JULY 1, 1937

MARTIN NIEMOELLER, CHURCH DISSIDENT LEADER, ARRESTED

Martin Niemoeller, one of main opponents of Nazi racial ideology in the Lutheran church and one of the founders of the oppositional "Confessional Church," is arrested. He is sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938 and spends the next seven years in concentration camps. After the war, Niemoeller's condemnation of bystanders to Nazi policies will become a call to early action. His words: "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist - so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat - so I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew - so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me."

JUNE 6, 1941

GERMAN HIGH COMMAND ORDERS KILLING OF SOVIET COMMISSARS

Two weeks before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the high command of the German armed forces issues orders to screen Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) for Soviet commissars. The commissars are to be handed over to the mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) for immediate execution. Between June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945, more than three million Soviet prisoners of war die in German custody. Most die from starvation, disease, and exposure, although tens of thousands are shot as Communists, Jews, or "Asiatics."

AUGUST 2-3, 1944

"GYPSY CAMP" AT AUSCHWITZ CLOSED

Twenty-three thousand Roma (Gypsies) were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and placed in a separate section of the camp. Conditions there were exceptionally bad. Almost all the Roma in Auschwitz were gassed, worked to death, or victims of disease. The Nazis define Roma as racially inferior, and their fate closely parallels that of Jews. On August 2-3, 1944, the "Gypsy camp" at Auschwitz-Birkenau is closed. Almost 1,000 Roma are transferred to camps in Germany for forced labor. The remaining Romani (Gypsy) men, women, and children are killed in the gas chambers. Between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma are killed in the Holocaust.