“Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Aryan Germans were superior and that the Jews, deemed inferior, were a “racial threat” to the German people. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
January 30, 1933: President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany
March 20, 1933: SS opens the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich
April 1, 1933: Boycott of Jewish-owned shops and businesses in Germany
April 7, 1933: Law for the Reestablishment of the Professional Civil Service
July 14, 1933: Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases
September 15, 1935: Nuremberg Race Laws
March 16, 1935: Germany introduces military conscription
March 7, 1936: German troops march unopposed into the Rhineland
August 1, 1936: Summer Olympics begin in Berlin
March 11-13, 1938: Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss (Union)
November 9/10, 1938: Kristallnacht (nationwide pogrom in Germany)
May 13, 1939: The St. Louis sails from Hamburg, Germany
September 29, 1938: Munich Agreement
August 23, 1939: Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Agreement
September 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe
September 17, 1939: The Soviet Union occupies Poland from the east
October 8, 1939: Germans establish a ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland
April 9, 1940: Germany invades Denmark and Norway
May 10, 1940: Germany attacks western Europe (France and the Low Countries)
July 10, 1940: Battle of Britain begins
April 6, 1941: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
June 22, 1941: Germany invades the Soviet Union
July 6, 1941: Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort, one of the 19th-century fortifications surrounding Kovno
August 3, 1941: Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Muenster denounces the “euthanasia” killing program in a public sermon
September 28-29, 1941: Einsatzgruppen shoot about 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar, outside Kiev
November 7, 1941: Einsatzgruppen round up 13,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto and kill them in nearby Tuchinki (Tuchinka)
November 30, 1941: Einsatzgruppen shoot 10,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto in the Rumbula Forest
December 6, 1941: Soviet winter counteroffensive
December 7, 1941: Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declares war the next day
December 8, 1941: The first killing operations begin at Chelmno in occupied Poland
December 11, 1941: Nazi Germany declares war on the United States
January 16, 1942: Germans begin the mass deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Lodz to the Chelmno killing center
January 20, 1942: Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, Germany
March 27, 1942: Germans begin the deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Drancy, outside Paris, to the east (primarily to Auschwitz)
June 28, 1942: Germany launches a new offensive towards the city of Stalingrad
July 15, 1942: Germans begin mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east (primarily to Auschwitz)
July 22, 1942: Germans begin the mass deportation of over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center
September 12, 1942: Germans complete the mass deportation of about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka
November 23, 1942: Soviet troops counterattack at Stalingrad, trapping the German Sixth Army in the city
April 19, 1943: Warsaw ghetto uprising begins
July 5, 1943: Battle of Kursk
October 1, 1943: Rescue of Jews in Denmark
November 6, 1943: Soviet troops liberate Kiev
March 19, 1944: Germans forces occupy Hungary
May 15, 1944: Germans begin the mass deportation of about 440,000 Jews from Hungary
June 6, 1944: D-Day: Allied forces invade Normandy, France
June 22, 1944: The Soviets launch an offensive in eastern Belorussia (Belarus)
July 25, 1944: Anglo-American forces break out of Normandy
August 1, 1944: Warsaw Polish uprising begins
August 15, 1944: Allied forces land in southern France
August 25, 1944: Liberation of Paris
December 16, 1944: Battle of the Bulge
January 12, 1945: Soviet winter offensive
January 18, 1945: Death march of nearly 60,000 prisoners from the Auschwitz camp system in southern Poland
January 25, 1945: Death march of nearly 50,000 prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland
January 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz camp complex
March 7, 1945: U.S. troops cross the Rhine River at Remagen
April 16, 1945: The Soviets launch their final offensive, encircling Berlin
April 29, 1945: American forces liberate the Dachau concentration camp
April 30, 1945: Adolf Hitler commits suicide
May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders to the western Allies
May 9, 1945: Germany surrenders to the Soviets
Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
