The Holocaust Timeline

Jan 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor (leader) of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

March 22, 1933 - 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.

March 24, 1933 - German Parliament passes Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

July 14, 1933- Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

Oct 4, 1933 - Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors.

May 17, 1934 - Jews not allowed national health insurance.

Oct 5, 1938 - Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."

Nov 15, 1938 - Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

Feb 21, 1939 - Nazis force Jews to hand over all gold and silver items.

Sept 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

Sept 3, 1939 - England and France declare war on Germany.

In Oct - Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany.

Nov 23, 1939 - Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

Feb 12, 1940 - First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

In July, 1941 - As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct mass murder of Jews in seized lands.

March, 1942 - The start of deportation of Slovak and French Jews to Auschwitz.

March 30, 1942 - First trainloads of Jews from Paris arrive at Auschwitz.

May 18, 1942 - The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

June 5, 1942 - SS report 97,000 persons have been "processed" in mobile gas vans.

Sept 26, 1942 - SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews from Auschwitz and Majdanek.

In Dec, 1942 - Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted.

In 1943 - The number of Jews killed by SS Einsatzgruppen passes one million. Nazis then use special units of slave laborers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.

May 16, 1944 - 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.

Nov 25, 1944 - Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.

Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.

April 15, 1945 - Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."

April 30, 1945 - Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.