Timeline of Events
After 1945
A group of young survivors in Buchenwald. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft
After 1945
By May 1945, the Germans and their collaborators had murdered six million European Jews as part of a systematic plan of genocide—the Holocaust. When Allied troops entered the concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes—testimony to Nazi mass murder. Soldiers also found thousands of survivors—Jews and non-Jews—suffering from starvation and disease. For survivors, the prospect of rebuilding their lives was daunting. With few possibilities for emigration, tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors were housed in displaced persons (DP) camps. In the following years, many international and domestic courts conducted trials of accused war criminals.
Browse “After 1945”
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Massacre of Jews in the southeastern Polish town of Kielce.
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Verdicts delivered for major Nazi German leaders tried by the IMT.
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The United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act.
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Raphael Lemkin was a critical force for bringing “genocide” before the nascent United Nations.
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Raphael Lemkin coined the word "genocide" in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
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Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people.
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The United States ratifies the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
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Dedication ceremony for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum takes place.
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In 1993, in response to massive atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
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The conflict restarted on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down.
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On November 8, 1994, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania.
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Bosnian Serb forces killed an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, the largest massacre in Europe since Holocaust begins at Srebrenica.
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The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended in 1995 with a peace agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio.
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The Rome Statue establishes the International Criminal Court.
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Jean-Paul Akayesu is judged guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.
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At the heart of the Rwanda “Media Trial” was the issue of free speech rights.
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Luis Moreno Ocampo, ICC prosecutor, announces that the Court's first-ever investigation will probe crimes committed throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Colin Powell concludes that genocide has been committed in Darfur.
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In March 2006, Thomas Lubanga, a rebel commander operating in eastern Congo, became the first person ever arrested under an ICC arrest warrant.
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In 2006, DRC held the first multi-party elections in over 40 years, and over 25 million citizens participated.
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced its historic decision to issue an arrest warrant charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
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On July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan declared its independence from Sudan. In 2005, the north and south signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
