| 1933 |
|
| January 30 |
Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany |
| March 22 |
Dachau concentration camp opens |
| April 1 |
Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses |
| April 7 |
Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions |
| April 26 |
Gestapo established |
| May 10 |
Public burning of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state |
| July 14 |
Law stripping East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship |
| 1934 |
|
| August 2 |
Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him |
| 1935 |
|
| May 31 |
Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces |
| 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 |
| November 15 |
Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew |
| 1936 |
|
| March 3 |
Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions |
| March 7 |
Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty |
| June 17 |
Himmler appointed the Chief of German Police |
| July |
Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens |
| October 25 |
Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis |
| 1937 |
|
| July 15 |
Buchenwald concentration camp opens |
| 1938 |
|
| March 13 |
Anschluss (incorporation of Austria): all antisemitic decrees immediately applied in Austria |
| April 26 |
Mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich |
| July 6 |
Evian Conference held in Evian, France on the problem of Jewish refugees |
| August 1 |
Adolf Eichmann establishes the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna to increase the pace of forced emigration |
| August 3 |
Italy enacts sweeping antisemitic laws |
| September 30 |
Munich Conference: Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, previously western Czechoslovakia |
| October 5 |
Following request by Swiss authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter "J" to restrict Jews from immigrating to Switzerland |
| 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 |
| November 7 |
Assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan |
| 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) |
| November 12 |
Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands |
| November 15 |
All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools |
| December 12 |
One billion mark fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht |
| 1939 |
|
| January 30 |
Hitler in Reichstag speech: if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung (extermination) of European Jews |
| March 15 |
Germans occupy Czechoslovakia |
| August 23 |
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed: non-aggression pact between Soviet Union and Germany |
| September 1 |
Beginning of World War II: Germany invades Poland |
| September 21 |
Heydrich issues directives to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland |
| October 12 |
Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland |
| October 28 |
First Polish ghetto established in Piotrków |
| November 23 |
Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or yellow star |
| 1940 |
|
| April 9 |
Germans occupy Denmark and southern Norway |
| May 7 |
Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles |
| May 10 |
Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France |
| May 20 |
Concentration camp established at Auschwitz |
| June 22 |
France surrenders |
| August 8 |
Battle of Britain begins |
| September 27 |
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis |
| November 16 |
Warsaw Ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people |
| 1941 |
|
| January 21-26 |
Anti-Jewish riots in Romania, hundreds of Jews butchered |
| February 1 |
German authorities begin rounding up Polish Jews for transfer to Warsaw Ghetto |
| March |
Adolf Eichmann appointed head of the department for Jewish affairs of the Reich Security Main Office, Section IV B 4. |
| April 6 |
Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece; occupation follows |
| June 22 |
Germany invades the Soviet Union |
| July 31 |
Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the "Final Solution" |
| September 28-29 |
34,000 Jews massacred at Babi Yar outside Kiev |
| October |
Establishment of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for the extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and others were also murdered at the camp |
| December 7 |
Japanese attack Pearl Harbor |
| December 8 |
Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943 |
| December 11 |
United States declares war on Japan and Germany |
| 1942 |
|
| January 20 |
Wannsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews |
| March 17 |
Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered |
| May |
Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered |
| June |
Jewish partisan units established in the forests of Byelorussia and the Baltic States |
| July 22 |
Germans establish Treblinka concentration camp |
| Summer |
Deportation of Jews to killing centers from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lachva, Mir, and Tuchin |
| Winter |
Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers; Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin |
| 1943 |
|
| January |
German 6th Army surrenders at Stalingrad |
| March |
Liquidation of Kraków ghetto |
| April 19 |
Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June |
| June |
Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union |
| Summer |
Armed resistance by Jews in Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnów ghettos |
| Fall |
Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna, and Riga |
| October 14 |
Armed revolt in Sobibor extermination camp |
| October-November |
Rescue of the Danish Jewry |
| 1944 |
|
| March 19 |
Germany occupies Hungary |
| May 15 |
Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz |
| June 6 |
D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy |
| Spring/Summer |
Red Army repels Nazi forces |
| July 20 |
Group of German officers attempt to assassinate Hitler |
| July 24 |
Russians liberate Majdanek killing center |
| October 7 |
Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz; one crematorium blown up |
| November |
Last Jews deported from Terezin to Auschwitz |
| November 8 |
Beginning of death march of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria |
| 1945 |
|
| January 17 |
Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march |
| January 25 |
Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof |
| April 6-10 |
Death march of inmates of Buchenwald |
| April 30 |
Hitler commits suicide |
| May 8 |
V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich |
| August 6 |
Bombing of Hiroshima |
| August 9 |
Bombing of Nagasaki |
| August 15 |
V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed. |
| September 2 |
Japan surrenders; end of World War II |
|
|
| rev. 11/97 |
|
