1940
January. The first trial to gas
mental patients - Jews and others - take place in German asylums.
April. The Lodz ghetto is closed to the outside world.
April 27. Himmler ordered the building of a concentration camp at
Auschwitz.
April-June. Germany occupies Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland and
France. Jews and some 2500 Gypsies are deported from Germany to Poland.
October 3. Special provisions against Jews in Vichy France.
October. The Jews in Warsaw are herded together into a ghetto. In
mid-November the ghetto is closed to the outside world. 1941
January. Registration of Dutch Jews.
March 1. Himmler inspects Auschwitz and orders another camp to be built
at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and allows the chemical company I.G. Farben to use prisoners to
build a factory near Auschwitz.
March 22. Gypsies and colored children are no longer allowed to attend
German schools.
March 30. Hitler tells his generals that the impending war against Russia
will be a "war of extermination".
June 22. Germany attacks the Soviet Union. Special Units begin mass
slaughter in areas to the east of Poland. The same day Robert Lay, one of the Nazi
leaders, says in a speech in Beslau: "The Jew continued to be our implacable enemy,
who did his utmost to destroy our people so that he could rule. That is why we must fight
until he is annihilated, and we will annihilate him! We want to be free, not only
inwardly, but outwardly too!"
July 31. Reich Marshall Herman Goring signs an order giving the SS powers
to prepare a "total solution to the Jewish question". Which meant the murder of
all the Jews in Europe.
September 1. German Jews aged six and over have to wear the yellow Star
of David.
September 18. Jews have to apply for permits to travel on public
transports.
September 29-30. More than 33,000 Jews from Kiev are murdered by a
special Squad at the Babi Ya ravine.
October 15. Jews are forbidden to emigrate from Germany.
October 8. 27,000 were massacred in Riga.
October 23. 34,000 were massacred in Odessa.
November. The first Jews are deported to
Teresienstadt, a
ghetto/concentration camp set up to service as a "Jewish model society",
suitable for inspections by the Red Cross.
November 6. 15,000 were massacred in Rovno.
December 7. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The United States enters the war.
December 8. The first gassing of Jews in Chelmno death camp on the Ner
River, Chelmno, Poland.
December 11. Germany declares war on the United States.
December 12. German Jews are not allowed
to use public telephones. |
1942
January 20. SS Security Chief
Reinhard Heydrich is chairman at the Wannsee (Berlin suburb) conference. High-ranking Nazi
and government officials meet to co-ordinate the "final solution". Deportation
of Jews and Gypsies from the Lodz ghetto to Chelmno continues.
February 15. The first trainloads of Jews are killed using the gas
Zyklone B in Auschwitz. German Jews are no longer allowed to keep pets.
March 17. The first mass gassings are performed at the Belzec
extermination camp southeast of Lublin.
March 20. The gas chambers are now in use at Auschwitz-Birkenau and two
farm houses are converted for this purpose. Those first to be gassed are Polish Jews from
Upper Silesia.
April-May. Sobibor extermination camp opens.
May 4. The first "selections" take place among prisoners who
have been at Auschwitz for several months. Anyone "not fit for work" is sent to
the gas chambers.
May 12. German Jews are not allowed to visit "Aryan"
hairdressers.
May-June. Jews in Western Europe have to wear a Star of David.
June 12. German Jews now have to hand in their radios, binoculars,
bicycles and typewriters.
July 1. Jewish children in Germany are no longer allowed to attend Jewish
schools.
July 4. The first "selection" takes place on the unloading
platform in Auschwitz. The trainload contains Jews from Slovakia.
July 7. Heinrich Himmler discusses sterilization of Jewish women with
Professor Carl Clauberg and others.
July 10. Clauberg is told that Himmler wants him to got to Ravensbrück
to sterilize Jewish women. Himmler wants to know, in particular, how long it takes to
sterilize 1000 Jewish women.
July 15-16. The first trainload of Dutch Jews arrives at Auschwitz.
July 16-18. French police arrest 13,000 "stateless" Jews in
Paris. 9,000 of them (including 4000 children) were transported to Auschwitz.
July 19. Himmler gives orders that the extermination of Jews in Poland
must be completed by the end of the year.
July 22. Mass deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka
extermination camp.
July 30-September 12. Jewish congregations in Germany have to hand over
cultural objects made of precious metal.
October 9. German Jews are no longer allowed to buy from
"Aryan" book shops.
November 26. Norwegian Jews are deported to Auschwitz.
December 17. The Allies declare that those guilty of killing Jews will be
punished after the war. |
