The Holocaust Timeline of Events

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The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

Timeline of Events

1938

12.13.1938

The Holocaust: The Neuengamme concentration camp opens in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany.

1939

7.6.1939

Holocaust: the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed.

1940

5.20.1940

Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

10.16.1940

Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto is established.

11.16.1940

Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.

1941

9.3.1941

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.

9.29.1941

World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C begins the Babi Yar massacre, according to the Einsatzgruppen operational situation report.

9.30.1941

World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C complete Babi Yar massacre.

10.29.1941

Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the "Great Action".

12.15.1941

Holocaust: German troops execute over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

1942

1.20.1942

World War II: At the Wannsee Conference held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, senior Nazi German officials decided on the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", accelerating The Holocaust.

3.17.1942

Holocaust: The first Jews from the Lviv Ghetto are gassed at the Belzec death camp in what is today eastern Poland.

5.9.1942

Holocaust: The SS murder 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast, Ukraine). The Zoludek Ghetto is destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered or deported.

5.12.1942

Holocaust: 1,500 Jews are sent to gas chambers in Auschwitz.

6.12.1942

Holocaust: Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

7.16.1942

Holocaust: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (''Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv''): the government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.

7.22.1942

Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.

7.23.1942

The Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp is opened.

9.7.1942

Holocaust: 8,700 Jews of Kolomyia (western Ukraine) sent by German Gestapo to death camp in Belzec.

9.20.1942

Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews.

12.4.1942

Holocaust: In Warsaw, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz set up the Żegota organization.

12.16.1942

The Holocaust|Holocaust: Porajmos

1943

3.13.1943

The Holocaust: German forces liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków. Hans Finke arrives in Auschwitz with 963 other prisoners. 473 are put to death in the gas chambers. 491 are assigned to slave labor.

4.7.1943

Holocaust: In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka where they are shot dead and buried in ditches.

5.16.1943

Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.

5.24.1943

Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

11.15.1943

Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". (see Porajmos)

1944

8.4.1944

The Holocaust: a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.

8.5.1944

Holocaust: Polish insurgents liberate a German labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners.

10.10.1944

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

1997

2.5.1997

The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.

1998

3.16.1998

Pope John Paul II asks God for forgiveness for the inactivity and silence of some Roman Catholics during the Holocaust.