The Holocaust

A Timeline

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html

Holocaust:• hol·o·caust (Greek – holokaustos) n. great

destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.

• Holocaust = the genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II: “Israel emerged from the Holocaust and is defined in relation to that catastrophe” (Emanuel Litvinoff).

• Anti-Semitism - hostility toward and discrimination against the Jews

Pre-War

1933• Jan 30- Adolph Hitler is

appointed Chancellor of Germany.

• Feb 27- Nazis burn down the Reichstag, the German Parliament building; civil rights are suspended.

• March 24- German Parliament passes the Enabling Act, giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

5/10/34 - The burning of books.“Where they burn books, they will ultimately also

burn people” – Heinrich Henne 1821

1933• 4/11 - Nazis issue a decree defining a non-Aryan 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.“

• 7/14 - Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

• 9/29 - Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land.• 3 concentration camps established

1934• 5/17/34 - Jews not allowed

national health insurance.• 6/30/1934 – Night of the

Long Knives; Nazis conduct a purge of the SA

• 7/2/34 – Ernst Rohm, leader of SA, executed

• 8/2/34 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer & Reich Chancellor.

1935

• 5/21/35 - Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military.

• 8/6/35 - Nazis force Jewish performers/artists to join Jewish Cultural Unions.

• 9/15/35 - Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed.

The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 deprived German Jews of their rights of citizenship, giving them the status of "subjects" in

Hitler's Reich. The laws also made it forbidden for Jews to

marry or have sexual relations with Aryans or to employ young

Aryan women as household help.

1936• March 7- Nazis occupy the

Rhineland. • June 17 - Heinrich Himmler is

appointed chief of the German Police.

• Aug 1- Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from foreign visitors and thus temporarily refrain from actions against Jews.

Heinrich Himmler

ID Triangles• Yellow = Jews – two stars overlaid to form Star of

David, with word “Jude” inscribed• Red = political dissidents, incl. Communists• Green = common criminals• Purple = Jehovah’s Witnesses• Blue = immigrants• Brown = gypsies• Black = lesbians & “anti-socials”• Pink = gay men

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges

1937• 1/1937 - Jews are banned from many professional

occupations including teaching Germans, and from being accountants or dentists. They are also denied tax reductions and child allowances.

• 7/16/1937 - Buchenwald Concentration Camp opens

• 11/8/1937 - Eternal Jew traveling exhibition opens in Munich

1938• 3/12, 3/13 - Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a

population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. • 7/1938 - At Evian, France, the U.S. convenes a

League of Nations conference with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but results in inaction as no country will accept them.

• 7/23/38 - Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.

EVIAN CONFERENCE - 1938

1938• Aug 17- Nazis require Jewish women to add Sara

and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports.

• Oct 15 - Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland. • Oct 28 - Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish

nationality 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.

• Nov 7 – Herschel Grynszpan assassinates Ernst vom Rath

Nov 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass.

• On November 9, mob violence broke out as the regular German police stood by and crowds of spectators watched. Nazi storm troopers along with members of the SS and Hitler Youth beat and murdered Jews, broke into and wrecked Jewish homes, and brutalized Jewish women and children.

KRISTALLNACHT

• It was decided in advance that the German police would not interfere with the outbursts against the Jews

• 91 killed

• 25,000-30,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps

• 267 synagogues ransacked or set on fire

• 7500 businesses destroyed

1938

• Nov 12- Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for damages related to Kristallnacht.

• Nov 15- Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

• Dec 14- Hermann Göring takes charge of resolving the "Jewish Question."

1939• 2/21 - Nazis force Jews to hand over all gold and

silver items.• 4/30 - Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated

into Jewish houses. • 5/13/-6/16 - The SS St. Louis, a ship crowded with

930 Jewish refugees with landing permits for Cuba, is turned away by Cuba & the United States and returns to Europe; Britain, Holland, Belgium, France share in taking the refugees

WWII

1939

• 9/1 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

• 9/1 - Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer.

• 9/21 – Reinhard Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the future "final goal.“

1939

• Sept - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "The Jewish people ought to be exterminated root and branch. Then the plague of pests would have disappeared in Poland at one stroke."

• Nov 23- Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

1940• 4/9 – German invasion of Denmark & Norway• 4/29 - Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim

(Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as site of new concentration camp.

• 5/10 - German invasion of Holland, Belgium & France

• 7/1940 - Eichmann's Madagascar Plan presented, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

Auschwitz

1940

• 9/27 - Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

• 11/1940 - The Krakow Ghetto is sealed off containing 70,000 Jews.

• 11/15 - The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.

1941• 4/6/1941 – Yugoslavia & Greece invaded by Germany• 6/22/1941 – German invasion of the USSR• 7/31/1941 – Goering appoints Reinhard Heydrich to carry

out final Solution against the Jews• Summer - Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant

Rudolf Höess to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose.“

• 12/11/1941 – Germany declares war on the US

1941

• 12/11/41 – the voyage of the Struma begins from Bulgaria to Palestine

• The Struma is held at Istanbul for 70 days• 2/23/42 – Struma towed out to Black Sea• 2/24/42 – Russian submarine sinks the Struma with

only 1 survivor

1942

• 1/1942 - Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow.

• 1/20/42 – Wannsee Conference; mass plan to eliminate 11 million European Jews detailed

• 3/1/42 - Belzec extermination begins• 3/17/42 – Treblinka death camp opens

Facsimiles of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference. This page lists the number of Jews in every European country.

1942• 6/10/42 – Heydrich murdered• 7/22/42 – Warsaw ghetto Jews begin to move to

Treblinka• June 30 and July 2 - The New York Times reports

via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis

• Dec 28, 1942 - Sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin

Map of Camps

1943• 3/1/43 - In New York, American Jews hold a mass

rally at Madison Square Garden to pressure the U.S. government into helping the Jews of Europe.

• 4/4/43 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory V opens at Auschwitz

• 4/19/43 – Warsaw ghetto uprising• 4/19/43 – Warsaw ghetto destruction begins • 6/1943 – Himmler orders all ghettos in Poland

liquidated

Joseph Mengele – “Angel of Death”

1944• 3/19/44 – German invasion of

Hungary• 5/15/44 - Jews from Hungary

arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.

1944• 8/4/44 - Anne Frank and family arrested by Gestapo

in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

• 10/30/44 - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz. • 11/8/44 - Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100

miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.

1945• 1/1945 - As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct

death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas.

• 1/27/45 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.

• 4/30/45 - Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker. • 5/8/45 - Unconditional German surrender

Post-War

Nuremberg Trials • 12/9/46 - former SS doctors and scientists go on trial

before a U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty, with 7 being hanged.

• 11/1945-10/1946 - Twenty two former SS Nazi leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for crimes against peace & humanity and war crimes. Fourteen are sentenced to death. The others receive prison sentences. Herman Goering commits suicide before he could be executed.

• All were hung, cremated at Dachau, and ashes dumped into a river in Munich.

Adolph Eichmann

After the War• 5/11/1960 - Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina

by Israeli secret service. • 4/11-8/14/1961 - Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for

crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962. A fellow Nazi reported Eichmann once said "he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction."

The Holocaust by the Numbers

Estimated Jewish Deaths by Country and % of Jewish

Population Killed

• POLAND- 3,000,000 90%• USSR- 1,000,000 11%• HUNGARY- 596,000 70%• GERMANY- 200,000 90%• FRANCE- 77,320 26%• ROMANIA- 287,000 50%• AUSTRIA- 65,000 90%

• LITHUANIA- 143,000 90% • BELGIUM- 28,900 60%• ITALY- 7,680 20%• FINLAND – 7 1%

• NETHERLANDS- 100,000 75%• BOHEMIA/

MORAVIA- 71,150 89%• LATVIA- 80,000 90%• SLOVAKIA- 71,000 83%• YUGOSLAVIA- 63,300 60%• GREECE- 67,000 77%• DENMARK- 60 1%• ESTONIA- 2,000 90%• LUXEMBOURG- 1,950 20%• NORWAY- 762 41%

Totals

• Estimated Killed- 9,508,340

• Estimated Percentage of World Jewish Population- 63%

Terms

• Aryan – pure Germanic race • Einsatzgruppen – mobile killing units disposing of

undesirables• Ghetto – walled section of the city where Jews were

forced to live• Pogrom – organized attack on Jews• Zyclon-B – insecticide used for massed gassing of

Jews in the death camps