A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Holocaust: Karl Fritzsch, deputy camp commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B in the gassing of Soviet POWs.

Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.

Holocaust: diarist Anne Frank and her family are placed on the last transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz, arriving three days later.

World War II: Uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down the crematoria.

Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Anne Frank and sister Margot Frank are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The Nazis begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in.

World War II: The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

The grave of "Wolfgang Gerhard" is exhumed in Embu, Brazil; the remains found are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's "Angel of Death". Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February, 1979.

Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.