proposes to Allies the transfer of 70,000 Jews to Palestine, but receives no response from Britain and the USA
March – 50,000 Greek Jews are sent to extermination camps
14 March – All Jews in the Krakow Ghetto are killed

66. 1943
April – The Bermuda Conference occurs as representatives from the USA and Britain discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries, but results in inaction

67. 1943 May – Dr. Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz
19 May – Nazis declare Berlin to be “Judenfrei” (cleansed of Jews)

68. 1943
Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland
2 August – 200 Jews escape from Treblinka extermination camp – Nazis hunt them down one by one.
3 November – Nazis kill 43,000 Jews in Poland
Austria Jews arrive at Auschwitz

69. 1943
Many of the extermination camps and concentration in eastern Poland were closed as Russian troops pushed the Germans back. Camps were destroyed, plowed over and trees were planted in their place. This was an attempt to cover up their actions – Obviously they knew it was wrong.

70. 1944
Poland’s Jewish population drops from 3.35 million to less than 100,000
15 May – 100,000 Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. By the end of June 381,661 Hungarian Jews (about ½) are in Auschwitz
12 June – 40,000 Polish children are taken as slave labour in Germany

71. 1944
Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over Six huge pits are used to burn the bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.
As the Russians move closer and the western Allies land after D-Day, the Nazis order an increase in exterminations.

72. 1944
24 July – Soviet troops liberate Majdanek extermination camp where 360,000 had been murdered
4 August – Ann Frank and family arrested and sent to Auschwitz
30 October – Last reported use of gas chambers at Auschwitz

73. 1944
25 November – Himmler orders destruction of crematories at Auschwitz

74. 1945
As Allied troops advance, Nazis conduct death marches of inmates from outlying areas
18 January – Soviet troops liberate 66,000 from Auschwitz. Estimated 2,000,000 people, including 1.5 million Jews were murdered there.

79. 1945
15 April – British troops liberate 40,000 prisoners at Bergen-Belsen camp
29 April – US Army liberates Dachau camp
30 April – Hitler commits suicide
7 May – Germany surrenders unconditionally to Allied forces
23 May – Himmler commits suicide
20 November – Opening of Nuremberg International Military Tribunal

80. Statistics Country Jewish Pop Killed Poland 3,350,000 3,250,000
USSR 3,020,000 1,100,000
Hungary 800, ,000
Germany 566, ,000
France 350, ,320
Romania 342, ,000
Austria 185, ,000
Lithuania 168, ,000
Netherlands140, ,000

81. Statistics Country Jewish Pop. Killed Netherlands 140,000 100,000
Moravia 118, ,150
Latvia 95, ,000
Slovakia 88, ,000
Yugoslavia 78, ,300
Greece 77, ,000
Belgium 67, ,900
TOTAL 9,508,340 5,963,129

90. The Holocaust: A slow, deliberate process
Planned killing did not occur until final years of Nazi regime
“How did they know who to hate?”

91. Genocide – The Process
You are the source of all our problems, therefore:
1. You may not work among us.

92. Genocide – The Process
You are the source of all our problems, therefore:
2. You may not work.

93. Genocide – The Process
You are the source of all our problems, therefore:
3. You may not live among us.

94. Genocide – The Process
You are the source of all our problems, therefore:
4. You may not live.

95. Medical Experiments Altitude experiments Freezing experiments
Genetic Experiments
Gynecological experiments

96. Other Genocides Armenian Genocide (1915) Cambodia (1975-79)
Screbrinicia (1993)
Rwanda (1994)
Darfur? ( )
Indigenous Peoples in the Americas?

97. Video: Bergen-Belsen Camp