Timeline of Events

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German authorities begin the deportation of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) from the Lodz ghetto to Chelmno.

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Reinhard Heydrich convenes the Wannsee Conference and presents plans to coordinate a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

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The Inspectorate of Concentration Camps opens a second camp at Auschwitz, called Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz II.

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French Resistance member Charlotte Delbo writes a letter to her sister, Odette.

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Czech agents kill SS General Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office.

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German forces destroy the Czech village of Lidice.

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German forces attack the Soviet Union in the south towards the city of Stalingrad.

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German authorities begin the deportation of Dutch Jews from camps in the Netherlands.

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SS Special Detachment Treblinka begins gassing operations at the Treblinka killing center.

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George Mandel-Mantello begins issuing Salvadoran citizenship papers to Jewish refugees in Nazi-occupied Europe.

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German poster, issued during mass deportations to Treblinka, announcing death penalty for aiding Jews who fled the Warsaw ghetto.

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With the assistance of collaborationist Norwegian officials, the Germans begin rounding up Jews in Norway.

The Allied nations issue a declaration stating explicitly that the German authorities are engaging in mass murder of the European Jews.

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A letter from parents promises land in exchange for hiding their daughter.

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After months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties, German forces (numbering now only about 91,000 surviving soldiers) surrender at Stalingrad on the Volga.

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SS and police authorities liquidate the Krakow ghetto.

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Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, individuals and small groups of Jews hid or fought the Germans for almost a month.

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Identity card used by Kurt I. Lewin while he was in hiding in a Studite monastery in Poland.

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From September 20 into October, approximately 7,200 Danish Jews escape to Sweden.

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Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor killing center begin an armed revolt. Selma Wijnberg and Chaim Engel escape and flee into hiding.

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First page of the ethical will of Elkhanan Elkes, the chairman of the Kovno ghetto Jewish Council.

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SS forces kill surviving Jews in work camps near Lublin, Poland.

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Josef and Amilia Kohout write to the commandant of Flossenbürg to ask to visit their son, Josef, who was imprisoned as a homosexual.

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Roosevelt and Morgenthau Jr meet to discuss the rescue of Jews from Nazi-dominated Europe.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9417, creating the War Refugee Board.

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German forces occupy Axis ally Hungary and install pro-German General Dome Sztojay as prime minister.

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From mid-May until July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials, under the guidance of German SS officials, deport some 440,000 Jews from Hungary.

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German authorities deport thousands of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Under the code name Operation “Overlord,” US, British, and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy, France.

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Between June 18 and 22, 1944, the Auschwitz Report, written by two Slovak Jewish prisoners who escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, goes public worldwide through media channels in Switzerland.

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Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest as first secretary to the Swedish legation in Hungary.

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Entry from Michael Kraus's postwar diary describing the liquidation of the “Czech family camp” in Auschwitz.

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German military officers attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in his East Prussian headquarters at Rastenburg.

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Soviet forces liberate Lublin-Majdanek.

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The underground Polish Home Army rises against the Germans in an effort to play a role in the liberation of Warsaw.

The SS liquidates the “Gypsy family camp” BIIe at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Beginning on August 9, SS and police units liquidate the Lodz ghetto.

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Prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebelled after learning that they were going to be killed.

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Allied troops arrive at the abandoned Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

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At Heinrich Himmler's order, the Auschwitz camp authorities demolish the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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At Hartheim, German authorities carry out the last gassing of inmates.

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As Soviet troops approach, SS units begin the final evacuation of prisoners from the Auschwitz camp complex.

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The Soviet army enters Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberates around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom are ill and dying.

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Allied leaders meet to discuss military strategy in the final defeat of Nazi Germany, the postwar occupation of Germany, and the prosecution of German war criminals.

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Soviet forces liberate the Gross-Rosen camp.

Soviet troops accept the surrender of the last German and Hungarian units fighting in Budapest, Hungary.

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Troops of the US 9th Armored Division capture the Ludendorff Railroad Bridge at Remagen, between Koblenz and Bonn, Germany.

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"Two more of our men died today..."

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The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. On April 4, 1945, it was the first Nazi camp liberated by US troops.

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US forces liberate the Dora-Mittelbau camp.

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On April 11, 1945, in expectation of liberation, starved and emaciated prisoners storm watchtowers, seizing control of the Buchenwald camp.

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Pen and ink drawing by Corporal Frank Kennelly of the 1260th Combat Engineers capturing a scene at Buchenwald.

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Canadian forces liberate prisoners at the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands.

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Last diary entry by Otto Wolf (1927–1945), a Czech Jewish teenager who chronicled his family's experience in hiding.

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British forces liberate about 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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First entry by Felicitas, Otto Wolf's sister, who continued writing in Otto's diary after his disappearance.

The SS evacuates prisoners on foot from Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

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The 358th and 359th US Infantry Regiments (90th US Infantry Division) liberate Flossenbürg.

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Soviet and American troops meet at Torgau, Germany.

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"We have seen what can be called the living dead"

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US forces liberate the Dachau camp.

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The vanguard of the Soviet Army arrives at the Ravensbrück camp.

Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

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"Nazism at its worst was unfolded in stark reality before Doughboys of the 71st Infantry Division today."

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As British troops approached Neuengamme, the SS evacuated some 9,000 prisoners towards Lübeck on the Baltic Sea on April 19, 1945.

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Members of an “International Committee” formed by the prisoners in the last days of April administered the camp from within until US troops secured the area on May 5, 1945.

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German armed forces surrender unconditionally to Allied forces in the west.

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Earl G. Harrison, former Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, toured displaced persons camps in the summer of 1945.

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Alice Goldberger, a relief worker in England (and a Holocaust refugee herself) receives some of the first child survivors coming to England from Europe.

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Japan surrenders. World War II officially ends.

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The International Military Tribunal begins the trial of 21 major Nazi leaders.

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Justice Jackson makes opening statement to the International Military Tribunal.

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At the International Military Tribunal, the prosecution introduces a film titled "The Nazi Concentration Camps."

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Carl Atkin, UNRRA director at the Deggendorf displaced persons camp, receives a songbook created by the survivors in his care.

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The film “The Nazi Plan” is shown as evidence at the International Military Tribunal.

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US President Harry S Truman issues a directive giving preference to displaced persons for immigrant visas under existing US immigration quota restrictions.