A Timeline of the Holocaust

1. A Timeline of the Holocaust

2. 1933- The Nazi regime passed civil laws that barred Jews from holding public office or positions in civil service. They were also forbidden to be employed by press and radio. The Nazis encouraged boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and began book burnings of writings by Jews, pacifists, communists, and others not approved by the Reich. In 1933, Adolph Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

3. 1935-Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically. Jews were defined as a separate race under "The Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor." This law forbade marriages or sexual relations between Jews and Germans.

4. 1936- Germany hosted the Summer Olympics. Hitler saw the Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy, and the official Nazi party paper, the VölkischerBeobachterwrote in the strongest terms that Jews and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games. However, when threatened with a boycott of the Games by other nations, he relented and allowed Black people and Jews to participate. Jesse Owens

5. 1938- Open anti-semitism became increasingly accepted, climaxing in the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) on November 9, 1938, when nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire and 76 were destroyed. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and expelled all Jewish pupils from public schools. The Nazis further persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of Kristallnacht. The U.S. convened a League of Nations conference in France with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler but no country would accept them.

7. 1939- On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, officially starting World War II. In less than four weeks, Poland collapsed. Germany's military conquest put it in a position to establish the New Order, a plan to abuse and eliminate so-called undesirables, notably Jews and Slavs.

8. 1939-As war breaks out in Europe, U.S. Coast Guard prevents refugees on the St. Louis from landing in Miami.

9. 1940- The Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland was sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, was sealed off.

10. 1941-In the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Nazis used mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of four units of between 500 and 900 men each which followed the invading German troops into the Soviet Union. By the time Himmler ordered a halt to the shooting in the fall of 1942, they had murdered approximately 1,500,000 Jews. Heinrich Himmler

11. 1942- Nazi leaders met at the Wannsee Conference to determine the “final solution of the Jewish question.” Jews would be rounded up from Nazi controlled areas of Europe and sent to death camps to be exterminated in massive gas chambers.