The Holocaust - A time line

This year, the focus of Holocaust memorial day centres on the idea that of 'ordinary people' both help facilitate and are the victims of genocidal events.

The Nazi holocaust of the Second World War is a case in point. Thousands of 'ordinary' people were involved - either knowingly or unknowingly - in the Nazi machine of industrial scale murder. But how did so many 'normal' Germans become involved and embroiled in such a deplorable scheme?

Budapest, Hungary, October 1944 (Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-680-8285A-26 / Faupel )

The answer to this is long and complicated and I am not sure if anyone has really found the answer as of yet. But having a look through a timeline of events from 1933 to 1945 can help to see how individual policies, decisions and actions taken over 12 years, eventually added up to the murder of six million men, women and children.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here is one such timeline covering many of the important events of The Holocaust.

1933

30th January: Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, leading a coalition of Nazis and conservatives.

22nd March: Dachau concentration camp established.

23rd March: The Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

1st April: First officially organised boycott of Jewish shops.

7th April: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removes Jews and socialists from government employment

1935

15th September: Nuremberg Laws issued: Jews lose the rights of German citizens and are forbidden to marry or have sexual relations with non-Jews.

1938

13th March: Anschluss with Austria. Immediately followed by pogroms.

6th-13th July: Évian Conference.

5th October: Passports of German Jews stamped with letter ‘J’.

28th October: Deportation of 15-17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship from Germany.

9-10th November: Kristallnacht.

12th November: Conference of Nazi leaders organises complete exclusion of Jews from the German economy.

1939

30th January: In a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler ‘prophesises’ “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” if “the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging the nations into a world war”.

15th March: German occupation of Prague.

23rd August: Nazi-Soviet Pact.

1st September: German invasion of Poland begins the Second World War. Immediately followed by mass killings of Polish intellectuals and others.

21st September: Heydrich orders creation of Jewish Councils in Poland.

October: Hitler signs decree authorising the T4 programme (murder of German and Austrian adults with disabilities). It was backdated to start on 1st September to make it look like a war measure.

8th October: First Nazi ghetto created in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland.

12-26th October: Division of German-occupied areas of Poland: western provinces directly incorporated into the Reich; remainder becomes the General Government.

October: the Nisko Plan - the expulsion and resettlement of Jews into a remote corner of occupied Poland commenced. It was abandoned in early 1940.

26th October: Decree issued requiring Jews in the General Government to undertake forced labour.

23rd November: Jews in the General Government forced to wear Star of David armbands.

December: Beginning of mass deportations of Poles and Jews from the Polish territories incorporated into the Reich to the General Government.

1940

8th February: Order for the creation of the Łódź Ghetto (sealed May 1940).

14th June: First transport of Polish political prisoners to Auschwitz.

Summer: Madagascar Plan developed and then abandoned.

3rd October: Vichy government in France issues Statut des Juifs (anti-Jewish laws).

15th November: Warsaw Ghetto sealed.

1941

25th February: General strike in Amsterdam in protest at persecution of Dutch Jews.

Spring: In advance of the invasion of the USSR, German army and Food Ministry develop the Hunger Plan which envisages the starvation of 20-30 million Soviet citizens in order to feed Germany.

March-April: Ghettos created in many cities in the General Government area (e.g. Kraków, Lublin).

16th April: Fascist Ustaše movement takes power in newly-created Independent State of Croatia. Massacres of Serbs in certain villages begin in late April, escalating into a campaign of mass murder against Serbs, Jews and Roma in summer 1941.

2nd June: Second Statut des Juifs in France.

22nd June: German invasion of the USSR. Almost immediately followed by murders of Communists and Jewish men by Einsatzgruppen and other German police units. Also pogroms against Jews by local collaborators in some parts of Ukraine and the Baltic States.

August: Einsatzgruppen increasingly begin to murder Jewish women and children, including entire Jewish communities in many places.

24th August: Official end of the T4 programme though murders of the disabled continue by other means.

Autumn: More than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war forced into makeshift camps: 2 million die by February 1942 from disease, starvation, execution and forced marches.

September: Beginning of mass executions of Jewish and Roma men in Serbia by the German army – almost all murdered by the end of the year.

1st September: Decree ordering German Jews to wear the yellow star.

3rd September: First gassing experiments in Auschwitz on Soviet prisoners of war.

29-30th September: Babi Yar massacre: 33,771 Jews shot in a ravine on the edge of Kiev.

October: Construction of Birkenau (Auschwitz II) begins.

9th October: Romanian government begins deportations of Jews from Bessarabia (now Moldova) and Bukovina (now in Ukraine) to Transnistria (Romanian-occupied area of Ukraine). Tens of thousands die from starvation, disease and mass executions.

15th October: Deportation of Jews from Germany and Austria to ghettos in the East (e.g. Łódź, Minsk) begins.

23-25th October: Romanian occupation forces murder more than 20,000 Jews in Odessa (Ukraine).

1st November: Construction of Bełżec extermination camp begins.

24th November: First transport of Czech Jews to Terezín (transports from Terezín to the East begin January 9 1942).

8th December: Gassings begin at Chełmno extermination camp.

1942

20th January: The Wannsee Conference took place at which SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, worked to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

15th February: First gassing of a Jewish transport in Auschwitz (from Beuthen in Silesia).

Early March: Gassings of Serbian Jewish women and children begin at Sajmište camp. Murders continue to mid-May by which time almost all Serbian Jews murdered.

17th March: First transports to Bełżec, marking the start of Aktion Reinhard.

25-26th March: Slovak government begins deportation of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau and ghettos in the General Government.

27th March: First transport of French Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Early May: First transports to Sobibór.

27th May: Heydrich shot by Czech resistance in Prague (dies 4th June).

9-10th June: The Czech town of Lidice is destroyed by German police and the SS as revenge for the killing of Heydrich. All men over the age of 15 were shot and the women and children were deported.

15-16th July: First transports of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

17-20th July: Himmler visits Auschwitz and Lublin (Aktion Reinhard HQ) to order the acceleration of the killing process.

22nd July: Beginning of the Great Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto, marking the start of deportations to Treblinka (more than 700,000 Jews were murdered in Treblinka in 5 months).

4th August: First transport of Belgian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

4th September: Chaim Rumkowski (chair of the Łódź Ghetto Jewish Council) begs parents to “Give me your children” after the Germans demand all children under 10 and adults over 65 for deportation to Chełmno.

1943

18th January: New German Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto meets with Jewish resistance.

2nd February: German surrender at Stalingrad.

26th February: First group of ‘Gypsies’ arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

March: First transports of Jews from Macedonia and Greece to Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

19th April- 16th May: Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

2nd August: Treblinka uprising.

16-20th August: Białystok Ghetto uprising.

10th September: German occupation of Rome, following Mussolini’s fall from power in July 1943.

1-2nd October: Rescue of Danish Jews begins.

14th October: Sobibór uprising.

18th October: First transport of Italian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

3-4th November: Erntefest massacre: 42,000 Jews shot in two days in Majdanek and other camps in the Lublin region.

1944

19th March: German invasion of Hungary, following attempts by the Hungarian leader Horthy to leave the war.

15th May: Systematic deportations of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau begin: 435,000 Jews deported until Horthy orders a halt on July 7.

23rd June: Liquidation of Łódź Ghetto begins (continues to late August).

Autumn: Death marches begin.

7th October: Revolt by Birkenau Sonderkommando.

15th October: Overthrow of Horthy by Germans leads to resumption of deportations in Hungary (from November) and murders of Jews in Budapest by supporters of new Fascist Arrow Cross government.

1945

27th January: Auschwitz-Birkenau liberated by the Red Army.

15th April: Bergen-Belsen liberated by the British.

30th April: Hitler commits suicide.

7th May: Germany surrenders.

This is as comprehensive a timeline as I could put together but it is far from a definitive list or time line of activities. Of course, if any reader has any more details that I can use to improve the timeline, please do get in touch!!