The Nuremberg Trials:  Chronology

January 30, 1933
AdoIf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany.

February 28, 1933
German government takes away freedom of speech, assembly, press, and freedom from invasion of privacy (mail, telephone, telegraph) and from house search without warrant.

March 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated President of the United States.

March 20, 1933
First concentration camp opens at Dachau, Germany, for political opponents of the regime.

April 1, 1933
Nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany is carried out under Nazi leadership.

April 7, 1933
Law excludes "non-Aryans" from government employment; Jewish civil servants, including university professors and schoolteachers, are fired in Germany.

May 10, 1933
Books written by Jews, political opponents of Nazis, and many others are burned during huge public rallies across Germany.

July 14, 1933
Law passed in Germany permitting the forced sterilization of Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, African-Germans, and others considered "inferior" or "unfit."

October 1934
First major wave of arrests of homosexuals occurs throughout Germany, continuing into November.

April 1935
Jehovah's Witnesses are banned from all civil service jobs and are arrested throughout Germany.

September 15, 1935
Citizenship and racial laws are announced at Nazi party rally in Nuremberg.

March 7, 1936
Hitler's army invades the Rhineland.

July 12, 1936
First German Gypsies are arrested and deported to Dachau concentration camp.

August 1-16, 1936
Olympic Games take place in Berlin. Anti-Jewish signs are removed until the Games are over.

March 13, 1938
Austria is annexed by Germany.

July 6-15, 1938
Representatives from thirty-two countries meet at Evian, France, to discuss refugee policies. Most of the countries refuse to let in more Jewish refugees.

November 9-10, 1938
Nazis burn synagogues and loot Jewish homes and businesses in nationwide pogroms called Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"). Nearly 30,000 German and Austrian Jewish men are deported to concentration camps. Many Jewish women are jailed.

November 15, 1938
All Jewish children are expelled from public schools. Segregated Jewish schools are created.

December 2-3, 1938
All Gypsies in the Reich are required to register with the police.

March 15, 1939
German troops invade Czechoslovakia.

June 1939
Cuba and the United States refuse to accept Jewish refugees aboard the ship St. Louis, which is forced to return to Europe.

September 1, 1939
Germany invades Poland; World War II begins.

October 1939
Hitler extends power of doctors to kill institutionalized mentally and physically disabled persons in the "euthanasia" program.

Spring 1940
Germany invades and defeats Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France.

October 1940
Warsaw ghetto is established.

March 22, 1941
Gypsy and African-German children are expelled from public schools in the Reich.

March 24, 1941
Germany invades North Africa.

April 6, 1941
Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

June 22, 1941
German army invades the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, begin mass murders of Jews, Gypsies, and Communist leaders.

September 23, 1941
Soviet prisoners of war and Polish prisoners are killed in Nazi test of gas chambers at Auschwitz in occupied Poland.

September 28-29, 1941
Nearly 34,000 Jews are murdered by mobile killing squads at Babi Yar, near Kiev (Ukraine).

October-November 1941
First group of German and Austrian Jews are deported to ghettos in eastern Europe.

December 7, 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

December 8, 1941
Gassing operations begin at Chelmno "extermination" camp in occupied Poland.

December 11, 1941
Germany declares war on the United States.

January 20, 1942
Fifteen Nazi and government leaders meet at Wannsee, a section of Berlin, to discuss the "final solution to the Jewish question."

1942
Nazi "extermination" camps located in occupied Poland at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek-Lublin begin mass murder of Jews in gas chambers.

June 1, 1942
Jews in France and the Netherlands are required to wear identifying stars.

April 19-May 16, 1943
Jews in the Warsaw ghetto resist with arms the Germans' attempt to deport them to the Nazi extermination camps.

August 2, 1943
Inmates revolt at Treblinka.

Fall 1943
Danes use boats to smuggle most of the nation's Jews to neutral Sweden.

October 14, 1943
Inmates at Sobibor begin armed revolt.

January 1944
President Roosevelt sets up the War Refugee Board at the urging of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

March 19, 1944
Germany occupies Hungary.

May 15-July 9, 1944
Over 430,000 Hungarian Jews are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them are gassed.

June 6, 1944
Allied powers invade western Europe on D-Day.

July 20, 1944
German officers fail in an attempt to assassinate Hitler.

July 23, 1944
Soviet troops arrive at Majdanek concentration camp.

August 2, 1944
Nazis destroy the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau; around 3,000 Gypsies are gassed.

October 7, 1944
Prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau revolt and blow up one crematorium.

January 17, 1945
Nazis evacuate Auschwitz; prisoners begin "death marches" toward Germany.

January 27, 1945
Soviet troops enter Auschwitz.

April 1945
U.S. troops liberate survivors at Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.

April 30, 1945
Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

May 5, 1945
U.S. troops liberate Mauthausen concentration camp.

May 7, 1945
Germany surrenders, and the war ends in Europe.

November 1945-October 1946
War crimes trials held at Nuremberg, Germany

May 14, 1948
State of Israel is established.

From Tell Them We Remember by Susan Bachrach. Copyright © 1994 by Jeshajahu Weinberg. By permission of Little, Brown and Company.

Found at:  http://www.ushmm.org/education/chrono.html

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