Timeline of Events

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

German forces destroy the Czech village of Lidice.

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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.

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

SS and police authorities liquidate the Krakow ghetto.

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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.

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

Soviet forces liberate Lublin-Majdanek.

• Image Available

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.

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Video Available

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.

• Image Available

Soviet forces liberate the Gross-Rosen camp.

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

• Video Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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.

• Video Available
• Image Available

US forces liberate the Dora-Mittelbau camp.

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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.

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

Soviet and American troops meet at Torgau, Germany.

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

US forces liberate the Dachau camp.

• Image Available

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

Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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.

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available

Japan surrenders. World War II officially ends.

• Image Available

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

• Video Available
• Image Available

Justice Jackson makes opening statement to the International Military Tribunal.

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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

• Video Available

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

• Image Available

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