We in the United States should be all the more thankful for freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust, in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future. -Charlie Dent

Shoah Timeline
1933
Nazi party takes power in Germany and Adolph Hitler becomes chancellor
Nazis suspend civil liberties for all citizens
Nazis set up the first concentration camp at Dachau - the first inmates are 200 communists
Boycott of Jewish-owned businesses begin
Jews prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Services, and public high school teachers
All Jewish students are banned from public high schools and universities
Trade unions are closed
Books considered dangerous to Nazi beliefs are burned in public
Forced sterilizations begin
Jews are forbidden from owning land or being newspaper editors
The homeless, alcoholics, and unemployed are forced into concentrations camps

1934
Hitler combines the chancellor and president positions and becomes the fuhrer (leader) of Germany

1935
Jews are banned from being in the German military
Nazis permit forced abortions
Nurember Laws encated - Jews are deprived of citizenship and basic rights
Nazis intensify persecution of peoples including political dissidents, gypsies, and homosexuals - many are sent to concentration camps

1936
Jewish doctors are banned from practicing
Opening of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Nazis boycott Jewish-owned businesses
Signs barring Jews are removed until the Olympic Games are over

1937
The movie "The Eternal Jew" was released
Opening of the Buchenwald concentration camp

1938
Germany annexes Austria
All anti-Semitic laws in Germany are applied to Jews in Austria
Jews are required to report all assets
United States convenes a League of Nations conference in Evian, France to look at the problem of Jewish refugees - no action results because no country, aside from the small nation of the Dominican Republic, will allow the emigration of large numbers of Jews
Italy enacts anti-Semitic laws
Nazis raze the Nuremberg synagogue
Kristallnacht
Jewish children are expelled from public schools in Germany and Austria
Nazis take control of Jewish-owned businesses
Camps Flossenberg and Castle Hartheim; Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee established
First Kindertransport of refugee children arrives in Great Britain from Germany

1939
Germany invades Czechoslovakia
Nazis invade Poland and World War II begins
After being turned away by Cuba and the United States, the ship St. Louis, crowded with 930 Jews escaping the Nazis, is forced to return to Europe
Hilter orders the murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria
Jews required to wear armbands or yellow Stars of David
Jews are forced into ghettos

1940
Nazis begin to deport German Jews to Poland
Jews are forced into ghettos
Nazis begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland
Nazis invade France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
Auschwitz begins operation

1941
Nazis occupy Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and invade the Soviet Union
Nazis establish new ghettos in Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk, and Zhitomir
3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom in Kovno, Lithuania
Herrmann Göring orders Einsatzgruppen Chief Reinhard Heydrich to begin preparations for the “Final Solution”
In Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine, as many as 23,600 Jews are murdered
Zyklon B gas is first tested in Auschwitz
Vilna ghetto opens
Mobile killing units begin the systematic murder of Jews
In Babi Yar ravine, near Kiev, 34,000 Jews are murdered in a two-day period
In the Ukrainian city of Odessa, 47,000 Jews are murdered
Construction begins on Auschwitz II, also called Birkenau
First group of prisoners arrive at Majdanek in Poland
Lvov ghetto is established in south-eastern Poland
Germany declares war on the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan
Chelmno death camp begins operations in western Poland

1942
Nazis now using Zyklon B at Auschwitz-Birkenau to perform mass murder of Jews
Wannsee Conference in Berlin attended by senior Nazis outlines plan for the "Final Solution"
Belzec death camp becomes operational in Poland
Approximately 25 percent of the Jews who will die in the Shoah have been murdered
The Vatican learns of the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews but fails to condemn the Nazis’ actions or to urge Church officials to help the victims
Trains arrive at Auschwitz with the first trainloads of Parisian Jews
Sobibor death camp in central Poland opens with three gas chambers
Construction begins on the Treblinka death camp
Second gas chamber opened at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Heinrich Himmler authorizes sterilization experiments at Auschwitz
Deportations begin from the Warsaw ghetto
SS begins selling valuables taken from Jews of Auschwitz and Majdanek
Approximately 110,000 Jews are gathered in Bialystok, then sent to Treblinka and Auschwitz
Belzec death camp is closed, with some 600,000 Jews murdered
Himmler orders about 20,000 Gypsies, approximately two-thirds of Germany’s Gypsy population, to be arrested and sent to Auschwitz
SS forces put down a revolt at Sachsenhausen

1943
First armed resistance by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto
Romania asks to transfer 70,000 Jews to Palestine - neither Great Britain nor the United States responds
Nearly 80 percent of the Jews who will die in the Shoah have been murdered
Under Nazi occupation Greece begins the process of deporting 50,000 Jews to Auschwitz
American Jews pressure the United States to help European Jews with a mass public rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden
Bulgaria publicly opposes the deportation of Jews through its borders
United States and Great Britain meet to discuss refugees from Nazi-occupied countries - no agreements can be made so no help is offered
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Mengele begins medical experimentation at Auschwitz
Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels declares Berlin “cleansed of Jews”
Gas chamber III opens at Auschwitz
Jewish armed revolt in the Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnow ghettos
Rebellion at Treblinka
The Vatican does not condemn–or try to stop–the deportation of Italian Jews to the Nazi camps
Revolt in Sobibor
United States Congress holds hearings regarding the nation’s inaction with regard to European Jews, despite myriad reports of mass annihilation
In Poland, Nazis kill approximately 42,000 Jews
Auschwitz surgeon reports that 106 castrations have been performed

1944
Roosevelt creates War Refugee Board to help rescue the victims of Nazi persecution
Nazis occupy Hungary and deports 12,000 Jews each day to Auschwitz
Siegfried Lederer escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and warns Judenrat at Theresienstadt about the mass murder of the Jewish people
Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it to Czechoslovakia. A report based on the escapees’ descriptions of the camp and estimates of the numbers killed there is sent to European Jewish leaders and relief organizations; few believe the accuracy of the report’s contents and no substantive action is taken to rescue the Jews
Red Cross delegation visits the ghetto and concentration camp at Theresienstadt and issues a favorable report
Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, where he saves tens of thousands of Jews by using his powers as a Swedish diplomat to issue documents
Soviet Army liberates Majdanek
Anne Frank and her family are taken from their hiding place
Lodz, the last remaining Jewish ghetto in Poland, is liquidated
Oskar Schindler saves more than 1,000 Jews from the camps
Jewish slave laborers revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
SS stops operation of Auschwitz gas chambers
Approximately 40,000 Jews are forced on a death march from Budapest to Austria
Himmler orders the remaining Auschwitz crematoriums to be destroyed

1945
Nazis force concentration camp prisoners on death marches as the Allies push into the outer edges of German-controlled regions of Europe
Soviet Army frees Budapest
Soviet Army liberates Warsaw
Nazis evacuate Auschwitz and send prisoners on a death march
Stutthof inmates are sent on death march
Soviet Army liberates Auschwitz
United States Army enters Buchenwald and finds that most of the guards have fled, leaving the prisoners on their own
Bergen-Belsen is liberated by British forces
Dachau is liberated by the U.S. Army
Victory in Europe (V-E Day); unconditional German surrender
Approximately 100,000 Jewish survivors liberated from the Nazi camps are considered displaced persons without homes to which to return; some 150,000 other European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism also become war refugees. These people call themselves the Sh’erit ha-Pletah, a Hebrew term from the Bible meaning the “surviving remnant”
150 Jewish survivors who returned to their hometown of Kielce in southeast Poland are attacked in an anti-Jewish pogrom
The Bricha (Hebrew for “escape”) organization begins helping European Jews illegally emigrate to British-controlled Palestine
British forces begin deporting Jews bound for Palestine to detention camps in Cyprus
Nuremberg International Military Tribunal opens

1946
Nazi war criminals are hanged at Nuremberg. In the final use of the crematoriums at Dachau, the bodies are burned there, and the ashes scattered into a river

1947
Former Auschwitz Commander Rudolf Höss is hanged at Auschwitz.
The ship Exodus 1947 leaves southern France but is soon captured by the British military and forced to return to Europe
The United Nations calls for Jewish homeland in British-controlled Palestine

1948
Israel becomes an independent state

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Camps of the Shoah

¹ Source: Wikipedia: Table of Nazi-German Camps and Shoah Education

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