1933
January 30 –Hitler is appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg
January 30 — Sterilization (of inferiors) Laws enacted; implemented three weeks later
February 27 — Reichstag fire
February 28 — Leading communists arrested
March 20 — Dachau concentration camp established
April 1 — General boycott of all Jewish businesses – One day
April 1 — All religious literature printed by Jehovah’s Witnesses banned from circulation in Germany
April 7 — All Jews removed from civil service , Jews denied admission to the bar
April 24 First SA and police raid on the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses; literature confiscated
April 26 Gestapo formed
May 2 — Trade unions dissolved
May 10 — Burning of books written by Jews and political opponents
June 24 — Prussian State Police ban the work and organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses
June 28 — Second raid and closure of Watch Tower office in Magdeburg
July 14 — Law for the Prevention of Progeny of Hereditary Disease mandates the sterilization of patients with hereditary diseases e.g. feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, schizophrenia. Some 300,000 to 400,000 people are sterilized under this law
July 20 — Concordat signed with the Roman Catholic Church
August At the opening ceremony for the state medical academy in Munich, Walter Schultze, Bavarian Commissioner of Health, declares sterilization insufficient and argues for euthanasia. He adds, “This policy has already been initiated in our concentration camps.”
August 16 — The Golden Age magazine (published by Jehovah’s Witnesses) mentions the existence of concentrations camps within five months of Dachau’s opening
August 21-24 — Burning of 25 truckloads of confiscated Watch Tower publications
November 12 — Jehovah’s Witnesses fired from jobs and arrested for refusing to participate in mandatory vote
November 24 — Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps.
1934
Beginning in 1934 Mental hospitals encouraged to neglect patients – funding and inspections either made perfunctory or suspended.
August 2 — Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Head of State and Commander-in-Chief
1935
March 11 Nazi race hygienists and civil servants plan the sterilization of the “Rhineland Bastards”
April 1 — Jehovah’s Witnesses are banned from all civil service jobs and arrested throughout Germany. Pensions and employment benefits confiscated. Being married to a Witness becomes legal grounds for divorce. Witness children are banned from attending school. Some children are taken from Witness parents to be raised in Nazi reeducation homes.
May 21– Jews removed from military
Summer Juden Verboten (No Jews) signs increase in businesses and elsewhere
July 26 Justice Minister Frick orders marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans be stopped
September 15 — First of Nuremburg Laws (Anti-Semitic) passed
September Hitler expresses intention to eliminate the “incurably ill” at Nuremberg Party rally to Dr. Gerhard Wagner.
October 18 — Addendum to the sterilization law forbids marriages between “hereditary ill” and “healthy” people. In addition, forces the abortion of children of the “hereditary ill” up to the sixth month of pregnancy.
1936
Sachsenhausen concentration camp established
March 7 — German army marches into the Rhineland
May 10 — Burning of books written by Jews
June Central Office to “Combat the Gypsy Nuisance” opened in Munich
July 12 — German Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) are arrested and deported to Dachau
August Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).
August 1 — Olympic Games in Berlin opened
Anti-Semitic signs temporarily removed
August 28 — Mass arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Several thousand are sent to concentration camps and many stay there until 1945
October 25 — Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis
November 25 — Military pact signed between Germany and Japan
December 12 — Jehovah’s Witnesses secretly distribute 200,000 copies of the Lucerne Resolution, a protest of Nazi atrocities
1937
Spring Sterilization of the “Rhineland Bastards” begins
April 22 — Gestapo order directs that all of Jehovah’s Witnesses released from prisons are to be taken directly to concentration camps
June 20 — Jehovah’s Witnesses secretly distribute an open letter supplying detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities
July 16 — Concentration camp Buchenwald opens
1938
Neuengamme and Mauthausen concentration camps established
March 13 — Anschluss: The annexation of Austria
April 26 — Decree on the Reporting of Jewish Assets
June 15 — Arrest of all “previously convicted Jews”
July 23 — Announcement that Jews will need identity cards beginning in 1939
July 25 — Jewish doctors will only be allowed to treat Jewish patients
August 17 — Jews required to insert “Sara” or “Israel” as middle name
September 30 — Jewish physicians lose their licenses
October 2 — Watch Tower Society President, J. F. Rutherford, speaking over a network of 60 radio stations, denounces Nazi persecution of the Jews
October 6 — Passports of Jews marked with a “J”
October 26 — Approximately 17,000 Polish Jews expelled from Germany
November 7 — Herschel Grynspan assassinates Nazi Embassy worker in Paris in response to parents deportation from Germany to Poland
November 9 — Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass)
November 12– 26,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps
November 15 — Expulsion of Jewish children from German schools
December 13 — Compulsory expropriation of all Jewish businesses and industries
Late 1938/Early1939 — First German government sanctioned/authorized “Mercy Killing” of deformed infant named Knauer
1939
Ravensbruck concentration camp established
January 30 — Hitler predicts that Jews will be “exterminated” in the event of another war
March 15 — Occupation of Czechoslovakia
May The S.S. St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe.
August 18 — Directive sent ordering Euthanasia program for deformed/retarded children
August 23 — Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact
September 1 — German invasion of Poland
WWII begins
September 3 — Britain and France declare war on Germany
September — Mental patients first shot to make room for soldiers throughout Greater Reich
October 1939 (back-dated to September 1) “Fuhrer Decree – medical killing became official policy
An estimated 275,000 people become victims of “euthanasia”
October 1939 — Children’s Specialty Institution (euthanasia center) at Gorden established
October 1939 — T4 Project for adult “euthanasia” established
October 15 — First gassing of Polish mental patients at Posen
October 1939 – 1941 — Over 30 Children’s Specialty Institutions/Therapeutic Convalescent Institutions (adult euthanasia centers) were established and operated
October 12 — First deportations to Poland of Austrian and Moravian Jews
November 23 — All Jews in Poland mandated to wear Judenstern (Jewish Star of David)
1940
Early 1940 — Gas first used as killing method as part of T4 project
April 9 — Germans invade Denmark and Norway
April 30 — Lodz (Poland) ghetto sealed off
May 10 — Germans invade France, Holland, and Belgium
May – June — Gas vans first used to kill mental patients
June 22 — France surrenders to Germany
September 27 — Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis formed
November 15 — Warsaw (Poland) ghetto sealed off
1941
June 22 — Germans attack Soviet Union
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) follow the German army and commit mass slaughter throughout Eastern Europe. By the spring of 1943, these special killing units kill more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of others.
July 8 — Jews in Baltic States forced to wear the Star of David
July 31 — Heydrich appointed by Goering to carry out the “Final Solution”
August — Due to public protests led by Catholic Bishop Count von Galen, the killing of mental patients is temporarily stopped – continues in less centralized manner
September — Explosives tried as method of mass killing on mental patients
September 15 — Wearing of Jewish Star mandated throughout the Greater Reich
September 23 — First gassing experiments at Auschwitz
September 28-29 — Over 33,000 Jews are massacred during a two-day period at Babi Yar near the Ukranian capital, Kiev
October 10 — Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia) ghetto established
October 14 — Deportation of German Jews begins
October 23 — Massacre in Odessa – 34,000 Jews dead
October 28 — Massacre in Kiev – 34,000 Jews dead
November 6 — Massacre in Rovno – 15,000 Jews dead
December 7 — Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
December 8 — U.S. enters WWII
December 8 — Chelmno (Poland) extermination site opens
Beginning in December — Some 5000 Austrian Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) killed at Chelmmno in mobile gassing vans. Estimates for the total numbers of deaths of Roma and Sinti range from 200,000 to 300,000
December 8 — Massacre in Riga – 27,000 Jews dead
December 12 — The ship “Struma” leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an “enemy target.”
December 22 Massacre in Vilna – 32,000 Jews dead
1942
January 15 — First group of Lodz Ghetto residents transported to Chelmno
January 20 — Wannsee Conference on Nazi “Final Solution”
January 21 — Unified resistance organization formed in Vilna Ghetto
January/February First experiments on prisoners in low pressure chambers in Dachau
March 16 — Belzec death camp opened
May 1 — Sorbibor death camp opened
June 1 — Treblinka death camp opened
French and Dutch Jews must wear the Star of David
June 23 — Auschwitz opens as death camp and work center
June 30/July 2 — The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.
July 22 — 300,000 Jews deported to Treblinka from Warsaw Ghetto
July 28 — Resistance organization formed in Warsaw Ghetto
October 17 — Allied pledge to punish Germans for genocide
December 16 — Himmler orders the “final solution of the Gypsy question”
1943
January 18 — Jews of Warsaw Ghetto revolt against deportations
February 2 — German Army surrenders at Stalingrad
April 19 — Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins; fighting lasts for weeks
May 16 — Warsaw Ghetto liquidated
May 30 — Josef Mengele becomes camp doctor at Auschwitz
June 11 — Himmler orders the liquidation of all Polish Jewish ghettos
Summer Hundreds of Jewish Partisans escape Vilna Ghetto to continue resistance
August 2 — Revolt at Treblinka Death Camp
August 16 — Revolt at Bialystok Ghetto
September 23 –Vilna Ghetto liquidated
October 14 — Revolt at Sorbibor Death Camp
October 20 — U.N. War Crime Commission established
November 3 — Erntefest (Harvest Festival) operation launched to kill all remaining Jews in the central and southern region of Poland, call the Generalgouvernement. About 40,000 Jews are shot to death on this one day.
1944
March 19 — Germany occupies Hungary
May 15 – June 8 476,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz from Hungary to be murdered by gassing
Summer Death marches and camp evacuations inside the Reich begin
June 6 — D-Day
July 20 — Attempted assassination of Hitler
July 24 — Maidanek death camp liberated
October 7 — Prisoner revolt at Auschwitz resulting in destruction of Crematoruim 4 and damage to Crematorium 2 & 3
October 23 — Paris liberated
November 24 — Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz crematoria
1945
January 17 –Soviets liberate Warsaw
January 26 — Soviets liberate Auschwitz
February 4-11 — Yalta Conference in the Crimea
April American troops liberate Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps
April 15 — British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen death camp
April 20 – May 3 — Twelve-day death march from Sachsenhausen. Some 26,000 prisoners began the march of 200 kilometers. Barely more than 15,000 survive and are liberated by Allied forces
April 30 — Hitler commits suicide
May 7 — Germany surrenders unconditionally
November 22 — Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal commences
