Timeline of Events
1939–1941
This document bears witness to the vast array of bureaucratic stamps and visas needed to emigrate from Europe in 1940–41. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Samuel Soltz
1939–1941
The Holocaust took place in the broader context of World War II. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Over the next year, Nazi Germany and its allies conquered much of Europe. German officials confiscated Jewish property, in many places required Jews to wear identifying armbands, and established ghettos and forced-labor camps. In June 1941, Germany turned on its ally, the Soviet Union. Often drawing on local civilian and police support, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) followed the German army and carried out mass shootings as it advanced into Soviet lands. Gas vans also appeared on the eastern front in late fall 1941.
Browse “1939–1941”
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Hitler declares that the outbreak of war would mean the end of European Jewry.
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Submission of a bill to permit entry of 20,000 refugee children into the United States.
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The St. Louis, carrying Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, departs for Havana, Cuba.
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Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe.
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Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.
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SS authorities establish the largest concentration camp complex of the Nazi regime.
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The back of this Polish Jew's visa bears witness to the vast array of bureaucratic stamps and visas needed to emigrate from Europe in 1940–41.
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The ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over ten feet high, topped with barbed wire.
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The destruction of ship carrying 1,800 Jewish refugees.
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Between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews are forced to live within the ghetto boundaries.
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Germany launches its largest military operation of the war.
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Across Nazi-occupied territory, many Jews engaged in acts of spiritual and intellectual defiance.
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German authorities seal off the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania.
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Heinrich Himmler inspects Soviet prisoners of war at a German camp in occupied Belarus.
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In Drancy, France, German authorities open an internment and transit camp for Jews.
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Responding in part to public protests, Hitler orders the cessation of centrally coordinated murder of the disabled.
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All Jews over six years of age in the Reich, Alsace, Bohemia-Moravia and the German–annexed territory of western Poland (called the Warthegau) are ordered to wear an identifying badge.
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German forces occupy Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine.
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German authorities begin deporting Jews from central Europe to ghettos in occupied eastern territory.
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The plan to annihilate Jews in occupied Poland will lead to the murder of some 1.7 million innocent people.
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An SS officer submits his report on the mass killing of Jewish civilians in the northwestern region of the Soviet Union.
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9,200 residents of the Kovno ghetto massacred in Fort IX on the edge of the city.
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In its function as a tool of deception, Theresienstadt was a unique facility.
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Japan launches a surprise attack on the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, severely damaging the installation.
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President Roosevelt asks the US Congress to declare war on Japan following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Chelmo was first stationary facility where poison gas was used for mass murder.
