History And Timeline of the Holocaust

6 million Jews and 5 million others were killed by the German forces during the second World War. This became known as the Holocaust. It was indeed a horrific tragedy without precedent.

Timeline:

1933: Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis organized a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. The Nazis opened their first concentration camp at Dachau in Germany. The Nazis arrested communists, socialists and labor leaders. Books that contained ideas opposed to Nazi beliefs were seized and burned. The Nazis burned the Reichstag building. Goebbels became Minister of Propaganda of the Nazi government. The president of the Reichsbank Dr Hans Luther was fired. The Nazis send homeless, unemployed and alcoholic people to concentration camps. The Nazis passed laws that prohibited Jews from holding any positions in legal and medical professions, teaching, university and the civil services. Nazis passed a law divesting Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship. Jews were barred from working as newspaper editors or owning land. There was looting of Jewish stores in Braunsshweig.
1934: An order was issued which barred Jewish people from taking health insurance. Jewish newspapers were prohibited from selling on the streets.
1935: The Nuremberg Laws were introduced which were designed to take away Jewish rights of citizenship. Jews could not marry or have sexual relations with non-Jews and were no longer allowed to be German citizens. Jews were declared as a separate race under the ‘ Law for the protection of German blood and honor’. Being Jewish was determined by ancestry. Many thousands of Germans who had not previously considered themselves as Jews found themselves classified as ‘Non-Aryans’. The Jews were banned from serving in the military.
1936: Voting rights were taken away from the Jews. The Olympic Games were held in Nazi Germany. Signs prohibiting Jews were removed until the event was over. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was created.
1937: The Buchenwald concentration camp was created. ‘The Eternal Jew’ exhibition in Nuremberg portrayed the Jews as the leaders of international Bolshevism with the goal of destroying Germany.
1938: The Nazis destroyed the Jewish synagogue in Munich. The Nazis burned down Nuremberg synagogue. 30,000 Jews in Germany were arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp.
1939: Hitler invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. The second World War had started. Austrian and Czech Jews were deported to Poland. Under Hitler’s orders Jews must wear yellow stars of David and turn in their radio sets to the police. The Nazi Reinhard Heydrich issued instructions for Jews to be put in ghettos. The Jews were evacuated from Vienna. The Krakow and Warsaw ghettos containing Jews were sealed off. The Germans began expelling Jews from West Poland. Ravensbruck, a women’s concentration camp, was created.
1940: 2000 Jews were killed in Romania. The Auschwitz concentration camp was opened. The Nazis killed 23,000 Jews at Kamanets-Podolsk in the Ukraine. SS Einsatzgruppen put 33,771 Jews to death at Babi Yar near Kiev. 35,000 Jews from Odessa were murdered. The Warsaw Ghetto was opened.
1941: Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Nazis chose Reinhard Heydrich to implement ‘Final Solution’. Jews were prohibited from using public telephones or leaving their houses without permission from the police. Germany attacked the Soviet Union. 10,000 Jews were killed in Kishinev, Soviet Union. There was a mass shooting of German and Latvian Jews near Riga. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States entered the 2nd World War.
1942: Mass-gassing of Jews started at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jews were barred from keeping electrical equipment, bicycles, buying meat, eggs, attending school and using public transportation. Sterilization experiments on women began at Birkenau concentration camp.
1943: Gypsies were sent to concentration camps. Greek Jews were sent into ghettos. Extermination stopped at Treblinka concentration camp after 870,000 people were killed. First of the four crematoriums at Auschwitz began functioning.
1944: 440,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz. An estimated 100,000 had been gassed by May 24. Oskar Schindler saved 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz. The Soviet army liberated the Majdanek concentration camp. The Germans destroyed the crematoriums and gas chambers at Birkenau.
1945: All Jewish women too sick or weak to be moved were shot in Brodnica labor camp. The Nazis took out death marches of concentration camp inmates. Those who were too weak to march were shot dead. The Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Fearing capture, Hitler committed suicide. The Germans were defeated and the Second World War ended in Europe. The Nazi death camps were emptied. The Holocaust ended. The Nuremberg war trial began of the surviving Nazi leaders.
1947: The State of Israel (The Jewish homeland) was established in British controlled Palestine.