Holocaust and Diplomatic Rescue Chronology - Poland

By Eric Saul


The history of the Jews in Poland dates back more than 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland is home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland is a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy which ends after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century.

“The culture and intellectual output of the Jewish community in Poland had a profound impact on Judaism as a whole. Some Jewish historians have recounted that the word Poland is pronounced as Polania or Polin in Hebrew, and as transliterated into Hebrew, these names for Poland were interpreted as "good omens" because Polania can be broken down into three Hebrew words: po ("here"), lan ("dwells"), ya ("God"), and Polin into two words of: po ("here") lin ("[you should] dwell"). The "message" was that Poland was meant to be a good place for the Jews. During the time from the rule of Sigismund I the Old until the Nazi Holocaust, Poland would be at the center of Jewish religious life. Many agreed with Rabbi David ben Shemu’el ha-Levi (Taz) that Poland was a place where "most of the time the gentiles do no harm; on the contrary they do right by Israel" (Divre David; 1689). [Wikipedia]

“During World War II there is a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, called the Holocaust. [Wikipedia]

11th Century

1025
The founding of the Kingdom of Poland

1085
The first permanent Jewish community is mentioned by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl.

1096
The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096, are a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of German Christians of the People's Crusade.

1098
First Crusade in 1098. The first extensive Jewish migration from Western Europe to Poland occurs.

 

12th Century

1102
Bolesław III is born. Under Bolesław III (1102–1139), Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, including over the border in Lithuanian territory as far as Kiev. He recognizes the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country. [Wikipedia]

1120
Sicut Judaeis (the "Constitution for the Jews") is the official position of the papacy regarding Jews throughout the Middle Ages and later. The first bull was issued in about 1120 by Calixtus II, intended to protect Jews who suffered during the First Crusade, and was reaffirmed by many popes, until the 15th century. [Wikipedia]

13th Century

1215
Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215. Christian Europeans require Jews and Muslims to wear special clothing, such as the Judenhut and the yellow badge for Jews, to distinguish them from Christians. The practice of their religions is restricted, and they have to swear special oaths. Jews are not allowed to vote, where vote existed, and some countries formally prohibit their entry, such as Norway, Sweden, and Spain after the expulsion in the late 15th century. [Wikipedia]

1264
Under the General Charter of Jewish Liberties (commonly called the Statute of Kalisz). Jews are granted unprecedented legal rights in Europe, including the freedom of worship, trade, and travel in by Bolesław the Pious. The statute was ratified by subsequent Polish Kings: Casimir III in 1334, Casimir IV in 1453, and Sigismund I in 1539. [Wikipedia]

14th Century

1315-1317
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 is the first of a series of large-scale crises that strike Europe early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east to Russia and south to Italy) was affected. The famine causes many deaths over an extended number of years and marked a clear end to the period of growth and prosperity from the 11th to the 13th centuries. [Wikipedia]

1332-33
Jews persecuted across Europe are invited to Poland by Casimir the Great (1303-1370), who, in particular, vowed to protect them as "people of the king". Also known as "King of the serfs and Jews." Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian Baptism.  Under his reign, many Jews immigrate to Poland. Approximately 70 percent of the world's European Jews, or Ashkenazim, can trace their ancestry back to Poland—thanks to a 14th-century king, Casimir III, the Great, who drew Jewish settlers from all across Europe. [Wikipedia]

1346-1353
The Black Death or the Plague is a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. Jews are blamed in part by the West. [Wikipedia]

1348
In 1348, Pope Clement VI (1291–1352) issues a bull asking Catholics not to murder Jews, whom they blame for the Black Plague. He takes Jews under his personal protection at Avignon.

The first blood libel accusation against Jews in Poland is documented.

1349
Pogroms are committed against Jews in many towns in Silesia.

1356
First Jewish settlement mentioned in Lvov.

1367
First Jewish settlement mentioned in Sandomierz.

Pogrom in Poland takes place in Poznań.

1386
First Jewish settlement mentioned in Kazimierz near Kraków (1386).

1388
As a result of the marriage of Wladislaus II to Jadwiga, daughter of Louis I of Hungary, Lithuania is united with the kingdom of Poland. In 1388–1389, broad privileges were extended to Lithuanian Jews including freedom of religion and commerce on equal terms with the Christians. [Wikipedia]

1399
Accusations of blood libel by the priests, and more riots against the Jews in Poznań.

15th Century

1454
Anti-Jewish riots in Bohemia's ethnically German Wrocław and other Silesian cities; Jews are banned from Lower Silesia.

The Nieszawa Statutes are a set of laws enacted in the Kingdom of Poland which, among other things, abolished the ancient privileges of the Jews "as contrary to divine right and the law of the land."

1456
Casimir IV the Jagiellonian (1447–1492), issues a document announcing that he could not deprive the Jews of his benevolence on the basis of "the principle of tolerance which in conformity with God's laws obliged him to protect them".

1460 or 1470
Rabbi Jacob Pollak (Yaakov Pollack) is born. He is the son of Rabbi Joseph, is the founder of the Polish method of halakhic (religious laws) and Talmudic (central text of Rabbinic Judaism) study known as the Pilpul (‘sharp analysis’).

March 31, 1492
The Spanish Inquisition. Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, declared that all Jews in their territories should either convert to Christianity or leave the country. While some Jews converted, many others left for Portugal, France, Italy (including the Papal States), Netherlands, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and North Africa.

Kingdom of Poland becomes more tolerant as the Jews are expelled from Spain. Poland emerges as a haven for exiles from Western Europe; and Polish Jewry make it the cultural and spiritual center of the Jewish people.

1495
Jews are ordered out of the center of Kraków and allowed to settle in the "Jewish town" of Kazimierz.

Alexander the Jagiellonian (1501–1506) when he is the Grand Duke of Lithuania, expels Jews from Lithuania. For several years they take refuge in Poland.

1497
Many of Jews who had fled to Portugal from Spain are expelled by King Manuel or leave to avoid forced conversion and further persecution.

16th Century

1500
Shalom Shachna (c. 1500–1558), a pupil of Jacob Pollak, is among the prominent pioneers of Talmudic learning in Poland. He lived and died in Lublin, where he was the head of the yeshivah which produced the rabbinical scholars the following century.

1503
After becoming King of Poland Alexander allows Jews to return to Lithuania. In 1504 he issues a proclamation in which he states that a policy of tolerance befits "kings and rulers."

1506-1548
The most prosperous period for Polish Jews begins following a new influx of Jews with the reign of Sigismund I the Old. Many Jews leave Bohemia and go to Poland, founding a community in Kraków.

1520
Moses Isserles (known as the ReMA; 1520–1572) is the co-author of the Shulkhan Arukh (the "Code of Jewish Law").

1530
A Hebrew Pentateuch (Torah) was printed in Kraków.

Mordecai ben Avraham Yoffe (or Jaffe or Joffe) (c. 1530 – 7 March 1612; Rabbi, (religious teacher) Rosh (Dean-head) yeshiva (religious school) and posek. (legal scholar). He is known as author of Levush Malkhus, a ten-volume codification of Jewish law that particularly stressed the customs of the Jews of Eastern Europe.

1543
On the Jews and Their Lies is a 65,000-word anti-Judaic and antisemitic treatise written in by German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483–1546). He declares that Jewish synagogues and schools be burned, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to practice, homes destroyed, and their property and money taken. "[W]e are at fault in not slaying them.”

1548-1572
Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572), follows his father's tolerant policy and also granted communal-administration autonomy to the Jews and lays the foundation for the power of the Qahal, or autonomous Jewish community. This period led to the creation of a proverb about Poland being a "heaven for the Jews". [Wikipedia]

July 14, 1555
Pope Paul IV issued papal bull which revoked all the rights of the Jewish community and placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States. They Jew in Rome are forced to live in a Ghetto.

1561
Joel ben Samuel Sirkis (born 1561 - March 14, 1640) also known as the Bach (an abbreviation of his magnum opusBayi CHadash), is a prominent Ashkenaziposek (“decisor”) and halakhist, (authority on Jewish religious law).

1569
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is founded.Poland is the most tolerant country in Europe. Historians called it paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews"). Poland becomes a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries. It is home to the world's largest Jewish community at the time. About three-quarters of the world's Jews live in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious conflict (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland's traditional tolerancebegins to lessen from the 17th century. [Wikipedia]

July 1, 1569
The Union of Lublin was signed in Lublin, Poland. It creates a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. It replaced the personal union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a real union and an elective monarchy. [Wikipedia]

1573
Polish and Lithuanian nobles gather at Warsaw in 1573 and sign a document in which representatives of all major religions pledge mutual support and tolerance. As a result, there is a golden age of Jewish life. Jewish academies were established in Lublin, Kraków, Brześć (Brisk), Lwów, Ostróg and other towns. Poland-Lithuania is the only country in Europe where the Jews cultivate their own farmer's fields. The central autonomous body that regulated Jewish life in Poland from the middle of the 16th to mid-18th century was known as the Council of Four Lands.[Wikipedia]

17th Century

August 1, 1626
Sabbatai Zevi (August 1, 1626 – c. September 17, 1676), a Sephardic ordained rabbi from Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey). A kabbalist of Romaniote origin, Zevi, is active throughout the Ottoman Empire, claims to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He is the founder of the Sabbatean movement, whose followers subsequently are known as Dönmeh "converts" or crypto-Jews.[Wikipedia]

1648
The multi-ethnic Commonwealth of Poland is devastated by several major conflicts, in which the country lost over a third of its population (over three million people). The Jewish losses were counted in the hundreds of thousands.  The first of these large-scale massacres were the Khmelnytsky Uprising, in which Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Ukrainian Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Catholic Poles in the eastern and southern areas of Polish-occupied Ukraine. The Jewish community also suffered greatly during the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack uprising which had been directed primarily against the Polish nobility and landlords. The Jews, perceived as allies of the Poles, are also victims of the revolt, during which about 20% are murdered. [Wikipedia]

1655
Commonwealth of Poland is invaded by the Swedish Empire in what becomes known as the Deluge. Charles X of Sweden, at the head of his army, captures and plunders Kraków and Warsaw.

1657
The Polish general Stefan Czarniecki defeats the Swedish Army at the battle of Magierów. This results in the Peace of Oliwa.

1698
Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov, or BeShT, (1698–1760), a Jewish mystic and healer from Poland, who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic (“Pietist-Piety”) Judaism.He has a profound effect on the Jews of Eastern Europe and Poland in particular. His disciples teach and encourage a new fervent brand of Judaism based on Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) known as Hasidism. The rise of Hasidic Judaism within Poland's borders and beyond had a great influence on the rise of Haredi Judaism all over the world, with a continuous influence through its many Hasidic dynasties including those of Chabad-Lubavitch, Aleksander, Bobov, Ger, Nadvorna, among others. (As of 2016, there were over 130,000 Hasidic households worldwide, about 5% of the global Jewish population). [Wikipedia]

The Age of Enlightenment, also Age of Reason or the Enlightenment is an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominates the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century. The Enlightenment includes a range of ideas centered on the pursuit of happiness, ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermines the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.  [Wikipedia]

September 1, 1715
Death of Louis XIV of France. His reign is emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe.

1726
Jacob Joseph Frank born Jakub Lejbowicz; 1726 – December 10, 1791) is an 18th-century Polish-Jewish religious leader who claims to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob. The Jewish authorities in Poland excommunicate Frank and his followers due to his heretical doctrines. [Wikipedia]

1742
Most of Silesia is lost to Prussia.

1764
Accession to the throne of Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski

There are about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population is estimated at 1.2 million.

1760-1840
The Industrial Revolution. The transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, in the period from between 1760 to 1820 and 1840. This transition included from hand production methods to machines, and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth. [Wikipedia]

1768
Koliyivshchyna rebellion west of the Dnieper river in Volhynia causes the murders of Polish noblemen, Catholic priests, and thousands of Jews by the Ukrainian Haidamaka Cossacks.

1770’s
The Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), is an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism. The Haskalah promotes rationalism, liberalism, freedom of thought and enquiry, and is largely perceived as the Jewish variant of the general Age of Enlightenment. [Wikipedia]

1772
The military Partitions of Poland begins between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The Commonwealth loses 30% of its land during the annexations of 1772, and even more of its peoples. Jews are most numerous in the territories that fall under the military control of Austria and Russia. [Wikipedia]

1789
National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution adopts The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). It is states in Article 10: "No-one shall be interfered with for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their practice does not disturb public order as established by the law."

September 28, 1791
Revolutionary France becomes the second country in Europe, after Poland 500 years earlier, to emancipate its Jews. 40,000 Jews living in France at the time experience newfound freedom. This becomes a model for other European Jewish communities.

December 15, 1791
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. It states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

April 27, 1792
The Targowica Confederation a confederation established by Polish and Lithuanian magnates. The confederation opposes the Constitution of May 3, 1791, and fought in the Polish–Russian War of 1792, which led to the Second and Third Partitions of Poland. [Wikipedia]

July 17, 1793
The second partition of Poland after the Bar Confederation lost the war with Russia. The Second Partition occurred in the aftermath of the Polish–Russian War of 1792

1794
The Kościuszko Uprising, also known as the Polish Uprising of 1794 and the Second Polish War. An uprising against the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia led by Tadeusz Kościuszko in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Prussian partition. [Wikipedia]

1795
After the Partition of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews become subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, including the increasingly antisemitic Russian Empire, as well as Austria-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later a part of the German Empire). Following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland ceases to exist as an independent state for 123 years. [Wikipedia]

19th Century

1804
Alexander I of Russia issues a "Statute Concerning Jews", meant to accelerate the process of assimilation of the Empire's new Jewish population. The Polish Jews are allowed to establish schools with Russian, German, or Polish curricula. They could own land in the territories annexed from Poland. However, they are also restricted from leasing property, teaching in Yiddish, and from entering Russia. The harshest measures designed to compel Jews to merge into society at large call for their expulsion from small villages, forcing them to move into towns. Thousands of Jews lose their only source of income. Their living conditions in the Pale began to dramatically worsen. [Wikipedia]

1806
Napoleon passes a number of measures enhancing the position of the Jewish community in the French Empire.

1807
Napoleon creates the Duchy of Warsaw also known as Napoleonic Poland, as a client state of the French Empire.

In conquered countries, Napoleon abolishes laws restricting Jews to living in ghettos. He designated Judaism as one of the official religions of France, along with Roman Catholicism

1808
In 1808 Napoleon voids a number of reforms (under the so-called décret infâme, or Infamous Decree, of 17 March 1808), declaring all debts with Jews to be annulled, reduced or postponed.

1815
The Congress of Vienna creates the Kingdom of Poland, ruled by Russia. It is a semi-autonomous Polish state and successor to Napoleon's short-lived Duchy of Warsaw. It is established in the Russian sector after Poland is partitioned by the Habsburg Monarchy, Russia, and Prussia. [Wikipedia]

1816
Jewish population in the area of former Congress of Poland increases sevenfold between 1816 and 1921, from around 213,000 to about 1,500,000.

1827
Decree by Nicolas – while lifting the traditional double taxation on Jews in lieu of army service – made Jews subject to general military recruitment laws that require Jewish communities to provide 7 recruits per each 1000 "souls" every 4 years. Unlike the general population that have to provide recruits between the ages of 18 and 35, Jews have to provide recruits between the ages of 12 and 25. Between 1827 and 1857 more than 30,000 children are placed in the Canonists schools, where they are pressured to convert. "Many children are smuggled to Poland, where the conscription of Jews did not take effect until 1844." [Wikipedia]

May 24, 1829
Tzar Nicholas I of Russia formally crowned himself as King of Poland in Warsaw.

November 29, 1830
The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire.  After it is put down Russian Emperor Nicholas I decrees that henceforth Russian-occupied Poland will lose its autonomy and become an integral part of the Russian Empire. Jews take part in the uprising. [Wikipedia]

1848
The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848.  It is essentially democratic and liberal in nature, with the aim of removing the old monarchies and creating independent nation-states. More than 50 countries are affected. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history.

March 1855
Tzar Alexander II (April 29, 1818 – March 13, 1881) is Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 2 March 1855 until his assassination.

1861
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, ("peasants' reform of 1861") is the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform abolishes serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. Jews are accorded slightly more rights with the reform, but they are still restricted to the Pale of Settlement and subject to restrictions on ownership and profession. [Wikipedia]

April 4, 1866
Attempted assassination of Tzar Alexander II.

1870-1914
The Second Industrial Revolution. Also known as the Technological Revolution, is a phase of rapid standardization and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization. [Wikipedia]

1879
Wilhelm Marr (November 16, 1819 – July 17, 1904) Germen agitator and publicist becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German revolutions of 1848–49.  Marr popularized the term "antisemitism" (1881).

1881
In Russia newly enacted repressive anti-Jewish laws are passed and remain in effect until 1917. Along with violent pogroms they provide the motivation for mass emigration from Russia. In the period from 1881 to 1920, over two million Jews leave.

March 13, 1881
Tzar Alexander II of Russia is assassinated in Saint Petersburg. The assassination triggered major suppression of civil liberties in Russia, A series of anti-Jewish pogroms and antisemitic legislation, the May Laws, are instituted.

Jews leave the Russian Empire. Most Russian Jewish emigrants go to the United States or Argentina, though some go to Palestine.

March 30, 1882
Adolf Henryk Silberschein, (1882 – 1951) also known as Abraham Silberschein is born in Lwów, Austria-Hungary, today Ukraine, He is a Polish-Jewish lawyer, activist of the World Jewish Congress, Zionist, member of the Polish Sejm (1922–27). During the Holocaust he was a member of the Ładoś Group also called as the Bernese Group, an informal cooperation of Jewish organizations and Polish diplomats who fabricated and smuggled illegal Latin American passports to occupied Poland, saving their holders and their families from immediate deportation to German Nazi death camps. [Wikipedia]

May 15, 1882
Temporary regulations regarding the Jews (also known as May Laws) are proposed by the minister of internal affairs and enacted on 15 May 1882, by Tsar Alexander III of Russia. Originally, regulations of May 1882 are intended only as temporary measures until a future revision of the laws concerning the Jews but remain in effect for more than thirty years. [Wikipedia]

1884
In response to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire 36 Jewish Zionist delegates met in Katowice, forming the Hovevei Zion-Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. Their goal is to promote Jewish immigration to Palestine, and continue Jewish settlement there, particularly agricultural.

November 11, 1884
Filippo Bernardini (1884 –1954) is born He was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church. He spent almost his entire career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See and was given the rank of archbishop in 1933. He was Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and aided Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

1891
Most Jews are deported from Moscow and a newly built synagogue is closed by the city's authorities, headed by governor-general Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar's brother. About 20,000 Jews are expelled, causing international criticism.

December 27, 1891
Aleksander Wacław Ładoś 1891 – 1963) was a Polish politician and diplomat, who 1940–45 headed the Legation of Poland to Switzerland is born. Ładoś was a member and de facto leader of the Ładoś Group, also known as Bernese Group,[1][2] a secret action by the Polish diplomats and Jewish organizations who helped save several hundred Jews from the Holocaust by providing them with illegal Latin American, mostly Paraguayan passports.

1892
In Russia new measures ban Jewish participation in local elections despite their large numbers in many towns in the Pale of settlement. "The Town Regulations of 1892 prohibit Jews from the right to elect or be elected to town Dumas (a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions.

1893
In Russia the Law Concerning the Names impose criminal punishment on Jews who tried to "adopt Christian names" and declare that Jews must use their birth names in business, writings, advertisements, nametags, etc.

1897
The General Jewish Labor Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia generally called The Bund, (federation or union) or the Jewish Labor Bund, is established. It is a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire and active between 1897 and 1920.

1899
The British-German racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain publishes The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he writes that the 19th century is "the Jewish age" and he also writes that Europe's social problems are the result of its domination by the Jews. The book influences the Nazi Party.  

June 16, 1899
Konstanty Rokicki is born Lucerne, Switzerland. He is a Polish consular officer, vice consul of the Republic of Poland in Riga and Bern. Between 1941 and 1943 he was a member of the Ładoś Group also called the Bernese Group. He used his diplomatic position as vice consul to produce illegal Latin American passports and had them smuggled to the German-occupied Poland and Netherlands. They saved lives of numerous Jews. He is honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in 2019.

1900

1900
The Boxer Rebellion in China. The Russians and the Japanese both contribute troops to the eight-member international force sent in 1900 to quell the Boxer Rebellion and to relieve the international legations under siege in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Russia had already sent 177,000 soldiers to Manchuria, nominally to protect its railways under construction. [Wikipedia]

1901

1901
Poale Zion ("Workers of Zion") is a movement of Marxist–Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe and the Russian Empire in about the turn of the 20th century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901. [Wikipedia]

May 13, 1901
Witold Pilecki (1901 – 1948) is born. He was a Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. Early in World War II he co-founded the Secret Polish Army resistance movement.

December 11, 1901
George Mantello (1901 – 1992), a businessman with various diplomatic activities, is born into a Jewish family from Transylvania. He helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust while working for the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, Switzerland from 1942 to 1945.

1903

1903
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document forged by the Okhrana (Russian secret police) purporting to reveal the secret plans of a conspiracy of Jewish religious leaders for world conquest through the imposition of liberal democracy, is published in Znamya in the Russian Empire. It is later distributed across the world after 1917 by white Russian émigrés and becomes a popular anti-Semitic tract even after it was proved to have been forged and plagiarized. [Wikipedia]

April 19-21, 1903 
The Kishinev pogroms an anti-Jewish riot takes place on Easter Day in Kishinev (modern Chișinău, Moldova) 49 Jews are murdered.

December 26, 1903
Stefan Jan Ryniewicz (1903 – 1988) is born in Tarnapol. He is a Polish diplomat and counselor of the Legation of Poland in Bern between 1940 and 1945. As member of the Ładoś Group he a played a key role in issuing of thousands of illegal Latin American passports to save Jews from the Nazis.

1904

1904-1905
The Russo-Japanese War is fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of military operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. Many Jews leave Russia to avoid conscription. [Wikipedia]

1905

1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, is a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which is directed at the government. It includes worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to constitutional reform (namely the "October Manifesto"), including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. [Wikipedia]

In the Polish areas of the Russian empire, the Bund is a leading force in the 1905 revolution. At this time, the organization probably reaches the height of its influence. It calls for an improvement in living standards, a more democratic political system, and the introduction of equal rights for Jews. At least in the early stages of the first Russian Revolution, armed groups of the "Bund" are likely the strongest revolutionary force in Western Russia.

Recha Sternbuch (née Rottenberg; 1905–1971), a Swiss woman of Orthodox Jewish heritage, a Holocaust era Jewish rescuer is born in Krakow, Poland.

October 19-20, 1905
A second pogrom takes place in Kishinev. The riots began as political protests against the Tsar but turn into an attack on Jews. More than,19 Jews are killed and 56 injured.

1906

June 14-16, 1906
The Białystok pogrom in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). Between 81 and 88 Jews are killed by soldiers of the Russian Army, the Black Hundreds and the Chernoe Znamia, and about 80 Jews are wounded.

1909

1909
Salomon Reinach and Florence Simmonds refer to "this new antisemitism, masquerading as patriotism, which was first propagated at Berlin by the court chaplain Stöcker, with the connivance of Bismarck." Similarly, Peter N. Stearns comments that "the ideology behind the new anti-Semitism [in Germany] was more racist than religious."

1912

1912
World Agudath Israel is founded in Kattowitz, German Empire (now Katowice, Poland), in 1912, with the purpose of providing an umbrella organization for observant Jews who oppose the Zionist movement.

1913

1913
The Blood libel trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis in Kiev.

June 24, 1913
Juliusz Kühl (1913 – 1985) also known as Julius or Yehiel Kühl is born in Sanok, Poland. He is a Polish diplomat, and Jewish Holocaust rescuer. Kühl was a member of the Ładoś Group also known as the Bernese Group.  He is known for his role in the manufacturing of false Latin American passports by the Polish Legation in Bern, Switzerland. As a result, several thousand Jews in German-occupied Poland and Netherlands survived the Nazi Holocaust.

1914

June 28, 1914
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is one of the key events that led to World War I. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, are assassinated.  They are shot at close range while being driven through Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908.

August 1914-November 1918
World War I.  Millions of soldiers die.  At the conclusion of World War I, many of the royal families of Europe are deposed.  First of many European oligarchies and “undemocratic democracies” are formed.

Poland regains its independence in the aftermath of World War I. It is the center of the European Jewish world with one of the world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Antisemitism is a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishments and the general population. Throughout the interwar period, Poland actively supports Jewish emigration from Poland and, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. [Wikipedia]

While most Polish Jews are neutral to the idea of a Polish state, many play a significant role in the fight for Poland's independence during World War I; around 650 Jews joined the Legiony Polskie formed by Józef Piłsudski, more than all other minorities combined. Prominent Jews were among the members of KTSSN, the nucleus of the interim government of re-emerging sovereign Poland including Herman Feldstein, Henryk Eile, Porucznik Samuel Herschthal, Dr. Zygmunt Leser, Henryk Orlean, Wiktor Chajes and others. [Wikipedia]

After the 1918 reconstitution of an independent Polish state, about 500,000 refugees from the Soviet republics come to Poland in the first spontaneous flight from persecution especially in Ukraine where up to 2,000 pogroms take place during the Civil War. [Wikipedia]

November 1914
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is founded to distribute funds to aid Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere.

1915

1915
The Jewish Labor Committee is founded to help Jews in the Middle East.  It soon joins the Jewish Joint.

The Leo Frank trial and lynching in Atlanta, Georgia turns attention to antisemitism in the United States and leads to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.

1916

November 6, 1916
The Act of 5th November of 1916 is a declaration by Emperors Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Joseph of Austria. The act promises to create a Kingdom of Poland out of territory of Congress Poland. The had an important impact among the Allies of World War I. In December 1916, the Italian Parliament supports the independence of Poland. In early 1917, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia returns to an earlier proposal of an independent Poland, tied with the Russian Empire that Russian officials had proposed in 1914. At the same time, US President Woodrow Wilson also publicly expresses his support of a free Polish state. [Wikipedia]

1917

March 3, 1917
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed. It is a separate peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ends Russia's participation in World War I.

October 24, 1917
Russian Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin.  Czar Nicholas II is swept from power.  The Russian Revolution inspires Communist movements throughout Western Europe, including Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and Hungary.  In response, extreme right wing, and nationalistic movements, many of a fascist nature, are created.

December 15, 1917
Armistice between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers is concluded. On December 22, peace negotiations begin in Brest-Litovsk.

1918

1918
In 1918 the Eastern Front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapses. The Austro-Hungarian Empire then withdraws from all defeated countries. Germany suffers defeat on the Western Front. By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated and uprisings in the army had become common. In the capital cities, leftist liberal movements and their leaders support the separatism of ethnic minorities.

1918-1919
Many attacks are launched against Jews during the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Ukrainian War, and the Polish–Soviet War ending with the Treaty of Riga. Almost half of the Jewish men thought to have supported the Bolshevik Russia in these incidents were in their 20s. Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. Pressure for government action reaches the point where U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sends an official commission to investigate the matter. The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., concludes in its Morgenthau Report that allegations of pogroms are exaggerated. It identifies eight incidents in the years 1918–1919 out of 37 claims for damages and estimated the number of victims at 280. [Wikipedia]

Many other events in Poland are found to have been exaggerated, especially by contemporary newspapers, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continue elsewhere, especially in Ukraine.  Atrocities committed by the young Polish army and its allies in 1919 during their Kiev operation against the Bolsheviks has a profound impact on the foreign perception of the re-emerging Polish state. The result of the concerns over the fate of Poland's Jews is a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by the Western powers, and President Paderewski, protecting the rights of minorities in new Poland including Germans. [Wikipedia]

March 3, 1918
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is a separate peace treaty signed between Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty is signed at German-controlled Brest-Litovsk after two months of negotiations.

November 1918
The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) is founded in the US. It later protests the Nazi regime in Europe. Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and others join to lay the groundwork for a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the country, to rally for equal rights for all Americans regardless of race, religion, or national ancestry. [Wikipedia]

November 1, 1918
Polish-Ukrainian War Begins. It is a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces (both the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic).

November 11, 1918
“The First World War ends. It is one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies (primarily France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States) and the Central Powers (led by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Fighting occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers are killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.”

Armistice is signed, World War I ends.

Polish Independence Day. (Polish: Narodowe Święto Niepodległości). It commemorates the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 from the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires. Marshall Józef Piłsudski becomes “head of the state.”

November 21-23, 1918
The Lwów pogrom of 1918, an attack on the Jewish population of Lwów, takes place during the Polish–Ukrainian War. After the pogrom is over, an estimated 52–150 Jewish residents are killed, and hundreds are injured.

1918-1939
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, is an independent republic, that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established in 1918, after the end of World War I. It ceased to exist in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the World War II in Europe. [Wikipedia]

December 27, 1918
The Greater Poland uprising of 1918–1919, or Wielkopolska uprising of 1918–1919 or Posnanian War begins. It is a military insurrection of Poles in the Greater Poland region (German: Grand Duchy of Posen or Provinz Posen) against German rule.

1919

1919
The Kyiv (Ukraine) pogroms of 1919 a series of anti-Jewish pogroms in various places around Kyiv carried out by White Volunteer Army troops.

There are a total of 1,326 pogroms across Ukraine around that time, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews are massacred. Thousands of women are raped. Hundreds of shtetlekh (small Towns) are pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods are destroyed. The pogroms of 1918-1921, leave half a million Jews homeless.

Aleksander Ładoś returns to newly independent Poland in spring 1919 to join the Polish diplomatic service. Until spring 1920 he served as plebiscite delegate at Cieszyn Silesia, Spiš and Orava.

January 5, 1919
The German Workers’ Party (DAP) is founded.  It is a small, right-wing political group based on German ultra-nationalism.  Hitler joins the party on September 12.

January 18, 1919
Opening of the Paris Peace Conference to negotiate peace treaties between the belligerents of World War I. Dominated by Britain, France, the United States, and Italy, it resulted in five treaties that rearranged the map of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands and imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other defeated nations had no say. [Wikipedia]

January 23-30, 1919
The Poland–Czechoslovakia War, also known in Czech as the Seven-day war is fought. It is a military dispute between Czechoslovakia and Poland over the territory of Cieszyn Silesia.

January 26, 1919
Parliamentary elections are held in Poland, electing the first Sejm of the Second Polish Republic. The elections, based on universal suffrage and proportional representation, was the first free election in Poland’s history. It produces a parliament balanced between the right, left and center. The elections are boycotted by the Polish communists and the Jewish Bund. [Wikipedia]

February 14, 1919
The Polish–Soviet War (late autumn 1918 – 18 March 1921) begins. It is fought between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic after World War I.

February 20, 1919
Small Constitution is adopted in Poland. It is the first constitution of the Second Polish Republic. It was formally called the "Legislative Sejm's ordinance of 20 February 1919. Józef Piłsudski is “Chief of State."

March 2, 1919
Foundation of the Third International, or Comintern in Moscow. Comintern's stated aim is to create a global Soviet republic.

May 7, 1919
The Treaty of Versailles is presented to the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Most Germans disapprove of the reparation’s payments and the forced acceptance of German war guilt entailed in Article 231.

June 28, 1919
Signing of the Treaty of Versailles.  It ends the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers. It was signed exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  It takes six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. Germany is not allowed to participate in the negotiations. The treaty requires Germany to disarm, make territorial concessions, recognize the independence of states whose territory had previously been part of the German Empire, and pay reparations to the Entente powers. The resulted in the creation of several thousand miles of new boundaries in central Europe. Under the provisions of the Little Treaty of Versailles or the Polish Minority Treaty, Poland is declared a sovereign state and gains access to the Baltic Sea.

September 10, 1919
German Austria signs the Treaty of Saint-Germain. The peace treaty with the Allies regulates the borders of Austria, forbids union with Germany and German Austria has to change its name to Austria. The United States did not ratify the treaty and later makes a separate peace treaty with Austria. [Wikipedia]

September 16, 1919
Adolf Hitler, after joining the German Workers' Party, makes his first endorsement of racial anti-Semitism.

November 1919
Between November 1919 and June 1924, 1,200,000 people leave the territory of the USSR for new Poland. It is estimated that some 460,000 refugees speak Polish as their first language. [Wikipedia]

November 1, 1919
The Polish–Ukrainian War begins. It lasts from November 1918 to July 1919. It was a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces (both the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic).

November 18, 1919
Paul von Hindenburg gives testimony to the Weimar National Assembly blaming the loss of World War I on "the secret intentional mutilation of the fleet and the army" and made misleading claims that a British general admitted that the German Army was "stabbed in the back", giving rise to the popular stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory. He is elected President of Germany in the 1925 presidential election. [Wikipedia]

1920

1920
League of Nations is founded. It is the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal goal is to maintain world peace. It is founded by the Paris Peace Conference that ends World War I. The organization ceases operations in April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations.

The fabricated lie that the Bolshevik revolution was a Jewish conspiracy for the world domination sparks worldwide interest in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In a single year, five editions are sold out in England alone. In the US Henry Ford prints 500,000 copies.

In the Spring of 1920, Henry Ford made his personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, chronicle what he considered the "Jewish menace". Every week for 91 issues, the paper exposed some sort of Jewish-inspired evil major story in a headline. The most popular and aggressive stories were then chosen to be reprinted into four volumes called The International Jew.

February 24, 1920
The German Workers’ Party becomes the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).  It is known as the Nazi Party.

The Nazi Party platform is written.  It expresses ultra-right views on German nationalism and antisemitism.  It proposes to exclude Jews from German life by revoking their citizenship.

April 21, 1920
Treaty of Warsaw, also known as the Polish-Ukrainian Alliance, is signed during the Polish-Soviet War. It is a military-economical alliance between the Second Polish Republic, by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, by Symon Petliura, against Bolshevik Russia.

September 1, 1920
Polish–Lithuanian War continues over the Vilnius and Suwałki Regions.

1921

1921
Adoption of the modern Polish constitution known as the March Constitution.

According to the Polish national census of 1921, there are 2,845,364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic. 74.2% of Polish Jews list Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language; the number rises to 87% by 1931, contributing to growing tensions between Jews and Poles. Jews are often not identified as Polish nationals, a problem caused not only by the reversal of assimilation shown in national censuses between 1921 and 1931, but also by the influx of Russian Jews escaping persecution—especially in Ukraine, where up to 2,000 pogroms took place during the Civil War, an estimated 30,000 Jews were massacred directly, and a total of 150,000 died. A large number of Russian Jews emigrate to Poland, as they are entitled by the Peace treaty of Riga to choose the country, they preferred. Several hundred thousand refugees join the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic. [Wikipedia]

The Nazi Party creates the Sturmabteilung (SA) under the Division for Propaganda.

February 19, 1921
The Franco-Polish alliance is signed.  It is the military alliance between Poland and France that is active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements are signed in February 1921 and formally take effect in 1923.

March 17, 1921
The Second Polish Republic adopts the March Constitution, after ousting the occupation of the German/Prussian forces in the 1918 Greater Poland Uprising and avoiding conquest by the Soviets in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. The Constitution, based on the Constitution of the Third French Republic, was regarded as very democratic. Among others, it expressly ruled out discrimination on racial or religious grounds. It also abolished all royal titles It is superseded by the Polish Constitution of 1935 (April Constitution). [Wikipedia]

March 18, 1921
The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga, is signed in Riga between Poland, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ends the Polish–Soviet War. The Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until World War II. [Wikipedia]

November 1921
Hitler becomes head of the National Socialist German Workers’ party (Nazi).

The Munich Post opposes Hitler and the Nazi Party in numerous articles and editorials.  The articles accuse Hitler of being a political criminal.  They characterize the Nazi Party as gangsters.  These articles appear until Hitler comes to power in 1933.  Often intimidated and threatened, these editors and journalists continue their crusade against Hitler.  They are Martin Gruber, Edmund Goldschagg, Erhard Aurer and Julius Zerfass.

1922

1922
Non-aligned Jewish groups and individuals establish the Organization of General Zionists as a non-ideological party within the Zionist Organization (later the World Zionist Organization) Eventually the General Zionists became identified with European liberal and middle-class beliefs in private property and capitalism.

By 1922 the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin are victorious, forming the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin becomes Secretary General of the Communist Party in Russia. Stalin begins a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that leads to significant economic growth, but also contributes to a famine in 1930–1933 that killed millions.

February 6, 1922
The Washington Naval Conference ends and results with the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. The signing parties agree to limit the size of their naval forces.

Cardinal Achille Ratti of Milan is elected Pope, takes the name Pius XI.  He serves until his death in 1939.

April 16, 1922
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Treaty of Rapallo. It re-establishes diplomatic relations, renounces financial claims on each other and pledge future cooperation.

October 29-31, 1922
Italian Fascist party, under Benito Mussolini, takes control of the Italian government.

November 5-12, 1922
Legislative election in Poland Gabriel Narutowicz becomes President of Poland on December 9.

December 16, 1922
President of Poland Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated and Stanisław Wojciechowski becomes President on December 22.

1922-1923
High inflation devalues the German Mark, devastating the German economy.  The Weimar government is blamed.

1924

1924
US Congress passes Immigration Restriction Act.  It severely limits immigration for Asians and Eastern Europeans.

January 21, 1924
Leader of the Soviet Union Vladimir Lenin dies, and Joseph Stalin begins purging rivals to clear the way for his complete dictatorship.

February 1, 1924
The United Kingdom extends diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union (USSR).

April 1, 1924
For his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg prison (he serves only 8 months).

April 6, 1924
Fascist Party in Italy win elections with a 2/3 majority.

August 16, 1924
Allied occupation of the German Ruhr ends and establishes a staggered payment plan for Germany's payment of war reparations.

August 18, 1924
France begins withdrawing its forces from the Ruhr in Germany.

1925

1925
Hitler writes and publishes his manifesto entitled Mein Kampf (My Struggle).  In it, he outlines his antisemitic views on racial purity and social Darwinism.  By 1939, it will have 500 printings and more than six million books printed.

Benito Mussolini becomes dictator of Italy, calls himself Il Duce--The Leader.

Geneva Convention of 1925 outlaws the use of poison gas in war.  It also establishes rules for humane treatment of prisoners of war, sick, wounded, and dead.

YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute), established in 1925 in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia. It relocated to New York City during WW II.

May 12, 1925
Retired Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg is elected President of Germany.

December 1, 1925
The Locarno Treaties are signed. Negotiated in Locarno, Switzerland, in October 1925 and formally signed in London on December 1. First World WarWestern EuropeanAllied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe seek to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the defeated Germany (the Weimar Republic). It also states that Germany will never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divides borders in Europe into two categories: western, which are guaranteed by the Locarno treaties, and eastern borders of Germany with Poland. [Wikipedia]

1926

1926
Administration of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935). Piłsudski counters Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens are judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality. The years 1926–1935 are favorably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski’s appointee Kazimierz Bartel. [Wikipedia]

Hitler publishes second volume of his manifesto Mein Kampf.

April 24, 1926
The Treaty of Berlin is signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, it declares neutrality if either country is attacked within five years.

May 12-14, 1926
In a coups Marshal Józef Piłsudski, overthrows the government of Polish President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos. A new government is installed, and Ignacy Mościcki becomes President on June 4.

September 8, 1926
Germany joins the League of Nations.

December 25, 1926
Japanese Emperor Taishō dies, and his son Hirohito becomes the Emperor of Japan.

1927

1927
Polish diplomat Aleksander Ładoś, a pre-war envoy to Latvia (1923–26) is appointed consul general in Munich (1927–31).

November 12, 1927
Josef Stalin ousts Leon Trotsky from power in the USSR and becomes the absolute dictator.  The Communist government consolidates its hold on the Russian Confederation of States.

1928

1928
Hitler writes his third book, detailing his race theory.  He promotes antisemitism as a central aspect of his personal and political career.  The book is not published until 1961.

March 4-11, 1928
In Poland Józef Piłsudski's Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government, a coalition of the Sanation faction, is elected. It is considered the last free election in Poland until 1989.

August 2, 1928
Italy and Ethiopia sign the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty, pledging cooperation and friendship.

August 27, 1928
In Paris the major powers of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact or Pact of Paris, the treaty sought to outlaw aggressive warfare.  It was the basis for trial and execution of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg in 1946.

October 1, 1928
The Soviet Union launches its first five-year plan, an economic effort to increase industrialization.

November 6, 1928
Herbert Hoover is elected the 1928 US president defeating Democratic Governor of New York Al Smith.

1929

1929
British diplomat Frank Foley is stationed in Berlin.  After 1933, he issues thousands of destination visas to England for German Jews.  He is responsible for saving more than 10,000 Jewish refugees.

General Zionists establish a worldwide organization, holding their first conference in 1931.

Germany signs Geneva Convention of 1925.

January 20, 1929
Heinrich Himmler is appointed head of the SS (Reichsführer SS).

February 11, 1929
Holy See and Italy sign the Lateran Treaty, normalizing relations between the Vatican and Italy. The Treaty is ratified on June 7 making the Vatican City a sovereign state.

August 31, 1929
The Young Plan, which sets the total World War I reparations owed by Germany at US $26,350,000,000 to be paid over a period of 58½ years, is finalized. It replaces the earlier Dawes Plan.

October 1929
The New York Stock Exchange fails.  Stock values dissolve overnight.  This event initiates a worldwide economic depression.  It will not end until 1939.  The depression hits Germany extremely hard.

1930

April 22, 1930
The United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, and Japan sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting naval shipbuilding. It addresses issues not covered in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty.

June 30, 1930
France withdraws all of its troops from the Rhineland ending the occupation of the Rhineland.

September 30, 1930
The Nazi party gets 18% of the popular vote in the German Reichstag election. The Nazis becoming the second-largest party in the Reichstag.

US Immigration Law of 1917 is enforced by the Hoover administration to limit US immigration.  This action is a result of the worldwide depression.

1931

1931
According to the 1931 Polish National Census there were 3,130,581 Polish Jews measured by the declaration of religion. The Polish language, rather than Yiddish, is increasingly used by the young Warsaw Jews who do not have a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Varsovians and Poles. Jews such as Bruno Schulz were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. Most children were enrolled in Jewish religious schools, which limit their ability to speak Polish. As a result, according to the 1931 census, 79% of the Jews declare Yiddish as their first language, and only 12% listed Polish, with the remaining 9% being Hebrew. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of German-born Jews of this period spoke German as their first language. [Wikipedia]

The Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA) is established by SS chief Himmler.

President von Hindenburg decrees a 25 percent emigration tax, the Reich Flight Tax. It is enacted to prevent the transfer of currency out of the country. The Tax later becomes an impediment to Jews attempting to emigrate out of Germany.

Pope Pius XI launches Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on a Vatican diplomatic career as a Nuncio (Vatican diplomat).  Roncalli is appointed Archbishop of Areopolis and Apostolic Visitor to Greece.  Archbishop Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Bulgaria.  He serves there until 1934.

Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) is founded in Palestine.  It founds the Af-Al-Pi rescue operation in 1937.

Konstanty Rokicki joins the consular service of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 1932 and 1933, he is a contract employee of the Polish Consulate in Minsk, at that time capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1934–1936 he is appointed vice-consul in Riga, and in the years 1936–1938 a contract employee of the Polish Legation in Cairo. From 1939 to 1945, he was the vice-consul of the Republic of Poland in Bern.

September 18-19, 1931
Japan invades Manchuria and installs puppet Manchukuo regime. It is called the Mukden Incident. The Japanese Military stage a false flag bombing against a Japanese-owned railroad in the Chinese region of Manchuria, blaming Chinese dissidents for the attack, an event that some claim is the official start of the Second World War.

October 30, 1931
Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) is established.

December 9, 1931
The Munich Post publishes a major article revealing Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s plans to eventually remove Jews from German society and enslave them.

1932

1932
The Soviet famine of 1932–33, also known as the Holodomor (Terror Famine) begins. It is caused in part by the collectivization of agriculture of the first five-year plan. It has been estimated that between 3.3 and 3.9 million die in Ukraine, between 2 and 3 million die in Russia, and 1.5–2 million (1.3 million of whom were ethnic Kazakhs) die in Kazakhstan. [Wikipedia]

The Faith Movement of German Christians is established by the Nazi Party.  It fosters ultra-nationalism and antisemitism.

American journalist Dorothy Thompson publishes major anti-Nazi book entitled I saw Hitler!

Youth Aliyah (Youth Immigration) is founded in Germany by Recha Freier.  It brings thousands of Jews from Nazi Europe to Palestine.

January 7, 1932
The Stimson Doctrine is announced by United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in response to Japan invading Manchuria. It declares that the United States government will not recognize border changes that are made by force.

January 28, 1932
The Japanese military attack Shanghai, China. Fighting ends on March 6, and on May 5 a ceasefire agreement is signed, and Shanghai is declared a demilitarized zone.

February 27, 1932
Cease fire between China and Japan in Manchuria ends fighting leaving Japan in control of Manchuria.

March 1, 1932
Empire of Japan establishes the puppet state Manchukuo (1932-1945) out of occupied Manchuria inNortheast China and Inner Mongolia.

April 10, 1932
Paul von Hindenburg is reelected President of Germany. He defeats Adolf Hitler in a run-off.

June 14, 1932
German law prohibiting activities of Nazi Storm Troopers is lifted.

July 5, 1932
Oliviera Salazar elected Premier of Portugal.  He establishes his leadership as a fascist dictatorship.

July 25, 1932
The Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed. The pact is broken by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939, during the Soviet invasion of Poland.

July 31, 1932
The Nazis win more than 37% of the vote in a Reichstag election. Nazis became the largest political party in Germany, winning 230 of the 608 seats in the German federal election of July 1932.

August 30, 1932
Hermann Göring is elected chairman of the German Senate.

November 8, 1932
Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected President of the US by a landslide.

1933

1933
More than 52,000 Jews leave Germany in the first year of the Nazi government.  There are 37,000 German Jews traveling who remain abroad.

Agudat Yisrael enters into an agreement with the Jewish Agency in Palestine, according to which would receive 6.5% of the immigration permits. In the wake of the Holocaust, anti-Zionist rabbis who lead Agudat Israel recognize the great utility of a Jewish state, and it became non-Zionist, rather than anti-Zionist. It did not actively participate in the creation of Israel, but it ceased its opposition to it.

The French Jewish Aid Society, the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés (CAR), is founded to help German Jews emigrate to safety in France.

Jewish organizations worldwide attempt to have the Assembly of the League of Nations adopt measures to protect the rights of minorities being persecuted in Germany.  This effort is largely unsuccessful.  Later, the League initiates the Bernheim Petition, which partially protects the rights of German minorities in Upper Silesia.

German labor unions are dissolved.

Fifty concentration camps are built throughout Germany.  They include Dachau, Oranienburg, Esterwegen and Sachsenburg (Sachsenhausen).  These brutal camps are designed to house enemies of Nazism, Socialists and Jews.  In 1933, 25,000 people are sent to these camps.

The Faith Movement of German Christians becomes an official state-sanctioned organization.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee involves itself in refugee issues of the League of Nations. 

January 1, 1933
Hitler promotes Heinrich Himmler to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer, equal in rank to the senior SA commanders. On June 2 Himmler, along with the heads of the other two Nazi paramilitary organizations, the SA, and the Hitler Youth, are named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On July 10 he is named to the Prussian State Council.

He becomes the principal organizer of Nazi Germany's genocidal programs, forming the Einsatzgruppen and administering death camps. In this capacity, Himmler directs the killing of six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and other numerous others.

Japan attacks the fortified eastern end of the Great Wall of China in Rehe Province in Inner Mongolia. Fighting commences between the armies of Republic of China and Empire of Japan.

January 30, 1933
Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by German President Paul von Hindenburg.

The Nazi party becomes the ruling party in Germany.

There is 525,000 German Jews, including those living in the Saar District.  German law defines Jews by race.  Under German law, there are 566,000 Jews.  Jews comprise less than one percent of the German population.

Voluntary Aryanization of Jewish businesses begins.  Under pressure to leave Germany, many Jews turn over their businesses to Nazi administrators or sell their businesses at a greatly reduced rate.

February 1933
Lebensraum became an ideological principle of the Nazi party and provides the justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy ('Master Plan for the East') is based on its tenets.

February 2, 1933
All political demonstrations are forbidden in Germany.

February 20, 1933
Hitler gains support of many leading German businessmen and industrialists.

February 27-28, 1933
The German Reichstag [Parliament] is burned down under mysterious circumstances.  As a result, a state of emergency is declared.  Hitler receives emergency powers from German President Paul von Hindenburg.  Nazi storm troopers arrest ten thousand opponents of the Nazi party.  Many of these are executed or “disappear.”

February 28, 1933
The Reichstag Fire Decree issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler in immediate response to the Reichstag fire. The decree nullifies many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. The decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. [Wikipedia]

March 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd President of the United States.  Roosevelt appoints Cordell Hull as Secretary of State and Sumner Wells as Assistant Secretary of State.

March 5, 1933
Individual German states no longer have power.

Nazi party wins 288 seats in the Reichstag.

March 9, 1933
Dachau concentration camp opens near Munich, Germany.  Dachau is used to imprison enemies of the Nazi party.  It becomes the training camp and prototype for Nazi concentration camps under the SS.  By the end of the war, there will be more than one thousand of these camps and thousands more slave labor camps established throughout the Nazi Empire.

March 9-10, 1933
Anti-Jewish riots, organized by the Nazi Party, are carried out by the SA Storm Troopers.

March 13, 1933
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is created under the leadership of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

March 21, 1933
Nazis set up special courts to prosecute anti-Nazi dissidents.

Oranienburg concentration camp is opened in Oranienburg by an SA brigade near Berlin.

March 23, 1933
Passage of the Enabling Act by the Nazi-controlled Reichstag suspends and thereby destroys all civil liberties in Germany.  It establishes a completely totalitarian system with only one leader and one political party, which controls all communication.

March 24, 1933
The anti-Nazi boycott is an international boycott of German products in response to violence and harassment by members of Nazi Party against Jews following his appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

March 27, 1933
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) organizes an anti-Nazi rally in New York City.  It protests the Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.

Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations in response to efforts by the League to curb Japan’s expansion in China.

March 30, 1933
The American Committee in Religious Rights and Minorities sends a delegation to Germany to investigate the actions against Jews.  The committee consists of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergymen.

March 31, 1933
Nazi leaders Hanns Kerrl and Hans Frank issue legislation in the German states of Prussia and Bavaria dismissing Jewish judges and prosecutors and imposing quotas for lawyers.

April 1933
All Jewish welfare and social institutions in Germany are united in a single organization.  It is the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau (ZA).

April 1, 1933
Nationwide boycott of Jewish shops and businesses in Germany. It is unsuccessful.

April 4, 1933
Jews are barred from German civil service and public employment (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). Soon a similar law affects lawyers, doctors, musicians, and notaries.

April 6, 1933
The Belgian Federation of Protestant Churches protests the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

April 7, 1933
Nazi government defines non-Aryan descent.

April 11, 1933
Economic sanctions are implemented against Jews.

The Lutheran Church in Germany actively protests recently enacted antisemitic laws.

April 13, 1933
The British House of Commons condemns Nazi policy against Jews.

April 22, 1933
The Nazi Decree LicensingPhysicians from the National Health Service passed under Dr. Gerhard Wagner. It excludes Jewish doctors from medical practice.

April 25, 1933
A law restricting Jews from schools and universities is enforced (the Law for Preventing Overcrowding in Schools and Schools of Higher Education).

April 29, 1933
The establishment of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) under Nazi party rule by Hermann Göring. It committed widespread atrocities during its existence. The power of the Gestapo was used to focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters (clergy and religious organizations), the Sinti and Roma population, handicapped persons, homosexuals, and Jews. The Gestapo played a key role in the Holocaust.

May 2, 1933
Under the leadership of Nazi Robert Ley, German trade unions are banned and replaced by the German Labor Front. 

May 10, 1933
Nazis begin public burning of books by Jewish authors and others opposed to Nazism.  Nazi government imposes censorship of newspapers and publishing houses throughout Germany.

May 15, 1933
The establishment of the German air force (Luftwaffe) built in secret in violation of the Treaty of Versailles

May 17, 1933
The Bernheim Petition, protesting Nazi anti-Jewish legislation in German Upper Silesia, is submitted to the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva.  The petition is granted June 1, 1933.

May 23, 1933
Prominent Dutch church leaders protest Nazi treatment of German Jews.

May 26, 1933
1,200 US Protestant clergymen sign a manifesto protesting Nazi treatment of German Jews.

Spring 1933
King Gustav V of Sweden and other prominent Swedes warn Hitler that continued persecution of Jews would erode sympathy for Germany.

René de Weck is appointed Plenipotentiary Minister for Switzerland in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, stationed in Bucharest, Romania.  From this post, de Weck is eventually instrumental in helping to save thousands of Jews.

June 21, 1933
All non-Nazi parties are officially banned in Germany.

June 26, 1933
The Nazis establish the Academy for German Law.  The Academy rewrites German law to conform to Nazi ideals and policies.

June 27, 1933
A major rally in London protests Nazi persecution of Jews.

June 29, 1933
A call for a worldwide action to help German Jewry is issued and published by former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and other prominent individuals.

July 6, 1933
The British House of Commons issues a statement of sympathy for persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.

July 14, 1933
Nazi party becomes the only legal party in Germany.  Any form of opposition becomes a criminal offense, punishable by law.

The Law Regarding Revocation of Naturalization and the Annulment of German Citizenship is enacted.  This law is intended to strip Eastern European Jews residing in Germany of their citizenship and rights.

Germany enacts Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.  This law allows for involuntary sterilization of potential parents and for the euthanization of disabled and handicapped persons.  The Nazis label people with disabilities as “defective” and “useless eaters.”  They are declared Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life).  By 1937, 200,000 persons are involuntarily sterilized.

July 20, 1933
The Vatican signs Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany, which gives Hitler’s regime legitimacy.  This concordat purports to protect church rights and property; in fact, it closes Germany’s center party and withdraws the Catholic Church from German political organizations.

30,000 Londoners protest Nazi persecution of German Jews.

August 19, 1933
Ninety-eight percent of German voters approve of the merger of the offices of President and Chancellor.

August 25, 1933
Ha’avarah (transfer) agreement between the German foreign office and the Jewish community in Palestine is implemented.  It allows Jews who are emigrating to Palestine to transfer their assets there.  In turn, the German foreign office receives goods or funds from Palestine.  This agreement is facilitated by sympathetic German diplomats in the Germany foreign ministry.  Eventually, more than 40,000 German Jews emigrate to Palestine under this agreement.

September 1933
Dr. Leo Baeck elected to a new Jewish organization called Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Representative Council of Jews in Germany).  This organization is established in Berlin.

German Jews are banned from journalism and all cultural endeavors, including art, music, literature, theater, and broadcasting.

Himmler is appointed head of all police units in Germany except in Prussia.

September 22, 1933
The Reich Chamber of Culture is established, it bars Jews from the arts in Germany.

September 29, 1933
Under the Reichserbhofgesetz German Jews andGermans with any Jewish ancestry dating to 1800 are prohibited from agriculture, and their land is redistributed to ethnic Germans.

October 1933
In response to Nazi persecution of Jews and their exodus from Germany, the League of Nations establishes the High Commission for Refugees.  US diplomat James Grover MacDonald is appointed its head.  MacDonald will become a vigorous advocate on behalf of Jewish refugees throughout the war.

The American Jewish Joint works with the League of Nations to try to help resolve Jewish refugee issues.

October 4, 1933
Under the German Editor Law all Jews are prohibited from journalism.

October 21, 1933
Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

October 29, 1933
Jewish organizations meet in London to prepare to work with the League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees.

November 12, 1933
In a German general election, 92% of the electoral vote is for Nazi candidates.

November 17, 1933
The United States recognizes the USSR and resumes trade.

December 1933
The Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, which was originally founded in 1901, becomes the Emigration Section of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RVE).

1934

1934
Aliyah Bet begins operation to bring Jews from Europe into Palestine.  From 1934 to 1939, 17,240 Jews illegally immigrate to Palestine.

Angelo Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Turkey and Greece (1934-1944).  He establishes friendly relations with the governments and Eastern Orthodox clergy.

Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara resigns from position as Deputy Consul General in Manchuria in protest of the inhumane treatment of the Chinese.

The Dutch Catholic Church prohibits Dutch Catholics from joining the Dutch Nazi party.

Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps come under the administration and control of the SS.

Worldwide boycott of German goods is established in Geneva.

January 1, 1934
All Jewish holidays are removed from the official German calendar.

January 26, 1934
Germany and Poland sign non-aggression agreement. Both countries pledge to resolve their problems by bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of 10 years. The agreement effectively normalizes relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. Germany effectively recognizes Poland's borders and moved to end an economically damaging customs war between the two countries that had taken place over the previous decade. [Wikipedia]

February 17, 1934
Great Britain, France and Italy declare that Austria must remain an independent nation.

March 23, 1934
Law Regarding Expulsion from the Reich enacted.  This law paves the way for deporting Eastern European Jews from Germany.

April 1934
Peoples’ Court (Volksgericht) is established in Germany.  It is designed to suppress anti-Nazi activities.  Under this law there is no right to trial by jury or appeal.

Heinrich Himmler, who had become the leader of the entire German police force outside of Prussia in 1933, is appointed Reichsführer-SS. The Volksgericht is established to prosecute political dissidents.

May 1, 1934
The Office of Racial Policy is established within the Nazi Party.

June 9, 1934
The Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), SD is established as the Nazi Party's intelligence agency. Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared the SD a criminal organization.

June 30, 1934
Hitler orders SS leader Heinrich Himmler to organize the murder of the SA (Brownshirt) leadership.  More than 100 of Hitler’s rivals are murdered.  Among them are Ernst Röhm and former German Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.  This action becomes known as the Night of the Long Knives.

July 4, 1934
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (IKL) is established under SS officer Theodor Eicke.

July 20, 1934
The SS becomes an independent organization of the Nazi Party, directly responsible to Hitler.

July 25, 1934
Chancellor Dollfüss of Austria is assassinated by Austrian Nazis.

Hehalutz and the Revisionist Zionist Movement begin to organize illegal immigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

August 2, 1934
German President Paul von Hindenburg dies.  Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor).  As of August 8, German armed forces must swear personal allegiance to Hitler as Führer (leader).

August 19, 1934
Ninety-eight percent of German voters approve of the merger of the offices of President and Chancellor.

September 27, 1934
Great Britain, France and Italy again reaffirm their support for an independent Austria.

October 1, 1934
In violation of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Germany begins the buildup of its army, navy, and air force with over a half million soldiers.

December 1934
The US Attorney General issues ruling that Secretary of Labor can issue a visa if immigrants post a financial bond in advance.

SS commander Himmler becomes head of the Gestapo through his subordinate Reinhard Heydrich.

December 29, 1934
Japan rejects the Washington Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which impose limits on the size of its navy operating in the Pacific.

1935

1935
Anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland had reaches its zenith in the years leading to the Second World War. Between 1935 and 1937 seventy-nine Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents. After the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the Sanation government of his political followers, along with President Ignacy Mościcki, embark on a military reform and rearmament of the Polish Army in the face of the changing political climate in Europe. [Wikipedia]

Holland takes in 34,000 German Jewish refugees.  15,000 Jews become permanent residents. 

62,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine.

Violent attacks against Jews in Poland cause many Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

The German military Reichswehr is renamed Wehrmacht (Army).  Hitler continues to rebuild and enlarge its armies. This contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles – the foundation of the post-World War I international order.

The National Coordinating Committee (predecessor to the National Refugee Service) is founded to coordinate private rescue agencies.  It is created at the instigation of the US State Department.

The antisemitic Union of Protestant Churches is created and controlled by the Nazi government to disseminate its ideas.

The SA (Sturmabteilung) is incorporated into the SS.

The Gestapo enacts regulations threatening to arrest and intern in a concentration camp any refugee who returns to Germany.

1935-1941
Carl Lutz is named Vice-Consul at Swiss General Consulate, Jaffa; he is also responsible for the German interests and the Swiss Consulate, Tel Aviv.

1935-1937
In Poland seventy-nine Jews are killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents.

1935-1953
Filippo Bernardini an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church is assigned to the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and aided Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. He sent intelligence to the Vatican about the Nazi plans against the Jews. In 1944, he was instrumental in maintaining the lines of communication between Lelio Vittorio Valobra, head of the clandestine DELASEM Jewish rescue organization (settled in Zurich) and the organization’s Fr. Francesco Repetto, who was still in Genoa. At the Genoa Curia many letters arrived from Jews in the Vatican seeking news of their relatives and acquaintances in northern Italy. The flow of money between Switzerland (where Valobra and Raffaele Cantoni operated) and the DELASEM headquarters in Genoa always remained active due in part to the assistance of Bernardini. [Wikipedia]

January 5, 1935
Archbishop Angelo Roncalli is transferred as Papal Nuncio to Ankara, Turkey.

January 7, 1935
Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign agreement between Italy and France.

The League of Nations approves the results of the Saar plebiscite, which allows Saarland to be incorporated into Germany.

January 13, 1935
Germany retakes Saarland from France.

March 16, 1935
The Hitler Oath also called the Soldier's Oath is instituted in Nazi Germany. These are oaths of personal allegiance sworn by officers and soldiers of the Wehrmacht and civil servants of Nazi Germany between the years 1934 and 1945. The oath pledged personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler in place of loyalty to the constitution of the country. During the Nuremberg trials, many German officers unsuccessfully attempted to use the oath as a defense against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Germany reinstates conscription to the German Wehrmacht in direct violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

March 17, 1935
The German Confessing Church protests persecution of Jews.  It maintains its protests throughout the war.  As a result, seven hundred clergymen are arrested.  Some are sent to concentration camps.

April 23, 1935
The April Constitution of Poland is passed. It is a general law passed by the act of the Polish Sejm. It limits the powers of the Sejm and Senate while strengthening the authority of the President. It introduces into Second Polish Republic a presidential system with have some elements of executive authoritarianism.

May 12, 1935
Polish President Józef Pilsudski dies.  Pilsudski has protected Jews against antisemitism in Poland.  After his death, antisemitism spreads widely throughout Poland.

May 21, 1935
Law in Germany forbids non-Aryans from joining German armed forces.

August 31, 1935
In the United States The Neutrality Act of 1935 is passed imposing a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties at war It also declares that American citizens traveling on ships of belligerent nations do so at their own risk.

September 8, 1935
Parliamentary elections are held in Poland with Senate elections held a week later on September 15. They were held under the April Constitution, drawn up earlier in 1935 by the Sanation movement.

September 15, 1935
Anti-Jewish laws known as “Nuremberg Laws” are enacted in Germany.  These include the Law Respecting Reich Citizenship and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.  Jews are no longer considered German citizens.  Soon, hundreds of additional edicts are enacted.

International reaction to the Nuremberg Laws is almost universally negative.

October 3, 1935
Italian army attacks and invades Ethiopia. It is the beginning of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War. The League of Nations denounces Italy and calls for an oil embargo.

November 14, 1935
The First Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law institutes a system to categorize and define degrees of Jewishness.  It specifies that “a Jew cannot be a Reich citizen.”

In a General Election Stanley Baldwin replaces Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

December 1935
The SS Race and Settlement Main Office establishes the Lebensborn program.

December 20, 1935
The Church of England condemns Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany.

December 27, 1935
James MacDonald, High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations, issues a scathing report and resigns in protest over the failure of the League to help Jews and in response to world indifference to the refugee crisis.

December 31, 1935
Jews removed from civil service positions in Germany.

1936

1936
Italy strengthens ties with Nazi Germany.  Italian fascism turns increasingly to militant anti-Semitism.  Escalating Italian anti-Semitic press campaigns, talks of "Jewish and Zionist danger."

Due in part to a financial loan from France, Poland's new Central Industrial Region participates in a rearmament project in an attempt to catch-up with the advanced weapons development by Poland's neighbors. Foreign Minister Józef Beck continues to resist the growing pressure on Poland from the West to cooperate with the Soviet Union in order to contain Nazi Germany. [Wikipedia]

Council for German Jewry (CFGJ) is established in London, England.  It helps more than 100,000 Jews to emigrate from Germany.

The US State Department is ordered to revoke the Hoover Executive Order of 1930 and institute a more liberal version of the “likely to become a public charge” (LPC) clause.

January 26, 1936
George V, King of the United Kingdom, dies.  He is succeeded by King Edward VII.

March 7, 1936
German’s march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.  The United States, Great Britain and France denounce the invasion.

March 9, 1936
Jews of Przytyk, Poland, are attacked by local citizens.

March 17, 1936
Jews and Poles protest pogroms against Jews in Poland.

April 1, 1936
The Arab High Committee is formed to unite against Jewish territorial claims in or immigration to Palestine.

April 19, 1936
Arab Revolt (1936-1939) begins in Palestine.  This leads to substantial cuts in Jewish immigration by British authorities.

May 5, 1936
Ethiopia falls to Italy. Italian troops occupy the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, it is the end of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War.

June 1936
Léon Blum, a Jew, is elected Premier of France.

June 17, 1936
Heinrich Himmler, SS Chief, appointed to head all German police, and establishes the Orpo, the Sipo, and the Kripo under SS control.

The failed Spanish coup of July 1936, designed to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic by Nationalist forces signals the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

June 30, 1936
Jews in Poland organize general strike to protest recent pogroms.

July 12, 1936
Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.

July 16-18, 1936
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.  In Spain, right wing general Francisco Franco leads a mutiny against the Spanish Republican government.  Hitler sends thousands of German troops to support Franco’s forces.  The Germans use the Spanish Civil War to test new weapons and tactics, especially the Luftwaffe (air force), which perfects the technique of dive bombing.  Hitler also perfects the Blitzkrieg (lightening war).  Mussolini sends his Italian soldiers to fight for the Republican side. The war will last until 1939 with Franco’s victory over the legal Spanish Republican Government. 

8,000 Jews go to Spain as volunteers in the International Brigade.  They comprise an estimated 30% of the total volunteers who fight against the Nationalist forces.

August 1936
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is founded in Geneva, Switzerland as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. It is created in reaction to the rise of Nazism and the growing wave of European anti-Semitism. The main aims of the organization were "to mobilize the Jewish people and the democratic forces against the Nazi onslaught", to "fight for equal political and economic rights everywhere, and particularly for the Jewish minorities in Central and Eastern Europe" According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress' main purpose is to act as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people."

August 1-16, 1936
The International Olympic Games are held in Berlin.  Persecution of Jews is temporarily suspended by Hitler and the Nazis.

September 7, 1936
25% tax is levied on all Jewish property in Germany.

September 23, 1936
Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened in Oranienberg, 15 miles northeast of Berlin.  Initially, it imprisons opponents of the Nazi regime.  More than 100,000 people will die there.

October 1936
The Great Purge or the Great Terror, Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It involved large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Soviet Army; widespread police surveillance, and counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. The estimated total number of deaths due to Stalin’s repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million. [Wikipedia]

October 1, 1936
Criminal court judges in Berlin swear a personal oath to Adolph Hitler.

The Nationalist Rebellion appoints General Franco as Chief of State in its provisional government.

October 7, 1936
Germany imposes a 25 percent tax is imposed on all Jewish assets and property.

October 25, 1936
Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.  This is a formal alliance between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

November 3, 1936
Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection as president of the U.S.

November 6, 1936
The Spanish Nationalists seize Madrid and begin the Spanish Nationalist government in Valencia, Spain.

November 18, 1936
Germany and Italy formally recognize Franco’s Nationalist government in Spain.  Germany sends volunteer soldiers (Condor Legion) to fight on behalf of Franco’s fascist Nationalist army.

November 25, 1936
Germany and Japan sign Anti-Cominturn Pact against the Soviet Union. This pact attempts to thwart Soviet territorial aspirations in Europe.

Germany recognizes Japan’s puppet regime in Manchuria, China.

December 27, 1936
Great Britain and France agree to non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

1937

1937
In Poland anti-Jewish riots, and semi-official or unofficial quotas (Numerus clausus) are introduced in some universities, halves the number of Jews in universities between independence (1918) and the late 1930s. The restrictions are so inclusive that – while the Jews make up 20.4% of the student body in 1928 – by 1937 their share is down to only 7.5%, out of the total population of 9.75% Jews in the country according to the 1931 census. Catholic trade unions of Polish doctors and lawyers restrict their new members to Christian Poles. In January 1937 Foreign Minister Józef Beck declares that Poland could house 500,000 Jews and hopes that over the next 30 years 80,000-100,000 Jews a year would leave Poland. Beck declares in the League of Nations his support for the creation of a Jewish state and for an international conference to enable Jewish emigration. The common goals of the Polish state and of the Zionist movement, of increased Jewish population flow to Palestine, results in overt and covert cooperation.

Poland helps by organizing passports and facilitating illegal immigration.

At the annual Nuremberg meeting of the Nazi Party, Hitler declares the Reich will last a thousand years.

Beginning of the Nazis' policy of seizure of Jewish property through the policy of "Aryanization". Before Hitler came to power, Jews owned 100,000 businesses in Germany. By 1938, boycotts, intimidation, forced sales, and restrictions on professions had largely forced Jews out of economic life. According to Yad Vashem, "Of the 50,000 Jewish-owned stores that existed in 1933, only 9,000 remained in 1938." Between $230 and $320 billion (in 2005 [US] dollars) was stolen from Jews across Europe, with hundreds of thousands of businesses Aryanized. [Wikipedia]

The right-wing, antisemitic Hungarian fascist party, called the Arrow Cross, is formed.

Adolph Eichmann visits Palestine to explore possible Jewish immigration from Germany.

The chief rabbi of Milan, an old friend of the Pope from when he was the cardinal of Milan, meets with Pope Pius XI.  The rabbi asks the Pope to intervene on behalf of persecuted German Jews.

Paul Baerwald becomes head of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

January 1, 1937
The Archbishop of Canterbury attacks antisemitism.

January 6, 1937
Roosevelt renews the US Neutrality Act.  It specifically forbids the shipment of arms for use in the Civil War in Spain.

January 20, 1937
Roosevelt is inaugurated for a second term as US President.

January 21, 1937
The Nansen Assistance Organization is established in Oslo, Norway.  Its goal is to aid refugees and victims of Nazism to protect the rights of stateless people.

February 27, 1937
In Germany the Kripo (criminal police) begins the first mass roundup of political opponents of Nazi Party.

March 14, 1937
In Germany, Catholic nuns and priests are arrested, and Catholic schools, convents and monasteries are closed, due to their anti-Nazi activities. 

Pope Pius XI issues a Papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge [With Burning Anxiety].  Although it does not mention Hitler or Nazism, it comes out strongly against racism, extreme nationalism, and totalitarianism.  The encyclical is smuggled into Germany and read on Palm Sunday in all Catholic churches.

May 28, 1937
Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Spring 1937
Dr. Feng Shan Ho posted as First Secretary to Chinese Legation in Vienna.

Jun 11, 1937
Jews are forbidden to give testimony in German courts.

July 7, 1937
Japan invades northeast China.  Japan practices genocidal policies against the Chinese population.  Hundreds of thousands of Chinese will be brutally murdered.

July 15, 1937
Buchenwald concentration camp opens near Weimar, Germany.  Tens of thousands of prisoners will be murdered there.  Ten thousand Jews will be taken to Buchenwald after Kristallnacht.

July 19, 1937
Nazis sponsor a major exhibition called “Degenerate Art” (Entartete Kunst) in Munich.  It denigrates modern art and works by Jewish artists.

August 28, 1937
Japanese forces occupy Beijing [Peking] and Tianjin, China.

September 7, 1937
Hitler declares the Treaty of Versailles invalid.

A World Conference of the Society of Friends (Quakers) condemns Nazi antisemitism.

November 5, 1937
The Hossback Protokol is written.  These are the minutes from the meeting where Hitler outlines his war aims against Austria and Czechoslovakia.

November 6, 1937
Italy joins German-Japanese Anti-Comminturn Pact.

November 8, 1937
Nazi-sponsored antisemitic exhibit called “The Eternal Jew” opens in Munich.

November 9, 1937
Japanese military forces capture and occupy Shanghai, China.  Shanghai eventually becomes a major safe haven for 18,000 Jewish refugees from Europe.

November 25, 1937
Germany and Japan sign a military and political treaty.

December 5-13, 1937
Japanese troops conquer Nanjing [Nanking], China.  250,000 Chinese are killed by the Japanese army.  It is called the Rape of Nanjing.

December 11, 1937
Italy resigns from the League of Nations.

Second Sino-Japanese War: start of the Rape of Nanking following Japanese victory in the Battle of Nanking. An estimated 40,000 to over 300,000 Chinese are murdered. Japanese military records on the killings were kept secret or destroyed shortly after the surrender of Japan in 1945. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo estimated that over 200,000 Chinese were killed in the massacre. China's official estimate is "more than 300,000" dead.

December 14, 1937
SS chief Himmler issues a decree that the German Criminal Police (Kripo) do not have to have evidence of a specific criminal act to detain persons indefinitely.

1938

1938
By late 1938 approximately 3,310,000 Jews live in Poland. The average rate of permanent settlement is about 30,000 per annum. At the same time, every year around 100,000 Jews are passing through Poland in unofficial emigration overseas. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic had grown by over 464,000. [Wikipedia]

Japanese and German aggression cause Roosevelt and the US to review its position on neutrality and isolation.

Between 1938 and 1939, 17,000 Jews illegally enter Palestine.  Most of them are from Central Europe.

Between 1938 and 1941, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) helps rescue 30,000 European Jews.  Most of them are brought to the port cities of Lisbon and Milan. 

The National Refugee Service is created in the United States to help refugees immigrate to the United States.

The Jewish community initiates a worldwide boycott of German products and services to protest the treatment of German and Austrian Jews.

US Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd protests the treatment of Jews and in particular the confiscation of Jewish property in Germany.  Dodd sends numerous reports regarding this to the State Department.  He recommends formal protests.

The Union des Sociétés Juives (USJ) is founded in France.

The Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindebund (SIG; the Federation of Jewish Communities in Switzerland), headed by Saly Mayer, takes care of refugees coming from Germany and Austria.  Mayer negotiates with Swiss immigration officials to liberalize immigration laws and procedures.

US Congressman Charles A. Buckley writes FDR with a plan to resettle European Jews in the territory of Alaska.  His proposal is rejected.

Swiss Minister Maximilian Jaeger is sent to Budapest, Hungary.

By late 1938, more than 25% of Germany’s 525,000 Jews (150,000) have emigrated. 

Between April and December 1938, 30% of Austrian Jews (50,000 individuals) escape.

In 1938, there are 57,000 Italian Jews out of a total Italian population of 45,600,000.  As a result of continuing anti-Semitic policy, 5,000 Italian Jews emigrate and more than 4,000 convert to Christianity.  After emigration and conversion, the Jewish population of Italy is reduced to 35,156.

Bernhard Kahn, head of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Europe, retires.  To European Jews, he is known as “Mr. Joint.”

Aracy Carvalho is in charge of the visa section in the Brazilian Consulate in Hamburg, Germany, where she works as a secretary in. She aids a group of Jews obtain visas to Brazil, as well as assisting them in financial difficulties before leaving Germany for Brazil.

January 1938
Swedish government institutes strict immigration standards.

Dachau concentration camp is expanded.

January 1, 1938
Sweden passes a law severely limiting immigration.

January 21, 1938
Romania revokes laws protecting its Jewish citizens.  Some Romanian Jews lose their citizenship.

February 1938
Hitler removes key generals from the German Wehrmacht (Army).  These generals opposed Hitler’s war aims.

February 4, 1938
Hitler declares himself Commander of the Wehrmacht.  He appoints General Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of Staff.  Joachim von Ribbentrop is appointed German Foreign Minister.

February 11, 1938
Hitler invites Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden.  Hitler demands that the Austrian Nazi party be incorporated into the Austrian government.  He demands that Artur von Seyss-Inquart be made Austrian Minister of the Interior.  Schuschnigg understands that this ultimatum will inevitably lead to the end of Austrian independence.

February 16, 1938
Under pressure, Schuschnigg appoints Seyss-Inquart as Minister of Security.  Schuschnigg declares a general amnesty for all Austrian Nazi party members, including those who were responsible for the murder of Dollfuss.

February 20, 1938
British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden resigns in protest of British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

February 21-22, 1938
Winston Churchill leads a vote of censure against Chamberlain and his appeasement policy.

March 9, 1938
Schuschnigg calls for a popular vote on Austrian independence.  Hitler demands that the vote be postponed and demands Schuschnigg’s resignation.

March 12, 1938
German troops cross into Austria.

March 13, 1938
Anschluss (annexation of Austria).  Austria becomes a province of the German Greater Reich and is renamed Austmark.  Vienna loses its status as a capital and becomes a provincial administrative seat.  All antisemitic decrees imposed on German Jews are immediately applied in Austria.  Nearly 200,000 more Jews come under Hitler’s control.

As a result, the Roosevelt administration combines both the German and Austrian immigration quotas together.

The Israelitische Kulturgemeinde (IKG; Israeli Cultural Society) in Vienna is the main organization representing the Jewish community, both in the city and provinces.  Dr. Joseph Löwenherz becomes head of the IKG.

March 14, 1938
Cheering crowds greet Hitler as he parades triumphantly through Vienna.

March 18, 1938
SS Chief Heinrich Himmler given power to operate in Austria.  The offices of Vienna’s Jewish community and Zionist organizations are closed, and their leaders jailed.  All Jewish organizations and congregations are forbidden.  One hundred ten prominent Jewish leaders are arrested and deported to Dachau.  Jews are banned from any public activity.

March 23, 1938
Nazi occupying forces in Austria withdraw legal recognition and tax-exempt status from Jewish organizations.

March 24, 1938
Nazi concentration camp Flossenbürg is opened in Flossenbürg, Bavaria, ten miles from the border of Czechoslovakia. 89,964 to 100,000 prisoners passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps. Around 30,000 died from malnutrition, overwork, executions, or during the death marches.

April 1938
The Nazi government in Austria prepares a list of wealthy Jews in preparation for large scale confiscation of Jewish property and assets.

April 1, 1938
Borders of several western and central Voivodeships (provinces) of the Second Polish Republic are changed. This included the Voivodeships of Pomerania, Poznan, Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, Lublin, and Kielce. Pomerania gained most, while Bialystok lost most. [Wikipedia]

April 5, 1938
New anti-Jewish riots break out in Poland.

April 10, 1938
99.73% of Austrians vote in favor of annexation to Germany.

April 14, 1938
Rescue and relief groups meet at the White House “to undertake a preliminary consideration of the most effective manner in which private individuals and organizations within the United States can cooperate with the government in the work to be undertaken by the International Committee which will be created to facilitate the immigration of political refugees from Austria and Germany.”  It becomes the Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR).

April 26, 1938
An order calling for registration of all Jewish property is enacted in Nazi Germany.  This is a first step toward confiscation.

May 1938
The German Nuremberg Laws, which forcibly segregate Jews in Germany and deprive them of citizenship and the means of livelihood, are officially enforced in Austria. More than 200,000 Austrian Jews would be persecuted under these laws, according to German records.

2,000 Jewish leaders in Austria are arrested from a pre-prepared list and are sent to Dachau in four transports.

To force emigration, the families of Jews arrested and deported to concentration camps are told that proof of immediate emigration would secure their release. German Property Transfer Office actively confiscates Jewish property, businesses, and bank accounts.

The methods used in Austria combining economic expropriation and expulsion of Jews become the model in future Nazi-conquered territories.

Vienna becomes the center of emigration. All foreign consulates are besieged by Jewish refugees desperate for visas. Most refuse to help.

Dr. Ho is appointed Chinese Consul General in Vienna, reporting to the Chinese Embassy in Berlin.  Ho issues end destination Shanghai visas to Austrian Jews who are being forced to emigrate.  Visas are issued on his own authority, without permission from his government, enabling thousands of Austrian Jews to escape.  Ho is ordered to desist by the Chinese Ambassador in Berlin but ignores the order.

May 16, 1938
PACPR meets at the State Department and appoints James G. McDonald as Chairman and Samuel Cavert as its Secretary.

May 29, 1938
Anti-Jewish laws are enacted in Hungary.

June 9, 1938
The “June Action” (Juniaktion).  Hitler orders the destruction of the Great Synagogue of Munich, followed by the destruction of the Nuremberg and Dortmund synagogues on June 15.

June 13-18, 1938
In Germany the first mass arrests of Jews begin through Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich. "Reich compulsory labor prisoners". They are deported to concentration camps.

June 15, 1938
Fifteen hundred Jews are arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

June 22, 1938
Pope Pius XI orders the drafting of an important encyclical letter denouncing racism and anti-Semitism, entitled Humani Generis Unitas [The Unity of the Human Race].  It denounces racism and specifically mentions the persecution of Jews.  It is more than 100 pages long.  Due to the death of Pius XI, it is never published.

July 1938
Major anti-Semitic publication in Italy declares the existence of a "pure Italian race of Aryan stock," in which Jews had never belonged.

July 14, 1938
Major anti-Semitic “Manifesto of Race”, publication in Italy declares the existence of a "pure Italian race of Aryan stock," in which Jews had never belonged. It soon leads to stripping the Jews of Italian citizenship and governmental and professional positions.

July 6-15, 1938
Representatives from 34 countries meet at Evian, France, to discuss refugee policies.  All of the countries refuse to help or let in more Jewish refugees.  Australia’s response to accepting Jewish refugees states: “As we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.”  The lack of support for Jewish refugees signals to Hitler that the world is unconcerned with Jewish refugees.

The US State Department declares, “No country would be expected to make any changes in its immigration legislation.”

As an outcome of the Evian Conference, an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees is established to help refugees.  It is headed by Lord Winterton and George Rublee.  It is, however, highly ineffectual and fails to help Jews who are leaving Germany to take their assets with them.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee attends the Evian Conference and is disappointed with the outcome.

Dr. Heinrich Neumann, a Viennese Jew, is released from a concentration camp and sent to the Evian Conference with a secret proposal by the Nazis.  The proposal states that the Nazis will allow Jews to leave Austria and Germany for $250 each or $1,000 per family.  The delegates were indifferent to this proposal.

Ira Hirschmann, an American Jew acting as a private citizen, attends the Evian conference and witnesses its futility.  He travels to Vienna and underwrites many dozens of affidavits for Jewish refugees.  After returning to the United States, he becomes Chairman of the Board of the University in Exile.

Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, former Chief of the Swiss Federal Police, objects to Jewish refugees coming to Switzerland: “Switzerland, which has as little use for these Jews as has Germany, will herself take measures to protect Switzerland from being swamped by the Jews with the connivance of the Viennese police.”

August 8, 1938
The first concentration camp in Austria, Mauthausen-Gusen, opens near Linz.  Between 1938 and 1945, 200,000 persons will be imprisoned there and more than 120,000 will be murdered.

August 13, 1938
On his own authority, Kauko Supanen, Vice Consul for Finland in Vienna, Austria, grants provisional visas to Jewish applicants.  Fifty Jews bearing his visa arrive in Helsinki on this day.  Soon, the Finnish Foreign Ministry rebukes the Consul and orders him not to issue visas to Jews.

August 17, 1938
A Nazi decree forces Jews who do not have names that are recognized as Jewish to add the names “Israel” for males and “Sarah” for females as middle names.

August 20, 1938
Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung [Central Office of Jewish Emigration] is established by SS officer Adolph Eichmann in Austria.  This office is to force Jews to emigrate by expropriating their assets and removing all of their civil rights.  This model system is soon adopted in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

August - December 1938
Swiss Police captain Paul Grüninger, in the Swiss town of St. Gallen, allows 3,600 Austrian Jewish refugees entry into Switzerland, against the policy of the Swiss government.  Many of these refugees had Chinese visas issued by Ho and other diplomats.  Recha Sternbuch an orthodox woman, with children, and pregnant spends nights in the forested region by the Austrian border smuggling Jewish refugees while trying to evade Swiss border guards who had orders to turn back anyone over sixteen and under sixty. She worked with a Grüninger, who helped her smuggle over 800 refugees into Switzerland. After a leader in Switzerland informed on them, she was arrested and jailed, and she lost her child. Grüninger lost his job and pension for his help to Jews and was later aided by the Sternbuchs.

Swiss diplomat Ernst Prodolliet, stationed in Bregenz, Austria, works with Grüninger. On his own authority, Prodolliet issues visas and accompanies Jews to the Swiss border.

September 1938
First anti-Semitic laws are passed in Italy.  Forbids Jews from teaching in colleges. Orders the deportation of all Jewish aliens residing in Italy who had immigrated after 1919.  A department for demography and race is established in the Italian government.  This agency establishes a racial policy against Jews in government and civil life.

Concentration camp Neuengamme is established near Hamburg, Germany.  More than 10,000 prisoners are sent there.  50,000 will perish.

Berlin Putsch fails.  This is a plan by the German general staff to arrest Hitler and have him committed to a mental institution.

September 1-3, 1938
The Italian government enacts a law that foreign Jews can no longer reside in Italy.  Jews who have been naturalized after January 1, 1919, lose their citizenship and are treated as foreigners.

September 7, 1938
Pope Pius XI condemns Catholic participation in anti-Semitic activities.  He declares, “Christians are the spiritual descendants of the patriarch Abraham; we are all spiritual Semites.”

September 15 and September 22, 1938
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain meets with Hitler in Germany to discuss the Sudetenland crisis.  Hitler demands Czechoslovakia return Sudeten territories to Germany.  Hitler states that this will be his last territorial demand in Europe.  Chamberlain has agreed to Hitler’s demands to annex the Sudetenland.  Chamberlain signs Friendship Treaty with Germany.  Chamberlain returns to England bearing an agreement he signed with Hitler and states that there would be “peace in our time.”

September 26, 1938
France partially mobilizes its army in the wake of the Sudeten Czechoslovakia crisis.

September 27, 1938
The League of Nations declares Japan the aggressor in China.

The Nazi German government completely prohibits Jews from practicing law.

U.S. President Roosevelt sends a letter to Adolf Hitler seeking peace.

September 29-30, 1938
The Munich Conference is held.  It is attended by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French President Daladier, Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini, and Hitler.  Great Britain, France and Italy agree to allow the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia despite the existence of the 1924 alliance agreement and 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.  Czechoslovakia is not allowed to participate in the conference. It is also known as the Munich Betrayal. Most of Europe celebrates the Munich agreement, which is presented as a way to prevent a major war. Hitler announces it is his last territorial claim in Europe.

Poland seeks great power status but is not invited to participate in the Munich conference. Minister Beck, disappointed with the lack of recognition, issues an ultimatum on the day of the Munich Agreement to the government of Czechoslovakia, demanding an immediate return to Poland of the contested Zaolzie border region. The Czechoslovak government complies, and Polish military units take over the area. The move is negatively received in both the West and the Soviet Union, and it contributes to the worsening of the geopolitical situation of Poland. [Wikipedia]

The General Assembly of the League of Nations merges the Nansen Office for Refugees with the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.

September 30, 1938
Upon his return to Britain, Neville Chamberlain delivers his controversial "peace for our time" speech to crowds outside 10 Downing Street in London.

The Nazi German government completely prohibits Jewish doctors from practicing medicine.

October 1938
The Polish Consul in Lipsk, Germany, whose name is Feliks Chiczewski, prevents Polish Jews from being expelled from Germany by allowing them to seek refuge in the Polish consulate building and garden.

The Nazis expel 18,000 Jews of Polish ancestry living in Germany.  Five thousand of these are sent to a Polish border village named Zbaszyn.  The Jewish Joint helps these refugees.

October 2, 1938
In response to its censure, Japan withdraws from the League of Nations.

October 4, 1938
On the eve of the Jewish High Holiday, a pogrom is enacted against the Viennese Jewish community.  Many Jews are thrown out of their apartments and homes.

October 5, 1938
Following request by Swiss and Swedish authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter “J” to restrict Jews from crossing the border into Switzerland.

October 6, 1938
The Czech Sudetenland is annexed and occupied by the German Army.  Soon, 200,000 Czechs are expelled or flee the territory.  Czech President Eduard Benes resigns as a result of the annexation.

Italy’s Grand Fascist Council passes antisemitic laws.  Jews are to be excluded from public professions.

Polish Ministry of the Interior issues edict requiring Polish citizens to have their passports revalidated by October 29, 1938, or they cannot return to Poland.  This affects many Polish Jewish refugees.

October 7, 1938
Supreme Council of the Italian Fascist Party establishes policy and principles for anti-Semitic legislation.

October 28-29, 1938
61,000 Polish Jews are expelled from Germany to the Polish town of Zbasyn, on the German border.

October 29, 1938
Nazis make a list of Jews who did not comply with the regulation to have their passports marked with a “J.”

November 1938
Pio Perucchi and Candido Porta, Swiss Consular Officers in Milan, Italy, issue more than 1,600 illegal and unauthorized visas to Jews who had fled Austria to Italy after the Anschluss.  Many refugees enter Switzerland.  Perucchi and Porta are demoted and transferred for their illegal and unauthorized activities.

William Pearl begins an illegal operation to transport Jews out of Germany and Austria.  It is called Aliah AF-AL-PI.

Chinese Consul in Milan, Italy, issues visas for Jews to leave Italy for China.

November 2, 1938
The First Vienna Award. It separates largely Hungarian inhabited territories in southern Slovakia and southern Subcarpathian Rus' from Czechoslovakia while Poland annexes territories from Czechoslovakia in the North.

November 7, 1938
Jewish Polish German, communist, Herschel Grynszpan murders moderate German consular aide Ernst vom Rath in Paris. It provides a pretext for the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews.

November 9-10, 1938
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland.  Thousands of Jews are beaten, hundreds killed; 200 synagogues set fire and destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 171 Jewish homes destroyed; 30,000 German, Austrian and Sudeten Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen), 15,000 from Austria.  680 men and women commit suicide in Austria.

80,000 Jews are allowed to emigrate to England.  The Central British Fund, a relief agency, is very helpful.

The US consuls in Berlin send an extensive report about the Kristallnacht pogrom.  They recommend diplomatic action be taken against Germany. The US Ambassador to Germany Hugh Wilson sends an extensive report about the Kristallnacht pogrom to the US State Department.  Wilson recommends that strong diplomatic action be taken against Germany for the persecution of Jews. President Roosevelt temporarily withdraws the US Ambassador from Germany.

Eventually, many Jews are released from the Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps with proof of emigration, diplomatic exit visas and promises to leave Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.  Many diplomats work to help Jews gain release from the German and Austrian camps.  Among the more notable diplomats are: Alexander Kirk and Raymond Geist of the US consulate in Berlin; Gilberto Bosques of the Mexican legation in Vichy; Dr. Feng Shan Ho of the Chinese consulate in Vienna; Frank Foley of the British legation in Berlin; and R.T. Smallbones of the British consulate in Frankfurt.

The American Friends’ Service Committee (AFSC), founded by the Society of Friends, or Quakers, establishes a refugee division in New York City.  Its purpose is to help German and Austrian Jewish refugees.  The AFSC works closely with the Jewish relief agencies, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the Hebrew Immigration Aid and Sheltering Society (HIAS).  It will also work with the Oeuvre de Secours Aux Enfants (children’s rescue mission) in the rescue of Jews and Jewish children in Paris, Marseilles, Lisbon and Madrid.

November 11, 1938
The Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Representative Council of Jews in Germany) is closed down by the SS.

Werner Otto von Hentig, head of the Oriental Department of the German Foreign Ministry, tries to intervene on behalf of the Jewish community to prevent further actions against Jews.  He intercedes with Ernst von Weizsäcker, Undersecretary of State of the German Foreign Ministry.  Hentig obtains the release of Jews from concentration camps.  Von Hentig submits a report to Hitler and the German Foreign Ministry advocating the creation of a Jewish state.

November 12, 1938
Jews are banned from buying and selling goods under Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life.  The decree forces all Austrian and German Jews to transfer retail businesses to the government or to Aryan ownership.

German Jews are fined one billion Reichsmarks ($400 million) for damages inflicted on them during Kristallnacht.

November 14, 1938
Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith suggests to Secretary of State Hull that the US recall Hugh Wilson, Ambassador to Germany, as a response to “this wholesale inhumanity.”

November 15, 1938
Roosevelt orders labor department to extend visitors’ visas to the US by six months.

Jewish students are expelled from all German public schools.

November 17, 1938
The British ambassador to the United States in Washington meets with the Undersecretary of State, Sumner Wells, and offers to allow 32,500 German Jews to come to Great Britain.  Wells refuses the offer.

Anti-Semitic legislation in Italy is implemented.  It forbids Jewish/non-Jewish marriages, excludes Jews from serving in the armed forces, government or municipal services.  Jews are defined as having one Jewish parent.  Other restrictions include not allowing Jews to own radios, visit resort areas or publish newspapers.  Jewish businessmen are forbidden to have Aryan business partners.

November 18, 1938
In response to the Kristallnacht persecution of Jews, Roosevelt recalls the US Ambassador to Germany, High Wilson, back to Washington “for consultation.”

President Roosevelt announces visitors’ visas for approximately 15,000 refugees will be extended.  This is in response to the Kristallnacht pogroms.

November 21, 1938
British House of Commons strongly objects to the persecution of Jews in Germany.

December 1938
The Mossad for Aliyah Bet [Committee for Illegal Immigration] is established to smuggle Jews out of Europe and illegally into Palestine.  This organization was made up of Palestinian Jews.  They are successful in helping tens of thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust.

Mossad agents Moshe Auerbach, in Vienna, and Pino Ginsberg, in Berlin, organize the escape of thousands of Jews.  Moshe Auerbach gets 20,000 transit visas from an engineer named Karthaus to allow Jews to escape through Yugoslavia.  Karthaus also obtains Mexican visas from Consul General Gilberto Bosques.  Ginsberg is able to save hundreds of Jewish boys and girls from concentration camps with a certificate, signed by him, stating that they would leave Germany.

Every German, Austrian and Czech Jew must carry an identification card.

The Australian government announces it will admit 15,000 Jewish refugees to the country during the next three years.

American consul general in Berlin, Raymond Hermann Geist, warns the Assistant Secretary of State that the US should take measures to rescue Jews who will be condemned to death by the Nazis.

The United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USC), led by Clarence Pickett, of the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), organizes a drive to save the Jewish children in Europe.

December 6, 1938
France and Germany sign nonaggression pact.

In a special conference, Japanese ministers decide Jews residing in Japanese controlled territories would not be discriminated against or molested; they could freely emigrate to these territories if they wished.  This decision officially protects Jews in the Japanese occupied zone in Shanghai.

December 16, 1938
US Commissioner of the Philippines Paul V. McNutt submits proposal to FDR to resettle between 2,000 and 5,000 European refugees in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

December 24, 1938
American Catholic and Protestant leaders sign a Christmas Resolution expressing “horror and shame” regarding the Kristallnacht persecutions of Jews.

Late 1938
Polish Consul General Alexander Lados and Polish diplomat Dr. Julius Kuhl, stationed in Bern, Switzerland, issue Polish visas to Jewish refugees in Austria persecuted after the Nazi Anschluss.

US Vice Consul Stephen B. Vaughan stationed in Breslau, Germany, issues more than 700 visas to German Jews who escape to the Philippines for the duration of the war.  Philippine President Emanuel Quezon agrees to grant Jews asylum in the Philippine commonwealth.

Pio Perucchi and Candido Porta, Swiss Consular Officers in Milan, Italy, issue more than 1,600 illegal and unauthorized visas to Jews who had fled Austria to Italy after the Anschluss.  Some of these Jewish refugees had left Austria with a Chinese visa.  The refugees then enter Switzerland.  Perucchi and Porta are demoted and transferred for their illegal and unauthorized activities.

Chinese Consul in Milan, Italy, issues visas for Jews to leave Italy for China.

18,000 German, Austrian and Polish Jews flood into Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China.  Paul Komor, a former Hungarian Jew, forms relief agency, the International Committee for Granting Relief to European Refugees (IC); helps immigrants with food, housing, clothing, and funds.  He issues passports that allow many Shanghai refugees to escape China.

1939

1939
In early 1939 Hitler proposes an alliance with Poland on German terms, with an expectation of compliance. The Polish government would have to agree to Danzig's incorporation by the Reich and to an extraterritorial highway passage connecting East Prussia with the rest of Germany through the so-called Polish Corridor (an area linking the Polish mainland with the Baltic Sea). Poland would then join an anti-Soviet alliance and coordinate its foreign policy with Germany, thus becoming a client state. The Polish government is alarmed, and a British guarantee of Poland's independence is issued on March 31,1939. Reacting to this act and to Poland's effective rejection of the German demands, Hitler renounces the existing German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact on April 28. [Wikipedia]

Before World War II, 3,300,000 Jews people lived in Poland – ten percent of the general population of some 33 million. Poland was the largest population center of the European Jewish world. [Wikipedia]

Between 1933 and 1939, 14,000 anti-Jewish laws are passed in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

78,000 Jews leave Germany.

100,000 Jews leave Austria by May 1939.  113,824 Jews remain.

By the end of 1939, most young Jews have left Austria.  55,000 to 60,000 Jews, most of them elderly, remain.

650,000 children are moved from London and other major cities to rural areas in England.

300,000 Germans, 90% of them Jewish, apply for visas to the United States.

US admits only 90,000 immigrants in 1939. 

Laurence A. Steinhardt is appointed US Ambassador to the Soviet Union.  This is one of the most sensitive assignments in the US Department of State.  Steinhardt is one of the rare Jewish senior diplomats in the US Foreign Service.  Although Steinhardt has been involved in Zionist movements since the 1920s, he is at first unreceptive to helping Jewish refugees.

George Mandel-Mantello, a Romanian Jew, is appointed Honorary Consul of El Salvador in Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, stationed in Geneva.  He will use this post to issue thousands of protective papers to Jews in Eastern Europe.

Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas appoints Gilberto Bosques Consul General in France.  He maintains consulates in Paris and Marseilles.  Bosques issues thousands of visas to Spanish Republican soldiers who are trapped in southern France.  Eventually, he issues more than 40,000 visas to these anti-Fascist fighters.  Many of them immigrate to Mexico.  Bosques also issues visas to thousands of Austrian and German Jews.  Most of these Jews use the transit visa to escape out of southern France.  1,800 of these Jews eventually immigrate to Mexico.

Great Britain sets up major effort to break the German enigma codes.  It is called Project Ultra.

Jewish groups in the US are pessimistic about the plight of German and Austrian Jews, but few of these organizations realize the extreme danger the Jews will face in the near future.  The Jewish community in the US cannot agree on a unified or effective plan to help German and Austrian Jews.

Moses A. Leavitt returns from Palestine to become the Secretary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  He appoints Joseph J. Schwartz has Assistant Secretary.  The Jewish Joint is virtually the sole representative of American Jews in Europe.  It sets up its European headquarters in Paris.

Between 1929 and 1939, the American Jewish Joint spends $24.4 million for Jewish rescue and relief.  JDC claims to have helped 177,500 German Jews leave greater Germany.

By the end of 1939, Jewish welfare organizations support 52,000 Jews in Germany, mostly elderly.

In the summer of 1939, the American Jewish Joint helps the 900 Jewish passengers from the ship St. Louis who are forced to return to Germany.

The Joint works with the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), set up in London. It also establishes the Coordinating Foundation to provide money to help German Jews emigrate.

The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) is established to raise money for overseas agencies outside of Palestine.  This funds refugee rescue and relief efforts of the American Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.

60 anti-alien proposals are introduced into the US Congress in 1939.  These proposed laws are supported by so-called patriotic and nativist organizations.  American public opinion polls indicate that opinion against changing immigration laws to favor refugees goes from 67% in 1938 to 83% in 1939.

American public opinion against liberalizing immigration for refugees goes from 67% in 1938 to 83% in 1939.

January 1939
The Nazi Foreign Office states that “the ultimate aim of Germany’s Jewish policy [is] the immigration of all Jews living on German territory.”

January 1, 1939
Mandatory identification cards are required of all Jews in Germany and Austria. Jews banned from working with German citizens. All Jewish-owned businesses are permanently closed under the Law Excluding Jews from Commercial Enterprises.

January 10, 1939
Hitler announces to the German Reichstag [Parliament] that a world war will result in “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

January 14, 1939
Pope Pius XI urges foreign diplomats accredited to the Holy See to give as many visas as possible to victims of German and Italian racial persecution.

January 24, 1939
Reinhardt Heydrich is given authority by Göring to “solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation in the way that is most favorable under the conditions prevailing at present.” Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung (Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration) in Berlin is created by Göring and Eichmann.  This is based on the Austrian model.

January 25, 1925
Birth of the Atomic Age. A uranium atom is split for the first time at Columbia University in the United States.

January 27, 1939
Plan Z is ordered by Hitler a major 5-year naval expansion program intended to build a huge German fleet capable of defeating the Royal Navy by 1944.

January 30, 1939
Hitler states in his speech in the Reichstag: “It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole world is oozing sympathy for the poor, tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when in comes to helping them.”

January 31, 1939
Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas promises to protect life and property for Jewish immigrants throughout Mexico.

February 3, 1939
The Finnish people begin a nationwide collection of funds for Jewish German refugees.

February 5, 1939
The President of France rebukes the racist policies of Nazi Germany.

February 9, 1939
The Wagner-Rogers bill is introduced into the US Congress.  It proposes to allow 10,000 refugee children under 15 years of age to be admitted to the US in 1939-1940.  The Non-sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children advocates for this legislation.  The children will be taken care of with private money and assistance.  This bill is supported by Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, Francis Biddle, and former US President Herbert Hoover.  Due to complications, the bill is stalled and eventually put aside.

February 10, 1939
Achille Ratti, Pope Pius XI, dies in Rome at age 79.

March-September 1939
13,600 Viennese Jews are evicted from their apartments.

March 2, 1939
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope Pius XII.

March 11, 1939
A law is passed in Hungary establishing the Hungarian Labor Service.

March 14, 1939
Slovakia (First Slovak Republic) is made into an independent country.  It is ruled by a pro-Nazi government.  Hitler reneges on his promises to respect the integrity of Czechoslovakia by creating the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, giving Germany full control of what remained of Czechoslovakia, including its significant military arsenal that later plays vital role in Germany's invasions of Poland and France. As a result, Czechoslovakia had disappeared.

March 15, 1939
German troops invade Czechoslovakia and occupy Prague.  The Second Czechoslovak Republic is dissolved. Hitler incorporates Bohemia and Moravia into the Third Reich as a “Protectorate.”  Another 120,000 Jews come under Hitler’s control.  A total of 350,000 Jews are trapped in the Nazi web.

March 16, 1939
“Adolf Hitler gives Hungary permission to occupy the remainder of Carpathian Rus' This moves Hungary's territory northward, up to the Polish border. It restores a historic Hungarian–Polish border.  In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, the Polish government and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers escape into Hungary and Romania and from there go on to France and to French-mandated Syria.

March 17, 1939
A census determining the degree of Jewishness is taken of Austrian Jews.  Jews who have three or four Jewish grandparents are counted as a full Jew.  With two Jewish grandparents, they are categorized as “part Jew, grade I.”  With one Jewish grandparent, “part Jew, grade II.”  This census targets Jews for future arrests and deportations.

March 22, 1939
Adolph Hitler demands the return of the Free City of Danzig to Germany.

March 22, 1939
Germany annexes Memel, Lithuania, and forces Lithuania to sign Treaty of Acceptance.

March 28-29, 1939
Spanish Republican government surrenders to General Francisco Franco in Madrid, ending the Spanish Civil War.

March 1939
Consul Sugihara opens a Japanese consulate in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania.  His primary mission is as a military intelligence officer observing Russian troop movements.

March 31, 1939
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the French President Edouard Daladier declare that Britain and France will go to war with Germany if Poland is attacked.

April 1939
After the Spanish Civil War ends, thousands of anti-Franco Republican soldiers flee to southern France. 

The US recognizes Franco’s Nationalist government.

First concentration camp is established in France.  It is designed to hold thousands of Spanish Republican soldiers who are fleeing into southern France.

April 1, 1939
The Spanish Civil War ends with a Nationalist victory. Spain is now a dictatorship with Francisco Franco as the head of the government.

April 3, 1939
German government declares Danzig, Poland, a free city.  This is part of a strategic plan for the future invasion and war with Poland.

Hitler orders the German military to start strategic planning for Fall Weiss (“Case White”). It is the codename for the attack on Poland, planned to be launched on August 25, 1939. The German military High Command finalizes its operational on June 15, 1939. The invasion is begun on September 1, precipitating World War II.

April 7, 1939
Italy invades and occupies Albania.  Albanian king flees to Greece.

Great Britain reinstates conscription.

Spain joins Anti-Comminturn Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan.

April 8, 1939
Chinese Consul General Ho is censured by his own government and a demerit entered into his records for disobeying orders and for continuing to issue thousands of visas to Austrian Jewish refugees in Vienna.

April 10, 1939
A retroactive vote approves Germany’s annexation of Austria.

April 15, 1939
President Roosevelt requests Hitler to respect the independence and sovereignty of 31 independent European nations.  Hitler soon mocks this request in a speech at the Reichstag.

April 27, 1939
England reinstitutes draft into its armed forces.

Hitler nullifies 1935 naval treaty (Anglo-German Naval Agreement) and the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression with England.

April 28, 1939
Great Britain enacts legislation punishing crews and passengers of illegal immigrant ships to Palestine.

May 1939
US Consul General in Berlin Raymond Hermann Geist sends warning to the US Secretary of State that Jews are in danger.  Geist has been issuing visas to help Germany Jews escape Germany.

May 3, 1939
Stalin replaces his western-oriented foreign minister Maxim Litvinov with Vyacheslav Molotov. Germany begins negotiations with the Soviets, proposing that Eastern Europe be divided between the two powers. Stalin views this as an opportunity both for Soviet territorial expansion and temporary peace with Germany.

Antisemitic laws are enacted in Hungary.  Jews are forbidden in the professions of banking, teaching, law and serving in the legislature.

May 5, 1939
A second anti-Jewish law is enacted in Hungary.  It defines who is a Jew and severely restricts Jewish participation in the Hungarian economy.

May 8, 1939
Franco’s Spain withdraws from the League of Nations.

May 11, 1939
Soviet–Japanese border conflicts: The Battle of Khalkhin Gol begins with Japan and Manchukuo against the Soviet Union and Mongolia. The battle ends in Soviet victory on September 16, influencing the Japanese not to seek further conflict with the Soviets, but to turn towards the Pacific holdings of the Euro-American powers instead. [Wikipedia]

May 15, 1939
Ravensbrück is established as a concentration camp for women in Germany.  It is located 50 miles north of Berlin. Between 1939 and 1945, some 130,000 to 132,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system. About 50,000 of them perished.

May 17, 1939
White Paper (MacDonald White Paper) of 1939: The British government restricts Jewish immigration to Palestine.  As of April, only 75,000 Jewish immigrants will be allowed to enter Palestine in the next 5 years.  It also restricts the ability of Jews to purchase and own land in Palestine.

Scandinavian countries Sweden, Norway, and Finland reject Germany's offer of non-aggression pacts.

May 22, 1939
Italy and Germany sign a ten-year “Pact of Steel” political and military alliance.

July 10, 1939
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reaffirms support for Poland and makes it clear that Britain did not view Free City of Danzig as being an internal German-Polish affair and would intervene on behalf of Poland if hostilities broke out between the two countries. [Wikipedia]

July 13, 1939
British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald announces in the House of Commons that illegal immigrants to Palestine will be deducted from the established White Paper quotas.

July 26, 1939
Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office of Jewish Emigration) is established in Prague by Adolph Eichmann.  This office is to force Jews to emigrate by expropriating their assets and removing all of their civil rights. 

July 30, 1939
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain writes “No doubt Jews aren’t a lovable people; I don’t care about them myself.  But that is not sufficient to explain the pogroms.”  This statement reflects many European leaders’ attitudes toward Jews and refugee problems.

August 2, 1939
German physicist and Nobel prize winner Albert Einstein, who has recently immigrated to the US, writes to President Roosevelt about developing an atomic bomb for the United States. This letter prompts action by Roosevelt results in the Manhattan Project.

August 11, 1939
Eichmann demands 70,000 Jews leave Czechoslovakia within one year.  All Jewish property in Czechoslovakia is ordered registered.  Six Jewish communities are dissolved, and 50 synagogues closed.

August 23, 1939
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact).  Germany and the USSR agree not to attack each other.  According to this pact, in the event of war, Hitler gives Stalin Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and eastern Poland, almost half of the country.  On September 1, 1939. Germany invades Poland. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orders the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire. After the invasions, the new border between the two countries is confirmed by the supplementary protocol of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The pact is terminated on June 22, 1941, when Germany invades the Soviet Union.

August 25, 1939
Great Britain and Poland sign an Anglo-Polish Alliance.  England agrees to defend Poland if it is attacked. Because of the pact's signing, Hitler postponed his planned invasion of Poland from August 26 until September 1, 1939.

August 30, 1939
A French government memorandum reads: “All foreign nationals from territories belonging to the enemy must be brought together in special center.”  This memorandum is in response to the flood of German, Austrian, Czech and Spanish refugees entering France.

Summer 1939
Ruth Kleiger, a Mossad agent operating in Romania, is able to help 1,400 Jews escape to Palestine.

Fall 1939
The French government opens numerous concentration camps throughout France to house the influx of refugees entering the country.  Thousands of Jews and refugee Spanish Republican soldiers are interned in the camps.  Eventually, they become deportation centers to the Nazi death camps.

Fall 1939
Roosevelt calls Congress into special session, urges repeal of the arms embargo mandated by the Neutrality Act of 1937.

The British cabinet allows 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia into Britain.  This is later known as the Kindertransport.  They come through the efforts of Jewish and non-Jewish relief agencies.  The Central British Fund for German Jewry is particularly helpful.  Ninety percent of these children never see their parents again.

September 1939
The Gestapo orders the Jewish community in Vienna to produce an alphabetical list of all residents in the city.

The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RVE) intensifies its efforts to help Jews leave Germany.

Before World War II, 3,300,000 Jewish people lived in Poland – ten percent of the general population of some 33 million. Poland was the center of the European Jewish world.

Swiss Consul Carl Lutz intervenes on behalf of 2,500 German nationals in Palestine who were being deported as enemy aliens by the British.

September 1, 1939
Germany invades Poland.  World War II begins.  This is the first major Blitzkrieg (lightening war) of World War II.  It is devastatingly effective.  58 German divisions including 9 Panzer divisions with 1,400 aircraft invade on three fronts.  Poland’s soldiers are outnumbered three to one by Germany’s 1.5 million men.  Poland collapses in three weeks. [Wikipedia]

“The German "concept of annihilation" (Vernichtungsgedanke) that later evolves into the Blitzkrieg ("lightning war") enables the rapid advance of Panzer (armored) divisions, dive bombing, which resulted in the killing of large numbers of refugees crowding the transportation facilities, and aerial bombing of undefended cities. Deliberate bombing of civilians took place on a massive scale from the first day of the war. The German forces, ordered by Hitler to act with the harshest cruelty, massively engaging in murder of Polish civilians. [Wikipedia]

The number of Jews in Poland on September 1, 1939, amount to about 3,474,000 people. There are 1,926 Jewish communities across the country. One hundred thirty thousand soldiers of Jewish descent. 2,212,000 Polish Jews come under direct Hitler’s control. As of September 1, 1939 (approximately 10% of the total population) primarily centered in large and smaller cities: 77% live in cities and 23% in the villages. They make up about 50%, and in some cases even 70% of the population of smaller towns, especially in Eastern Poland. Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Łódź numbers about 233,000, roughly one-third of the city’s population. The city of Lwów (now in Ukraine) has the third-largest Jewish population in Poland, numbering 110,000 in 1939 (42%). Wilno (now in Lithuania) has a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total. In 1938, Kraków's Jewish population numbers over 60,000, or about 25% of the city's total population. In 1939 there are 375,000 Jews in Warsaw or one-third of the city's population. Only New York City had more Jewish residents than Warsaw. During the September Campaign some 20,000 Jewish civilians and 32,216 Jewish soldiers are killed, 61,000 are taken prisoner by the Germans; the most did not survive. The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who are released ultimately are sent to Nazi ghettos and labor camps and suffer the same fate as other Jewish civilians in the Holocaust in Poland. Several hundred synagogues were blown up or burned by the Germans, who often force the Jews to do it themselves. The Germans turn the synagogues into factories, theaters, or prisons. By 1945, almost all the synagogues in Poland are destroyed. [Wikipedia]

The first German anti-Jewish measures involve a policy of expelling Jews from Polish territories annexed by Germany. The westernmost provinces, of Greater Poland and Pomerelia, turn into new German Reichsgaue named Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland, with the intent to completely Germanize them through settler colonization (Lebensraum-living space). Annexed directly to the new Warthegau district, the city of Łódź absorbs an initial influx of 40,000 Polish Jews forced out of surrounding areas. 204,000 Jews pass through the ghetto in Łódź. They were to be expelled to the Generalgouvernement.

During the September Campaign some 20,000 Jewish civilians and 32,216 Jewish soldiers were killed, while 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive.

Polish Jews later serve in almost all Polish units during the World War II. Many are killed or wounded, and many are decorated for their bravery and service. Jews fight with the Polish Armed Forces in the West, in the Soviet Polish People's Army as well as in several underground organizations and as part of Polish partisan units or Jewish partisan units. [Wikipedia]

Between 5,000 and 10,000 Polish Jews in Germany are arrested and put into concentration camps.  Few survive.

Aktion [operation] Tannenberg is started.  Einsatzgruppen [special troops] are sent to murder Jews, Polish soldiers, political leaders, and intellectuals in Poland.  According to some records, nearly 500,000 Polish Jews and other civilians are killed.

The British and French Armies mobilize but do nothing to intervene in the attack on the West.  They lose an important opportunity to stop German aggression.

A euthanasia program to kill physically and mentally handicapped people in Germany begins.  It is called Operation T-4.  Hitler authorizes doctors to kill mentally and physically disabled persons.

The French government enacts anti-Jewish measures against the Jews in Paris.

The French government arrests German and Austrian nationals who have landed in French ports but who are bound for the western hemisphere.  Most of these are Jews fleeing the Nazis.  Most are interned in Les Milles detention camp.

Night curfew for Jews in Germany is enforced.

By the outbreak of war, nearly 70% or 185,246 Jews in Austria have emigrated.  Many go to southern France.

The Relief Committee for the War-Stricken Jewish Population (RELICO) is established in Geneva by the World Jewish Congress (WJC).  It is headed by Dr. Abraham Silberschein.  RELICO obtains and distributes more than 10,000 passports and visas through foreign consulates and representatives throughout Europe.

Two American relief agencies help Polish Jews after the German invasion.  They are the American Red Cross, headed by William MacDonald, and the Commission for Polish Relief, led by John Hartigan and Columba Murray.  These groups lead to the establishment of the Jüdishe Soziale Selbsthilfe (JSS; Jewish Self-Help), supported by the JDC.

September 2, 1939
Stutthof concentration camp is established.

The Jewish Joint announces that the Central Committee has been established in Warsaw, Poland.

September 3, 1939
In response to the German invasion of Poland, France, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand officially declare war on Germany.  Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain forms a wartime cabinet with Winston Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty.

Although the UK and France declared war on Germany, little movement takes place on the western front. The offensive in the West that the Poles understood they were promised did not materialize. The Polish government is initially not fully aware of the degree of the country's isolation and the hopelessness of its situation. [Wikipedia]

The German armored corps quickly thwart all attempts of organized resistance and the Polish border defenses are broken along all the axes of attack. Crowds of civilian refugees fleeing to the east blocked roads and bridges. The Germans are also able to circumvent concentrations of the Polish military and arrive in the rear of Polish units. [Wikipedia]

September 4, 1939
Germans take Częstochowa, Poland.

All Austrian and German male refugees residing in France between the ages of 17 and 50 years are ordered to report for internment.

September 8, 1939
German armored units reached the Wola district and south-western suburbs of the city of Warsaw. Despite German radio broadcasts claiming to have captured Warsaw, the initial enemy attack was repelled and soon afterwards Warsaw was placed under siege.

The Ciepielów massacre was one of the largest and most documented war crimes of the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland. On that day, the forest near Ciepielów was the site of a mass murder of 250 Polish prisoners of war from the Polish Upper Silesian 74th Infantry Regiment. The massacre was carried out by soldiers from the German Wehrmacht.

September 9, 1939
All radios are confiscated from Jews in Germany.

In Warsaw, Major Włodarkiewicz, Second Lieutenant Pilecki, Second Lieutenant Jerzy Maringe, Jerzy Skoczyński, and brothers Jan and Stanisław Dangel founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. TAP was based on Christian values. From 25 November 1939 until May 1940, Pilecki was TAP's inspector and chief of staff; from August 1940, he headed its 1st branch (organization and mobilization).

September 10, 1939
Germany occupies and controls most of Western Poland.

September 12, 1939
The Luftwaffe begins bombing Warsaw.

September 13, 1939
On September 13, the town of Frampol, Poland with a population of 4,000 is bombed by the German bombers of Luftwaffe. The town had no military value, and the bombing was seen as a practice run.

September 17, 1939
Soviet Army invades and occupies Poland’s eastern section.  The army enters virtually unopposed.  In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, the Soviet Union invades Poland from the east. By October 1939, the Second Polish Republic is split in half between two totalitarian powers. Germany occupies 48.4 percent of western and central Poland. [Wikipedia]

Racial policy of Nazi Germany regards Poles as "sub-human" and Polish Jews beneath that category, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence. One aspect of German foreign policy in occupied Poland is to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. The Soviet annexation is accompanied by the widespread arrests of government officials, police, military personnel, border guards, teachers, priests, judges etc. The Soviet NKVD massacres prisoners and deports 320,000 Polish nationals to the Soviet interior and the Gulag slave labor camps where, as a result of the terrible conditions, about half of them die before the end of war. [Wikipedia]

The Nazi plan for Polish Jews is one of concentration, isolation, and eventually total annihilation in the Holocaust also known as the Shoah. Similar policy measures toward the Polish Catholic majority focuses on the murder or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders as well as the Germanization of the annexed lands which include a program to resettle ethnic Germans from the Baltic states and other regions onto farms, ventures and homes formerly owned by the expelled Poles including Polish Jews. The response of the Polish majority to the Jewish Holocaust covers an extremely wide spectrum, often ranging from acts of altruism at the risk of endangering their own and their families lives, through compassion, to passivity, indifference, blackmail, and denunciation. Polish rescuers faced threats from unsympathetic neighbors, the Polish-German Volksdeutsche, the ethnic Ukrainian pro-Nazis, as well as blackmailers called szmalcowniks, along with the Jewish collaborators from Żagiew and Group 13. The Catholic rescuers of Jews are betrayed under duress by the Jews in hiding following capture by the German Order Police battalions and the Gestapo, which resulted in the Nazi murder of the entire networks of Polish helpers. [Wikipedia]

Hundreds of Jews trapped in the German section escape behind Soviet lines.  Eventually, between 300,000-400,000 Jewish refugees flee.  Though they are treated badly by the Soviet government, many survive the war. Eventually, more than one million Jews escape from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union.  Fifty percent of them enter the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).  Most of these Jews survive the war. [Wikipedia]

Wehrmacht reaches the city of Brest-Litovsk on the Polish/Soviet border.

September 18, 1939
The Wehrmacht occupies Lublin.  Jews are required to wear a yellow star and work in forced labor battalions.  Synagogues are destroyed and religious services banned.

September 19, 1939
Soviet army occupies Vilna, Lithuania.

The Central Jewish Committee in Warsaw takes the name Koordinatzie-Komitet (KK).  Lieb Neustadt becomes Chairman.  His Secretary is Dr. Emmanuel Ringelblum, a member of the JDC.  The KK begins supplying relief and shelter for Warsaw Jews.

”Witold Pilecki of the Secret Polish Army is one of 2,000 men arrested by Germans. He used the identity documents of Tomasz Serafiński, who had been mistakenly assumed to be dead. He is deported to Auschwitz where, under Serafiński's name, he was assigned prisoner number 4859. In autumn 1941 he was promoted by his superiors to lieutenant. While working at Auschwitz, Pilecki organized an underground Military Organization (ZOW). Its tasks were to better inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to its members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack. ZOW was organized as secret cells, each of five members.
“While at Auschwitz, Pilecki secretly wrote reports and sent them to Home Army headquarters. The first dispatch in October 1940, described the camp and the ongoing murder of inmates thru starvation and brutal punishments; it is used as the basis of a Home Army report on "The Terror and Lawlessness of the Occupiers." Further dispatches of Pilecki's are also smuggled out by prisoners who escape from Auschwitz. The reports' purpose may have been to get the Home Army command's permission for ZOW to stage an uprising to liberate the camp; however, no such response came from the Home Army.” [Wikipedia]

September 21, 1939
Chiefs of Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with German civil and military leaders, are ordered to establish Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland.  The aim of the ghettos is to segregate Jews from Polish society.  The plan is to murder Jews slowly by starvation and disease, to kill them by shooting them on the spot, and eventually to deport them.

September 25, 1939
In Austria, a night curfew is enforced for Jews.

September 27, 1939
Warsaw surrenders after three days of intense bombardment by the Luftwaffe. Approximately 140,000 Polish troops left the city and were taken as prisoners of war.

The Germans move large numbers of Jews away from more than 100 areas in western Poland.

The Reichssicherheitshauptamt [Reich Security Main Office; RSHA] is established.  This office will be one of the main instruments for the deportation and murder of millions of Jews and others throughout Europe.

September 28, 1939
After Warsaw surrenders Germany and the Soviet Union partition Poland.  German forces occupy Warsaw.

September 29, 1939
Germany and the Soviet Union divide up Poland; German forces occupy Warsaw. Germany gains the areas of Lublin Province and part of Warsaw Province while the Soviets gain Lithuania. A German–Soviet Frontier Treaty is signed shortly after. The two states continue trading, undermining the British blockade of Germany. Jews are seized by Germans for forced labor throughout Poland.  Jewish schools are shut down.

End of September 1939
By September 1939, nearly 70% of the 185,246 Jews in Austria (approximately 130,000 Jews) had emigrated.

Between September 1939 and early 1941, 12,000 Jews escape Europe and enter Palestine illegally.

October 1939
“Between October 1939 and July 1942, a system of ghettos is imposed for the confinement of Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto is the largest in all of World War II, with 380,000 people crammed into an area of 1.3 sq mi (3.4 km2). The Łódź Ghetto is the second largest, holding about 160,000 prisoners. Other large Jewish ghettos in leading Polish cities include Białystok Ghetto in Białystok, Częstochowa Ghetto, Kielce Ghetto, Kraków Ghetto in Kraków, Lublin Ghetto, Lwów Ghetto in present-day Lviv, Stanisławów Ghetto also in present-day Ukraine, Brześć Ghetto in present-day Belarus, and Radom Ghetto among others. Ghettos are also established in hundreds of smaller settlements and villages around Poland. The overcrowding, dirt, lice, lethal epidemics such as typhoid and hunger all result in countless deaths.
“Once the ghettos are sealed off, death by starvation and disease became rampant, alleviated only by the smuggling of food and medicine by Polish gentile volunteers, in what was described by Ringelblum as "one of the finest pages in the history between the two peoples". In Warsaw, up to 80 percent of food consumed in the Ghetto was brought in illegally. The food stamps introduced by the Germans, provide only 9 percent of the calories necessary for survival. In the two and a half years between November 1940 and May 1943, 100,000 Jews die in the Warsaw Ghetto of starvation and disease; and around 40,000 in the Łódź Ghetto in the four-years between May 1940 and August 1944. By the end of 1941, most ghettoized Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for further bulk food deliveries.
“During the occupation of Poland, the Germans use various laws to separate ethnic Poles from Jews. In the ghettos, the population is separated by putting non-Jewish Poles into the "Aryan Side" and the Polish Jews into the "Jewish Side". Poles found giving help to a Jewish Pole is subject to the death penalty. Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops, and if they did, they were subject to execution. Many Jews try to escape from the ghettos in the hope of finding a place to hide outside of it, or of joining the partisan units. When this proved difficult escapees often return to the ghetto on their own. If caught, Germans would murder the escapees and leave their bodies in public view. Despite these terror tactics, attempts at escape from ghettos continue until their liquidation.” [Wikipedia]

Many Poles are expelled from the annexed lands in order to make room for German colonizers. Only those Poles who had been selected for Germanization, approximately 1.7 million including thousands of children who had been taken from their parents, are permitted to remain, and if they resist they are to be sent to concentration camps.  

By the end of 1940, at least 325,000 Poles from occupied lands are forced to abandon their property and are forcibly resettled in the General Government. There are numerous fatalities among the very young and very old, many of whom either perished en route or perished in makeshift transit camps. The expulsions continue in 1941, with another 45,000 Poles forced to move eastwards. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the expulsions slowed down, as more and more trains were diverted for military logistics. In late 1942 and 1943, large-scale expulsions take place in the General Government, affecting at least 110,000 Poles in the Zamość–Lublin region. Tens of thousands of were  sent to Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Majdanek concentration camps. By 1942, the number of new German arrivals in pre-war Poland had reached two million.

US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes submits a proposal to US President Roosevelt to allow European Jews to immigrate to the Territory of Alaska or the Virgin Islands.  Ickes is sympathetic to the plight of Jewish refugees. Roosevelt tentatively agrees to these plans, but severely limits the quota of Jews to Alaska.  These plans are never implemented.

Hitler extends power of doctors to kill mentally and physically disabled persons.

October 1, 1939
The Wehrmacht enters Warsaw, which begins a period of German occupation that lasts until the devastating Warsaw Uprising and later until January 17, 1945, when German troops abandon the city due to the advance of Soviet forces.

Around 18,000 civilians of Warsaw are killed during the siege.

As a result of the air bombardments, 10% of the city's buildings are entirely destroyed and further 40% are heavily damaged.

The Polish government in exile is established in Paris, France.  After the invasion and occupation of France, it moves to London, England.

October 3, 1939
The US declares neutrality in the European war.

October 4-5, 1939
Poland capitulates to Germany. 

October 7, 1939
Eichmann is ordered to prepare deportation of Jews from Vienna to the Lublin district.

October 10, 1939
Germany creates Generalgovernment headed by Hans Frank in German-occupied Poland.  Its headquarters are in Krakow.  The soon-to-be-established murder camps will be located in this area.

October 12, 1939
Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland to the so-called Lublin Reserve.

October 16, 1939
The Intergovernmental Committee meets in Washington to discuss the refugee crisis.  FDR calls for a major plan to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe into a “supplemental national home.” A number of major proposals are submitted to Roosevelt.  Because of Roosevelt’s indifference and lack of attention, no plan is adopted.

October 20, 1939
First deportation of Austrian Jews from Vienna to Poland.  In one month, 1,672 Jews arrive in Lublin.

October 26, 1939
The first deportation of 600 Czech Jews is sent to Poland.  Soon, 10,000-20,000 Czech Jews are expelled from Moravska-Ostrava.

Hans Frank issues an order that forces all Jews between 14 and 60 into mandatory labor.

October 28, 1939
Lithuanian army enters Vilna.  Lithuanians instigate a pogrom against Jews that lasts three days.

October 29, 1939
Warsaw Judenrat is ordered to conduct census of Jews.

October 30, 1939
Himmler orders Jews to be removed from the rural areas of Western Poland.  Hundreds of Jewish communities are dispersed and destroyed forever.

A report critical of the treatment of Jews in concentration camps is released by the British government.

November 1939
US passes the Neutrality Act of 1939.  US repeals arms embargo.

Plot to overthrow Hitler planned by the German generals at Zossen, Germany, is never implemented.

November 4, 1939
Roosevelt signs bill enabling belligerent nations to purchase war material from the US on a cash and carry basis.  Due to the British Naval blockade, only Britain and France are able to purchase materials.

November 6, 1939
Sonderaktion Krakau terror operation by Nazis against university professors, targeting Poland's intellectual class. It is carried out as part of the much broader action plan, the Intelligenzaktion, to eradicate the Polish intellectual elite especially in those centers (such as Kraków) that are intended by the Germans to become culturally German. 184 persons are arrested and jailed. On November 27, 1939, at night, they are loaded onto a train to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and in March 1940, to Dachau concentration camp.

November 8, 1939
Plot to kill Hitler by using a bomb at Bürgerbraukeller in Munich.

November 11, 1939
Portuguese Foreign Ministry issues foreign policy statement that Jews and other refugees “expelled from countries of their nationality from whence they came” were forbidden entry into Portugal.

November 12, 1939
All the Jews from the newly established area of Warthegau, Poland, are to be removed.

Deportation of the Jews from Lodz, Poland, begins.

November 15, 1939
The Fideikommussirat (The Estate Commission) is established by German occupation authorities in Poland to confiscate Jewish property.

November 23, 1939
The Nazis order Polish Jews in the occupied area of the General Government to wear a yellow Star of David.  Jewish businesses must also be marked with a yellow star.

November 28, 1939
A law to establish Jewish councils, called Judenräte, in the Nazi general government in Poland, is enacted.  These councils convey German occupation orders to the Jewish community.

November 29, 1939
SS chief Himmler signs order to kill Jews who do not report to deportation.

November 30, 1939
Soviet Union invades Finland.  War lasts until March 13, 1940.

December 1939
By the end of 1939, approximately 1.8-1.9 million Jews live in German occupied Poland.  610,000 live in Northwest Poland.  360,000 live in the Warsaw area.  Approximately 1.3 million Jews reside in the Russian occupied area of Eastern Poland.

4,000 Jews are leaving Austria monthly.  A Nazi report declares there are too many Jews remaining in Vienna and in Austria.

FDR appoints his friend Myron C. Taylor as personal representative to the Vatican.  Roosevelt hopes to move the Vatican toward the rescue of refugees.

December 1, 1939
Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants (Delegazione per l'Assistenza degli Emigranti Ebrei) or DELASEM, is founded. It is an Italian and Jewish resistance organization that worked in Italy between 1939 and 1947.

December 2, 1939
Initiation of poison gas vans to murder mental patients in Germany.

December 5-6, 1939
Germans seize Jewish property in Poland.  This includes homes, businesses and bank accounts.

December 14, 1939
Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations following their invasion and occupation of Poland.

December 18, 1939
Food rations for Jews living in Germany are significantly reduced.

1940

1940
President Roosevelt designates Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to be in charge of Jewish immigration policies.  Long and his associates in the State Department implement anti-Jewish immigration policies.  This policy lasts until the creation of the War Refugee Board in January 1944.

French Premier Edouard Daladier resigns.  He is succeeded by Paul Reynaud.  Reynaud appoints World War I French hero Marshal Pétain as the Vichy Premier.

Six “euthanasia centers” are established throughout Germany.  They murder Jews, handicapped, mentally ill and elderly persons.  The use of gas chambers and poison gas is established in these centers.

13,000 Jews successfully emigrate from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.  55,000 Jews remain in Austria.  Since 1933, more than 300,000+ Jews have left the Old Reich and Greater Reich.

Estonia is occupied by the Soviet Union.

The Ústredna Zidov (Jewish Center) is established in Slovakia.  Jewish community leader Gisi Fleischmann is appointed its head of Alia (immigration department).

Joseph J. Schwartz is appointed head of the American Jewish Joint in Europe, with headquarters in Paris.  JDC’s operation is soon transferred to Brussels, Belgium.  Moses Leavitt returns to the Jewish Joint.

Great Britain’s Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha, a Jew, resigns his office under pressure.  This is largely due to antisemitic sentiment among high British officials.

HICEM aids 10,500 refugees leaving Poland between 1940 and 1942. HICEM establishes an affiliate organization in Belgium called BELHICEM.  It is led by Alice R. Emanuel.  Jewish emigration from Allied territory is supervised by HICEM.

January 1940
First gassing of handicapped and mental patients in German asylums.  More than 70,000 people are murdered before protests by church leaders bring about an end to the euthanasia program.  However, this operation continues secretly until the end of the war.

President Roosevelt appoints Breckinridge Long as Assistant Secretary of State for Special Problems.  Long supervises 23 of the 42 divisions of the State Department.  Among his duties is overseeing the visa section, civilian internees, overseas relief, prisoners of war, immigration and refugee policies.  From the outset of his appointment, Long is opposed to helping refugees escape Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.  Long claims that refugees entering the country pose a major security risk for the United States.  This, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Long and his associates in the State Department implement anti-Jewish immigration policies.  This policy lasts until the creation of the War Refugee Board in January 1944.  Further, Long exploits divisions among American Jewish groups.  He states in his diary, “there is no cohesion, nor any sympathetic collaboration—rather rivalry, jealousy and antagonism…” 

Roosevelt submits a list of 200 people to the State Department to be given special consideration, i.e., emergency visas.

Numerous refugee committees are established in the US.  These committees represent refugee scholars, writers, artists, musicians, physicians, labor leaders etc. Among these groups are the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Scholars (University in Exile).  Eventually, hundreds of intellectuals will be placed in universities, colleges, and other institutions throughout the US.  Besides Jewish committees, numerous other groups are established, representing Protestants, Catholics, Spanish loyalists from the Spanish Civil War, political, social and labor groups.

January 1, 1940
Stalin designated Time magazine’s person of the year for 1939. In Allied countries, Stalin is increasingly depicted in a positive light during the war.

January 5, 1940
Great Britain announces that German and Austrian Jews will not be allowed into Palestine because they are considered “enemy aliens.” 

Curfew is imposed for Jews in the area of the General Government in Poland.  Jews are forbidden to change residences.

January 20, 1940
Jewish Council in Lublin is established.

January 24, 1940
Jews must register all property in the area of the General Government in Poland.

January 31, 1940
By the end of January 1940, 20,000 Jews from Lodz are deported.

February 1940
10,000 Jews are deported from Vienna to Lublin.

In Germany, clothing coupons are taken from Jews.

The Alaskan Development Bill is introduced into the US Congress as a possible refuge for German, Austrian and Czech Jews.  It is introduced by Senator William H. King and congressman Frank Havenner.  It is strongly supported by US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.  It is opposed by Assistant US Secretary of State Sumner Wells.  The proposal is also opposed by government representatives and special interest groups in Alaska.  FDR opposes the idea and the bill never gets out of committee.

February 2, 1940
New law requires that Jews leaving Germany must pay large tax.

February 8, 1940
Lodz ghetto is established in Poland.

February 12-13, 1940
First deportation of Jews from Germany.

February 16 and 23, 1940
Assistant Secretary of State Adolph A. Berle, Jr., tries to persuade US Secretary of State Cordell Hull to protest treatment of Jews in Poland.  This request is based on a report by the Chargé in Warsaw, Alexander Kirk. 

March 5, 1940
The Central Immigration Office, under Adolf Eichmann, maintains complete control of all Jews in Czechoslovakia.

March 12, 1940
Juliusz Kühl is employed in the Legation of Poland to Switzerland and Liechtenstein as an auxiliary employee. He is tasked with working with Polish refugees coming in massive numbers from occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands, most of whom were Jews and Poles of Jewish descent escaping from Nazi persecution.

The Russian-Finnish War ends.  Finland and Russia sign peace treaty.

April 1940
”In Switzerland the Polish Legation is at Elfenstrasse in the diplomatic district of Kirchenfeld in Bern. There is another building housing a Consular Section, at Thunstrasse.  In April 1940, the Legation is headed by Aleksander Ładoś. When he took up the post in Bern, the three other diplomats were stationed there: Stefan Ryniewicz from 1938, and Juliusz Kühl and Konstanty Rokicki from 1939. Rokicki and Ryniewicz knew each other from their previous posting in Riga, Latvia (1934–36) and were associates. They organized the so called “Ładoś Group.” It had a semi-informal structure and connections between its members. It is Konstanty Rokicki who is involved in acquiring blank passports and filling them out; Abraham Silberschein and Chaim Yisroel Eiss and Alfred Schwarzbaum (a Jewish rescue activist refugee from Bedzin. They deal with smuggling passports, photos and personal data between Bern and German-occupied Europe and provide a significant part of the financing of the rescue operation. The role of Aleksander Ładoś and Stefan Ryniewicz is to ensure diplomatic cover among the Bernese Group and prevent Swiss authorities from ending the rescue operation. The idea of producing false passports was conceived in early 1940.  Several dozen Paraguayan documents are produced with a plan to enable Jews from the areas occupied by the Soviet Union to escape through Japan. The legation identifies an honorary consul of Paraguay, a Bernese notary Rudolf Hügli, who is ready to sell blank passports and buys about 30 of them. It is not known who filled them out and how they were sent to the Soviet Union. Initially, it was assumed that such activities could be carried out individually. Funds to acquire the documents were raised mostly by World Jewish Congress represented by Abraham Silberschein and Agudath Yisrael and the leader of its Swiss branch Chaim Eiss.” [Wikipedia]

April 3, 1940
Winston Churchill is appointed Chairman of the British government’s Military Committee.

April 8, 1940
Soviet NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) massacres 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, Russia the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere.  It is one of the earliest mass murders of prisoners of war during World War II. It is called the Katyn massacre.

April 9, 1940
Germany invades and occupies Denmark and Norway.  Anti-Jewish measures are immediately applied by Nazi government.

April 10-14, 1940
British and German naval forces fight major battle off the Norwegian port of Narvik.  Ten German destroyers are sunk, greatly weakening Germany’s naval capabilities.

April 14-17, 1940
British Army lands in Namos and Andolsnes, Norway, to help Norway repel the German invasion.  This operation will soon fail.

April 15, 1940
The British begin to break the German enigma cipher codes.

April 25, 1940
Slovak parliament enacts law to confiscate Jewish property.

May 1940
Consul General Ho is transferred from Vienna.  Under Ho’s watch, the Chinese Consulate in Vienna had issued an average of 500 visas a month for the two years following the Anschluss.  Chinese consulate closed the following year.

May 10, 1940
Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.  136 German divisions participate in the invasion.  Germans enforce anti-Jewish measures in each area.  In the wake of the German invasions, more than 8 million persons are displaced all over Europe.  In Belgium, there are between 85,000 and 90,000 Jews, among whom 30,000 are refugees.  In Holland, there are 140,000 Jews.  110,000 are native Dutch Jews, and 30,000 are refugees from Germany and Austria.  In Luxembourg, the Jewish population is 3,500, many of whom are German and Austrian refugees.

Approximately one million Polish citizens are members of the country's German minority. Following the 1939 invasion, an additional 1,180,000 German-speakers come to occupied Poland, from the Reich (Reichsdeutsche) or (Volksdeutsche going "Heim ins Reich") from the east. Many hundreds of ethnically German men in Poland joined the Nazi Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz as well as Sonderdienst formations launched in May 1940 by Nazi Gauleiter Hans Frank in occupied Kraków. [Wikipedia]

The HICEM office in Belgium is evacuated.

Neville Chamberlain resigns as Prime Minister of Great Britain due to the failure of the Norway expedition.  Winston Churchill becomes new Prime Minister.  Lord Halifax is appointed Foreign Secretary.

May 12, 1940
Germany invades France.

May 13, 1940
Churchill gives “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech in the House of Commons.

May 14, 1940
Luftwaffe bombs Rotterdam, Holland, heavily damaging the city.  Many civilians are killed.

May 15, 1940
The Netherlands surrenders to Germany.  Thousands of German, Austrian and Czech Jews who sought refuge in Holland are now trapped.

May 16, 1940
German Governor-General Hans Frank orders AB-Aktion (extraordinary operation pacification) to begin in Poland.  7,000 Polish leaders are murdered, along with 30,000 others. This is a second stage of the Nazi German campaign of violence aimed to eliminate the intellectuals and the upper classes of the Second Polish Republic across the territories slated for eventual annexation. Most of the killings were arranged in a form of forced disappearances from multiple cities and towns upon the German arrival. In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Polish citizens were arrested by the Nazi authorities in German-occupied central Poland, the so-called General Government. About 7,000 of them including community leaders, professors, teachers, and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) were subsequently massacred secretly at various locations. [Wikipedia]

May 17, 1940
German army enters Brussels, Belgium.

General Weygood declares that the battle of France is lost and advises the French government to maintain order and avoid chaos of war. A million French soldiers are taken prisoner by the German armed forces. French government evacuates Paris.

May 20, 1940
Concentration camp established at Auschwitz, Poland.  It will become the largest and deadliest death camp in the Nazi system.  More than 1.2 million Jews, and tens of thousands of others, will be systematically murdered there.

May 22, 1940
British Parliament grants wide emergency powers.

May 24, 1940
Canada’s war cabinet meets to discuss the refugee situation.  Canadian Ambassador to France, Georges Vanier, proposes that Canada accept a number of Jewish refugees from southern France.  Vanier finds little support in the Canadian cabinet for accepting Jewish refugees.  There are tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews in southern France.

May 26-June 4, 1940
Following the encirclement of Allied forces in northeastern France, the British, French, and Belgian forces are evacuated from Dunkirk, France.  338,226 soldiers are rescued by 861 ships.

May 28, 1940
Belgium surrenders to Germany.  The Prime Minister and members of the Belgian cabinet flee to southern France.  King Leopold III remains in country.  65,696 Jews come under Nazi rule.  34,801 Jews will eventually be imprisoned or deported.  28,902 Jews in Belgium will be murdered.  56% of the Belgian Jewish community will survive the war.

May 30, 1940
Saly Mayer accepts the honorary post of JDC head in Switzerland.

June 1940
Marshal Pétain is installed as head of state with Pierre Laval his Vice President of the Council of Ministers.  Pétain is granted executive powers under the armistice agreement and the French National Assembly is merely a “rubber stamp.”  The Third French Republic no longer exists. Civil liberties in France are suspended.

The French begin to implement Nuremberg-style antisemitic laws imposed on all Jews in France. These laws and policies are initiated entirely by the Vichy government.  These restrictive laws and decrees will eventually disenfranchise most foreign Jews in France. 

June 1940
The Polish government, headed by general Władysław Sikorski, takes control of the property of the Polish State abroad, including the network of its diplomatic missions. After the German invasion of France, the government moved to London, from where it continued to fight the Germans. In the continental part of Western Europe, the Polish government-in-exile is represented by the legations in Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Other countries either came under German occupation or, under the pressure of the Germans, closed Polish diplomatic missions.

After the fall of France, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) moves its main European office from Paris to Lisbon.  The JDC transfers millions of dollars to beleaguered Jewish communities throughout Europe. JDC relief efforts in Lisbon are supervised by Moses B. Amzalak.  HICEM/JDC help more than 40,000 refugees in Lisbon between June 1940 and early 1942.  The JDC and HICEM charter medium sized Portuguese ships to evacuate refugees.  These ships are called Nyassa, Guinee, Teneriffe, Serpapinto, Magallanes, Mouzinho and Colonial.  The JDC and HICEM transported Jewish refugees to the United States, Cuba, West Indies, Latin and South America.
There is a refugee committee called the Commisao Portuguesa de Assistencia aos Judeos Refugiados, headed by Augusto d’Esaguy.  His Secretary was Samuel Sequerra.

Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, Brazilian Ambassador to France, issues visas to hundreds of Jews in occupied France.  He does this against the strict orders of the pro-fascist Brazilian government headed by Getulio Vargas, and at great risk to his diplomatic career.  Several of the Jews arrived in Brazil and were detained by the Brazilian government, but were later released.

Jan Zwartendijk, Director of Philips Electronics in Lithuania, is appointed Acting Dutch Consul.  He lives in Kovno, Lithuania.

Amelot, a Jewish rescue organization, is created in Paris.  Throughout the war, it will aid in the rescue of Jews.  It provides food, medicine and false papers.  It also hides children and adults in the countryside.

Belgium surrenders to Germany.  60,000 Jews come under Nazi domination.

US embassies and consulates in Nazi-occupied Europe (Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Luxembourg) are ordered to begin closing.  The US embassy in Paris will be moved to a new headquarters in Vichy.

The US Congress passes the Alien Registration Law of 1940.Visa regulations for refugees are severely tightened.  A refugee must now be able to prove that they can return to the country of their origin from which they are fleeing.  This is, in most cases, impossible because they are subject to arrest in their home country.  Further, visa waiting periods are significantly lengthened.

Breckenridge Long’s Special Problems Division of the State Department is pressured by these organizations to help refugees.  He writes disparagingly of this pressure: “There is a constant pressure from Congressional and organized groups in this country to have us proceed on behalf of non-Americans….  So far, I’ve been able to resist the pressure.”

Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) is established in the US under the leadership of Frank Kingdon.  It is established to coordinate various US rescue efforts.  Eleanor Roosevelt agrees to lobby on behalf of this organization.

After the surrender of France, a US Gallup Poll shows that 58% of Americans are willing to admit French and British children to the US during the war.

James Grover McDonald complained that certain refugees, particularly those with political affiliations, such as labor leaders, Spanish nationalists, and intellectuals, were targeted for stricter screening regulations by the State Department.  McDonald and Chamberlain, of the National Refugee Service, offer to pay the expenses of refugee children while in the United States.  They ask that children be admitted outside the normal immigration quotas.
Long writes in his diary in 1940, “The list of Rabbis has been closed and the list of labor leaders has been closed and now it remains for the President’s Committee to be curbed.”  Many rescue advocates are well aware of Long’s obstructionism.  Whether it is antisemitism or unjustified paranoia based on security concerns, there are numerous complaints.  Long is aware of this criticism by both refugee advocates and Jewish community leaders.  In his diary, Long writes: “[James Grover] McDonald…has developed a very definite and violent antagonism to me, he thinks I have been non-cooperative and obstructive…”

June 9, 1940
Norway surrenders to Germany.  Approximately 2,000 Jews are now subject to Nazi occupation.

June 10, 1940
Italy enters the war as a German ally, declares war on Great Britain and France, and invades France. Italy's entry into the war does not change the condition for Italian Jews.  However, 43 concentration camps are set up for non-Italian Jews and resident enemy aliens.  Several thousand non-Italian Jews, mostly refugees, are placed in these camps.  Two hundred Italian Jews are included in this number.  These are not German-style concentration or labor camps.

June 13, 1940
Mexico ends its immigration quota.

June 14, 1940
First deportation to Auschwitz death camp arrives.

Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, who has been appointed Vatican Chargé d’Affaires to Bratislava, arrives at his post.

The President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR) submits list of 600 refugees to be issued special emergency visas.

June 14-15, 1940
Paris falls, the German army occupies Paris, and the French government is transferred to Bordeaux.  There are 100,000 Jews living in Paris.  More than 1 million refugees pour into Bordeaux. 

Various foreign consuls issue transit visas for refugees to leave Nazi controlled areas.

Soviets invade and occupy Lithuania.

June 16, 1940
French Vichy collaborationist government is established under Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I.  Pétain becomes head of the French cabinet.  He asks for an armistice eight days before the fighting ceases.

June 17-19, 1940
The Portuguese Consul General Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, his staff and his son, Pedro Nuno, issue thousands of Portuguese visas to Jewish and non-Jewish refugees in Bordeaux, France.  This is completely unauthorized and against Portuguese immigration regulations.

June 17, 1940
Lithuania declares itself a Soviet Socialist Republic.

June 18, 1940
A police regulation for immigrants is instituted in Switzerland.  It regulates the entry of military and civilian refugees.

June 20, 1940
Representatives from the Portuguese foreign office are dispatched to relieve de Sousa Mendes of his post and return him to Portugal to face charges of insubordination.  A few days later, de Sousa Mendes and his family travel to Bayonne, France; several thousand additional visas are issued there; Mendes helps these refugees cross closed borders.

June 21, 1940
The Bloom-Van Nuys Immigration Law is passed and takes effect on July 1.  It gives US consuls stationed in Europe wide latitude to deny immigration to the US by refugees based on the possibility that they may endanger public safety.

June 22, 1940
France surrenders to Germany.  The French sign an armistice with Germany; in Article 19 of this document, the French agree to “surrender on demand” all persons named by the German authorities in France.  France is divided into two zones.  The French Army is limited to 125,000 officers and soldiers in metropolitan France.

Approximately 350,000 Jews reside in France at the time of the German invasion.  They constitute less than one percent of the total population of France, which is 45 million.  France becomes the largest population center for Jews in Western Europe. 

France is divided into two zones.  The northern zone is administered by German military forces.  The south, called the “Free Zone,” is established in the resort town of Vichy.  The Nazi military occupation forces control about two thirds of France.

France is forced to pay Germany 400 million francs a day as a war indemnity.

Italy and France sign a peace agreement.

June 23, 1940
General Charles de Gaulle, head of the French National Committee in London, pledges war against Germany.

June 26, 1940
Assistant US Secretary of State Breckinridge Long implements a policy to effectively block or obstruct the granting of US visas to Jews seeking asylum in the US.  Long argues that immigration can be “delayed and effectively stopped” by ordering US consuls “to put every obstacle in the way [to] postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas.”  His instructions are secretly sent to US consular office all over the world.

June 27, 1940
Mrs. Roosevelt influences her husband to issue emergency visas to notable Jewish artists, labor leaders and other refugees in France.

June 28, 1940
The British government recognizes General Charles de Gaulle as leader of the Free French organization during the German occupation of France.

Mid-1940
Following the deportation of Jews from the occupied and unoccupied zones of France, Spain’s border becomes a vital escape route for Jewish refugees.  By October, several thousand Jewish refugees have escaped across the border.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) moves its main European offices from Paris to Lisbon, Portugal.  The JDC arranges for thousands to leave Nazi-occupied Europe for neutral Spain and Portugal.  JDC transfers millions of dollars to beleaguered Jewish communities throughout Europe.  This money is used to provide documents to feed, transfer, transport or hide Jews.

Gastone Guidotti, Secretary of the Italian legation in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, issues unauthorized visas to Jews.

Henri François Deroover, Belgian Consul in Bayonne, France, issues 150 blank Belgian passports to French and Belgian Jews.  The visas are filled out by the Jewish refugees themselves, who use them to escape to neutral Portugal.

Boyan Atanassov, Bulgarian Diplomat in Paris, France, issues unauthorized visas to Bulgarian Jews and other refugees to escape France under the Nazi occupation.

Summer 1940
An estimated 30,000 Jews escape from France into Spain and Portugal with the help of diplomatic rescuers.  Upon arrival in Lisbon, these refugees are helped by Jewish relief agencies.

July 1940
An estimated 30,000 Jews escape from France into Spain and Portugal with the help of rescuers and relief organizations.  Upon arrival in Lisbon, these refugees are helped by Jewish relief agencies such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Hebrew Immigration and Sheltering Society (HIAS).

De Sousa Mendes returns in disgrace to Lisbon, unceremoniously discharged from the diplomatic service and stripped of rank and pension.  Mendes unsuccessfully fights a lifelong battle to have his good name restored.  Ironically, Portuguese dictator Oliveira Salazar takes credit for Mendes’ rescue work.

Soviet authorities order all foreign embassies to leave Kovno; Sugihara requests and gets 20-day extension and requests permission from Tokyo to issue visas to Polish Jews.  His request to issue visas is denied.

Jews can shop for food only during the late hours in Germany.

July 1, 1940
The French government moves to Vichy, France.

July 5, 1940
Vichy France severs relationship with Britain.

Roosevelt bans shipment of oil and strategic materials to Japan.

July 8, 1940
Eleanor Roosevelt writes Varian Fry explaining that she is trying to get the President to get cooperation of South American countries to accept refugees.

July 10, 1940
Hitler orders the implementation of the invasion of England, called Operation Sea Lion.  He orders the Luftwaffe to attack British air bases, convoys and ports.  Battle of Britain begins.

The French National Assembly gives Pétain full powers to govern occupied France.  The next day, Pétain abolishes the French constitution of 1875 and dismisses the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

America First committee is established in the United States.  This is an isolationist group that lobbies to keep America out of the war.  There are strongly antisemitic elements to this organization.

July 11, 1940
Marshall Petain becomes President of Vichy France.  It is a collaborationist regime to administer central and southern France.

Jan Zwartendijk issues first “Curacao” visa.  He is authorized to do this by Dutch Ambassador to the Baltic States L. P. J. de Decker.

July 12, 1940
Pierre Laval is appointed Prime Minister of France.

July 21, 1940
The British government recognizes the Czech national government in exile in London.

July 22, 1940
A French commission is set up to review French citizens who have been naturalized since 1927.  It is set up with the intention of revoking the citizenship of citizens who are considered “undesirable.”  15,000 people, including 6,000 Jews, have their citizenship revoked.

German writer Lion Feuchtwanger is hiding in US Vice Consul Hiram Bingham’s house in Marseilles.  Bingham tells Feuchtwanger “all about the work that emigrants are making for him.  He is always tired and exhausted.”

July 27-August 28, 1940
Consuls Sugihara and Zwartendijk issue visas to Polish Jews in Kovno.  At least 2,139 visas are issued to individuals and families.  One group was the famous Mir Yeshiva from Poland.  An estimated 3,500 Polish refugees escape using these visas.  Additional visas are forged by the Jewish community and used to escape.  Many of the refugees find haven in the Japanese controlled city of Shanghai, China. British consul in Kovno Thomas Preston issues more than 800 visas and papers for Jews to go to Palestine.  Another 400 of these are forged.  A few hundred of these Jews are able to cross the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden.

August 1940
American private citizen Varian Fry, appointed by the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), arrives in Marseilles, France.  He is empowered to save artists, writers, composers, and other intellectuals who are on Hitler’s arrest lists.  Fry and his volunteers contact numerous foreign consular officials who issue him hundreds of legal and extra-legal visas and other documents to help Jews escape the Nazis.  These diplomats include US Vice-Consul Hiram “Harry” Bingham and Mexican Consul General Gilberto Bosques, along with a Chinese diplomat.  These diplomats also work with Vladimir Vochoc, the Czech Consul in Marseilles.  Vochoc also issues false visas and passports to Jews and anti-Nazis to escape to Spain and Portugal.  Vochoc is soon arrested but manages to escape to Lisbon.  Fry and his associates organize escape routes over the Pyrenees mountains for refugees.  Hans and Lisa Fittko are among his most able guides.  The Fry group will rescue an estimated 2,500 persons.

The Armée Juive (AJ; Jewish Army) is founded in Toulouse, France.  This group is headed by David Knout (Zionist), Abraham Polonsky and Leo Lublin (socialist-Zionist).  It fights for France as a segregated group.  By war’s end, there are 900 Jews fighting in the Armée Juive.

August 1, 1940
Institution of antisemitic laws to be enforced in the General Government in Poland.

August 5, 1940
Britain recognizes the Polish government in exile in London of General Sikorski.

August 6, 1940
The French order a census of all foreigners.

August 7, 1940
British government signs agreement with the Free French organization of French exiles under Charles de Gaulle.

August 8, 1940
The Battle of Britain begins with an attack by the Luftwaffe in southern England.

August 10, 1940
Romania enacts antisemitic laws.

August 15, 1940
Madagascar Plan is announced by Adolph Eichmann to send the Jews of Europe to the island of Madagascar.

August 21, 1940
Phillipe Pètain rescinds 1939 French law that prohibits the French press from inciting racial hatred.

August 23, 1940
Germans launch an all-night air raid against London, England.

August 25, 1940
British Royal Air Force (RAF) conducts night bombing raid against Berlin.  This escalates into a terror bombing campaign between Germany and Great Britain.

August 27, 1940
The US Congress amends US Neutrality Act with the enactment of the Hennings Bill.  It permits rescue and refugee ships to evacuate and bring refugee children under 16 years old from war zones, including France and Portugal, to the United States.  4,200 children and 1,100 adults come to the US by the fall of 1940 under this provision.

August 30, 1940
Hungary annexes northern Transylvania.

US State Department authorizes the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USC) to evacuate 5,000 Jewish children from Vichy France.  The Allied invasion of North Africa on November 8 prevents this rescue.

September 1940
Ion Antonescu, head of the antisemitic National Legionary Government, takes power in Romania.

September 5, 1940
Vatican nuncio in Slovakia, Msgr. Giuseppe Burzio, writes an official dispatch to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione informing him of anti-Jewish regulations and persecutions in Slovakia.

Germans impose antisemitic Nuremberg Laws in occupied Luxembourg.  Jewish businesses and property are confiscated.

Cardinal Roncalli of Turkey is told of the fate of Jews in Nazi occupied Poland. 

September 6, 1940
King Carol II flees Romania.  Ion Antonescu becomes Prime Minister of Romania.  It is a fascist dictatorship.  The Iron Guard becomes the sole legal party.

September 7, 1940
Hitler initiates terror bombing of London.  Called the “Blitz,” it lasts for 57 days.

September 11, 1940
The Quanza, a Jewish refugee ship chartered out of Lisbon with nearly 300 refugees, is granted temporary asylum in Virginia.  Many of these refugees have received visas from the Mexican ambassador Castillo in Lisbon.  Eleanor Roosevelt intercedes on behalf of these refugees.

September 17, 1940
Due to the setbacks of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, Hitler puts off the invasion of England.  This is the first major setback for Hitler.

50,000 Jews, mostly refugees and elderly, are driven from the Warsaw district into the capital.

September 27, 1940
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis alliance is signed. The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, is an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, and Saburō Kurusu in the presence of Adolf Hitler. It is a defensive military alliance that is joined by Hungary (November 20, 1940), Romania (November 23, 1940), Bulgaria (March 1,1941), and Yugoslavia (March 25, 1941) as well as Slovakia (November 24, 1940).

First antisemitic German law (Verordnung) is enacted in the occupied zone of France.  It defines Jews by race and requires Jews to register with the police in the French prefects.

October 1940
The German government in Poland abolishes exit visas for Jews. Jews of Warsaw are ordered into a ghetto.  In mid-November, the ghetto is sealed. 350,000 Jews, out of a total of 1.9 million, are now in German ghettoes in Poland.

Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish Council) is established.  Adam Czerniakow, its leader, will be forced to cooperate in enforcing German policies.

Vice-Admiral Jean-Pierre Estéva, the French Governor General of Tunisia, refuses to apply antisemitic laws against the Jews in Tunisia.  The Moslem leader in Tunisia, Beysidi Mohammed al Mounsof, is also sympathetic to the Jews of Tunisia.

October 3, 1940
Statute des Juifs, a set of Nuremberg-style anti-Jewish laws, is passed by the French Vichy government.  Law removes many civil rights for Jews in France.

Breckinridge Long meets with President Roosevelt and convinces him to implement a policy that will let local US consuls make the final decision regarding visas to be issued to refugees.  Long does this because he believes most US consulates will deny visas on the issue of a possible threat by the refugee to “national security.”  He states in his diary, “About noon I had a long satisfactory conversation with the President on the subject of refugees.  McDonald, Chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Refugees, has developed a very definite and violent antagonism to me.  He thinks I have been non-cooperative and obstructive and has given evidence of his personal animosity.  In a recent conversation in Mr. Welles’ office he indicated that he had a superlative ego and a vindictive mentality added to his disregard, to put it lightly, of me.”  He goes on to say: “I found that [Roosevelt] was 100% in accord with my ideas.”

Rescue leaders such as Myron C. Taylor, James Grover McDonald and Stephen Wise find it very difficult meeting with the President to advocate rescue.

October 4, 1940
Vichy government is empowered to arrest and imprison Jews in concentration camps in the southern unoccupied zone in France.  31 of these camps are established throughout France.  Eventually, more than 50,000 Jews will be interned in these French-administered camps.  4,000 Jews will die from the poor health conditions in the camps.  Eventually, these will become centers for deportation to the death camps in Poland.

October 5, 1940
Laws passed in Romania to confiscate Jewish property.

October 7, 1940
German troops enter Romania.  Romania allows Germany to take control of oil fields.

The Bulgarian government approves the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the Nation.  The Law severely curtails Jewish civil rights.  21 leaders in the Bulgarian parliament will send a protest letter to the Prime Minister.

The Vichy Law of October 7, 1940, strips Algerian Jews of citizenship.  They had been citizens for more than 75 years.

October 8, 1940
James G. McDonald and representatives of rescue groups meet with FDR to complain that Undersecretary Breckinridge Long and the US State Department are unjustly using security as a reason to block legitimate rescue of needy refugees.  McDonald states: “[I] cannot believe, that those without visas present threats to the national interest.”  Specifically, McDonald criticizes US consuls in Europe.  FDR takes no action on this.  567 names are submitted to the State Department in August and September, yet only 40 visas are issued.

James McDonald states that refugees, despite reaching Portugal, “are still refused visas.  To close this last avenue of escape is to condemn many scientists, scholars, writers, labor leaders and other refugees to further sacrifices for their belief in democracy and to bring to an end our tradition of hospitality to the politically oppressed.  The original arrangements were wisely and soundly planned.  Their purpose is still to be achieved.”  Breckinridge Long defends his policies using the security issue as a rationale.  After the complaint by McDonald, Long states: “In view of reports indicating that Nazi and other totalitarian agents are endeavoring to enter the United States in the guise of refugees, it has been considered essential in the national interest to scrutinize all applications carefully.”  Reports by the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover state that there was negligible entry of foreign agents into the United States during World War II. 

October 10, 1940
German occupying government in Belgium asks Belgian government to implement economic sanctions against Jews.  The Belgian government refuses.  Nazi decrees in Belgium define who is a Jew and order a census of Jews and their businesses.  Antisemitic laws prohibit Jews from working in public professions, teaching and journalism.

46,000 Belgian Jews over 15 are registered.  By the end of the war, 31,416 are deported, of whom only 3,000 survive.  26,000 Jews survive in Belgium, which is 50% of its Jewish population.

October 12, 1940
Warsaw ghetto is established.  Ghetto walls begin to be constructed on October 16. Initially, almost 140,000 Jews are moved into the ghetto from all parts of Warsaw. At the same time, approximately 110,000 Poles are forcibly evicted from the area. The Germans select Adam Czerniakow to take charge of the Jewish Council called Judenrat made up of 24 Jewish men ordered to organize Jewish labor battalions as well as Jewish Ghetto Police which is responsible for maintaining order. The population of the ghetto reaches 380,000 people by the end of 1940, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. The size of the Ghetto is only about 2.4% of the size of the city. The Germans close off the Ghetto from the outside world, building a wall around it. During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages are brought into the Warsaw Ghetto. Diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation keep Jewish inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw are limited to 253 kcal, and 669 kcal for Poles, as opposed to 2,613 kcal for Germans. [Wikipedia]

Hitler again postpones Operation Sea Lion (the amphibious invasion of Great Britain).  The German air force switches its attacks from military targets to English cities.

October 18, 1940
German decree in France orders all Jewish property to be transferred to Aryan ownership.

October 21, 1940
149,734 Jews are registered in the French census.  86,664 are French Jews.  65,070 are foreign Jews.

Central Commission on Jewish Relief Organizations (Commission Centrale des Organizations Juives d’Assistance; CCOJA) is created to unite Jewish relief organizations. 

October 22, 1940
Jews in Holland must register business and property with the German occupying forces.

Hitler and French leader Philippe Pétain meet in Montoire for two days.

October 28, 1940
Italy invades Greece.  Many Greek Jews participate in the defense against the Italian invasion.

Antisemitic law in Belgium removes Jews from public administration.  This law will cause widespread resentment against German occupying forces.

October 31, 1940
The Belgian government in exile is established in London.  It agrees to support the Allied cause. King Leopold III and Queen Mother Elizabeth try to prevent the deportation of the Jews.  The Ministry of the Interior refuses to legislate against the Jewish community.  The University of Brussels states that it will not “participate in the execution of these orders.”

End of October 1940
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, under Joseph Schwartz and Herbert Katzki, help organize an important umbrella organization for the relief of Jews.  It is called the Central Commission of Jewish Assistance Organizations.  The Chief Rabbi of France, Isaie Schwartz, and Rabbi René Hirshler helped organize the Commission.
 
Herbert Katzki was active throughout France in helping Jewish refugees.  He was a rescue advocate who helped organize rescue and relief actions.  Katzki worked out of the JDC office in Lisbon, Portugal. 

November 1940
The Nîmes Committee (Camps Committee) is created, consisting of 25 organizations, including the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), Unitarian and Catholic organizations, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).  It unites to bring relief and rescue to thousands of Jews in Vichy France.  They are helped by countless French civilians and entire towns and villages.  French Catholic and Protestant clergy are particularly helpful in hiding, transporting, and feeding Jewish refugees.  The organization is headed by Dr. Donald Lowrie, an American representing the International YMCA, Dr. Charles Joy of the Unitarian Committee, and Varian Fry of the Emergency Rescue Committee.  Cardinal Gerlier, of Lyon, Dr. Marc Boegner, President of the Protestant Federation of France, and Archbishop Saliège, of Toulouse, are among those who protest the outrages against Jews by Nazi authorities.  Abbé Glasberg, an assistant of Cardinal Gerlier, rescues thousands of Jews.  Father Charles Devaus, of the Pères de Notre Dame de Sion, rescues one thousand Jews.  Jewish self-help and rescue organizations, including the OSE, FSJ and CAR, are also extremely active in hiding and sheltering thousands of Jews.  Many of these rescue operations are financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  These funds are distributed by Catholic and Protestant churches.  Thousands of Christians shelter Jews throughout the countryside.  These organizations provide false ration cards, baptismal certificates, and identity cards.

40,000 Jews are deported from Lorraine to Lyon, France. 

Roosevelt elected to an unprecedented third term as US President.  Democrats retain majority in Senate and House of Representatives.

New and more complicated screening procedures for approving visas to refugees are implemented by the State Department.  The procedure involves a review of visa applicants not only by the State Department, but also by the Justice Department, the FBI and US Military and Naval Intelligence.  This system requires that if a diplomat or consul in the field rejects an applicant for any reason, the visa would have to be approved by these various government departments.  The visa process is slowed to a trickle.

November 7, 1940
In France, Jews must have passports, visas stamped with “Jew” in prominent letters.

November 11, 1940
An article appears in the New Republic magazine exposing terrible conditions in the French concentration camp Le Vernet.  They call it the “French Dachau.”

November 15, 1940
The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed.  There are 450,000 Jews crammed into a few square blocks.

November 16, 1940
Undercover Polish diplomat Jan Karski visits the Warsaw ghetto and a concentration camp.  He prepares a written report for the Polish government in exile on his observations.

November 20-24, 1940
Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

Late 1940
During the Italian occupation of Tunisia in North Africa, Italian officials there prevent the implementation of anti-Jewish laws.  They demand that the French refrain from confiscating the property of 5,000 Jews in Tunisia who held Italian passports.  After December 1942, thousands of Jews are made to do forced labor under harsh conditions.  In the Italian forced labor camps, the Jews are treated far better than in German camps.  On May 7, 1943, the Allies liberate Tunis and thousands of Jews are saved from annihilation.

December 1940
Julio Palencia, Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary in Bulgaria, organizes protection for 150 Jews of Sephardic origin.

SS Haputsturmführer (Captain) Theodore Dannecker, under Eichmann, sets up the Anti-Jewish Institute in Paris.
 
All Jewish businesses must display a large yellow placard in their windows identifying it as a Jewish business.

Vichy government negotiates with Mexican Consul General Gilberto Bosques regarding the fate of 150,000 Spanish Republican refugees.  The object is to send these refugees to Mexico.  The Germans object to this plan and are fearful that these repatriated soldiers will fight for the British.

Myron Taylor, a friend of Roosevelt, is appointed Special US Envoy to the Vatican (Holy See) to elicit help from the Vatican for refugees.

US Justice Department rules that all refugees coming to the United States are protected by the Constitution with all rights guaranteed to citizens.

US Congressman Samuel Dickstein introduces new bill to utilize Alaska as a refugee haven.  The bill dies in subcommittee.

December 9, 1940
Operation Compass begins in North Africa.  The British Army advances from Egypt to Libya.

1941

1941
Food rations for the Poles are small (669 kcal per day in 1941) compared to other occupied nations throughout Europe and black market prices of necessary goods are high.

Roosevelt announces Lend-Lease policy to furnish Allies with ships and armaments.  This is the beginning of the end of US isolation.

The United States, a non-belligerent in the war, has a more rigid screening procedure for refugees than does Britain, who had been fighting for two years.  As a result of the US State Department’s interference and antisemitic policies, many European Jews are unable to obtain refuge in the United States.  In the crucial year of 1941, only 47% of quota for German-Austrian immigration to the United States is filled.

US Minister to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther, stationed in Bucharest, reports to the State Department about the murder of Jews by the fascist Horia Sim Iron Guard.

The New Republic magazine writes a series of articles in 1941 calling for an inquiry into antisemitism in the US State Department.  The article categorically states that there is “widespread antisemitism in the Foreign Service.”

José Rojas, Spanish Minister in Bucharest, Romania, criticizes Nazi policy of persecuting Jews.  He adamantly opposes the deportation of Jews and the brutal conditions imposed by the Nazis.  He posts diplomatic protective signs on more than 300 houses where Jewish families live.

January 1941
Isaac Weissman, a Turkish-born Jew of Polish ancestry, becomes a representative of RELICO in Lisbon.  In 1942, he aids Jewish illegal immigrants who are stranded in Portugal.

Virginia Chase Weddel, wife of the US Ambassador to Spain, and Dorsey Stephens, wife of the US military attaché, help distribute JDC money to refugees stranded in Spain.

January 4, 1941
Great Britain sends soldiers to help its ally Greece.

January 10, 1941
Jews in occupied Holland are forced to register.

The Belgian government in exile in London issues an injunction (arrête-loi) that states that German laws against Jews are invalid and illegal.

January 22, 1941
Bulgarian parliament enacts the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the Nation.  It is based on the German Nuremberg Laws.  Jews are forced out of many professions and a special tax is levied against Jews.  Jewish community leaders in Bulgaria begin an information campaign to counter affect the antisemitic law.  A group of 21 leading Bulgarian writers, physicians and lawyers sends strong letter of protest to the Prime Minister.  Soon, Bulgarian political leaders endorse the protest.  The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church protests the Law.  These include Metropolitans Stephan of Sofia, Cyril of Plovdiv, Neofit of Vindin, and Sofroni of Vratsa.

February 1941
French Vichy officials object to Germans using southern France as a dumping ground for Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and other occupied territories.

February 1, 1941
Deportation of Jews to the Warsaw ghetto begins.

February 5, 1941
Reinhardt Heydrich states in memorandum that he sees the “later total solution to the Jewish problem” is to “send them off to whatever country will be chosen later on.”

Romanian government passes the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the State.

February 14, 1941
Heydrich tells German foreign ministry representative in France Martin Luther, “After the conclusion of the peace, they [Jews] will be the first transported to leave fortress Europe in the total evacuation of the continent we plan.”  Luther then tells his diplomatic representatives that forced Jewish emigration from German territories must take priority.

February 22, 1941
400 Jewish men from Antwerp, Belgium, are deported to Buchenwald concentration camp.

February 25, 1941
Thousands of Dutch Christians go out on general strike to protest the deportation of Jews to Buchenwald.  This is the only such strike in Europe in reaction to Jewish persecution.  Dutch students go on strike to protest dismissal of Jewish teachers.  Dutch citizens wear a yellow flower to protest the Jewish star decree.  In Rotterdam, signs are put up to encourage Dutch citizens to respect their Jewish countrymen.  Dutch Catholic and Protestant clergy speak up on behalf of Jews.

March 1941
“Witold Pilecki a member of the Polish Armia Krajowa (AK) resistance, and the only person who volunteers to be imprisoned in Auschwitz. As an agent of the underground intelligence, he begins sending numerous reports about the camp and genocide to the Polish resistance headquarters in Warsaw through the resistance network he organized in Auschwitz. Pilecki's reports are being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London, but the British government refuses AK reports on atrocities as being gross exaggerations and propaganda of the Polish government. [Wikipedia]

March 1, 1941
Bulgaria joins the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan.  In April, Bulgaria takes part in the attack of Yugoslavia and Greece.  In return, Hitler gives Bulgaria Thrace, Macedonia, and parts of eastern Serbia.  Bulgaria declares war on the US and England.

Himmler orders the construction of a second death camp in Auschwitz called Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

Thousands of Dutch citizens of all backgrounds aid in the rescue of beleaguered Dutch Jews.  Secret organizations come into existence all over Holland to help Jews hide.  Jewish children are hidden in private homes and most of them survive.  Dutch groups provide Jews with false documentation.

March 2, 1941
German army enters Bulgaria.

March 3, 1941
Krakow ghetto is established.

March 12, 1941
Jewish property is confiscated by Nazi authorities in Holland.

March 25, 1941
Yugoslavia joins the Tripartite Pact.

March 26, 1941
The German general staff gives the approval for the activities of the Einsatzgruppen (murder squads) in the Soviet Union.  The Wehrmacht will participate directly in the murder of civilians.

March 29, 1941
The antisemitic General Commission on Jewish Affairs is established in France.

March 30, 1941
Hitler informs German military leaders that the upcoming war against the Soviet Union will be a war of “extermination.”

April 6, 1941
German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.

April 9, 1941
German forces occupy Salonica (Thessaloníki).  Fifty thousand Jews reside there.

April 10, 1941
Croatia declares its independence after the invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria.

April 12-13, 1941
German Army enters Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

April 18, 1941
Yugoslavia surrenders to Germany.

April 24, 1941
Lublin ghetto is sealed.

Portugal announces it will no longer issue transit visas.

April 27, 1941
Greece surrenders to the German and Italian armies.  After a protracted battle for conquering Greece, Germany intervenes on behalf of the Italian army.  This delays Hitler’s planned attack on the Soviet Union.

May 1941
As a result of Germany’s invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia, Roosevelt declares a national emergency.  The declaration will enable the US Congress to pass extraordinary legislation.

French Admiral Jean-François Darlan meets with Hitler at Berchtesgaden and cedes to Germany military bases in North Africa and Syria.  The French receive nothing in return.

By the end of May 1941, the Jewish office of HICEM in Marseilles had received more than 35,000 requests from Jews to leave France.  The HICEM managed to help approximately 3,000 Jews leave France in 1941 and another 3,000 Jews emigrated in the first months of 1942. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee intervenes on behalf of refugees with the Portuguese ambassador in Washington, DC.

May 1, 1941
Grossrosen, located in Germany, becomes a major independent concentration camp.  125,000 persons go through the camp; 40,000 are murdered.

May 7, 1941
US Vice Consul Hiram Bingham is notified he is being transferred out of Marseilles.

May 10, 1941
Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess commandeers an airplane and goes on a secret mission to negotiate a separate peace with the British government.  This action has not been authorized by Hitler and it is disavowed.  Hess is imprisoned by British authorities.

May 14, 1941
Thousands of Polish Jews in Paris are rounded up pending deportation.  The green ticket roundup (French: raffle du billet vert ), also known as the green card roundup.  The mass arrest started a day after French Police delivered a green card (billet vert) to 6694 foreign Jews living in Paris, instructing them to report for a "status check" They are deported to  French concentration camps Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. SS Haputsturmführer (Captain) Theodore Dannecker meets with Director of the German military rail system General Kohl.  Kohl agrees to supply trains to deport between 10,000 and 20,000 French Jews in the next few months.

Romanian Jews are conscripted for forced labor.

May 15, 1941
French Vichy government declares policy of cooperation with Nazi German government.

May 20, 1941
Gestapo issues circular prohibiting Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria.

May 25, 1941
Under pressure, the Portuguese government lifts its ban on issuing transit visas.

May 31, 1941
Decree in Belgium orders Jews to display signs in businesses and to declare their ownership of properties and assets; limits banking transactions.

Spring 1941
Defeated Greece is divided into three occupation zones.  Italy occupies most of the Greek peninsula, including Athens, Epirus and the Ionic Islands.  The zone is controlled by the Italian army and the Italian Foreign Ministry.  This zone has approximately 13,000 Jews.  It will become a safe haven for Jews until the Italians surrender in September 1943.

Giuseppe Bastiannini of Italy, acting Governor of Dalmatia, drafts an important memorandum for the signature of Italian leader Mussolini to protect Jews in the Italian zones of occupation.  Bastiannini encourages Italian diplomats to protect Jews.

During World War II, the Italian army and Italian diplomats administer three zones of occupation.  They are in Athens and the Ionic Islands; Croatia and Yugoslavia; and southern France.  The Italian occupying forces actively participate in sheltering Jews from deportations to the Nazi death camps.  It is estimated that more than 40,000 Jews are rescued from Nazi murder.

After Hiram Bingham is relieved of his post in Marseilles, France, he is transferred to Buenos Aires, Argentina.  While in Argentina, Bingham reports on the activities of pro-Nazi groups and infiltrators.  The State Department refuses to act on his recommendations, and he resigns from the State Department in protest.

Many Jews join Tito’s anti-German partisan soldiers fighting in Yugoslavia.

June 1941
Finland joins Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union.

US State Department closes German consulates in the United States.  It bans pro-Nazi propaganda in the US.

US Congress passes Russell Bill, which permits US diplomats and consults in Europe to deny visas to refugees who, in their opinion, would “endanger the public safety of the United States.”  Breckinridge Long, who lobbied for this bill, did it to keep State Department diplomats in check.

Head of the Justice Department Francis Biddle asserts the right of the Justice Department to rule in favor of refugees in certain visa cases.  This removes some power from Breckinridge Long at the State Department.

Louis Darquier de Pellepoix becomes head of Commissariat General aux Questions Juives.  He is extremely antisemitic.

Czech Consul Vladimir Vochoc is arrested by Vichy authorities in southern France.  He later escapes.

June 2, 1941
The second Statute des Juifs (set of antisemitic laws) is enacted by the French Vichy government.  Law calls for the expropriation and Aryanation of Jewish property are enacted.  Eventually, 42,000 Jewish businesses, buildings, homes and other properties are confiscated. 

June 3, 1941
US State Department institutes additional policies discouraging help for refugees from German occupied countries.

June 6, 1941
Hitler issues the Commissar Order.  It authorizes the German army to murder any and all Soviet authorities in the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union.

June 7, 1941
Jews are ordered to wear the yellow star in occupied France.  Many Jews refuse to wear the star and some French citizens wear stars and yellow flowers in solidarity with persecuted Jews.

June 18, 1941
Turkey and Germany sign a treaty.

June 21, 1941
Himmler orders the preparation of the Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East). The plan is approved by Hitler in May 1942. It called for the Baltic States, Poland, Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million Germans. Some 31 million people—would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labour. Himmler stated: "It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply."

June 22, 1941
Breaking the non-aggression pact of 1939, Hitler orders the German army to invade the Soviet Union.  The plan is called “Operation Barbarossa.”  Germany is now fighting a two-front war.  The Wehrmacht, with 150 divisions and more than three million men, invade and occupy much of the western Soviet Union.

“Although the war is launched more for strategic than ideological reasons, what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism is to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war.

“A quick victory is anticipated and is planned to be followed a massive demographic project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers. To increase the speed of conquest the Germans plan to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with mass killings. The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause a food shortage and plan the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas. Although the starvation policy is less successful than military planners hoped, millions of people die of starvation.”

“Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army are intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation, making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after Jews. Jewish prisoners of war and commissars are systematically executed. About a million civilians are murdered by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare. From 1942 onwards, the Germans and their allies target villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them, and killing or expelling their inhabitants. During these operations, nearby small ghettos are liquidated, and their inhabitants killed.  Although most of those killed were not Jews, anti-partisan warfare often led to the deaths of numerous Jews.”

“Himmler visits Białystok at the beginning of July 1941, and stated that, ‘as a matter of principle, any Jew’ behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be ‘regarded as a partisan’. His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children are to be shot.

“At the onset of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the main architect of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich, issues his operational guidelines for the mass anti-Jewish actions to be carried out with the participation of local population. Following the German army, Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) of 11,000 men begin mass murder of Jews, civilian and Communist leaders.  More than one and a half million people are murdered. SS recruit collaborationist auxiliary police from among Soviet nationals. The local Schutzmannschaft provide Germany with manpower and knowledge of local regions and languages. This becomes known as the "Holocaust by bullets". German military police battalions (Orpo), SiPo, Waffen-SS, and special-task Einsatzgruppen, along with Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliaries, operate behind front lines, systematically shooting tens of thousands of men, women, and children. The German army also willingly participates in many aspects of this genocide.” [Wikipedia]

“Massacres are committed in more than 30 locations across the formerly Soviet-occupied regions of Poland, including in Brześć, Tarnopol, and Białystok, as well as in prewar provincial capitals of Łuck, Lwów, Stanisławów, and Wilno. Entire regions behind German–Soviet lines are reported to Berlin by the Nazi death squads to be "Judenfrei". [Wikipedia]

“Less than one tenth of 1 per cent of native Poles collaborated, according to statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission. Ethnic Poles assist Jews by organized as well as by individual rescue and aid efforts. Many Poles offered food to Polish Jews or left it in places Jews would pass on their way to forced labor. Other Poles directed   Jewish ghetto escapees to Poles who could aid them. Some Poles shelter Jews for only one or a few nights; others assume full responsibility for their survival, fully aware that the Germans punished by summary execution those (as well as their families) who helped Jews. (There is no official number of how many Polish Jews were hidden by their Christian countrymen during wartime. Some estimate that the number of Jews sheltered by Poles at one time might have been "as high as 450,000." However, concealment did not automatically assure complete safety from the Nazis, and the number of Jews in hiding who were caught has been estimated variously from 40,000 to 200,000).” [Wikipedia]

June 24, 1941
Wehrmacht occupies Kovno and Vilna, Lithuania.  Einsatzgruppen [murder squads] immediately begin murdering Jews.

June 25, 1941
15,000 Jews are murdered by the Iron Guard in Romania.

June 27, 1941
Hungary enters the war against the Allies.

June 28, 1941
The Wehrmacht occupies the Soviet city of Minsk in the western USSR.  It surrounds 27 Soviet divisions.

June 30-July 29, 1941
In the series of Lviv pogroms committed by the Ukrainian militia, German murder squads, Ukrainian nationalists (specifically, the OUN), and urban population in the eastern city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), 6,000-7,000 Polish Jews are murdered between June 30 and July 29, 1941, in addition to 3,000 arrests and mass shootings by Einsatzgruppe C. [Wikipedia]

June 30, 1941
Wehrmacht occupies Lvov, Poland.  Almost 4,000 Jews are murdered immediately.

July 1941
Jewish relief agency CENTOS establishes 143 residences for refugees in the General Government in Poland.  It runs 26 homes and 62 children’s centers, taking care of 12,299 children.  It establishes 122 kitchens where 47,000 will eat.

Nazi troops occupy Croatia, part of Yugoslavia, and begin deporting Jews.

July 1941-January 1942
HICEM sponsors 10,700 Jewish refugees fleeing Europe from Lisbon on JDC-sponsored ships.

July 1, 1941
Wehrmacht occupies Riga, Latvia.  18,000 Jews are murdered by the end of the month.

July 2, 1941
Wehrmacht occupies Ternapol.

25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) along with their families are killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hope to prevent anti-Nazi activity and to weaken the resolve of the Polish resistance movement. According to an eyewitness the executions are carried out by an Einsatzgruppe unit. [Wikipedia]

July 4, 1941
Jewish Council in Vilna is established.

July 9, 1941
Unable to win the air war over England, Hitler calls off Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Great Britain.

July 10, 1941
The Jedwabne pogrom a massacre of Polish Jews in the town of Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland. At least 340 men, women and children were murdered, some 300 of whom were locked in a barn which was then set on fire. About 40 Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne carry out the massacre; German secret service agents met with the ringleaders beforehand, and German military police were present. [Wikipedia]

July 15, 1941
US consulates in Nazi occupied Europe are closed.  These include consulates in Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium.

July 20, 1941
Minsk ghetto is established.

July 28, 1941
Former US diplomat Alfred Wagg publishes a series of articles in the New Republic magazine highly critical of the visa policy of the US State Department.  He accuses the State Department of widespread antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiments in the US Foreign Service.

July 31, 1941
Hermann Göring appoints Reinhardt Heydrich to implement the “final solution of the Jewish question, and coordinate with all affected organizations.

August 1941
The Nazis order the closing of the emigration department of the Reichsvereinigung.  Nazis ban emigration for Jews between 18 and 45 years old.  The age is soon extended to 60 years old.

Antisemitic Commassariate for Jewish Questions in the Ministry of the Interior in Bulgaria is created.  It is headed by anti-Semite Aleksander Belev.

The Drancy detention/transit camp is established in a suburb of Paris.  It is under French administration.  Most of the Jews who are deported to the Auschwitz death camp will leave from Drancy.

Bernardo Rolland de Miota, the Spanish Consul General in Paris, actively intervenes in the cases of 14 Jews who were deported to the Drancy concentration camp.  At the same time, he embarks on a dangerous mission to transfer 2,000 Jews from Drancy to Morocco.  Throughout the war, he denounced Nazi persecution of Jews.  By September 1943, Rolland would be partially responsible for the escape of hundreds of French Jews to Spain.

Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium intervenes on behalf of Belgian Jews.  She appeals directly to Hitler to stop the deportations.  This action leads to widespread protest and postponement of deportations.  The Red Cross distributes parcels to Jews in hiding in Belgium.

August 1, 1941
Bialystock ghetto is established. About 50,000 Jews from the city and the surrounding region are confined in a small area of Białystok. The ghetto has two sections, divided by the Biala River. Most Jews in the Białystok ghetto work in forced-labor projects, primarily in large textile factories located within the ghetto boundaries. The Germans also use Jews in forced-labor projects outside the ghetto. [Wikipedia]

August 4, 1941
Kovno ghetto is sealed.

August 8, 1941
Deportation of 11,485 Jews begins from the Gurs and Rivesaltes camps in the southern zone.  The Coordinating Relief Committee for the Camps (CIMADE), a Protestant relief organization comprised of the Red Cross, the Quaker Relief Committee, the Swiss Service Civil International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, is allowed to rescue Jews. 

Ross McClelland, Dr. Donald Lowrie and Father Arnoux, representing Catholic Archbishop Gerlier, lobby Philippe Pétain to save Jews.

August 14, 1941
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sign Atlantic Charter.  This is an eight-point document declaring joint US and British peace aims.

August 15, 1941
German government stops issuing exit visas to Jews.

August 17, 1941
Sikorski-Mayski agreement between Soviet Union and Poland is signed in London. Stalin agrees to declare all previous pacts that he had with Nazi Germany null and void, to invalidate the September 1939 partition of Poland and to release tens of thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war held in Soviet camps. Pursuant to an agreement between the Polish government-in-exile and Stalin, the Soviets granted "amnesty" to many Polish citizens on 12 August 1941, from whom a 40,000-strong army (Anders Army, later known as the Polish II Corps) was formed under General Władysław Anders. [Wikipedia]

August 20, 1941
The Eleventh District in Paris is sealed off and 4,000 Jews are interned and sent to Drancy.  French officials protest the arrests. 

Protestant Minister Marc Boegner sends protest letter to Marshal Pétain: “…the indescribable sadness that our Churches feel at the news of the decisions taken by the French government, with regard to foreign Jews, whether converted to Christianity or not.”

August 21-September 26, 1941
The Wehrmacht encircles city of Kiev and captures 665,000 Soviet prisoners.

August 23, 1941
Monsignor Saliège, Archbishop of Toulouse, France, publicly disapproves of the deportations.  He orders a message to be read in churches by his priests at mass.

August 26-28, 1941
A massive roundup of Jews in Lyons, France.  In response, Monsignor Théas, Bishop of Montauban, issues a protest.

August 29, 1941
Jews in Belgium can reside only in major cities and are subject to curfew.

Samuel Sequerra represents the Jewish Joint in Barcelona, Spain.  Sequerra disburses funds in support of 600 refugees receiving financial aid.  After September 1941, he looks after refugees who have entered the country illegally.

September 1, 1941
Hitler ends the T-4 euthanasia program in Germany under pressure from church and civic leaders.  Between 70,000 and 93,000 people are killed in this program.

September 2, 1941
Francis Biddle and James G. McDonald convince FDR to liberalize the “close relative clause” and the visa policy for refugees.  In a small way, this helps refugees in their appeals process.  The rate of visa rejection is lowered by 15%.

Rabbi Wise contacts US State Department with information about the Nazis’ plan to murder European Jews.  The State Department advises Wise to remain silent until the information is verified.

September 3, 1941
Experimental gassing of Soviet POWs in Auschwitz.

The Vilna ghetto is established.

September 6, 1941
The Nazis forbid emigration of Jews between 18 and 45 years old.  The RVE in Germany helps Jews escape to Spain and Portugal.

September 17, 1941
The beginning of the general deportation of German Jews to the death camps in Poland.

September 19, 1941
In Germany, Jews are forced to wear the yellow star.

September 20, 1941
German forces capture Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

September 23, 1941
Further experimental gassing tests on prisoners are conducted at Auschwitz.

September 24, 1941
The Nazi government blocks 60 million marks that had been earmarked for emigration assistance to Jews.

September 29-30, 1941
German murder squads kill 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar, near Kiev.  Eventually more than 100,000 people will be murdered there.

October-November 1941
German and Austrian Jews are deported to ghettoes in Eastern Europe.

October 1941
In France, the Archbishop of Lyons, Pierre Cardinal Gerlier, of L’Amité Chretienne [Christian Friendship], protests anti-Jewish decrees and instructs French Catholics to help Jews.  Many nuns, priests and monks are arrested, deported and killed in their efforts to save Jews.

The Archbishop of Toulouse, France, protests Nazi terror.

Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, Vatican Nuncio in Bratislava, Slovakia, reports to the Vatican about Jews being murdered by the Germans.

Only 4,800 visa applications out of 9,500 have been approved by the US State Department for refugees.  The US State Department and Department of Justice disagree on refugee visa policy and security issues.

October 1, 1941
All legal emigration out of Germany and the occupied territories is stopped by Gestapo order.

The German armies advance from Smolensk, Russia, toward Moscow.

October 10, 1941
Cardinal Roncalli, Nuncio to Turkey, has an audience with Pope Pius XII.  Roncalli writes in his private diary, “He [the Pope] asked me if his silence regarding Nazism was not judged badly.”

October 12, 1941
In Stanisławów – a provincial capital in the Kresy macroregion (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) – the single largest massacre of Polish Jews prior to Aktion Reinhardt is perpetrated. 10-12,000 Jews are murdered in one day. It is known as the Blutsonntag (de), or the Bloody Sunday.

October 15, 1941
The Soviet government in Moscow is evacuated to the city of Kuybyshev, on the Volga River.  Stalin remains in Moscow.

Jews from Germany and Austria are deported to the Kaunas, Lodz, Minsk and Rega ghettoes.

Nazi authorities pass a law imposing the death penalty for all Jews who leave the ghettoes without permission or for “persons who knowingly provide hiding places for Jews.”

October 16, 1941
The Wehrmacht occupies Odessa, Russia.  Soon 19,000 Jews are murdered by Einsatzgruppen [special killing squads].

October 19, 1941
Jews from Luxembourg deported to Lodz, Poland.

October 23, 1941
Himmler orders that no more Jews are to emigrate from the German occupied zones.  This order takes effect in France in February 1942.

October 24, 1941
The German Army captures the city of Kharkov in the Ukraine.

October 25, 1941
The first part of the German army’s offensive against Moscow fails.

October 27, 1941
Monsignor Burzio sends a detailed report to the Vatican regarding the systematic murder of Jews in Europe.  This is the first Vatican-produced report regarding the massacre of Jews.

October 28, 1941
9,000 Jews are murdered in the old Czarist Ninth Fort in Kovno, Lithuania.

Late October 1941
After being forced to leave Marseilles, Varian Fry returns to New York City. 

November 1941
The early onset of the Russian winter greatly slows the German army’s advance in the Soviet Union.

Swiss Minister René de Weck contacts Red Cross urging them to protect Jews being murdered in Bucharest.

There are approximately 17,500 internees in French camps in the southern unoccupied zone.  11,150 are Jews (63%).  Many will receive exit visas to leave these camps.

A Catholic resistance organization called Temoignage Chrétien publishes a brochure that directly addresses the issue of French antisemitism.  It mentions the concentration camps, Nazism, and French hypocrisy.

November 10, 1941
All emigration of Jews from Austria now officially prohibited.  126,445 Jews have been able to emigrate from Austria, thousands with the Ho, Bosques and other diplomatic visa. 

In Occupied Poland the death penalty is introduced by Hans Frank, governor of the General Government, to apply to Poles who help Jews "in any way: by taking them in for the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind" or "feed[ing] runaway Jews or sell[ing] them foodstuffs." The law is made public by posters distributed in all cities and towns, to instill fear. The imposition of the death penalty for Poles aiding Jews is unique to Poland among all German-occupied countries. [Wikipedia]

November 12, 1941
Franklin Mott Gunther, the US Minister in Bucharest, Romania, sends Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull a detailed report describing the atrocities committed by the Iron Guard in Romania against Jews.  Gunther will continue to send reports regarding the deportation of Jews.  The State Department’s Eastern European Division replies to Gunther that “endorsing of such a plan is likely to bring about new pressure for an asylum in the Western Hemisphere…We are not ready to handle the whole Jewish problem.”  Nothing was done on Gunther’s reports or proposals.

November 20-December 7, 1941
30,000 Jews are murdered in the Rumbula Forest near Riga, Latvia, by SS murder squads.

November 24, 1941
US State Department confirms to Rabbi Wise that Nazi Germany is, in fact, planning to murder all the Jews of Europe.  Wise holds press conference.

November 25, 1941
Decree in Belgium orders the establishment of the Association of Jews in Belgium (Association des Juif en Belgique; AJB).  At its head is Chief Rabbi of the Belgian Army Solomon Ullman.  All Jews must be registered, and some Jewish children are expelled from public school.

November 29, 1941
Under German pressure, Vichy orders the dissolution of all Jewish organizations in France.  Their records must be turned over to Vichy officials.  Vichy forms the Union General de Isrealites du France (UGIF), which the Germans hope to turn into a Judenrat (Jewish Council).  The UGIF refuses to take part in selecting Jews for deportation during the roundups.  The UGIF helps Jews escape and provides them with food and shelter.

December 1941
Germany Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories declares, “As a matter of principle, no consideration should be given to economic interest…”  This statement declares that killing Jews takes precedence over all other considerations, including use of Jewish labor for the war effort.

The US Congress authorizes $10 billion of lend-lease assistance to the Allies.

The Swiss Red Cross launches a relief operation specifically to save French Jewish children.  The Swiss Red Cross has delegations located in Paris, Marseilles, Lille, Lyon, Toulouse and Arles.

Harry Bingham, US Vice Consul in Marseilles, hides painter Marc Chagall in his home, issues him visa to leave France.

December 1-5, 1941
The German army reaches the outer suburbs of Moscow.

December 5, 1941
The Soviets launch a major counteroffensive against the German army’s attack on Moscow.

December 7, 1941
Japanese Imperial Navy attacks US forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Night and Fog Decree: Hitler orders the suppression of anti-Nazi resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe.  This order is carried out by the German army in Eastern Europe.  Tens of thousands are murdered under this order.

December 8, 1941
The United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Japan.

“Gassing of Jews begins at Chelmno death camp in Poland. The camp, which was specifically intended for no other purpose than mass murder. Jews are crowded into trucks and vans, where they are asphyxiated. 152,000-180,000 Jews will be murdered in Chelmno. The vast majority of those murdered were Jews of west-central Poland, along with Romani people from the region, as well as foreign Jews from Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia, Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria transported to Chełmno via the Łódź Ghetto, as well as of the Soviet prisoners of war.

By the end of December 1941, the Nazis have murdered more than one million Jews.

December 9, 1941
China declares war on Germany and Japan.

December 10, 1941
The United States declares war on Germany and Italy.  The vast majority of the war effort will be directed at winning the war against Germany.

December 14, 1941
Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Washington, DC.

Major deportations in France are announced.  Due to lack of rail transportation, the deportations to the death camps do not begin until March 1942.

The German occupying force in France fines the Jewish community one billion francs.

December 16, 1941
The German army forces of Army Group Center, who are attacking Moscow, begin to retreat as a result of Soviet Marshall Zhukov’s counterattack.

December 18, 1941
SS leader Himmler recorded the decision of his meeting with Hitler. The decision is: "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them [Jews] as partisans").

December 25, 1941
British armed forces in Hong Kong surrender to the Japanese army.

December 31, 1941
United Partisans’ Organization in Vilna, Lithuania, which is founded by Jewish leader Abba Kovner, calls Jews to resist the Nazis.  Kovner states, “We must not go like sheep to the slaughter.”

Winter 1941-1942
The French village of Le Chambon begins rescue work to hide 5,000 Jews.  This rescue is led by Pastor André Trocmé.  All survive until the end of the war.

The Dutch village of Nieuwlande succeeds in saving all the Jews of its town.  All 117 townspeople hide Jews in their homes.  All of the Jews in the town survive the war.

Many Christian organizations help to rescue Jews in France.  Among them are the Sisters of Zion at the Hospice de la Vieille Charité, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Dominican Order of St. Baume, led by Father Régis de Perceval in Boulogne.  Fathers Perrin and Pipro hide Jews in their houses.  CIMADE helps Jewish evacuees interned at Gurs to escape to Switzerland.  Fathers Perceval and Perrin are arrested in August 1943 for helping Jews.  Father Abbé Blanc and 50 agents provide Jews with false records.  During this period, Church people issue thousands of false Baptismal Certificates.

Father Marie-Benoit, a Capuchin priest, works with the UGIF and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to print and distribute false documents and hide Jews.  He establishes a Jewish children’s refuge in the French province of Var.  He is credited with rescuing as many as 4,000 Jews.

A number of French prefectural officials in southern France are helpful to Jews.  Among them are Jean Séguy, Marseilles police captain Dubois, Monsieur Roux and Madame Esmiol of the Aliens’ Bureau, Marie-Ange Rodriguez, Secretary General of the Cassis Town Hall, Monsieur Boyer, also of Cassis, Antoine Zattara and Georges Barellet.

A number of guards at the French concentration camps take great risks to help Jewish internees survive and eventually escape.  Among them are Lucien Mercier, Auguste Boyer, Aimé Bondi, and Jean-Louis Kissy.  The Commandant of Les Milles, Robert Maulavé, helps individual Jews.  He is later put in jail for these efforts.

Father Pierre Chaillet of the Amitié Chrétienne [Christian Friendship], centered in Lyons, organizes an association of priests and laypersons under the guidance of Archbishop Gerlier and Pastor Boegner.

1942

1942
A major conference planning the murder of millions of Jews is held on January 20, 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee.  Heads of major German departments gather to plan the largest organized murder in history.

2.7 million Jews will be murdered this year.  The Aktion Reinhardt death camps are established in Poland.  They are Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.  These camps are established with the specific purpose of murdering Jews.  They are named after SS security chief Reinhardt Heydrich, who was assassinated earlier in Czechoslovakia.  1.7 million Jews are killed in these camps from March 1942 through November 1943.  Most of the Jews killed are from the area of the General Government of Poland.

Numerous reports reach the Allies regarding the murder of millions of Jews in Eastern Europe.

The Jewish Combat Organization is established in Warsaw, Poland.

Necdet Kent, Consul for Turkey in Marseilles, France, issues numerous Turkish certificates of citizenship to Jewish refugees, preventing them from being deported to Nazi death camps.  On one occasion, Kent boards a deportation train with Jews loaded on a cattle car.  He successfully intervenes to have them released to his custody. 

Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Papal Nuncio to Greece and Turkey, participates in the aid and rescue of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe.  He reports to the Vatican on the murder of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  He works with other Nuncios, including Monsignor Angelo Rotta in Hungary.  He also works with US Ambassador in Turkey Laurence A. Steinhardt and Raymond Courvoiser, International Red Cross Director in Turkey.  Among the Jews saved by Roncalli are Slovakian Jews caught in Hungary and Slovakia, Jews trapped in Transnistria, a Romanian-administered territory, and Jews in Budapest.  He distributes, by diplomatic pouch to Vatican representatives, various Vatican documents that place Jews under the protection of the Holy See.  He also works with the Agency for Palestine (Yishuv) and distributes immigration certificates.  Roncalli eventually participates in helping an estimated 24,000 Jews.

Diplomatic rescuers who worked in Slovakia intervened with Vatican and Slovakian officials to try to save Jews.  Among these diplomats were Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, Vatican Nuncio in Bratislava; Max Grässli, Consul General for Switzerland in Bratislava; and Georges Dunand, International Red Cross.

Diplomats who reported on Nazi atrocities and helped Jews in Bucharest, Romania (Transnistria), were:  Hamdullah Suphi Tanriöver, Turkish Ambassador; José Rojas y Moreno Conde de Casa, Spanish Minister; Monsignor Andrea Cassulo, Vatican Nuncio; René de Weck, Swiss Consul General; Karl “Charles” Kolb, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); Franklin Mott Gunther, U.S. Minister; Edouard Chapuisat, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); Vladimir de Steiger, Delegate to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); José Carlos Ponti, Secretary of the Argentine Legation; and Selbarty Istinyell, Turkish Chargé d’Affaires.

Dutch bishops and clergymen protest first deportation of Jews from Holland.

Belgian police intentionally lose or destroy files on Jews.  Belgian officials in the Ministry of Justice save Jews by intervening with the Nazi occupying government.  Belgian Jews are given false documents and are successfully hidden in Belgian homes and institutions.  Belgian clergy actively protest deportations and participate in rescuing Jews, particularly children.  Abbé Joseph André and Father Edouard Froidure rescue hundreds of Belgian children with the help of Belgian citizens, businessmen and public officials.  Cardinal van Roey, the Primate of Belgium, denounces pogroms against Jews.  The Dowager Queen Elizabeth pleads with Nazi occupying forces to save Jews.

Johannes Bogaard, a farmer in the Dutch village of Nieuw Vennup, near Amsterdam, begins rescue operation ot save Dutch Jews by hiding them in the countryside.  More than 300 Jews are eventually saved by him during the Nazi occupation.

January 1942
Eight European governments in exile meet in London and refuse to condemn the Nazi murder of Jews in Europe.  The Allies refuse to acknowledge that Jews were being targeted for murder as Jews and not just as Europeans.

Carl Lutz is Vice-Consul in Budapest, chief of the Department of Foreign Interests of the Swiss Legation.  He also represents the interests of the United States, Britain and several other countries that had severed relations with Hungary because of its alliance with Germany. Carl Lutz initiates the practice of issuing Schutzbriefe (protective letters) on the basis of Palestine Certificates, in cooperation with the Budapest office of the Jewish Council for Palestine.  This document is designed to protect Jewish children waiting for immigration to Palestine.  Carl Lutz helped 10,000 Jewish children and young people immigrate to Palestine.

US Ambassador Laurence A. Steinhardt is transferred from Moscow to Ankara, Turkey.  From this posting, Ambassador Steinhardt becomes extremely active in helping Jews and other refugees escape from Eastern Europe.  Turkey becomes a natural area of refuge and an escape route for Jews from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

Comité des Assistance aux Réfugiés (CAR) helps 13,000 Jews in France.

January 1, 1942
The United Nations is founded in Washington, DC.  26 nations sign an agreement to defeat Hitler and his allies.

The Counter-Intelligence Corps is established to investigate and apprehend Nazi war criminals.  Many Holocaust survivors will volunteer for this organization after liberation.

January 2, 1942
Consul Lutz assigned to Chief of the Department of Foreign Interests of the Swiss Legation in Budapest.

January 10, 1942
Japanese army invades and occupies East Indies.

January 12, 1942
Nine European nations and China sign a resolution to hold Nazi war criminals responsible for war crimes, “whether they have ordered them, perpetuated them or in any way participated in them.”

January 13, 1942
The governments in exile of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia condemn the murder of their citizens by the Germans.  Jews are not specifically mentioned.

January 14, 1942
Concentration of Dutch Jews in Amsterdam begins.

January 16, 1942
Deportation of Jews from Lodz ghetto to the Chelmno death camp.

January 17, 1942
Law forbids Belgian Jews from leaving the country.

January 20, 1942
Wannsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe’s Jews by use of poison gas in purpose-built death camps. The industrial killing by exhaust fumes is already tried and tested over several weeks at the Chełmno death camp in the then-Wartheland, under the guise of resettlement. At Majdanek and Auschwitz, the implementation of gas chambers begins in March and May, preceded by experiments with Zyklon B. Between 1942 and 1944, the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the mass murder of millions of Jews from Poland and all over Europe was carried out in six death camps. [Wikipedia]

“Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation of Jews from other parts of Europe is organized and controlled from Berlin. This however depends on the success of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation.”

“In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occur after deportation. The Germans rely on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting the number who are deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews are deported from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Only 25 percent of the Jews in France are killed; most of them are either non-citizens or recent immigrants. The death rate in the Netherlands is higher than neighboring countries, due to difficulty in hiding or collaboration of the Dutch police.”

“The German government sought the active help in deportation of Jews from their allies. The first to turn over its Jewish population was Slovakia, which arrests and deports 58,000 Jews to Poland in1942. Croatia has already shot or killed in concentration camps the majority of its Jewish population and later deports several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. Bulgaria deports 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia, who are murdered at Treblinka, In 1943 they decline to allow the deportation from its prewar territory. Romania and Hungary do not send any Jews, which are the largest surviving populations after 1942. Prior to the German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there are no serious attempts to deport Italian Jews. Further Italy refuses to allow the deportation of Jews in many of their occupied areas. Nazi Germany do not attempt the annihilation of the Finnish Jews and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule.”

“An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans are directly involved in killing Jews, and if it includes all those involved in the organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000. Genocide requires the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans.” [Wikipedia]

January 21, 1942
Jews in Vilna organize major partisan resistance group called The United Partisan Organization.

January 27, 1942
President Roosevelt, in a private conversation with Leo Crowley, Wartime Alien Property Custodian, states: “Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance.  It is up to both of you [Crowley and Henry Morgenthau, a Jew and Secretary of the Treasury] to go along with anything that I want at this time.”

Paul Komor is arrested by Japanese secret police in Shanghai; imprisoned on suspicion of being a spy; Komor is later released and prevented from working with the IC for the duration of the war.

February 1942
In France, German’s order Jews and others to report for the Obligatory Labor Service (STO; Service du Travail Obligatoire), which will deport workers to Germany by mid-February.

February 1, 1942
SS creates Economic Administrative Main Office.  It is headed by Oswald Pohl.  It manages slave labor operations in the concentration camps.

February 8, 1942
First deportation of Jews from Salonika, Greece, to Auschwitz.

February 15, 1942
First transport of Jews murdered at Auschwitz using prussic acid (Zyklon B) poison gas.

British army surrenders to Japan in Singapore.

February 24, 1942
The ship SS Struma is sunk off the coast of Turkey.  The ship is carrying 700 Jewish refugees attempting to reach Palestine.  All drown except one.

February 26, 1942
In a letter to Martin Luther, Reinhard Heydrich follows up on the Wannsee Conference by asking Luther for administrative assistance in the implementation of the "Endlösung der Judenfrage" (Final Solution of the Jewish Question).

March 1942
Vatican Nuncio in Slovakia, Giuseppe Burzio, informs Cardinal Maglione that 80,000 Jews will be deported from Slovakia to certain death.  In May 1942, the Jews are in fact deported.

Jewish community leaders in Slovakia, including Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Dov Weissmandel, form the rescue group called the Working Group (Prácovna Skupina).  Its purpose is to save Jews from deportation by bribing Adolph Eichmann and SS representative in Slovakia Dieter Wisliceny with funds provided by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee offices in Geneva.  The Working Group appeals to members of the Slovak government and leaders of the Catholic clergy.

Consul Lutz issues more than 10,000 “Palestine certificates,” and invents a document called the Schutzbrief (protective letter) to protect Jewish refugees.  Lutz helps organize transports to Palestine.  By the end of the war, Lutz has helped more than 62,000 Jews.

The French Jewish Scouts (Eclaireus Israelites de France; EIF) creates The Sixth (Sixième) to develop a rescue network for Jewish children in France.

US government orders the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast and interns them in ten camps in the country’s interior.  Canada and Peru follow the US policy and intern their Japanese populations.

March 1, 1942
Construction of the Sobibor death camp in Poland begins.

March 3, 1942
Belgian Jews are to do forced labor.

March 5, 1942
The British War Cabinet reaffirms its previous decision to refuse Jewish immigration to Palestine.

March 6, 1942
In Switzerland, JDC head Saly Mayer is authorized by headquarters to provide “relief to needy Jews who cannot be helped by American organizations.”

March 9, 1942
Monsignor Burzio in Slovakia cables Vatican Secretary of State Maglione regarding the deportation of Slovakian Jews.  Burzio protests the deportations to Prime Minister Tuka.  Tuka tells Burzio that he sees nothing inhumane or harsh about the deportations.

March 10, 1942
Catholic Archbishop Felipe Bernardini, the Vatican nuncio in Switzerland, appeals to leaders in Slovakia to cancel deportations.

March 13, 1942
Vatican Nuncio in Budapest, Monsignor Angelo Rotta, forwards an appeal from the World Jewish Congress requesting Pope Pius XII to persuade Slovakian leader Tiso, a Catholic and a former priest, to cancel the deportation of Slovak Jews.  A subsequent note of protest to the Slovak government from the Vatican Secretary of State is ignored.

March 17-June 1943
430,000-500,000 Jews are deported to and murdered in the Belzec death camp. It is situated about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. It is the third-deadliest death camp, exceeded only  by Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

March 19, 1942
Archbishop Bernardini sends a report to the Vatican on the condition of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe.  He reports information received from Gerhardt Riegner of the World Jewish Congress.  Bernardini asks for Papal intervention on behalf of Jews.

March 25, 1942
British envoy to the Holy See, Francis de Arcy Osborne, requests that the Vatican intervene on behalf of Jews being deported in Slovakia.

March 26 - June 1942
57,000 Slovakian Jews are deported.

March 27, 1942
Introduction of the yellow star in Belgium leads to widespread protest by the Belgian people to this order.  Many Belgians wore a similar badge in solidarity with their Jewish countrymen.

First deportation of Jews from France to Auschwitz.  1,112 Jews are sent; only 19 survive the war.  Vichy says nothing about this deportation.

March 31, 1942
Monsignor Burzio sends the Vatican a report on the deportation of Jews in Slovakia.  The Slovakian government claims that there was no pressure from Germany to deport its Jews.

April 1942
The City Council of Helsinki, Finland, refuses to introduce anti-Jewish legislation by pro-Nazis.  The Finnish parliament also refuses to enact anti-Jewish measures.  Popular protests against anti-Jewish legislation are held throughout Finland, led by the Social Democratic Party.

Admiral François Darlan, Deputy Head of Vichy, and his staff resign from the Vichy government.

April-September 1942
Switzerland admits 2,380 Jewish refugees.

April 9, 1942
US Armed Forces surrender to the Japanese Army in Bataan, Philippine Islands.

April 26, 1942
In France, Pierre Laval is returned to his post in the cabinet.  Laval becomes head of the Departments of the Interior, Information and Foreign Affairs.  He becomes virtual head of state.

April 29, 1942
Jews in the Netherlands are forced to wear yellow Jewish star.

May 1942
Belgians protest the enforcement of the Jewish star.  There is widespread protest by the Belgian population.  Many Belgians wear Jewish stars in solidarity.  A mayor’s conference in Brussels protests the order.

May 2, 1942
German anti-Jewish measures are enforced in Yugoslavia and Greece.

May 7, 1942
Reinhardt Heydrich arrives in Paris to speed up and oversee lagging deportation efforts in France.

Battle of the Coral Sea. Victory of the US Navy over Japanese.

May 10-11, 1942
The Biltmore Resolution is adopted by the Conference of American Zionists.  It advocates a policy to establish a state to be the Jewish homeland in Palestine.

May 16, 1942-October 14, 1943
Sobibor a death camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Sobibór in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. Sobibor existed for the sole purpose of mass murder of Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Belzec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. [Wikipedia]

May 26, 1942
The Soviet Union and Great Britain sign a mutual assistance treaty.

May 27, 1942
Reinhardt Heydrich is mortally wounded by Czech partisans near Prague.  He dies on June 3.

Forcing the Jews to wear yellow stars leads to protests in Belgium.  The Greater Brussels City Council will not distribute the star.

May 28-June 8, 1942
6,000 Jews from Krakow are deported and murdered in Belzec.

May 30-31, 1942
A “thousand bomber” air raid by the British air force is launched against Cologne, Germany.

June 1942
In Marseilles, the Emergency Rescue Committee is forced to close by the French police for subversive activities in helping refugees.  The ERC continues to operate secretly.  The Villa Air-Bel estate outside Paris becomes a haven for the Alsatian refugees.

Jules Jefroykin is made JDC representative in Marseilles, France.

Monsignor Burzio attempts to persuade Prime Minister Tuka of Slovakia to investigate the fate of deported Jews.

In Belgium, the local Jewish council leader at Charleroi presents a false list to the Nazis, enabling Jews to escape deportation.

June 1, 1942
Treblinka death camp begins construction.  More than 700,000 Jews are murdered there by mid-1943.

June 3, 1942
U.S. declares war on Romania.

June 3-6, 1942
The Battle of Midway, between US and Japanese naval forces.  The US sinks three Japanese aircraft carries, resulting in the turning of the tide in the war of the Pacific in favor of the Allies.

June 7, 1942
All Jews in France are ordered to wear the Jewish star.  Many Jews decide not to wear the star.  French population resists identifying Jews with the stars, and the French people are outspoken in their protests.

June 10, 1942
The Czechoslovakian villiage of Lidice is destroyed, and all of its inhabitants murdered, by the Gestapo in reprisal for the killing of SS General Reinhardt Heydrich.

June 11, 1942
Himmler ordered increased deportations to Auschwitz from southeastern Europe.  He includes 100,000 Jews to be deported from both zones in France.  The French are asked to revoke the citizenship of the deportees and even pay for the cost of their deportation, which is set at 700 DM per Jew. 

June 20-October 9, 1942
13,776 Jews from Vienna are deported to Theresienstadt.

June 21, 1942
German victory over the British army at Tobruk.

June 22, 1942
Eichmann orders ten thousand Belgian Jews to be deported from Belgium to the death camps.

June 25, 1942
Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Washington, DC.

June 26, 1942
Deportations from the Netherlands to Auschwitz begin.

June 27, 1942
Vichy is asked to round up 50,000 Jews from the southern zone for deportation.

Pierre Laval agrees to cooperate with the deportation of stateless (i.e., German, Austrian and Czech) Jews.  He later claims to have done this to save French Jews from deportation.  Later, he states “I did all I could, considering the fact that my first duty was to my fellow countrymen of Jewish extraction whose interests I could not sacrifice.”

In Bordeaux, the SS sends a train to deport the Jews there.  In a lightening raid, the SS could find only 150 stateless Jews.  Eichmann is furious and cancels the train transport.  Eichmann says, “This never happened before.”

Summer 1942
Himmler asks Finnish government to hand over its Jews for deportation.  His request is denied by Finnish Prime Minister Johann Wilhelm Rangell.  Rangell tells Himmler, “Wir haben keine Judenfrage” [We have no Jewish Question].  The Jews of Finland are not deported, and survive the war.

When Nazi deportations begin in Belgium, there are widespread rescue efforts on behalf of Jews in Belgium.  As many as 80,000 Jews go into hiding to avoid forced labor. More than 25,000 Jews remain in hiding in Belgium.  Many of them are helped to escape to Switzerland.

Franz Neumann, a Jewish convert to Christianity, helped save most of the Jews of Arad, Hungary, from deportation by lodging a protest and paying bribes to local officials.

Franz Neumann, a Jewish convert to Christianity, is responsible for saving the Jews of Arad, Hungary, by paying bribes to local Nazi and Hungarian officials.

Recha Sternbuch sends a coded message through a Polish diplomatic pouch to the to her contacts in Va’ad Hatzalah (Rescue Committee) in the United States and Turkey on the horrors of the Holocaust. This report is a message reinforced by the subsequent 8 August 1942 Gerhardt-Riegner cable. It was sent to alert American Jewry to the reality of the Holocaust and led to a meeting of 34 Jewish organizations. The Polish diplomatic pouch was also used to send secret messages, money to Jews in Nazi occupied Europe and as bribes for rescue.

Summer 1942-September 1943 - Italian Diplomatic Rescue in Croatia and Yugoslavia
With German cooperation, the anti-Semitic Ustasha party in Croatia destroys entire villages and murders thousands of Jews and Serbs.  Italian soldiers and diplomats refuse to look the other way.  Without instructions, they rescue thousands of Jews by allowing them into the Italian protected zones.  Word spreads in Croatia and thousands of other Jews and Serbs flee from German to Italian zones.  Germans vigorously protest these rescue activities.  Eventually, these complaints go all the way to fascist leader Mussolini.

Convinced by his diplomatic corps, Mussolini resists Hitler’s order to deport Jews to concentration camps.  He continues to let Jewish relief groups operate throughout Italy.

Three thousand Jews under the protection of the Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia are transferred to the Island of Arbe, off the coast of Yugoslavia, where most survive the war.  All told, nearly 80% of the Yugoslavian Jews who fled to the Italian-occupied zone were saved.

The following Italian diplomats were involved in the rescue of Jews in Croatia: Vittorio Castellani, Liaison Officer, Foreign Ministry; Ambassador Roberto Ducci, Head of the Croatian Department of the Italian Foreign Ministry; and Gastone Guidotti, Secretary at the Italian Legation in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Gisi Fleischmann, a Jewish community leader in Slovakia, organizes a major rescue of Jewish children from Poland into Slovakia and later from Slovakia into Hungary.

July 1942
The United States and Great Britain agree to plan an invasion of North Africa.

July 1942
Deportation of Jews to the killing centers of Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec, from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland.

The World Jewish Congress publishes a report about the Nazi mass murder in Eastern Europe.  According to this report, gathered from reliable sources, the Congress estimates that more than a million Jews have been murdered.

Zalman Friedrych is a member of the Jewish underground in Warsaw, Poland.  In July 1942, he escaped from the ghetto, where he followed the railroad tracks to verify the murder of Jews in the Treblinka death camp.  He took this information to the Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO-ZOB).  As a result, the JFO planned the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  Friedrych fights bravely on both sides of the wall during the Uprising.  While on a rescue mission, he is taken by the Germans and executed. [Wikipedia]

In Lyon, France, General Robert de Saint-Vincent refuses to use his military troops in the roundup and deportation of Jews.  He is immediately relieved of his command.  Other French officials refuse to participate in the deportations.

In Belgium, the Comité de Defense des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee; CDJ) is organized.  With ties to the Belgian resistance, it finds hiding places for Jewish children the Oeuvre Nationale de l’Enfantes (National Children’s Committee), led by Yvonne Nevejean, hides 4,000 children.

In Brussels, the AJB card index file is intentionally burned by the Jewish underground CDJ.

Students in Holland place 1,000 children in hiding.  By the end of the war, 4,500 Jewish children are hidden.

Joop Westerwell forms the Westerwell Group and works with Jewish Zionist pioneer organizations and successfully rescues Jews from Holland, taking them to France and then to Spain.

July 1, 1942
“The Polish government in exile issues a report to the Allied nations detailing the murder of 700,000 Jews since the German invasion and occupation in September 1939.  This report reveals the use of mobile gas vans at Chelmno.  Ninety Jews are murdered at a time in each of these vans by carbon monoxide.  More than a thousand people are murdered a day. [Wikipedia]

July 4, 1942
Deportation of Jews from Belgium to Auschwitz begins.  25,000 Jews go into hiding with non-Jewish Belgian families.

Vichy agrees to deport foreign Jews in both zones.  The Germans call this deportation operation “Vent Printanier” [spring wind]. 

Jews from the Netherlands and other foreign Jews residing in Holland are helped to escape to France and Switzerland.  Father André of Namur in Bastogne, Bishop Lewis Joseph Kerkhofs of Liege, and the Bishop of Mechelen, help hide numerous Jews.  Belgian Red Cross also helps hide Jews.  Catholic Cardinal Von Roey helps Jews who are arrested.

July 15, 1942
First deportation from the Westerbork transit camp in Holland to Auschwitz.  The AJB in Belgium is ordered to organize a labor draft for Jews.

July 16-17, 1942
12,887 Jews are arrested and sent to the Drancy deportation camp near Paris.  From there, these Jews are deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

July 19, 1942
Himmler orders the Jews in the General Government of Poland to be killed by the end of the year.

July 20, 1942
French Ministry of the Interior suspends issuing exit visas for foreign Jews except for those from the Benelux countries.

Jewish uprising in Nesvizh.

July 22, 1942
Construction continues on the Treblinka death camp near Warsaw.  It begins its murderous operation in August 1942.  The mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants begins. During the next fifty-two days (until 12 September 1942) 265,000 people are transported by freight train to Treblinka where they are murdered on arrival. The Jewish Ghetto Police are ordered to escort the ghetto inhabitants to the Umschlagplatz train station. They are spared from the deportations until September 1942 in return for their cooperation, but soon share their fate. More than 870,000 Jews are murdered there.  Most are from the Warsaw ghetto. [Wikipedia]

The Nieśwież Ghetto fighters in eastern Poland revolt.

July 22-September 12, 1942
265,000 Jews from Warsaw are murdered in Treblinka.

July 24, 1942
The Derechin ghetto, which is liquidated. Yeheskel Atlas is a partisan commander who helps numerous Jews escape the ghetto. Atlas assists numerous Jews who escape into the forest and form family camps.

July 28, 1942
The Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) is created in the Warsaw ghetto.

July 30, 1942
Heinrich Himmler travels to Finland to encourage Finnish leaders to participate in the deportation and murder of Jews.  There are 2,000 Jews living in Finland.  Himmler talks with Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rolf Witting.  Witting firmly refuses to cooperate with Germany in the handing over of Jews.  The Finnish cabinet decides unanimously to protect its Jews.  Not one Jew is surrendered.  Witting says, “Finland is a decent nation.  We would rather perish together with the Jews…We will not surrender the Jews.”  On February 3, 1943, the Finnish government withdraws from the war.  Due to war reversals, too few German soldiers are stationed in Finland to enforce a deportation.  As a result, Finnish Jews and other Jewish refugees survive the war.

Eduard Schulte, an important Germany industry leader, reports on the planned murder of Jews in Europe.

August 1942
25,000 Jews in France are deported to Auschwitz.  Most of them are murdered upon arrival.

Gabriel Zivian, a Jewish refugee who escapes, gives an eyewitness account of the massacre of Jews in Riga, Latvia.

The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) are able to get a few hundred Jewish children out of southern France to Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland.

Father Pierre Chaillet and his group, the Amitié Chrétienne [Christian Friendship], hide Jewish children in a number of religious institutions.  The Christian Friendship organization also rescues Jewish children from deportations.  Among those who take part in the rescue are Madeleine Barot and Abbe Glasberg.  Father Chaillet is placed under house arrest for three months, and he refuses to give up the address where Jewish children are being hidden.  Archbishop Gerlier also refuses to give the addresses of the children’s shelters to the regional police in Lyons.

Germans demand that Laval enforce sanctions against clergy and church groups who aid Jews.

General de St. Vincent, the military governor of Lyons, refuses to assist in the deportation of Jews and uncovering hidden Jewish children, and is dismissed from his position.

24 French prefects in the southern zone stated that public opinion was overwhelmingly shocked by the deportation of Jews there.

H. Pinkney Tuck, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Vichy France, discusses with Laval the deportation of Jews.  In a letter to the US Secretary of State, he writes, “It is evident from Laval’s attitude that he had never interest nor sympathy in the fate of the Jews who he callously remarked were already too numerous in France.”

The United States and Great Britain send aid to millions of starving Greeks by shipping food to the beleaguered country.  Great Britain ships 35,000 tons of food per month, with the United States paying for it.

The Papal Nuncio in Bucharest, Romania, Archbishop Andrea Cassulo, along with Swiss diplomat René de Weck, protests the Romanian government’s announcement that they would deport Jews.

Rabbi Alexander Safran, Chief Rabbi of Romania, and Wilhelm Filderman, leader of Romanian Jewry, persuade the Archbishop of Transylvania, Nicolae Balan, to intervene with Romanian leader Ion Antonescu against the upcoming deportation of Jews.

George Mandel-Mantello, an honorary diplomat representing El Salvador, publishes and publicizes a report of two escapees from Auschwitz death camp.  It is published in more than 400 newspapers worldwide.  Mantello is arrested by Swiss authorities for violating Swiss neutrality laws.

August 1, 1942
Gerhardt Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, learns from a top German industrialist, Eduard Schulte, that Nazi Germany is planning to murder Jews using poisonous prussic acid gas (Zyklon B).

Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium promises to intervene with senior German general to postpone deportation of Jews.  She meets with the Jewish delegation.  Her husband, King Leopold, strongly protests Nazi actions against Jews.

There are still 30,000 Jews in Bendzin and in Sosnowiec.  But in subsequent months practically all of them were deported to the death-camp of Oswiecim.  The halutz group which had been secretly formed in Bendzin resisted the deportation orders in every possible way and organized attacks upon the Nazis, killing many of them. [Wikipedia]

August 3, 1942
The Nimes Committee in southern France and the Quakers, led by Lindsey Nobel, meet with Pierre Laval to plead humanity and to protect Jews.  Laval turns them away.

August 4, 1942
Tracy Strong, of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in France, meets with Marshal Pétain and informs him of the adverse publicity regarding the deportation of Jews and how it affects American public opinion.

August 5, 1942
In France, order for all foreign Jews to be sent to the occupied zone.  All legal exit visas are now cancelled.  As a result, only 600 Jews emigrate legally in the last half of 1942.

August 6, 1942
The Quakers in France meet with US Chargé d’Affaires in Vichy H. Pinkney Tuck and inform him about their meeting with Pierre Laval.  They indicate that Laval stated that “these foreign Jews had always been a problem in France and that the French government was glad that a change in German attitude towards them gave France an opportunity to get rid of them.”

August 8, 1942
Gerhardt Riegner cables Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in New York and Sydney Silverman in London regarding Nazi implementation of a plan to murder European Jewry.  Riegner hopes that this report will initiate a worldwide mass rescue effort to save Jews.  Most of Europe’s Jews are still alive.  The US State Department delays delivery of the cable to Wise. This information is sent to the State Department by US diplomat Howard Elting, Jr., who is stationed at the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

August 9, 1942
Mir ghetto uprising in Poland.

August 10-23, 1942
50,000 Jews from Lvov are murdered in Belzec.

August 13, 1942
Swiss Alien Police Commissioner Rothmund instructs border police to admit political refugees only.  Ironically, he states, “Refugees for racial reasons only, for instance Jews, do not count as political refugees.”

August 13-14, 1942
Foreign Jews residing in Antwerp, Belgium, are arrested and sent to the Malines deportation center.

August 13-20, 1942
Large part of the Croatian Jewish community is deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

August 20, 1942
Swedish Consul General in Stettin, Poland, forwards report on the murder of Jews in Poland.

August 20-24, 1942
18,000 Jews in Kielce, Poland, are deported to Treblinka.

August 21, 1942
Goran von Otter, a Swedish consular official in Berlin, receives a secret report from German SS officer Kurt Gerstein, who has personally witnessed a gassing of Jews in a Polish killing center.  Gerstein is a member of a Protestant resistance group.

August 26, 1942
Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., the US Ambassador to several European governments in exile, forwards a report written by Ernest Frischer, a member of the Czechoslovakian State Council, to the US State Department.  It outlines the murder of Jews in central Europe.  Frischer’s report stresses that the Jews are being singled out for total destruction by the Nazis.

George Garel, a French Jew, establishes a rescue network throughout France.

August 27 and 31, 1942
US Consul Paul Chapin Squire, stationed at the embassy in Bern, Switzerland, forwards a report to the US State Department by Dr. Donald A. Lowrie representing the YMCA in Geneva.  Lowrie describes the deportation of Jews from southern France.  He concludes that the deportation would eventually lead to their murder.

September 1942
In France, 27,000 Jews in 13 separate deportations are sent to Auschwitz from both French zones.  These deportations are accomplished with the cooperation of French authorities and police.  Pierre Laval expresses reservations about cooperating in future deportations of French Jews by the Germans.

Germany’s allies in France, including Hungary, Romania, and Italy, refuse to cooperate with deportations.

3,800 Jewish refugees enter Switzerland. Swiss newspapers censor stories about the murder of Jews in Europe.  They call these “foreign rumor propaganda of the worst type.”

60 clergymen, briefed by Pastor Marc Boegner, create a secret rescue network known as the “Refuge Cévenol.”  This network throughout the southern zone is established by Amitié Chrétienne [Christian Friendship].  Refugees are hidden in convents and churches.  Escape routes are established from Toulouse to Spain and from Lyons, Grenoble and Valence to Switzerland.  Clergy in Haute-Savoie become guides.  The nuns of Notre-Dame-de-Sion in Lyons provide forged documents.  Protestant hostels in Lyons are used as refuges.

Monsignor Rémond, Bishop of Nice, forbids the checking of baptismal certificates by anti-Jewish police.  On September 30, a report states, “it is of public notoriety that he [the bishop] sets himself up as champion in defense of the Jews.” 

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film corporation donates one million dollars toward rescue of Jews in southern France.

Italian consul general in Nice Alberto Calisse refuses to cooperate with German officials in interning Italian stateless Jews.  He asks the Italian foreign ministry for permission to protect Italian Jews.  This prompts the Italian foreign ministry to issue a decision paper that will in fact protect Italian Jews throughout France.  Calisse informs Italian police official Ribiere that Italians have authority over Jews in the Italian zone.  Calisse is not required to enforce the regulation of having “Jew” stamped in the identity cards and ration books of Jews in the Italian zone.

Several Vatican diplomats request that Pope Pius XII end his public silence on Nazi atrocities against Jews.  The Pope declines to take direct action to help Jews who are being murdered.  He states: “The Holy See has done, is doing, and will do all in its power to help.”

There are 25,000 Jews in hiding in Holland.  Dutch make every effort to save them.

The Jewish Council in Ternapol refuses to turn over fellow Jews for deportation.

September 4, 1942
Macedonian Jews are forced to wear the yellow star.

September 6, 1942
French Archbishop Gerlier issues a public protest about the deportations.

September 8, 1942
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, during a meeting of the British House of Commons, reports on the Nazi deportation of French Jews.

September 11, 1942
US Chargé d’Affaires in Vichy France Pinkney Tuck obtains 1,000 blank US entry visas for Jewish children trapped in southern France.  He eventually gets permission from US Secretary of State Cordell Hull to obtain a total of 5,000 visas to the US.  Pierre Laval, reacting to German pressure, rescinds the offer to release the Jewish children.  The rescue efforts fail.

September 22, 1942
Pastor Marc Boegner protests Jewish deportations from France.  He personally tries to intervene with Vichy leader Pierre Laval.  Laval refuses.

September 26, 1942
Myron Taylor, the US representative to the Holy See, writes to Cardinal Maglione asking him to reply to Taylor’s earlier communications regarding reports of the murder of Jews.  In Taylor’s note, he reports stories of the deportation of Jews from Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Leland Harrison, the US Minister to Switzerland stationed in Bern, informs the US State Department about the deportation of Polish Jews.  He states that between 5,000 and 10,000 Jews in Warsaw are being collected in “lots” and shipped east, “their whereabouts and fate unknown.”

Swiss immigration regulation states the principle that Jews should be allowed refuge in Switzerland.  It ironically concludes that this does not include the sick, pregnant women, people over 65, close relatives of refugees already in Switzerland, refugees under 16, and parents of these children.  It further states that French Jews should be refused immigration because the are not in danger.

September 27, 1942
Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Zydom [Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews] is founded in Poland by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka.  It is made up of Catholic activists and has 180 members.  On December 4, the organization becomes Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Żydom), known by the codename Żegota, with Julian Grobelny as its president and Irena Sendler as head of its children's section.  It is one of the few organizations where Jews and Christians serve together.  Until the liberation of Poland, it successfully hides, feeds, and provides forged documents to thousands of Jews. It is not exactly known how many Jews were helped by Żegota, but at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in Warsaw alone. At the end of the war, Sendler attempts to locate their parents but nearly all of them had died at Treblinka. It is estimated that about half of the Jews who survived the war (thus over 50,000) were aided in some shape or form by Żegota. [Wikipedia]

September 28, 1942 
Gerhardt Riegner gives US Consul Paul Squire in Geneva two sets of documents outlining the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe.  The first was prepared by an anti-Nazi officer in the German high command.  The second is an eyewitness account, by a Jew in Warsaw, of the deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.  The report states that Jews are being murdered.  These reports are forwarded to US Secretary of State Cordell Hull. As a result of these reports, US Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells asks Minister Leland Harrison, in Bern, to submit additional reports verifying the reports of the extermination of Jews.

September 30, 1942
In a speech at the Sports Palace in Berlin, Hitler acknowledges plans to murder Jews.  Hitler says, “if Jewry should plot another world war in order to exterminate the Aryan peoples of Europe, it should not be the Aryan peoples which would be exterminated, but Jewry…”

October 1942
The Working Group, in Slovakia, establishes three camps that serve as safe havens for 40,000 Jews.  They are Novaky, Sered and Vyhme.  The Working Group begins helping Jews escape to Hungary.

Attempts by the Germans to round up and deport 1,500 Jews living in Norway raise an outcry among the Norwegian public and clergy.  The Norwegian Lutheran Church continues to protest actions against Jews.

1,904 Jewish refugees are allowed to enter Switzerland.

Norwegian rescuers smuggle approximately 930 Jews across the border into neutral Sweden to keep them from being deported.

October 9, 1942
Cardinal Joseph Ernst van Roey and Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth intercede on behalf of Belgian Jewish community leaders for their release from jail.  Five of six are freed.

The Italian racial laws are put into force in Libya.

October 14, 1942
Mizocz Ghetto revolt in Poland.

October 22, 1942
World Jewish Congress representative Gerhardt Riegner submits a summary report to US Minister in Bern, Leland Harrison, regarding the Nazi murder of Jews.  It states, “four million Jews are on the verge of complete annihilation by a deliberate policy consisting of starvation, the ghetto system, slave labor, deportation under inhuman conditions and organized mass murder by shooting, poisoning and other methods.  This policy of total destruction has been repeatedly proclaimed by Hitler and is now being carried out.”  Riegner pleads for urgent rescue efforts to save Jews in Hungary, France, Romania, Italy and Bulgaria.  On October 24, Harrison submits these reports to the US State Department.  Harrison continues to investigate information and passes it along to the State Department.  Harrison is in sympathy with Riegner and the plight of Jews in Europe.

Paul Squire continues to collect material regarding the murder of Jews in Europe.  He receives reliable information from eyewitness sources, including Red Cross officials.

October 29, 1942
In the first week of November 1942, more than 170,000 Jews are murdered in Belzec, Treblinka and the Auschwitz death camps.

The Polish Government in Exile is the first to reveal the existence of Nazi-run concentration camps and the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, through its courier-diplomat Jan Karski and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, a member of Armia Krajowa who is the only person to volunteer for imprisonment in Auschwitz and who organizes a resistance movement inside the camp itself. [Wikipedia]

Winston Churchill, in a protest meeting in London led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, criticizes Nazis for the murder of European Jews.

November 1942
US breaks off diplomatic relations with Vichy France.

US Secretary of State Sumner Wells meets with Dr. Stephen Wise regarding the reports from the Swiss embassy in Bern.  He confirms the accuracy of the reports and tells Dr. Wise, “I regret to tell you that these [reports] confirm and justify your deepest fears.”

Swedish government provides refuge for Jews who escape across the Norwegian-Swedish border.  Swedish diplomats in Oslo try to protect Jews with any Swedish connections.

President Roosevelt announces that the US will propose the establishment of a war crimes commission to collect information on the acts of war criminals and to establish criteria for punishment of the perpetrators after the war.  The US Ambassador to Britain, John G. Winant, is asked to prepare information regarding the proposed war crimes commission.  He collects additional reports and information about Nazi war crimes.  Winant receives more than 200 appeals demanding support for the creation of this commission and in support of actions on behalf of Jews.  The US State Department delays issuing its recommendations.

The Jewish community in British controlled Palestine, called the Yishuv, receives information about the murder of Jews in Europe.

The Allied armies turn the tide of the war in North Africa at the battle of El Alamein in Egypt.  German General Rommel’s army retreats.

Ukrainian SS squad executes 20 villagers from Berecz in Wołyń Voivodeship for giving aid to Jewish escapees from the ghetto in Povorsk.

November 4, 1942
German General Rommel’s Italian and German forces retreat in North Africa.

November 8, 1942
The Allied armies land in Algeria and Morocco, in North Africa.  The invasion is called Operation Torch.  The landing guarantees the safety of 117,000 Algerian Jews.

November 9, 1942
The German and Italian armies occupy Tunisia in reaction to the Allied invasion of North Africa.  Italian occupying officials will protect Jews in Tunisia.

The First Secretary of the American Embassy in Madrid intervenes with the Spanish government to prevent deportation of Jewish refugees.  As a result, Spain no longer deports refugees.

November 11, 1942
After the Allied landings in North Africa, Germans and Italians occupy southern France.  This occupation extends to the Mediterranean coast.  The operation is called “Attila.”  There is no French resistance to this occupation.  France is now a fully occupied country.  Vichy maintains a limited sovereignty.  The SS and Gestapo now have complete authority over Jewish issues in the south, except in the Italian zone of occupation. During the Nazi occupation of the south, 22,000 refugees are able to flee successfully to Spain.  By the end of the year, more than 30,000 refugees have crossed the border. 

Norwegian Protestant clergymen publicly protest the deportation of Norwegian Jews.

November 18, 1942-January 12, 1943
15,000 Jews are killed in the Lvov ghetto.

November 19, 1942
Soviet army launches major counteroffensive against German General von Paulus’ army, west of Stalingrad.  This will result in his being encircled and cut off.

November 27, 1942
French naval officers sink their own ships at Toulon to prevent them from falling into the hands of the German navy.  The Allies occupy all of French overseas possessions.  The Jews in French North Africa are protected from deportation.

December 1942
The Vatican rejects attempts by the Allies to sign a solemn resolution condemning Nazi war atrocities.

8,467 Jewish refugees are admitted to Switzerland.

Several thousand Paraguayan visas are issued and distributed by the “Lados Group” in the Polish Legation in Bern, Switzerland. The vast majority of Paraguay passports are issued between 18 and 30 December 1942, indicating that these passports were backdated (there is evidence that several passports of 30 December 1942 were issued in the autumn of 1943). Most of the Paraguayan passports were issues by Polish consul Konstanty Rokicki, but there are also several passports filled with different writing. They are issued either by consuls Juliusz Kühl or Stefan Ryniewicz. Passports are issued for Jewish citizens of Poland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Hungary as well as for Jews who are deprived of their Germany citizenship. As many as 1056 passports are issued. In many cases there are more two people on the passports indicating at least 2,100 people are aided by these documents.

December 4, 1942
In Poland, Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews (Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Zydom) is renamed Zegota.  Together with Jewish resistance fighters and partisans, they rescue thousands of Jews. Zegota, the Polish Council for Aid to Jews, begins actions to rescue thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.  Zegota is administered by Polish Catholics and Jews together.  Catholic churches and monasteries in Poland hide Jewish children.  Polish Boy Scout units (Grey Ranks) cooperate with the Jewish rescue organization Ha Shomer ha-Tsa’in.  The number of Aryan gentiles who help Jews in Nazi occupied Poland is eventually estimated to be between 160,000 and 360,000, or between 1-2.5% of the total population.  At least 872 Poles are executed for helping Jews. [Wikipedia]

December 7, 1942
The London Times observes, “The question now arises whether the Allied governments, even now, can do anything to prevent Hitler’s threat of extermination from being literally carried out.”  The German government gives occupied countries deadlines for the expulsion of their Jews.  The Times further reports, “The dates are freely given on the Axis wireless or in reports from Berlin… In all parts of Europe, the Germans are calling meetings, or issuing orders, about what they call ‘the final solution of the Jewish problem.’”  German newspapers state that since September 1942, 185,000 Jews have been deported from Romania to Transnitria.  They reprot that all the Jews of Croatia and Slovakia have been moved to Eastern Poland.

December 8, 1942
Stephen Wise and a Jewish delegation meet with President Roosevelt in the White House.  They give the President a document entitled Blueprint for Extermination.  It is a detailed analysis of the murder of millions of Jews.  The President expresses profound shock.

December 9, 1942
Vichy government dismisses the military governor of Lyons, General Robert de Saint-Vincent for refusing to arrest Jews.

December 10, 1942
The Polish government in London issues a report called The Mass Extermination of Jews in German-Occupied Poland.  This report is widely publicized.

Poland asks for the Allies to retaliate for the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

December 12-23, 1942
German General von Paulus’ army remains trapped by Soviet army near Stalingrad after German General Manstein fails to break through.  The German air force cannot supply von Paulus’ army.

December 13, 1942
Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, Josef Goebbels, enters in his diary, “The question of Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top news priority by the English and the Americans…At bottom, however, I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff raff.”  He also complains about Italy’s halfhearted persecution of its Jews.

December 17, 1942
The United States, Great Britain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French government in exile make a joint declaration of condemnation against the murder of European Jews.  They declare their intention to prosecute Nazi war criminals after the war.  This declaration makes headlines around the world.  Thousands of letters are sent to the US State Department and the British Foreign Ministry at Whitehall regarding this declaration.  Swiss officials continue to state that reports of atrocities are unverified Allied propaganda.  These reports are, in fact, verified by the liberal press in Switzerland.

December 18, 1942
Francis d’Arcy Osborne, the British Ambassador to the Holy See, states that Pope Pius XII “does not see that his silence is highly damning to the Holy See.”

Several hundred Poles are massacred with their priest, Adam Sztark, in Słonim for sheltering Jewish refugees of the Słonim Ghetto in a Catholic church.

The Polish President in exile Władysław Raczkiewicz writes a dramatic letter to Pope Pius XII, begging him for a public defense of both murdered Poles and Jews.

Winter 1942
Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers; Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin.

3,500 Jews are interned at the Miranda Camp in Spain.  They are cared for by the Jewish Joint and the Spanish Red Cross.  In January, Spanish authorities begin to release people from this camp.

November 1942-September 1943 - France
Beginning in November of 1942, the Italian Army and Foreign Ministry officials occupy and administer eight French departments east of the Rhône River, in southern France.  A French government remains in place, but the Italians control the area.  In these zones, French Jews and other refugees are protected until the Italians surrender and leave southern France in September 1943.

Italian forces and diplomats refuse to enforce anti-Semitic measures in their zones.  They refuse to allow any forced labor camps in their occupation zones.  Further, the Italian occupying Army prevents any arrests or deportations of Jews in their area.  By 1943, more than 50,000 Jews flee to the Italian zone.  Twenty to thirty thousand of these are non-French Jews.  Many gravitate to the area around Nice.

For nearly 10 months, Italian diplomats, and the occupying military forces thwart the Nazis' "final solution" in southern France.

The following Italian diplomats are active in rescue of Jews in southern France: Gino Buti; Alberto Calisse, Consul in Nice; Guido Lospinoso, Foreign Ministry Official and 'Inspector General of Racial Policy,' Nice; Vittoriano Manfredi, Consul in Grenoble; Gustavo Orlandini, Italian Consul in Paris; and Vittorio Zoppi.

1943

1943
Hundreds of thousands of Jews are murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka, near Warsaw.  250,000 Jews are murdered in Sobibor’s gas chambers.  On November 3, 1943, 42,000 Jews are rounded up and shot in the Lublin district of Poland.  The code name for this operation is Erntefest, which means harvest festival.  In 1943, it is estimated that 500,000 Jews are murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe.

There are Jewish armed revolts in the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps.

The Working Group in Slovakia, along with Jewish rescue organizations, smuggles between 6,000 and 8,000 Slovak Jews into Hungary.  This rescue operation is known as the Tiyyul.

Pope Pius XII states that the Vatican and Holy See can only help peoples through “our prayers.”

Mexico, Brazil and several other Latin American countries declare war against Germany, Italy and Japan. 

The Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross is allowed to operate in the occupied zone of France.  They supply food, medicine and other supplies to Jews and others in the internment camps.  In addition, the Commission tries to help Jews by redefining their legal status by having them declared prisoners of war and entitled to protections under the Geneva Convention.  The Red Cross is able to improve some of the conditions in the camps.

The French Red Cross provides relief to Jewish prisoners at the internment camps at Hôtel Terminus des Ports, Bombard, and Les Milles.

The Red Cross and Quaker missions continue to collect information on internees and conditions in the camps.  They report these conditions to the Allies.

Mexican Consul General Gilberto Bosques, Mexican Ambassador Luis I. Rodriguez, and the entire Mexican legation are arrested by German and French officials.  The Brazilian Ambassador and the Brazilian legation are also arrested.  The diplomats and their families are interned in the German city of Bad Godesberg for a year.  This action is in violation of international conventions.

Ira Hirschmann becomes involved with one of the most active rescue organizations, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.

Gerhart Feine, the German Consul General in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, rescues several Jewish families.  He issues false German papers to help them escape deportation.

Julio Palencia, Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary in Bulgaria, steps up his actions to protect Jews from deportation.  He actively protests Nazi persecution of Jews.  Palencia contributes to the saving of the lives of more than 600 Bulgarian Jews.  For his actions, he is declared persona non grata and forced to return to Madrid.  Upon his return, he is reprimanded for his actions in Bulgaria.

Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII, intercedes on behalf of Bulgarian Jews with King Boris of Bulgaria. 

Carvalho da Silva, Vice Consul for Portugal in Paris, France, personally intervenes on behalf of 40 Portuguese Jews who are at the deportation center of Drancy, France.  He convinces the Gestapo to free them and personally accompanies the group through a border crossing of France into Spain.  He rescues a second group of about 100 Jews, and accompanies them across the border as well.

Abraham Silberschein, Zionist activist, pre-war deputy to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, founder of the rescue committee RELICO establishes contact with the Jewish employee of the General Consulate of El Salvador in Geneva, George Mandel-Mantello. Mantello – with the consent of the consul – Arturo Castellanos, gave him completed passports and citizenship certificates. The Polish legation is informed about the number of issued passports and about contacts between Silberschein-Mantello, but there is no evidence that it participated in the production of documents. Colonel Arturo Castellanos is declared a Righteous Person in 2010 by Yad Vashem.

Protestant churches in Switzerland pressure the Swiss government to alleviate the restriction on Jewish refugees entering Switzerland.  More than 16,379 refugees are allowed to enter the country.  The churches provide material aid to Jewish refugees.

The Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople writes a letter to all of the bishops under his authority asking them to help Jews.  He states that concealing Jews is a sacred duty.

The Bishop of Wurttemberg, Theophil Wurm, protests the deportation and murder of Jews in Germany.

The World Council of Churches, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, becomes the center for rescue and relief efforts on behalf of Jews.  Further, it disseminates information about the Holocaust throughout the world.

January 1943
A group of German generals near Stalingrad, Russia, plans to overthrow Hitler.  The plot is never implemented.

61,000 Jews are murdered at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belzec.

The US State Department thwarts attempts to save Jewish children in Europe.

When the German army occupies Marseilles, they arrest and intern members of the Quaker, Unitarian and Mennonite committees in Baden Baden, Germany.  All legal and semi-legal rescue groups in Marseilles are shut down.

The Joint Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency is set up to rescue Jews in Europe.

The Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest (Va’ada) begins functioning in Budapest as part of the Jewish Agency.

January 1, 1943
Jews in Holland can no longer have private bank accounts.

January 3, 1943
Wladislaw Racziewicz, President of the Polish government in exile, asks the Pope to denounce Nazi atrocities against Poles and Jews.

January 4, 1943
Time magazine names Stalin "Man of the Year" for 1942.

January 13, 1943
1,500 Jews are deported from Radom, Poland, to Treblinka.

January 14-24, 1943
Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt confer in Casablanca, Morocco, to discuss the future of the Allied war effort against Germany. The debate and negotiations produce what was known as the Casablanca Declaration, a statement of "unconditional surrender". That doctrine will come to represent the unified voice of Allied will and the determination that the Axis powers would be fought to their ultimate defeat.

January 17, 1943
Catholic bishop Konrad Graf von Preysing threatens to resign unless the collaboration of German bishops with Nazi policy ceases.  He sends communication to Pope Pius XII.

January 18, 1943
The German Luftwaffe begins new attacks on London. 

Isaac Gitterman is killed. Giterman was a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw, Poland.  He administered Jewish welfare organizations in Nazi-occupied Poland, including the General Government. Giterman helped keep the JDC office open in Warsaw, Poland, despite Nazi pressures to close it.  He also worked with the Jewish Self-Help Society (JSS) and the Jewish Mutual Aid Society. Giterman was also an active member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), joining it in October 1942.  He also worked with Emanuel Ringelblum and helped establish the Oneg Shabbat group and a Yiddish cultural organization. [Wikipedia]

January 18-22, 1943
Second phase of the deportation of the Jews of Warsaw begins. 

First Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins. On January 18, 1943, a group of Ghetto militants led by the right-leaning ŻZW, including some members of the left-leaning ŻOB, rise up in a first Warsaw uprising. Both organizations resist, German attempts for additional deportations to Auschwitz and Treblinka. The ŻOB had more than 750 fighters, but lacked weapons; they had only 9 rifles, 59 pistols and several grenades. A highly developed network of bunkers and fortifications are built. The Jewish Ghetto fighters receive support from the Polish Underground (Armia Krajowa). The German forces, which include 2,842 Nazi soldiers and 7,000 security personnel, are not capable of crushing the Jewish resistance in open street combat. After several days, they decide to set buildings on fire in which the Jewish fighters hid. The commander of the ŻOB, Mordechai Anielewicz, died fighting on May 8, 1943, at the organization's command center on 18 Mila Street. It takes the Germans twenty-seven days to put down the uprising, after some very heavy fighting. The German SS general Jürgen Stroop stated that his troops had killed 6,065 Jewish fighters during the battle. After the uprising is over, Himmler had the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Square (outside the ghetto) destroyed as a celebration of German victory and a symbol that the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was no longer. The final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto comes four months later after the crushing of one of the most heroic and tragic battles of the war, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. [Wikipedia]

January 21, 1943
Gerhardt Riegner provides additional information about the murder of Jews to Minister Harrison at the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.  He reports that 6,000 Jews are being killed every day in Poland.  He further reports on the 130,000 Romanian Jews who had been forcibly deported to Transnistria in 1941.  Sixty thousand Jews had already been murdered, and the rest were being starved.

January 22, 1943
Jewish revolt at the Treblinka death camp is started by a transport of Jews from Grodno, Poland.

January 22-27, 1943
Ten thousand French police and several thousand German soldiers are sent to move the 22,000 residents of the old port of Marseilles and destroy it.  In the process, 2,000 Jews are arrested.

January 23, 1943
British Army liberates Tripoli, Libya.

January 26, 1943
Members of the Swedish parliament propose legislation to curb anti-Semitism.

January 27, 1943
Members of both houses of the British parliament, in special committees, urge government to help persecuted Jews in Nazi-occupied areas.

Leland Harrison, US Ambassador to Switzerland, submits a report on the murder of Jews in Europe.

David J. Blickenstaff, a Quaker representative, and his Spanish wife Janine begin supervising relief activities on behalf of Jewish refugees in Spain.  Relief expenses are paid by the JDC.  On April 10, 1943, Spain officially recognizes Blickenstaff.  The JDC and the Quakers work in Spain.

February 1943
The UGIF refuses to hand over to the Nazis lists of foreign Jews residing in France.

1,230 Jewish children, many of whom are orphans, and 369 adults arrive in Palestine via Iran.  This is known as the Teheran Children’s Transport.

Swedish consul in Oslo, Norway, Claes Adolf Hjalmar Westring, issues visas for 50 Norwegian Jews to emigrate to Sweden.

February 2, 1943
The German Sixth Army surrenders to the Soviet Army at Stalingrad, Russia.  This event is considered the major turning point in World War II.  Total German casualties in the Sixth Army are 160,000 dead and 107,000 captured.

February 4, 1943
Field Marshall Montgomery’s British forces are victorious over Rommel’s Africa Corps at El Alemein.

Archbishop of Canterbury, in England, condemns murder of Jews in Europe.

February 5, 1943
Mussolini takes over the post of Italian Foreign Minister.

February 5-15, 1943
10,000 Bialystock Jews are deported to Treblinka. During the deportations, hundreds of Jews, mainly those deemed too weak or sick to travel, are killed. Some resist deportations.

February 8, 1943
The Soviet Army retakes the city of Kursk.

February 10, 1943
US Ambassador to Switzerland Leland Harrison is sent a message from the US State Department not to communicate with private citizens regarding reports of atrocities against Jews.  This is sent despite the US and British pledges to help Jews and punish war criminals.

February 12, 1943
The New York Times reports, “The Romanian government has communicated to United Nations officials that it is prepared to cooperate in the transferring of 70,000 Romanian Jews from Transnistria to any refuge selected by the Allies, according to neutral sources.  This proposal, which was made in specific terms, suggests the refugees would be moved in Romanian ships which would be permitted to display the insignia of the Vatican to ensure safe passage.”  The Allies fail to respond to this offer.

February 16, 1943
The French Vichy government publishes a law promising to supply French labor to Germany.  This unpopular law marks the beginning of major resistance to Vichy authorities.

February 18, 1943
There are an estimated 140,000 Jews in the south of France, not including the Italian zone.  French police are ordered to round up French and foreign Jews and send them to the Gurs concentration camp, and then to Drancy.  The Germans have limited success in this action due to increasing French resistance.

February 22, 1943
Bulgaria and Germany sign an agreement to deport Bulgarian Jews to Poland.  Bulgarian officials agree to deliver 50,000 Jews to the Germans.  This is the only time that a formal contract for the murder of Jews is written.  The contract is signed by Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksander Belev and Theodore Danneker, Eichmann’s SS representative in Bulgaria.  The agreement states, “As a first step, 20,000 Jews will be deported to German territories to the East.”  On March 2, the Bulgarian government will approve the agreement.

Dr. Harald Feller is posted as Second Secretary to the Swiss embassy in Budapest.

In Lyons, France, occupying Italian soldiers order local French chief of police to rescind German deportation order.

February 24, 1943
The Salonika ghetto is established.

The Spanish ambassador in Berlin suggests that Spanish Jewish passport holders would be allowed Spanish transit visas for immigration to the United States or Portugal.

February 25, 1943
The US and Britain begin day and night bombing raids of Germany.

February 26, 1943
H. Shoemaker, the former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, makes a broadcast appeal to the Bulgarian people to resist the impending deportation of Jews. 

February 27, 1943
Christian wives of Jews who have been arrested begin protest at the Berlin Gestapo headquarters on Rosenstrasse.  By March, the protest gains the attention of Goebbels and Hitler.  The husbands are soon released.

March 1943
Massacres of Poles and Jews in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia beginning in March 1943, parallel with the liquidation of the ghettos in Reichskommissariat Ostland ordered by Himmler. 31 deadly pogroms are carried out throughout the region in conjunction with the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Schuma.  Thousands of Jews who escaped actions hide in the forests are murdered.

German foreign ministry and SS authorities are increasingly dissatisfied with French and Italian cooperation in the deportations.

Italian police in the cities of Valence, Chambery and Anecy prevent French prefects from arresting Jews in their zones. In Grenoble, Italian soldiers protect Jewish internees about to be deported.  They are released from custody.

The Hebrew Immigration Aid Society releases a report that shows that only 228,964 visas, fewer than half of the 460,000 visas available, were issued by the US State Department.

Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu visits Hitler and is pressured to agree to the resettlement of Romanian Jews to the East.  He rejects Hitler’s demand to deport the remaining 70,000 Jews.

The US State Department blocks the rescue of 70,000 Jews from France and Romania by refusing to transfer money to support a plan worked out by the World Jewish Congress.  Funds are blocked in Swiss bank accounts until the end of the war.  Agents of the Treasury Department discover this intentional delaying of the transfer of money.  They determine that this is being done by Breckinridge Long and other officials at the State Department.  A report on these activities is eventually submitted to Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury.  Morgenthau submits this report to President Roosevelt, which eventually leads to the creation of the War Refugee Board.

The Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency in Turkey (Va’ad ha-Hatsala be-Kushta), acting on behalf of the Jewish Rescue Committee, is established in Istanbul, Turkey.  Headed by Chaim Barlas, it helps thousands of Jews escape from the Balkans to Palestine.

Eleanor Rathbone, a non-Jewish Member of the British Parliament, founds the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror.  The group denounces the British government’s lack of support for refugees.  She urges public demonstrations against the British refugee policy.

March 1, 1943
A massive rally in support of the rescue of Jews is held in Madison Square Garden.  The rally is sponsored by the Church Peace Union, the AFofL/CIO, and many other groups.  37,000 people attend the rally.

Papal Nuncio Andrea Cassulo requests permission to visit the concentration and transit camps in Romania and Transnistria.  After visiting the camps, he receives promise to improve conditions in the camps; however, little is accomplished.

March 2, 1943
Italian General Avarna de Gualtieri delivers a note to the French secretary of state, Admiral Charles Platon, stating that “henceforth, not only non-French Jews were under Italian protection but French Jews as well. No Jew in the Italian zone could be coerced or arrested by anyone except Italian authorities, except for violations of the common law.”

March 4, 1943
Bulgarian government evicts 11,000 Jews from the Bulgarian occupied territories of Thrace, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia.  By the end of March, most of these Jews are sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka.

March 6, 1943
SS Obersturmführer Heinz Röthke estimates there are 270,000 Jews remaining in France, including 200,000 in the southern zone.  He hopes to deport 8,000-10,000 Jews per week beginning in April.  Under new ordinances, Germans are free to arrest Jews without French police present.

March 9, 1943
Metropolitan Stephan, of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Sofia, and the Metropolitan of Plovdiv Kiril, protest the planned deportation of Bulgarian Jews and bring their objections directly to King Boris.

King Boris X and members of the Bulgarian parliament defy the Nazis by rescinding the order to deport Bulgarian Jews.  Although Bulgaria has previously allowed the deportation of thousands of Jews to Treblinka from Thrace, Macedonia and Serbia, they prevent the deportation of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews.  With the help of the local population, Jews are dispersed and hidden in the countryside.

José Rojas, Spanish Minister in Bucharest, criticizes Nazi policy of persecuting Jews.  He adamantly opposes the deportation of Jews and the brutal conditions imposed by the Nazis.  He posts diplomatic protective signs on more than 300 houses where Jewish families live.

The US passes the Barkley Resolution, which strongly advocates for the punishment of Nazis for war crimes.  The US House of Representatives passes a similar resolution on March 18.

The Committee for a Jewish Army presents a pageant in New York called "We Will Never Die" in memory of the murdered Jews of Europe. 

March 13, 1943
An assassination attempt on Hitler fails.

Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Gomez Jordana notifies the Germans that some Jewish Spanish nationals will be repatriated.

March 20, 1943
Mussolini transfers authority over Jews from the Italian army to the Italian ministry of the interior.  He appoints Guido Lospinoso Commissioner for Jewish Questions in Nice.  Lospinoso does everything in his power to thwart German plans to deport Jews.  He is successful in helping Jews through September 1943.  He works closely with Jewish banker and rescuer Angelo Donati and Catholic monk Father Benoit.  Benoit operates out of a monastery in Marseilles.

March 20-August 18, 1943
Jews deported from the Salonika ghetto to Auschwitz.

Spanish government issues a statement reiterating its position that it will repatriate Jewish Spanish nationals.

March 22-29, 1943
7,158 Jews from Macedonia are deported to Treblinka.

March 23, 1943
4,226 Jews from Thrace and the city of Pirot are deported to Treblinka.

Archbishop Papandreou Damaskinos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, publishes a letter denouncing the deportation of Greece’s 77,000 Jews.  The letter is signed by 28 Greek leaders.  The letter further states that all Greek citizens must be entitled to the same treatment from the occupation authorities, regardless of race or religion.

March 25, 1943
Von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister, complains to Mussolini regarding lack of cooperation by the Italian diplomatic corps and Army in the Italian occupied zone of southern France.

March 27, 1943
Rabbi Wise receives information regarding the mass murder of Jews in Treblinka.  He calls on presidential envoy Myron Taylor with a proposal to establish a rescue group.

March 28, 1943
Jewish Congressional delegation and committee meet with FDR to protest State Department’s sabotaging of rescue efforts by its complicated screening procedure for visa applicants.  FDR does nothing.

March 29, 1943
Non-governmental leaders in Athens appeal to Euginio Prato, the Political Secretary in the Italian embassy in Athens, to halt the deportation of Greek Jews.

March 31, 1943
Germany gives Spain until March 31, 1943, to repatriate its Jewish Spanish nationals.  Jews not repatriated would be treated as all other Jews.

April 1943
US Ambassador to Turkey Laurence Steinhardt is instrumental in getting Turkey to accept nearly 30,000 Balkan Jews, including many from Romania, for temporary refuge and transit for Palestine.

The Greek leader, Ioannis Rallis, protests to the Gestapo regarding the deportation of Jews.  The Greek Minister of Education, Nikolaos Louvaris, greatly helps Jews.  More than 600 Greek clergymen are arrested, some deported, for helping Jews.  The Greek underground hides many Jews and smuggles them to unoccupied areas.  A number of Jewish communities in Greece survive virtually intact.  They include Thessaly, Volos, Katerine, Larrissa, Trikkola, Cardhitsa, Cholis and Patris.

An internment camp on the island of Rab (Arbe), of the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, is established by Italian military and diplomatic authorities.  More than 3,500 Jews are protected on the island.  The camp is liberated on September 8, 1943.  Virtually all of the Jews survive.

Sebastián Romero Radigales, Spanish Consul General in Athens, intervenes on behalf of more than 800 Jews of Athens and Salonica, preventing their deportation to Nazi concentration camps.  In one instance, he manages to evacuate 150 Jews from a deportation train. 

April 2, 1943
Bulgarian church leader Metropolitan Stephan, in meeting Holy Synod, warns of the imminent danger of deportation of Bulgarian Jews.

April 7, 1943
Winston Churchill warns Spanish ambassador that closing the border to Jewish refugees could cause “destruction of good relations” between Spain and Great Britain.  As a result, Spain keeps its borders open.  Between July 1942 and September 1944, more than 7,500 Jewish refugees cross into Spain.

Papal nuncio in Slovakia Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio protests deportation of Slovakian Jews.

April 10, 1943
Spanish officials give approval for American relief organizations to operate in Spain.  These relief organizations have offices in the US embassy and funds for rescue efforts are provided by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

April 13-14, 1943
The British Council of Churches condemns anti-Semitism in all forms.

April 17, 1943
Hitler summons Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy to Salzburg, Austria, to urge him to allow the Jews of Hungary to be ‘resettled.’  Horthy refuses: “The Jews cannot be exterminated or beaten to death.”

April 19-20, 1943
The Jewish underground in Belgium attacks a deportation train from the Mechelen camp bound for Auschwitz.  231 Jews escape, 23 are shot.

April 19-30, 1943
Bermuda Conference: British and American representatives meet in Bermuda to discuss rescue options, but fail to come up with any significant possibilities.  The US has guaranteed the failure of this conference by significantly limiting any realistic or significant actions that could aid in the rescue of Jews.  The conferees declare “it would be unfair to put nationals who profess the Jewish faith on a priority list for relief.”

April 19-May 16, 1943
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Jews in the Warsaw ghetto resist German deportations to the Treblinka death camp.  This uprising lasts nearly a month and is the largest and most successful Jewish revolt in Nazi-occupied Europe. A total of 13,000 Jews are killed.  The news of the revolt spreads throughout Europe and inspires other ghettoes to resist. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said their inspiration to fight was "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths". According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people". [Wikipedia}

April 20, 1943
Gerhardt Riegner proposes the rescue of 100,000 Jews in Romania and France.  This requires the transfer of rescue and relief money from Jewish relief agencies to Romania.  The US State Department effectively delays and blocks the transfer of this money for many months.

April 26, 1943
The American military general staff in North Africa refuses to allow the Allies to set up refugee camps, fearing it would alienate local Arabs.

Witold Pilecki escapes from the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.

April 30, 1943
Revolt of Jewish prisoners deported from Wlodawa, Poland to the Sobibor death camp.  This revolt fails and all Jewish participants are killed.

Spring 1943
Winston Churchill addresses joint session of the US Congress.  He predicts the defeat of Hitler and Japan.

Spring 1943 - Greece
After the German occupation of Greece, the Nazis begin rounding up the Jews of Salonica for deportation to Auschwitz.  The Italian consulates in Salonica refuse to participate in the roundup of Jews.  Italian consulates impede the deportations be engaging in lengthy discussion on defining what a Jew is.  Italian consulates also issue naturalization papers to Jews.  This action protects many Jews from deportation.

Pellegrino Ghigi, Italian Minister Plenipotentiary in Athens, with the help of General Carlo Geloso, Italian Commander of the 11th Army in Greece, protects Jews in the Italian zone and rescues as many as possible from the German occupied areas such as Salonica.

Guelfo Zomboni, Italian Consul General in Salonica, Greece, on his own authority and without permission from the Italian Foreign Ministry, provides hundreds of Greek Jews Italian birth certificates and certificates of citizenship, which protect Greek Jews from deportation to Auschwitz.  He is challenged by the German authorities, but is able to pretend he has authority from the Italian government.

Giuseppe Castruccio replaces Guelfo Zomboni as Italian Consul General in Salonica, Greece.  Castruccio plays a key role in saving 350 Salonica Jews by placing them on an Italian military train that takes them out of Salonica into the Italian neutral zone.  He does this on his own authority.  Like his predecessor, Castruccio issues identification papers and other protective documents to Jews.

Italian soldiers are sent to German detention camps in Salonica on a mission to save Jewish women.  They falsely claim they are their wives.  The Germans release the women to their "husbands."

Italian military trains carry protected Jews from the German occupied zone to Athens, where they remain temporarily under the protection of the Italian army. 

The head of the Italian legation in Athens, Pellegrino Ghigi, and General Carlo Geloso of the Italian Army, agree to protect Jews.  As a result, more than 10,000 Jews in Athens are saved by the Italian diplomatic and military forces there. As long as the Italian army remains as an occupying force, these Jews are fed, housed and remain under Italian protection.  After the Italian surrender and withdrawal, many of the Jews are deported and murdered.

May 1943
Spain decides to protect Jews of Sephardic heritage.  By the end of the war, 11,500 Jews will be saved because of Spanish diplomatic intervention.

Dutch Catholic Church forbids Dutch Catholic policemen to participate in the roundup and deportation of Jews, even if they may lose their jobs. 

Episcopal clergy in Holland actively support and participate in the rescue of Dutch Jews.

May 4, 1943
Advertisement in the "The New York Times" is taken out by Jewish activists criticizes the Bermuda Conference as: "a mockery and a cruel jest." 

May 13, 1943
Tunisia is liberated by the Allied armed forces.

May 14, 1943
President Roosevelt decides it would be “extremely unwise” to bring Jewish refugees to camps in military zones in North Africa.

May 18, 1943
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is established.

May 19, 1943
The British Foreign Office approves of the idea of a Swedish proposal that would request that Germany release 20,000 Jewish children who would be transferred and taken care of in Sweden until the end of the war.  The Swedish government requests the United States and Great Britain to share the cost of food and medicine for these refugees.  The Swedish government had already allowed 35,000 Jews into Sweden up until this time.  The US State Department and British Foreign Ministry do not reply until January 1944, nearly eight months later.  The Swedish plan is abandoned.

May 20, 1943
The Italian Army establishes an internment camp as a safe haven for Yugoslavian and Slovakian Jews on the island of Rab (Arbe).

May 24, 1943
Bulgarians hold protest in Sofia against the proposed deportation of Jews.

May 27, 1943
The secret organization, National Resistance Council, is created in France.  Jean Moulin is its head.

Anton Bauer, the former Honorary Consul of Honduras in Berne Switzerland, steels the seal and issues at least 200 illegal Honduran passports to Jews at his office in Bern. The is arranged by Abraham Silberschein, advocate, Zionist activist, pre-war deputy to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, founder of the rescue committee RELICO.

June 1943
SS Chief Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union.

Chief of the U.S. Visa Division admits that Spanish consulates are withholding visas from refugees who had advisory approvals. 

June 6, 1943
19,153 Bulgarian Jews are dispersed from Sofia into the Bulgarian countryside.  They are housed and fed by their neighbors.

June 25, 1943
Armed rebellion by Jews in Czestochowa ghetto, Poland.

June 28, 1943
Herbert Morrison, British Home Secretary, comes out against sending life-saving Palestine immigration certificates to Jews under Nazi control.  His objection is on the grounds that the Allies should not negotiate with the Nazis.

June 30, 1943
Churchill asks Roosevelt to provide relief for victims of the Nazis.  A refugee camp is set up in Fedhalla in North Africa.  By August 1944, 630 Jewish refugees will be moved to Fedhalla from Spain.

Summer 1943
Swiss Minister (ambassador) René de Weck saves more than 2,000 Jewish orphans in Moldavia from deportation.  He also manages to protect Hungarian Jews in Romania.

July 1943
Eichmann sends his SS assistant Alois Brunner to Paris with 25 men to speed up the deportations.  Brunner takes over operations at the Drancy camp.  Vichy announces it will no longer actively cooperate with the Germans in the arrest of French Jews.

July 4, 1943
A plane carrying Polish government-in-exile leader Władysław Sikorski crashes into the sea immediately after takeoff from Gibraltar, killing all on board except the pilot. The exact circumstances of Sikorski's death have been disputed and have given rise to a number of different theories surrounding the crash and his death. Sikorski had been the most prestigious leader of the Polish exiles, and his death was a severe setback for the Polish cause. [Wikipedia]

July 5, 1943
The Wehrmacht conducts its last major offensive in the German occupied territory of the Soviet Union.  Soviet offensives around Kursk fatally weaken the Wehrmacht at the front.

July 9-10, 1943
US and British Allied forces invade Sicily.  This is the beginning of the liberation of mainland Europe.

July 10, 1943
The Gestapo in Marseilles reports that Italian police commissioner Guido Lospinoso has moved thousands of Jews out of the German area to Megéve, St. Gervain and Vence, which are Italian protected areas.

July 11-12, 1943
Zagaje massacre of Polish people in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Approximately 260–350 people were killed, including women and children. The village Zagaje was completely destroyed. It was carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region. It is known as "Bloody Sunday," is the peak of massacres of Polish people in the area. [Wikipedia]

July 16, 1943
British government tells Jewish Agency for Palestine that Jewish refugees who escape to Turkey will be given permission to enter Palestine.

The Treasury Department is prepared to issue license allowing for the transfer of funds from Jewish organizations in the U.S. to Switzerland. The money would be used to help rescue Jews from Rumania and France. 

July 16, 1943
Catholic priest Father Marie-Benoit has audience with Pope Pius XII.  He presents the Pope with documents regarding the persecution of Jews in France.  He asks for assistance in rescuing Jews in the Italian occupied zone in France.  Working with Jewish Italian businessman Angelo Donati, he begins preparation for evacuating 30,000 Jews from the south of France to Italy, Spain and North Africa.  The project is approved by the Vatican, by Sir Arcy Osborne, the British Ambassador to the Holy See, and by Harold Tittman, US Ambassador to the Vatican.  The evacuation plan fails due to the Italian withdrawal from the war on September 8, 1943.

July 20, 1943
Hitler orders the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union to launch no additional offensives.

1,700 Jews are deported from the island of Rhodes to Athens.

The Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe is held in New York City. More than 1500 people attend.

July 21, 1943
Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettoes in Ostland.

July 22, 1943
General Patton’s Seventh Army captures Palermo, the regional capital of Sicily, with Major General Lucien K. Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division at the head of armored columns. Palermo is the first city liberated by US forces in World War II. Many citizens of Palermo welcome the Americans.

July 23, 1943
Jean Changeneau, police prefect of the Alpes Maritimes, replaces French policeman Ribiere.  Changeneau announces that he will protect Jews in his area.

July 25, 1943
Benito Mussolini is overthrown; Marshal Pietro Badoglio sets up a new government in Italy.

Italian Foreign Ministry orders the Defense Ministry not to release Jews on the island of Rab into German custody.

The Italian Foreign Ministry reiterates to the Italian army not to release Jews from its zone for deportation.  In addition, the Foreign Ministry tries to arrange for transport of Jewish refugees to Italy.

July 28, 1943
Jan Karski, Polish diplomat/courier, meets with President Roosevelt and gives him eyewitness details of the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt asked no questions about the Jews. Karski then met with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, OSS head William Donovan, and Rabbi Stephen Wise. Karski also presented his report to media, bishops of various denominations, but without result, as most people could not comprehend the scale of extermination that he reported.

August 1943
Between August and December 1943, 10,708 refugees are allowed to enter Switzerland.

A report is received by Jewish leaders in the U.S. tells that the death toll of European Jews has reached four million. 

Witold Pilecki prepares Witold's Report (Raport W), an eyewitness report on the Auschwitz underground. It covered three main topics: ZOW and its members; Pilecki's experiences; and the murder of prisoners, including Jews. Pilecki's intent was to persuade the Home Army to liberate the camp's prisoners. However, the Home Army command rejected this proposal since the camp's resistance lacked basic fighting equipment.

August 2, 1943
Jewish uprising at the Treblinka death camp near Warsaw.

August 3, 1943
Jewish uprisings in the Bedzin and Sosnowiec ghettos in Poland are unsuccessful.

August 5, 1943
The Soviet Union launches major counteroffensives against German armies around Orel and Belgorod.  This ends the German attempts to break through Soviet defenses.

First secret negotiations between Eisenhower and the Badoglio government to negotiate Italian surrender.

August 8, 1942
The Riegner Telegram is a telegraph message sent from Gerhart Riegner, then Secretary of World Jewish Congress (Geneva), to its New York and London offices. The cable confirmed the reports that had reached the West previously about the German plan to mass murder the European Jews.

Mid-August 1943
King Boris III of Bulgaria, whose country was officially aligned with Germany, refuses Hitler’s demands to deport Bulgaria’s Jews to Germany for extermination.  Jews hide in the countryside.  Two weeks later, on August 28, the king dies under mysterious circumstances.

August 11, 1943
Germans army begins evacuating their forces at night from Sicily across the Straits of Messina. Most of the German force on Sicily escapes.

August 14-24, 1943
The Quadrant Conference between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill is held in Quebec, Canada.  Churchill and Roosevelt agree to defeat Germany before Japan and aim for an invasion of France in May 1944.

August 15-20, 1943
In August 1943, the Germans begin an operation to destroy the Białystok ghetto. German forces and local police auxiliaries surround the ghetto and begin to round up Jews systematically for deportation to the Treblinka death camp. Hundreds of Jewish resistance fighters including members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organization (Polish: Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa) in the Jewish ghetto battle Nazis for several days.  Using only small arms, bayonets, and axes, they hold off the Nazis for several days.  The revolt fails.  It is the second-largest ghetto uprising, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Several dozen partisan fighters manage to break through to the forests surrounding Białystok where they join the partisan units of Armia Krajowa and other organizations and are able survive the war. [Wikipedia]

August 23, 1943
The Soviet army recaptured Kharkov.

Adam Czerniakov, head of the Warsaw Jewish Council, commits suicide rather than supply more Jews for Nazi deportations.

August 29, 1943
A major crisis erupts between the German occupation authorities and the Danish government.  Nazis impose state of emergency. Danish public rises up in acts of sabotage and civil disobedience against the German occupiers.  German authorities declare martial law and the Danish government resigns.

Germans order the Vichy government to recruit French and foreign Jews for forced labor in Germany.

September 1943
The American Unitarian Committee sends a representative to Spain to help refugees.

A bill is introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow refugees who don't endanger public safety to come to the U.S. temporarily. The bill doesn't reach the floor of either the House or Senate.   

September 1, 1943
The uprising in the Vilna ghetto is stopped.  Fighters escape to forests and meet up with partisans.

September 3-4, 1943
The last deportation of Jews from Belgium, it is called Operation Iltis.

September 3-8, 1943
The Allies invade southern Italy.  Italy surrenders.  An armistice is signed with the Allies, with Italian Marshal Badoglio.  The German Army and SS units move into Italy.  Mussolini is arrested.

September 6, 1943
Michał Kruk and several other people in Przemyśl were executed for the assistance they render to Jews. Altogether, in the town and its environs 415 Jews (including 60 children) were saved, in return for which the Germans killed 568 people of Polish nationality. [Wikipedia]

September 8, 1943
The Italian government surrenders to the Allies and withdraws from the war.  Italian Armed Forces in Yugoslavia and southern France return to Italy.  Thousands of Jewish refugees flee with them.

Some Italian units flee to Switzerland.  They are disarmed and permitted to enter the country.

German forces occupy Athens.  Italian forces surrender to the Germans.

Metropolitan Theophilos Damaskinos protests the proposed deportation of Jews from Athens.  Damaskinos tells clergy under him to help Jews escape the Nazi net.  Jews are hidden and Greek Orthodox religious institutions.

Greek Jews are welcomed into Greek underground resistance organizations.  The Nazis demand resignation of Damaskinos.  He replies: “The priests of the Orthodox Church never resign.  They stay in the place where God put them, even if they are hanged for it!”

The Greek Orthodox Metropolitan in the town of Volo in Thessaly warns the local rabbi of imminent deportation.  822 Jews are taken out and hidden.  Most survive.  The police chief of Athens, Anghelos Evert, authorizes police forces to give protective papers to Jews.  Police units are active in helping Jews during the occupation.

Dr. Werner Best, the Nazi Plenipotentiary in Denmark, requests permission from Hitler to arrest and deport Danish Jews.

Italy is cut in two.  The south is held by the Allies.  The central and north of Italy are occupied by the German army. Most Jewish communities are concentrated around Rome and in the northern areas and are now subject to Nazi deportations.

September 9, 1943
German army occupies former Italian zone in southern France.  Thousands of Jews are trapped around Nice.

September 10, 1943
The U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, expecting little resistance, landed against heavy German resistance at Salerno in Operation Avalanche; in addition, British forces landed at Taranto in Operation Slapstick, which was almost unopposed.

Germany Army occupies Rome. Pope Pius XII opens Vatican properties, including churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, to house Jewish refugees who are seeking protection.  Some Jews are even hidden in Vatican City.

Late 1943-May 1945
After the German takeover, most Italian Jews go into hiding and into the underground.  Most get sanctuary from their neighbors and the general population.  Many are hidden in houses, farms and in the rural countryside.  Despite the extreme danger of hiding Jews from the Nazis, the greater part of the Italian people, for humanitarian reasons alone, risked their lives to save Jews.  Many Jews were saved by Catholic religious institutions.  Over 200 Jews were saved by Catholic organizations in Assisi, Italy, by a number of priests in numerous institutions. Approximately 2,000 Jews served in the Italian partisan forces.  More than 100 were killed in partisan actions.
By the end of the war, more than more than 35,000 Jews, 85% of the Italian Jewish population, was saved from the Nazi murderers.  This was a completely spontaneous, altruistic rescue effort.

September 12, 1943
Mussolini is rescued from his fortress prison in Italy by German troops.

Fall 1943
King Christian X of Denmark intercedes directly with the Germans on behalf of the Jews.  He is later placed under house arrest.

September 13, 1943
German Consul Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, in Copenhagen, tries to prevent deportations of Danish Jews by personally intervening with German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.

Hitler assures Pope Pius XII that the Germans will honor the sovereignty of the Pope over Vatican City. 

September 14, 1943
Allied landings in Sardinia; Heavy fighting at Salerno.

September 15, 1943
Mussolini tries to establish a new fascist government at Saló, on Lake Garda in Italy.

September 16, 1943
Montgomery’s Eighth Army advanced forces moving from Calabria, meet up with troops of Clark’s Fifth Army in the beachhead near Salerno.

September 17, 1943
Recommendation to deport Danish Jews is passed on to Hitler, who gives authority for implementation of the action.

September 20, 1943
Jewish Council is established in Athens, Greece.

September 23, 1943
Mussolini establishes the Italian Social Republic, referred to as the Salò Republic because of its location in northern Italy. Germans organize the first round-up of Italian men born between 1910 and 1925 for forced labor, of some 18,000 men in Campania and Latium.

September 25, 1943
Soviet forces recaptured Smolensk.

Duckwitz secretly flies to Stockholm and meets with Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson.  Duckwitz tells of plans to deport Danish Jews.  Sweden agrees to grant refuge. Swedish ambassador to Denmark Gustav von Dardel participates in the rescue of Danish Jews.

The headquarters of the SS sends an order to all of its offices stating that, “in agreement with the Foreign Office,” all Jews are now to be deported.  Italian Jews are to be arrested and deported first, with the order to be carried out immediately. Friedrich Möllhausen, the German Acting Consul General in Rome, tries personally to intervene with German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to stop the deportation of Rome’s Jews.   As a means to spare them, Möllhausen suggests that Jews be used for labor.  Instead, his suggestion is refused, and he is censured by von Ribbentrop’s staff.
German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander of the Army Group South in Italy, refuses to give approval for the use of German troops for deportations of Jews in Rome.

September 29, 1943
Duckwitz warns Danish political leaders about imminent deportation of Danish Jews.  Jewish community leaders are warned on the eve of the Jewish High Holidays.  The Danish community mobilizes and successfully hides the Jewish community in preparation for a mass escape to Sweden.

SS confiscate Jewish lists of names and addresses from the main synagogue in Rome.

2,000 Jews in Amsterdam are sent to the Westerbork transit camp.

End of September 1943
By the end of September, a total of 52,000 Jews are deported from France.  6,000 are citizens.  13,000 are refugees from Vichy, 4,000 of which are from Marseilles.  This was less than half the figure Eichmann had projected.  He concluded the French “no longer wished to follow [them] in the Final Solution in France.”

October 1943
By this  time more than 1.7 million Jews are murdered at the Aktion Reinhard death Nazi camps

SS officer Theodore Dannecker arrives in Rome with a detachment of 44 SS men to deport the Jews of Rome.

October 2, 1943
Rescue of 7,900 Danish Jews. Danish fisherman and policemen smuggle 98% of the nation’s Jews to neutral Sweden.  This is the most successful rescue operation by percentage of Jews in the war.  This action is supported by virtually the entire nation.  400 Jews are captured during the Nazi roundups.  Of these, fewer than 50 are killed by the Nazis, largely due to the interest and intervention by the Danish King and parliament.

Jewish partisans from the Solim ghetto in Poland help liberate and rescue Jews in Kosovo.  400 Jews escape into the forests.

October 4 and 6, 1943
In two recorded speeches, Himmler explains why the Nazi leadership find it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled are told that the Nazi state policy is "the extermination of the Jewish people" as such.

Today, I am going to refer quite frankly to a very grave chapter. We can mention it now among ourselves quite openly and yet we shall never talk about it in public. I'm referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it's like to see 100 corpses side by side or 500 corpses or 1,000 of them. To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This is an unwritten—never to be written—and yet glorious page in our history.
— Heinrich Himmler, October 4, 1943

We were faced with the question: what about the women and children?–I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only—in other words, to kill them or have them killed while allowing the avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up in the midst of our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth.              
 — Heinrich Himmler, October 6, 1943

October 6, 1943
Four hundred Orthodox rabbis go to the White House to present a petition to President Roosevelt calling for a creation of a U.S. rescue agency. The president refuses to meet with them. 

October 7, 1943
SS general and police chief Jürgen Stroop in Athens orders Jews to register.  Only 2,000 register.

October 13, 1943
Italy declares war on Germany.

October 14, 1943
A Jewish revolt in the Sobibor death camp in Poland results in the deaths of 11 guards and the escape of more than fifty Jewish prisoners.  Leibi Felhendler is one of the organizers of the Sobibor death camp uprising and escape, He successfully escaped along with the others.  He was killed by Polish partisans of the Polish Secret Army in April 1945. As a result, the camp is closed and demolished.

October 15-16, 1943
SS troops begin “Black Sabbath” raid on the Jews of Rome.  1,127 Jews are rounded up and deported to Auschwitz.  Thousands of Jews go into hiding.  The German ambassador in Rome warns the Pope about the imminent deportation. The Pope subsequently instructs priests to give the Jews sanctuary.  The Vatican hides 477 Jews and 4,238 Jews are hidden in convents and monasteries and religious orders in Rome.  In addition, many Italians take Rome’s Jews into their homes.  In all, 5,615 Jews of Rome are successfully hidden and could not be found by the Nazis.  This is 90% of the Roman Jews.

Bishop Ludwig Hudal of the German church in Rome, asks the German military commander to stop the deportation.

Roman police supervisor Angelo de Fiore refuses to give up Jewish registration lists.  Police officer Mares Ciallo Mario de Marco issues fake registration cards to Jews.

October 18, 1943
Italy declares war on Germany. 

In Nazi-occupied Rome, 1,035 Jews are arrested and deported to Auschwitz.

October 18-30, 1943
The Moscow Conference, between US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, is held.  It discusses the future of Europe after the Allied victory.

October 20, 1943
The World Jewish Congress requests that the American Red Cross declare Jews in ghettos and concentration camps to be treated as Prisoners of War.  This would provide Jews with Red Cross and Geneva Convention protection.  The Red Cross rejects the idea on the grounds that Germans consider Jews to be an internal problem.

September 6, 1943
"Michał Kruk and several other people in Przemyśl were executed on for the assistance they had rendered to the Jews. Altogether, in the town and its environs 415 Jews (including 60 children) were saved, in return for which the Germans killed 568 people of Polish nationality."[84]

November 1943
International Committee of the Red Cross representative Charles Kolb is sent to Bucharest, Romania.  He tours camps in Transnistria and attempts to bring aid to Jewish survivors.

Series of intensive air raids against Berlin is begun.  It is called the Battle of Berlin.

Breckinridge Long continues his campaign against Jewish immigration to the United States.  He gives misleading testimony about immigration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Between December 1941 and the end of the war, only 21,000 refugees are admitted to the US and they comprise only ten percent of the US quota available for Axis-controlled countries.

Nazis destroy the death camp of Treblinka. 

Inmate resistance at the Majdanek death camp.  Hundreds are killed, but ten prisoners escape.

40 deportation trains leave France for Auschwitz.  There are no deportations in December and January 1943-1944.

Several French prefects destroy the Jewish census and registration files.  Refugees are helped by French citizens to flee to the Spanish border by sympathetic French police and civilian officials.

November 1, 1943
Moscow Declaration is signed by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, notifying German leaders that they will be held responsible for crimes against humanity for the murder of Jews and others, and will be subject to extradition to the countries where the crimes were committed.  The declaration does not mention Jews.

November 3, 1943
42,000 Jews are murdered in Poland in an action called “Ernfest” [harvest festival].

November 6, 1943
Soviets retake Kiev.

November 9, 1943
US Senator Guy Gillette, along with Congressmen Will Rogers, Jr., and Joseph Baldwin, introduces a resolution to establish a presidential commission “of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of action to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe.”  The resolution becomes the basis for the War Refugee Board, which will be created in January 1944.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) is established.

November 10, 1943
President Roosevelt suggests setting up refugee camps in North Africa and southern Europe. The U.S. State Department rejects plan. 

Germany Army occupies Rome.

Pope Pius XII opens Vatican properties, including churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, to house Jewish refugees who are seeking protection.  Some Jews are even hidden in Vatican City. After the German takeover, most Italian Jews go into hiding and into the underground. 

November 19, 1943
Jewish Sonderkommando [prisoners] in the Janowska camp rise up in revolt.  Several dozen escape.

November 22-26, 1943
The Cairo Conference (codenamed Sextant) is held in Cairo, Egypt, it outlines the Allied war strategy against Japan during World War II and made decisions about postwar Asia. The meeting is attended by President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China.

November 24, 1943
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drafts a letter to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, objecting to the State Department’s slow approval of the transfer of funds for the rescue of Jews in France and Romania.

November 26, 1943
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Breckinridge Long testifies before the House of Representatives on the rescue resolution. He withholds vital information.

November 27, 1943
The Cairo Declaration is issued and released in a Cairo Communiqué through radio on December 1, 1943, stating the Allies' intentions to continue using military force until Japan's unconditional surrender. The main clauses of the Cairo Declaration are that the three great allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan in the Pacific.

November 28-December 1, 1943
Teheran Conference is held with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka) is a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. It is held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran (Persia). It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom). [Wikipedia]

November 30, 1943
SS officer Theodore Dannecker is put in charge of the arrest and deportation of Italian Jews. The Nazis order all Jews in Italy into concentration camps.

December 1943
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representative Charles Kolb tries to protect Jewish deportees in Romania.  Kolb visits camps to ascertain living conditions of Jews.  Kolb intervenes on behalf of the thousands of Romanian Jews who had been sent to Transnistria.

December 3, 1943
Under pressure, Swiss authorities agree to accept all Jewish refugees entering the country.

December 20, 1943
US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and his assistant, John Pehle, meet with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and his assistant, Breckinridge Long.  Morgenthau complains about the State Department’s almost complete non-cooperation in approving the transfer of funds to be used for the rescue of Jews.  Morgenthau assigns Randolph Paul, General Counsel of the Treasury Department, to prepare a background paper documenting the eight month delay in granting World Jewish Congress representative Gerhardt Riegner the license to transfer money.  Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., prepares the paper with John Pehle and the Foreign Funds Control Division.  Pehle and DuBois investigate the State Department’s inaction on this and other matters, and they prepare a document entitled Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of Jews.  It is signed by Randolph Paul.  The full report is never published.

December 23, 1943
Gerhardt Riegner is finally given a license to transfer funds from Jewish agencies for the relief and rescue of the Jews of Romania and France.  This is eight months after Riegner first requested permission from the US State Department to do so.

1944

1944
In 1944, more than 600,000 European Jews will be murdered.

Early in 1944, US Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt manages to have the Turkish government intercede on behalf of ten thousand Turkish Jews living in France.  Steinhardt uses his good relationship with Turkish foreign minister Noman Menenencioglu in helping to untangle bureaucratic rules that prevented Jews from passing through Turkey as an escape route.  Hirschmann and Steinhardt are able to get Turkish official in charge of visas, Kemel Aziz Payman, to liberalize some of the Turkish immigration laws.  The World Jewish Congress estimates that by the end of the 1944, 14,164 Jews escaped through Turkey.  Many more, however, entered Turkey illegally through Romania.

The Representative Council of French Jewry (Conseil Représentatif des Juifs de France; CRIF) is founded to coordinate rescue activities among Jewish groups.  They work with the Armée Juive to arrange rescue of Jews through Spain.  They also participate with the French underground, both in the north and the south.

Dr. Hans Georg Calmeyer, a lawyer serving in the German embassy in Holland, saves many Jews by having them classified as Aryan. A national underground organization in the Netherlands is set up to support Jews in hiding in Holland.

José Rojas, Spanish Minister in Ankara, is directly responsible for the evacuation of 65 Jews to Spain.

Consul General Rives Childs, head of the US legation in Tangier, Morocco, makes connections with the Spanish authorities in Madrid and Morocco and helps save more than 1,200 Jews.  He persuades Spanish authorities to issue visas to Jewish refugees and to provide access to Spanish safe houses until they can emigrate.

The Mexican and Brazilian diplomatic delegations, held in Bad Godesberg, Germany, are released and repatriated in a prisoner exchange with Germany.  When Gilberto Bosques returns to Mexico City, he is greeted by thousands of cheering refugees who had received his life-saving visas.  Bosques then serves on the commission of the Secretary of Foreign Relations.

“In late 1944 the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, CDJC) is established in Paris. Its goal is to document the persecution and martyrdom of French Jewry by collecting massive amounts of documentation, to study discriminatory laws, to support attempts at recovery of confiscated Jewish property, to document the suffering as well as the heroism of the Jews, and to record the attitude of governments, administrations, and various sectors of public opinion. [Wikipedia]

January 1944
In January 1944, after the passport rescue operation in Berne headed by Alexander Lados ended, the Polish government in exile grants Juliusz Kühl full diplomatic status and the rank of attaché.

January 14, 1944
Soviet Army launches a major offensive against the German siege of Leningrad. 

January 16, 1944
US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Treasury Department officials meet with President Roosevelt and present to him a report on the State Department’s suppression of information on the murder of the Jews of Europe.  In his report, renamed Personal Report to the President, Morgenthau states that the State Department: Utterly failed to prevent the extermination of Jews in German-controlled Europe…Hid their gross procrastination behind such window dressing as “intergovernmental organizations to survey the whole refugee problem…” “The matter of rescuing the Jews from extermination is a trust too great to remain in the hands of men who are indifferent, callous, perhaps even hostile.”

January 22, 1944
British and US Allied forces land at Anzio, Italy, southeast of Rome.  The invasion beachhead is sealed off by German forces.

President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board (WRB) in response to the report by Morgenthau and the Treasury Department regarding the failure of the US State Department to take significant action to protect Jews from mass murder.  The WRB is put under the administration of Henry Morgenthau and the Treasury Department.  It is charged with “taking all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.”  John Pehle, of the Treasury Department, is appointed Director of the WRB.  He has 30 employees.  The US government appropriates one million dollars for the operation of this new agency.  The vast majority of funds for operating the WRB will come from Jewish rescue and relief agencies, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Hebrew Immigration Aid and Sheltering Society (HIAS).

Raoul Wallenberg is later selected for a mission representing the War Refugee Board to protect Hungarian Jews from deportation. Other notable employees of the War Refugee Board include Josiah E. DuBois and Randolph Paul (headquarters), Ira Hirschmann (Turkey), Roswell McClelland (Switzerland), Iver Olson (Sweden), Leonard Ackermann (North Africa and Italy).

In joint operations between the World Jewish Congress, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the War Refugee Board, between October 1943 and October 1944, 1,350 children and adolescents escaped to Switzerland, 770 children reached Spain with 200 parents, 700 children were hidden in Vichy France along with 4,000-5,000 adults.  During this period, Lisbon was a center of false papers, including baptismal certificates, birth certificates and legitimate and illegitimate passports, visas and affidavits.  By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews and other refugees escaped through Lisbon. Statistics will later indicate that the War Refugee Board was successful in saving as many as 200,000 Jews in Eastern Europe.

January 27, 1944
The siege of Leningrad is broken, after more than 900 days and one million civilian deaths.

January 31, 1944
The National Committee Against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of Jews is organized.  It is headed by Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy and includes Wendell Wilkie, Vice President Henry A. Wallis, and other prominent members of the Roosevelt administration.

February 1944
Jean Marie Musy, Former President of the Swiss Council, arranges with SS officials for the rescue and transportation of 1,200 Jews in Theresienstadt concentration camp to safety in Switzerland.

February 2, 1944
The War Refugee Board (WRB) proposes that the US State Department urge Spain to remove restrictions on refugees entering its territory.  The US ambassador to Spain refuses to implement the plan.

February 10, 1944
Greek Jews from Salonika in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who hold Spanish citizenship are repatriated to Spain.  This is largely due to the work of Spanish diplomat Radigales.

February 12, 1944
Ira Hirschmann, appointed a War Refugee Board representative, is assigned to Ankara, Turkey.  He works closely with Ambassador Steinhardt in the rescue of thousands of Jews.  Hirschmann effectively streamlines the procedure by which refugees escape through Turkey.  Hirschmann actively publicizes the Turkish rescue operation and Steinhardt’s role in it.  In addition, Hirschmann negotiates with the Romanian ambassador in Turkey, Alexander Cretzianu, for the rescue and rehabilitation of 48,000 Jewish survivors of concentration camps in Transnistria.

February 14, 1944
Josef Winniger, an officer in the German intelligence, tells Jewish leaders in Budapest of a plan for German occupation of Hungary.

Under pressure from the Allies, Romanian leader Ion Antonescu agrees to return Jewish deportees to Romania from Transnistria.

February 19-26, 1944
German Luftwaffe carries out heavy raids against London.  It is known as the “Little Blitz.”

February 20-25, 1944
A series of strategic bombing raids by the US Army Air Forces (USAFF) and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, known as “Big Week,” are launched against the German aircraft industry. From Italy, Fifteenth Air Force plays a major role in dramatically reducing production capacity at the oil refinery complex in Ploesti, Romania.

February 28, 1944
Massacre of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine. Estimates of the number of victims killed ranges from 500, to 1,200.

March 1944
War Refugee Board representative in Turkey, Ira Hirschmann, persuades the Romanian ambassador to Turkey, Alexander Cretzianu, to persuade the Romanian government to transfer 48,000 Jews to the interior of the country, thus saving their lives.

Miguel Angel de Muguiro, Spain’s diplomatic attaché in Budapest, is openly critical and protests Hungarian and German antisemitic policies.  Muguiro is recalled to Spain for his outspoken denunciation of the murder of Hungarian Jews.

March 4, 1944
In Huta Stara near Buczacz, Polish Christians and the Jewish countrymen they protected are herded into a church by the Nazis and burned alive

March 6, 1944
US Army Air Force (AAF) begins major daylight bombing of Berlin.

March 15, 1944
Soviet Army begins liberation of Transnistria.

March 19, 1944
Germany occupies Hungary and immediately implements anti-Jewish decrees; places the Hungarian government at the disposal of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Final Solution. 

Hundreds of desperate Budapest Jews besiege the former American legation, where Carl Lutz has his headquarters.  Jewish Council of Palestine office seized by pro-Nazi Hungarian officials.  Hungarian borders are closed against immigration. Consul Lutz begins to issue thousands of additional Schutzpässe (protective letters).  These Swiss documents are in fact honored by German SS authorities.  Consul Lutz has 8,000 persons register for immigration to Palestine.  Lutz is not immediately aware of deportation plans.  After receiving secret information about planned deportations, Lutz appeals to the other neutral legations in Budapest, including Sweden, Spain, Portugal and the Vatican, for a united front against the deportations of the Hungarian Jews.

Henryk Slawik, the Polish Chargé d’Affaires in Budapest, issued thousands of documents certifying that Polish Jewish refugees were Catholic. One of his initiatives was the creation of an orphanage for Jewish children (officially named School for Children of Polish Officers) in Vác. Slawik was arrested on this day was and deported to a sub camp of Mauthausen (Gusen), where he was killed on August 23, 1944.

March 20, 1944
Eichmann orders the establishment of Judenrat (Jewish councils) representing Hungarian Jews.  This is a preliminary step to ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

March 24, 1944
President Roosevelt sends a stern warning to Hungarian officials against harming the Jews.

A patrol of German police from Łańcut came to the home of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma a Polish Catholic husband and wife which was on the outskirts of the village. The Germans caught eight Jews of the Szali and Goldman families whom they were hiding. They shot them. Then the German gendarmes killed the pregnant Wiktoria Ulma and her husband. The German police shot three or four of the children while the other Polish children were murdered by the remaining gendarmes. Within several minutes 17 people were killed.

Spring 1944
Swedish government accepts 160 Jewish refugees from Finland.

April 1944
Gallup poll shows 70% of Americans approve setting up emergency refugees camps in the United States. 

Ira Hirschmann’s activities with Steinhardt to rescue Eastern European Jews appear in major news articles throughout the world.  This publicity helps the War Refugee Board promote its future rescue activities.

The SS in France conduct arrests without the help of French police.  As a result, the arrests are way below German anticipated quotas.

The Polish government in exile in London appoints a Council for the Rescue of the Jewish Population.  It operates until the summer of 1945.

International Red Cross representative in Romania Charles Kolb attempts to organize the relief and rescue of Jews from Romania to the Black Sea, to Turkey and then to Palestine.  He is aided by the Swiss Minister in Romania, Rene de Weck and Swiss consular officer Hans Keller, the Romanian Red Cross and representatives of the War Refugee Board.

April 2, 1944
Soviet Army in Ukraine crosses into Romania.

April 5, 1944
Jews of Hungary forced to wear the star; Jewish businesses and bank accounts confiscated; Jews placed in ghettoes.

Joel Brand and Rudolph Kasztner, of the Rescue and Relief Committee in Budapest, meet with SS with a plan to ransom Jews from deportation.  This plan ultimately fails.

April 7, 1944
Two Jewish prisoners, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, escape Auschwitz and reach Slovakia with detailed information about the mass murder of Jews in the camp.  In Slovakia, along with Alfred Wetzler, Vrba reports the murder of the Jews in Auschwitz to the Working Group (Pracovná Skupina).  Vrba worked in the administration office in Birkenau and memorized many of the documents he saw.  He even was able to report on the number of Jews murdered in various transports.  Their report became known as the Auschwitz Protocols, which were widely disseminated by the Working Group. Their report, called the Auschwitz Protocols, (supplemented by information brought by two more escapees) reaches the free world in June. [Wikipedia]

Information from the report about the murder of Jews in Auschwitz is broadcast in Germany by the BBC World Service on June 16, 1944. It contains a warning that the Germans would be held responsible after the war. It was also published by the New York Times on June 20.  Jaromír Kopecký transmits this information to the United States State Department and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on June 23, reporting that 12,000 Hungarian Jews were being murdered daily. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile asks the BBC European Service to publicize the information in the hope of preventing the murder of Czech Jews imprisoned at the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz. Their report is called the Auschwitz Protocols.

April 11-18, 1944
The Allied forces in Italy break through the major German defensive line at Monte Cassino.  This enables Allied troops to break out of the Anzio beachhead.

April 15, 1944
Thousands of Hungarian Jews move into newly established ghettoes.

April 28, 1944
Deportations of Hungarian Jews from the ghettoes in the countryside to Auschwitz begin.

May 1944
Only one transport leaves France for Auschwitz.

Friedrich Born, representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, arrives in Budapest and begins to issue thousands of Swiss Red Cross documents to protect Jewish refugees.

George Mandel Mantello issues thousands of El Salvador visas to Jewish refugees in Budapest through Consul Lutz’s office.  He is later arrested by Swiss police for violating Swiss neutrality.

The War Refugee Board (WRB) establishes its first refugee camp at Fedala in North Africa. 

May 2, 1944
First Jews deported from rural Hungary arrive in Auschwitz.

May 15-July 9, 1944
More than 438,000 Hungarian Jews from the countryside are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them are murdered on arrival.  It takes 148 trains to carry them there.

There were 109 trains for 33 days, until June 16. On several days, there were six trains. From 25–29 June, there were 10, then 18 on 5–9 July. Another 10 trains were sent to Auschwitz via other routes.  Because the crematoria could not cope with the corpses, special pits were dug near them, where bodies were burned.

It has been estimated that one-third of the murdered victims at Auschwitz were Hungarian. The mass deportation of Hungarian Jews is the largest Holocaust murder after 1942. It took place as World War II appeared to be drawing to a close — and world leaders had known for some time that Jews were being murdered in Nazi gas chambers.

May 15, 1944
Dean of the diplomatic corps in Budapest and Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta condemns the deportation of Jews.

Carl Lutz places the staff of the Jewish Council from Palestine under his diplomatic protection and renames it “Department of Emigration of the Swiss Legation.” Lutz starts to issue tens of thousands of Schutzbriefe (protective letters), indicating applicants for immigration under formal Swiss protection.  Lutz receives support by the newly appointed Swiss representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Friedrich Born.

May 16-17, 1944
“Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl sends a plea for help to Nathan Schwalb and details steps that the Allies could take to slow the killing in the Auschwitz death camp. Among his suggestions was to ‘blow up from the air the centers of annihilation’ at Auschwitz II-Birkenau and the rail infrastructure in Carpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia used to transport Hungarian Jews to the camp. Kopecký forwarded these suggestions, and on July 4, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile officially recommended bombing the crematoria and the rail infrastructure; their military significance was emphasized. Neither Auschwitz nor its rail lines were ever bombed.

May 17, 1944
Assembly of Reform Churches in Hungary protest the treatment and deportations of Hungarian Jews.

May 27, 1944
“Two additional Jewish prisoners escape from Auschwitz.  They are Czeslan Mordowicz (prisoner no. 84216) and Arnost Rosin (no. 29858), originally from Snina, Slovakia. They arrived in Slovakia on June 6, and dictate a seven-page report to Oskar Krasniansky of the Slovakian Jewish Council. They report on the murder in the death camp also given to members of the Working Group in Slovakia. Mordowicz and Rosin confirmed the details that Vrba and Wetzler had given. They also told Krasniansky that, between 15 and 27 May, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at Auschwitz, and most had been gassed on arrival”.

June 1944
“Appeals from the Jewish underground in Slovakia to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz reach Switzerland.  Though he had “several doubts about the matter”, John Pehle of the War Refugee Board and Benjamin Akzin, a Zionist activist in America, urge the United States Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy to discuss the possibility to bomb the camps. McCloy tells his assistant to "kill" the request, as the United States Army Air Forces had decided in February 1944 not to bomb anything "for the purposes of rescuing victims of enemy oppression", but to concentrate on military targets. On November 8, 1944 Pehle orders McCloy to bomb the camp. On June 11, 1944, the Executive of the Jewish Agency considers the proposal, with David Ben-Gurion, and it specifically opposes the bombing of Auschwitz. Ben Gurion states: ‘The view of the board is that we should not ask the Allies to bomb places where there are Jews.’ On June 19, 1944, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem reverses its opposition immediately upon learning that Auschwitz was a death camp and urged U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bomb the camp and the train tracks leading to the camp”.

The U.S. War Department turn downs the appeals to bomb rail lines between Hungary and Auschwitz. McCloy responded in a letter dated July 4, 1944 to John W. Pehle of the War Refugee Board, "The War Department is of the opinion that the suggested air operation is impracticable. It could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not amount to a practical project." In fact, long range American bombers stationed in Italy had flown over Auschwitz several times that spring in search of the I.G. petrochemical plant nearby.

June 1, 1944
President Franklin Roosevelt approves plan to allow 1,000 refugees in Italy to come to a camp in the United States.

June 2, 1944
Chairman of the Jewish Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency requests bombing of the rail lines to the Auschwitz death camp.

June 3, 1944
German troops withdraw from Rome, declaring it an open city.

June 5, 1944
The 5th US Army, commanded by General Mark Clark, liberates Rome. It is the first capital of the Axis Powers to be captured. Many cheer Clark’s men. Addressing a crowd of 100,000 people.

June 6, 1944
D-Day: Operation Overlord is launched.  Allied invasion at Normandy, in northwestern France, opens second front.  Seven Allied divisions attack in the largest amphibious operation in history.  The invasion involves more than 4,000 ships and 1,000 transport planes.

Deportations from France are halted.  Himmler and Eichmann consider the deportation from France to be a failure.  Nearly 80% of French Jews survive.

June 7, 1944
The first part of the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews is complete.  290,000 Jews have been killed in 23 days.

June 11, 1944
Dr. Waldemar Langlet, Swedish Red Cross delegate in Budapest, Hungary, and his wife Nina Langlet along with his assistant, Alexander Kasser, launch a humanitarian campaign to issue Swedish Red Cross protective passes to Hungarian Jews.

June 13, 1944
Germany launches secret weapon called the V-1 (Vergeltungswaffen [vengeance weapon]).  This is an unmanned flying bomb that uses jet technology.  It is launched from mainland France to bomb English cities.

June 19, 1944
“George Mantello sends his friend, a diplomat from Romania, Florian Manoliu, to Hungary, in order to determine what is happening to Jews there. Manoliu went to Budapest, obtained reports from Swiss vice-Consul Carl Lutz on June 19, 1944, and immediately returned with the reports to Montello in Geneva. One of the reports was from Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl's of the full 33-page Auschwitz Protocols: both the Vrba–Wetzler report and Rosin-Mordowicz report. The reports described in detail the genocidal operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. With much help from Swiss Pastor Paul Vogt, Mantello publicizes the details within a day of receiving them. This triggers a significant grass roots protest in Switzerland, including Sunday masses, street protests, and the Swiss press campaign; over 400 headlines in the Swiss press demanded (against censorship rules) an end to the deportations”.

June 25, 1944
Pope Pius XII sends telegram to Hungarian Regent Horthy to stop persecution of “a large segment of the Hungarian people because of their race.”  The Pope does not specifically mention Jews.

June 25-28, 1944
Negotiations with SS officials result in 21,000 Jews from southern and southeastern Hungary, including the areas of Baja Debrecen and Szeged, being transferred to Strasshoff, Austria, where they survive the war.

June 27, 1944
US government issues warning to Hungarian government and people regarding treatment of Hungarian Jews.

June 29, 1944
US War Department refuses request to bomb Auschwitz.  The request is denied on the grounds that it would ostensibly divert resources needed in order to win the war.  It is later discovered that US Air Force bombing raids routinely flew over the Auschwitz death camp.

July 1944
The War Refugee Board organizes the establishment of a temporary safe haven for more than 1,000 Jewish refugees.  It is established in an old Army base in Oswego, New York. War Refugee Board representative Ruth Gruber helps lead this rescue.

“Pastor Paul Vogt's copies of the Auschwitz reports come to the attention of the Zürich correspondent of The New York Times, Daniel T. Brigham, who writes two reports in early July on their contents, which represented the first detailed public news stories on the scale of the Holocaust and the functioning of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first report was titled "Inquiry Confirms Nazi Death Camps", with the subheading "1,715,000 Jews Said to Have Been Put to Death by the Germans Up to April 15". The second was titled "Two Death Camps Places of Horror; German Establishments for Mass Killings of Jews Described by Swiss."

The Archbishop of Canterbury in England appeals to Hungarian government to stop deportation of Jews.

Turkish Consul General Selahattin Ülkümen intercedes on behalf of Jewish Turkish nationals who are being deported from the island of Rhodes.   More than 40 Jewish families were spared deportation to Auschwitz.  In retaliation, the Nazis bombed the Turkish embassy, fatally wounding Ülkümen’s wife.

July 3, 1944
Soviet Army retakes Minsk from the German Army.

July 4, 1944
The Soviet Army reaches the 1939 Polish-USSR border.

July 7, 1944
Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy reassumes power and temporarily halts deportation of Jews.  There are 300,000 Jews left in Hungary, 170,000 in and around Budapest.  They are concentrated into two ghettoes.  Lutz and other neutral diplomats place Jews under their diplomatic protection in over 100 safe houses.  Nazi and Arrow Cross gangs continue to raid and murder in these areas.

July 8, 1944
The Kovno ghetto is liquidated.  2,000 Jews are killed and 4,000 deported to Germany.

July 9, 1944
The Allied Armies capture the city of Caen in Normandy, France.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest.  He is employed by the War Refugee Board of the US Treasury Department.  His mission is to save as many Jews as possible. Consul Lutz gives Raoul Wallenberg invaluable instructions on how to issue protective letters, which he often calls safe conduct passes, to save Jews in Budapest.  Lutz’s activities also serve as a model for the Spanish, Portuguese, and Vatican embassies.

July 12, 1944
Don Angel Sans Briz, Minister (Ambassador) of Spain stationed in Budapest, issues 500 visas to Budapest Jews providing them protection from deportation and death marches.  Also rents buildings that become protected by the Spanish legation.

July 13, 1944
Vilna is liberated by the Red Army.

July 18, 1944
Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo resigns after the defeat of the Japanese army by US forces on the Island of Saipan.

Maurice Cachoud is arrested in Paris and is tortured to death.  The rescue efforts of Jewish underground organizations like the Cachoud Group were in part responsible for the rescue of 20,000 Jews in the former Italian zone of occupation in Southern France.

July 19, 1944
Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, Vatican Nuncio in Turkey (future Pope John XXIII) appeals to Hungarian Regent Horthy on behalf of 5,000 Hungarian Jews with Palestine visas.  Roncalli provides Vatican certificates for Jews in hiding.  Roncalli works closely with members of the Yishuv rescue committee in Turkey, including Ira Hirschmann and Joel Brand.

July 20, 1944
Attempted assassination of Hitler by opposition military officers at his headquarters in Rastenberg fails.  In reprisal, thousands of Germans are murdered.

July 22, 1944
The Soviet Army captures Lublin, Poland.  They liberate the German death camp of Majdanek, near Lublin.

Proclamation of the PKWN Manifesto by Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation, operating in opposition of exiled-Polish government in London.

July 24, 1944
Carl Lutz establishes the “Glass House” at Vadász Street in Budapest.

July 28, 1944
The Soviet Army recaptures the city of Brest-Litovsk on the Polish-Soviet border.  This Soviet offensive has virtually annihilated the army of German Field Marshal Ernst Busch.

July 31, 1944
The American Jewish Conference sponsors a major rally in Madison Square Park in New York to draw attention to the mass murder of Hungarian Jews. 

August 1944
Based on a understanding with the Hungarian authorities, Swiss Consul Lutz attempts to obtain a safe haven in Switzerland for at first 40,000 and later even for 200,000 Hungarian Jews.  The Swiss Foreign Minister, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, accepts.  The agreement is torpedoed twofold:  a) Veesenmayer refuses to give German transit permits and Eichmann hints that he would murder the Jews en route, and b) the British refuse absolutely to have these people transferred from Switzerland to Palestine after the war.

Consul Lutz persuades authorities to let Jews protected by Switzerland be placed in 76 geschützte Häuser (protective houses) in the Szent-Istvan area of Budapest.  There are over 30,000 persons carrying Lutz’s Schutzbriefe in these buildings.  Later, 32 more Safe houses are added at the request of Raoul Wallenberg.  Consul Lutz, with meager funds from the consulate, helps feed the inhabitants of this ghetto.

Lutz and Wallenberg employ 1,000 Jewish Chalutzim (pioneers) who provide them with communication with the entire community of Budapest and the Hungarian underground.  They alert them to the transfer of Jews, deportations, death marches and actions by the Nazis and Arrow Cross.  One hundred Chalutzim are killed.
 
August 1-October 2, 1944
Polish resistance army in Warsaw begins actions against the German occupiers.  It is by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa). The Soviet Army outside the city refuses to come to their aid. Some 166,000 people lose their lives in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.

Warsaw is razed to the ground by the Germans, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945. More than 150,000 Poles were sent to labor or concentration camps. On 17 January 1945, the Soviet Army entered a destroyed and nearly uninhabited Warsaw. Some 300 Jews were found hiding in the ruins in the Polish part of the city.

Perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who have either fought with the AK or had been in hiding. It is estimated that over 2,000 Polish Jews, some as well-known as Marek Edelman, and several dozen Greek, Hungarian and even German Jews freed by Armia Krajowa from Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw, take part in fighting against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. [Wikipedia]

August 5-12, 1944
“The Wola massacre the systematic killing of between 70,000 and 90,000 Poles in the Wola neighborhood of the Polish capital city, Warsaw, by the German Army and their Axis collaborators in the Azerbaijani Legion, as well as the mostly Russian RONA forces. The massacre was ordered by Adolf Hitler, who directed to kill "anything that moves" to stop the Warsaw Uprising soon after it began. [Wikipedia]

August 14, 1944
Operation Anvil.  Allied forces land on the south coast of France.  They quickly advance 20 miles on the first day.

August 15, 1945
Marshal Philippe Pétain, former head of the Vichy government, is convicted in a French court of treason and is sentenced to death.  His sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment.

August 17, 1944
US forces break out of the German defenses in western Normandy. 

August 20, 1944
One hundred twenty-seven U.S. Army Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses drop high-explosives on the Buna factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles east of the gas chambers.

August 21, 1944
The diplomatic legations in Budapest of Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, the Vatican, and the Red Cross protest the resumption of deportations of Jews to Auschwitz.  The diplomats from these legations were active in saving Jews from deportation to Auschwitz and the death marches.  They all issued protective papers, documents, and other forms of identification.  They housed, fed and provided medical care for more than 100,000 Jews in Budapest.  They set up apartments and homes as protected houses that were under the protection of the various legations.  The following diplomats were active in saving Jews.  Sweden: Carl Ivan Danielsson, Per Anger, Lars Berg, Raoul Wallenberg, Göte Carlsson, Dénes von Mezey.  Swedish Red Cross: Sandor Kasze-Kasser, Dr. Valdemar Langlet and Nina Langlet, Asta Nilsson.  Switzerland: Dr. Harald Feller, Maximillian Jaeger, Charles Lutz and Gertrud Lutz, Peter Zürcher, Ernst Vonrufs, Franz Bischof, Ladislaus Kluger.  Swiss Red Cross: Jean de Bavier, Friedrich Born, Dr. Robert Schirmer, Hans Weyermann, Dr. Gyorgy Gergely.  Vatican: Monsignor Angelo Rotta, Father Gennaro Verolino, Father Köhler (volunteer).  Portugal: Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho, Dr. Carlos Almeida Afonseca de Sampayo Garrido, Gyula Gulden, Count Ferenc Pongrácz.  Spain: Miguel Angel de Muguiro, Don Angel Sanz-Briz, Giorgio Perlasca.  Poland: Henryk Slawik, Zimmerman.  Romania: Florian Manoliu.  Turkey: Abdülhalat Birden, Pertev Sevki Kantimir.  Argentina: Alberto Bafico.  Slovakia: Dr. Spisiak.  International Red Cross:  Sándor Újváry.  Hungarian Red Cross: Sarolta Lukács.  Germany: Gerhart Feine.

August 23, 1944
Horthy informs Eichmann that he will not cooperate with the deportation of Hungarian Jews.

August 24-25, 1944
Paris is liberated by Allied forces.  The French forces, led by de Gaulle, lead the victory procession.

August 25, 1944
Himmler orders the halt of deportations from Budapest.

August 28-29, 1944
The Slovak National Uprising breaks out.  2,000 Jews take part; 269 are killed.

August 31, 1944
Soviet Army enters Bucharest, Romania.

Fall 1944
The Working Group in Slovakia comes up with a major proposal to rescue Jews.  It is called the Europa Plan.  The Plan calls for bribing SS officials to stop the deportations in Central and Eastern Europe.  They negotiate with Alois Brunner and Kurt Becher.  Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Dov Weissmandel are credited with devising this plan.  It ultimately fails.

September 1944
Jewish rescue activist Recha Sternbuch contacts Jean Marie Musy, former Swiss president and an acquaintance of SS Chief Himmler. At Sternbuch’s request Musy, with help from his son Benoît Musy, negotiate with Himmler, who is willing to release Jews in concentration camps for ransom of one million dollars. On 7 February 1945 Musy delivers the first 1,210 inmates from Theresienstadt and more were promised at two-week intervals. Unfortunately, this initiative is apparently obstructed by a Jewish leader in Switzerland. The Sternbuchs keep negotiating through Musy to the end of the war. There is an agreement to turn over four concentration camps essentially intact to the Allies in return for a USA guarantee to try the camp guards in court as opposed to shooting them on the spot. This saves the lives of large numbers of camp inmates

Slovak National Uprising is suppressed by the German army.

September 3, 1944
Brussels is liberated by British forces.  More than 20,000 Jews remain alive; many had been in hiding.

Last deportation from the Westerbork transit camp.

As a result of a suggestion by Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, evacuation begins by air of 650 German, Austrian and Czech Jews from areas of Yugoslavia to Bari in Allied occupied Italy.

September 4, 1944
Finland surrenders to the Soviet Union.

British capture Antwerp, Belgium, and secure the port.

September 5, 1944
A new Slovak government is formed under Dr. Stefan Tiso (nephew of former president).

Soviet Union declares war on Bulgaria.

September 8, 1944
Bulgaria changes sides and declares war on Germany.

The first V-2, German-built rocket, is launched against London.  V-2s are built by Jewish slave laborers in the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp.

September 11-16, 1944
The Octagon Conference is held in Quebec, Canada, between Roosevelt and Churchill.  They plan the postwar occupation and demilitarization of Germany.

September 12, 1944
Soviet Army begins offensive on Budapest, Hungary.

September 16, 1944
Bulgaria surrenders to the Soviet Army.

September 17-18, 1944
Military operation called Market Garden is launched in the Netherlands and Germany by British and US divisions.

September 19, 1944
Germany disbands Danish political parties and ends Danish general strike.

September 20, 1944
Monsignor Angelo Roncalli sends protest about deportations to Dr. Stefan Tiso.

September 25, 1944
Hitler calls up remaining men between 16 and 60 in Germany for military service in the Volkssturm [people’s home army].  This is a last desperate attempt to defend the German homeland.

September 28, 1944
Members of the Working Group in Slovakia, including Gisi Fleischmann, are arrested by the SS.

September 29, 1944
Soviet Army invades German occupied Yugoslavia.

October 1944
Gisi Fleischmann is deported to and murdered in the Auschwitz death camp.

Henryk Slawik, the Polish Chargé d’Affaires in Budapest, issued thousands of documents certifying that Polish Jewish refugees were Christian.  Slawik was caught and deported to Mauthausen, where he was murdered.

An Italian refugee living in Budapest, Giorgio Perlasca, becomes a Spanish citizen and volunteers with Minister Sans-Briz in mission to protect Jews in Budapest.  By November, 3,000 Jews received Spanish protection in eight safe houses.

Georges Dunand, delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, arrives in Slovakia with money from the Joint Distribution Committee (JCD) to save Jews.  Dunand distributes these much-needed funds to refugees and helps a number of Jews escape deportation. He works closely with Jurag Revesz, a Jewish youth leader.

October 2, 1944
International Committee of the Red Cross, under pressure, finally makes official inquiry to Germany on the status of all foreign prisoners in Germany and German-occupied territories.

The Polish resistance forces in Warsaw end the uprising against the German occupiers.  The nearby Soviet forces refuse to aid the Poles in their uprising.  250,000 Poles are killed.

October 4, 1944
The British Army lands in German occupied Greece.

October 5, 1944
The British Colonial Office allows only 10,300 Jews to immigrate to Palestine.  This will be at the rate of only 1,500 per month.  This order rescinds an original offer made to the Jewish Agency of Palestine, which would originally allow all Jews reaching Turkey to enter Palestine.

October 6, 1944
Soviet Army enters Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

October 6-7, 1944
Jewish Sonderkommando [those working in the gas chambers and crematoria] managed to smuggle in gunpowder and blow up one of the gas chambers at Birkenau.

October 9, 1945
Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of France in Vichy, is convicted in a French court of treason.  He is sentenced to death.

October 9-19, 1944
Churchill, Stalin, and Averell Harriman of the US, meet at the Moscow Conference in the Soviet Union.  They discuss the war.

October 13, 1944
Soviet army liberates Riga, Latvia.

October 14, 1944
British Army liberates Athens.

German armored division enters and occupies Budapest.  Hungarian Prime Minister Lakatos is removed.  Ferenc Szálazi, head of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party, is appointed Prime Minister.

War Refugee Board hears rumors of Jews being concentrated outside of Budapest for deportation.  The WRB warns the Arrow Cross, “None who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished…All who share the guilt shall share the punishment.”

October 15, 1944
Admiral Horthy tries to sue for peace with Soviet Union.  Horthy is soon arrested by Nazi puppet government.  Hungarian Arrow Cross, under Ferenc Szálasi, and Nazis introduce new reign of terror and murder thousands of Budapest Jews.  Death marches to Austria are instituted. 

Swiss Consul in Budapest Carl Lutz persuades the Arrow Cross to validate his letters of protection. Four thousand Jews seek protection within the American legation, shielded by Lutz.  As a result, the Szent-Istvan area escapes attack during this period. German minister Veesenmayer requests permission from Berlin to murder Lutz.  Lutz also evades Arrow Cross, who seem to be out to assassinate him. Hungarian officials compel Lutz, Wallenberg and Born to transfer several thousand of their protected Jews to a fenced in ghetto in Pest. 70,000 Jews fill this ghetto, who suffer from starvation and cold.

The neutral diplomats and their helpers succeed in stopping death marches and protecting their safe houses. Acting under the protective umbrella of the neutral legations, the Chalutzim Jewish youth distribute thousands of forged protective letters to Jews in the death marches, saving them.

By the end of the war, the courageous diplomats are able to save the lives of more than 100,000 Jews in Budapest.

Dr. Sampayo Garrido, Portuguese Chargé d’Affaires in Budapest, and later his replacement, Carlos Branquinho, issue more than 800 protective passes and establish safe houses to shelter Jews.

The Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest (Va’ada), headed by Otto Komoly, helps in the relieve efforts of Jews in the Budapest ghettoes.  5,000 Jewish children are housed in specially designated buildings.

October 20, 1944
SS troops under Eichmann round up 27,000 Jews in Hungary who are marched to the Austrian border, bound for deportation.  Raoul Wallenberg and other neutral diplomats in Budapest follow behind these death marches and manage to rescue thousands of Jews.  Occasionally, an entire death march column is rescued and returned to Budapest.  The SS and Arrow Cross are angry.  Szálasi lodges a protest with the neutral legations for “sabotaging the Hungarian-German war effort.” 

Tito’s partisans liberate Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

October 23, 1944
Adolf Eichmann leaves Budapest along with his SS troops.

October 27, 1944
Hungarian Regent Horthy resigns.

October 31, 1944
Himmler orders the murder of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau to cease.  The SS begin dismantling the death camp.

November 1944
Roosevelt elected President of the US for a fourth term.

November 4, 1944
Jewish, Nazi, and other allied leaders meet in Switzerland in a proposed rescue effort of Hungarian Jews.

November 8, 1944
Beginning of a new round of death marches of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria. Raids are conducted in the Swiss-and Swedish protected buildings, looking for Jews in possession of forged protective letters.  Some are forced to go to Óbuda brickyards and on the death marches.  Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg, Swiss consul Lutz and his wife, Gertrud, frequently intervene and save Jews.

Himmler orders the end of the death marches in mid-November.  Eichmann is summoned to Berlin and is confronted by Himmler, who orders him to stop all murder actions.  Himmler orders all killing in the death camps to cease.

German Consul Gerhard Feine, Director of the Jewish Department of the German Plenipotentiary of Budapest, secretly informs Swiss Consul Lutz of Veesenmayer’s and Eichmann’s plans to deport and murder the Jews of Budapest.

November 10, 1944
Refusing to recognize the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross regime, the Swiss government recalls head of legation Maximilian Jaeger from Budapest.  As Lutz’s supervisor, Jaeger has been active until then in protesting the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.

November 11, 1944
British and Greek Armies complete the liberation of Greece. 

November 12, 1944
The Central Committee of Polish Jews also referred to as the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and abbreviated CKŻP, is a state-sponsored political representation of the Jewish Community in Poland. It provides care and assistance to Jews who survived the Holocaust. It legally represented all CKŻP-registered Polish Jews with the new government and its agencies. It existed until 1950 [Wikipedia]

November 13, 1944
In Budapest, a ghetto is set up for Jews without protection of neutral nations.

November 23-27, 1944
Swiss diplomats Leopold Breszlauer and Ladislaus Kluger issue 300 protective papers to Hungarian Jews at the Austro-Hungarian border.

November 26-29, 1944
Pest ghetto, with 63,000 Jews, is established.  The ghetto contains 293 houses and apartments, with up to 14 persons per room.

December 1944
All foreign representatives are ordered to leave Budapest.  Consul Carl Lutz and Wallenberg stay on with the intention of protecting thousands of Jews in the international ghetto.  This area is under the protection of various neutral governments.  They stay on as “a matter of conscience.”  Arrow Cross bands attack and destroy the Swedish Legation.  Swedish Minister Carl Ingvar Danielsson barely escapes death.

Spanish Minister Don Angel Sans-Briz leaves Budapest and is recalled to Spain.  Perlasca appoints himself Spanish “Ambassador” and continues to issue Spanish protective passes through the end of the war.  The Nazis honor his protective papers.

Dr. Harald Feller assumes post as Swiss Interim Chargé d’Affaires to Budapest, replacing Maximilian Jaeger.  Feller works closely in support of Consul Lutz’s rescue activities.  He personally hides 32 Jews in his own home.

Under pressure from the Allies and the Red Cross, SS General Kurt Becher allows the Allies and relief agencies to supply medical and food supplies to inmates in concentration camps.

December 6, 1944
Saly Mayer, the Swiss representative of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, arranges for the transport of 1,355 Orthodox Jewish refugees from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Basel, Switzerland.

December 16, 1944
German Army launches major offensive against the Allied Armies in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.  It is called the Battle of the Bulge.

December 26, 1944
The US Third Army, under General Patton, liberates trapped US forces in the Belgian town of Bastogne.

The Soviet Army completes the encirclement of Budapest. Consul Lutz and refugees are besieged in the residence of the British Legation in Buda.  Lutz is cut off from his office at the American legation in Pest.  He appoints Swiss lawyer Peter Zürcher to be his temporary representative.  Zürcher persuades SS commanders, on threat of war crimes prosecution, to protect the Jews of the Pest ghetto.  As a result, most of the 70,000 Jews of the Pest ghetto survive.  Both Carl Lutz and Peter Zürcher contribute substantially to preserving the lives of the Jews of Budapest, of whom 124,000 survived. 

1945

1945
The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects is created by the Supreme Allied Headquarters.  Its purpose is to catch and prosecute Nazi war criminals.

It is estimated that 250,000-350,000 Jews are liberated from the concentration camps.  1.6 million come out of hiding.  The first wave of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust emigrate to Palestine (142,000), the United States (72,000), Canada (16,000), Belgium (8,000), and other places (10,000), including Central and South America and Australia.  A very few stay in Europe.

At the end of 1944, the number of Polish Jews in the Soviet and the Soviet-controlled territories is estimated at 250,000–300,000 people. Jews who escaped to eastern Poland from areas occupied by Germany in 1939 are numbering at around 198,000. Over 150,000 are repatriated or expelled back to new communist Poland along with the Jewish men conscripted to the Red Army from Kresy in 1940–1941. Their families died in the Holocaust. Those Jews who survive the Holocaust in Poland include those who are saved by the Poles (most families with children), and those who joined the Polish or Soviet resistance movement. Some 20,000–40,000 Jews are repatriated from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, up to 240,000 returning Jews might have resided in Poland mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Dzierżoniów (where there is a significant Jewish community initially consisting of local concentration camp survivors), Legnica, and Bielawa. [Wikipedia]

January 1945
Peter Zürcher and Ernst Vonrufs, acting representatives of Swiss interests in Budapest, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, thwart Nazi plans to blow up the Pest ghetto with 70,000 Jewish inhabitants.

Lutz and his wife, along with Jewish refugees, take refuge in the air shelter of the abandoned British Legation on the right bank of the Danube. 

Rescuer diplomats from the Ładoś Group – Ładoś, Rokicki, Kühl and Ryniewicz – were named in the letter of thanks from Agudat Israel.

January 1, 1945
Carl Burkhardt becomes head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

January 1-16, 1945
By the beginning of 1945, the German Ardennes offensive, called the “Battle of the Bulge,” for which the Nazi leadership had risked so much, fails.

January 5, 1945
Five thousand Jews are taken from Swedish protective houses and moved to the central Pest ghetto.

January 7, 1945
Arrow Cross attacks Swedish protected houses on Jokai Street, Pest ghetto.

January 9, 1945
US Army, under General MacArthur, lands in Luzon, Philippine Islands.

January 16, 1945
Soviets liberate and occupy Budapest.

January 17, 1945
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp is closed and evacuated, 66,000 prisoners are taken away on a series of death marches.

The Soviet Army enters and liberates Warsaw, Poland.  Warsaw is completely destroyed.

Wallenberg was last seen in the company of Soviet soldiers; he said: “I do not know whether I am a guest of the Soviets or their prisoner;” he has not been seen as a free man since.

January 18, 1945
Soviet Army liberates and occupies Pest.

January 19, 1945
Soviet Army liberates Lodz, Poland.

January 27, 1945
Soviet troops enter and liberate Auschwitz concentration camp.  Seven thousand remaining prisoners are free.

February 1945
The German troops in Budapest surrender to Marshall Malinovsky of the Soviet Army.

Soviets arrest Swiss Minister Dr. Harald Feller and send him to Moscow, where he is imprisoned for more than a year in the Lubianca prison.

February 1, 1945
On Himmler’s orders, 2,700 Jews are taken from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and sent to Switzerland. 

February 3, 1945
US Army begins the liberation of Manila in the Philippines.

February 4-11, 1945
An Allied conference is held at Yalta in the Russian Ukraine between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.  It defines the postwar spheres of influence in Europe and Germany.

As a result of the conference Poland's borders are redrawn by the Allies according to the demands made by Josef Stalin during the Tehran Conference, confirmed as not negotiable at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The Polish government-in-exile is excluded from the negotiations. [Wikipedia]

February 5-7, 1945
Recha Sternbuch and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arranges with Jean Marie Musy, former Swiss president and an acquaintance of Himmler for small transport of 1,210 Jews from Terezin Concentration Camp to Switzerland. The Sternbuchs keep negotiating through Musy to the end of the war. There is an agreement to turn over four concentration camps essentially intact to the Allies in return for a USA guarantee to try the camp guards in court as opposed to shooting them on the spot. This saves the lives of large numbers of camp inmates. The Sternbuchs also negotiate the release of thousands of women from the Ravensbrück camp and release of 15,000 Jews held in Austria. [Wikipedia].

February 11, 1945
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee representative Saly Mayer meets with SS officer Kurt Becker to arrange for the release of Jews from concentration camps.  1,691 Jews are rescued from Hungary and brought to Switzerland.  17,000 other Jews are later rescued under these negotiations.

February 13, 1945
German Army surrenders in Budapest.

February 13-15, 1945
The German city of Dresden is firebombed by the British and US air forces.  60,000 are killed.

February 19, 1945
Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross operating in Germany and nephew of King Carl Gustav V of Sweden, negotiates with SS commander Heinrich Himmler and General Walter Schellenberg, Chief of Himmler’s Office of Information, for the release of thousands of Scandinavians held in Nazi concentration camps.  An agreement is made to release thousands of prisoners and Jewish inmates.  The Swedish and Danish Red Cross are allowed to supply food and medicine to the inmates of the camps.  Iver Olson of the War Refugee Board in Stockholm is also involved in these negotiations.

February 23, 1945
Turkey declares war on Germany.

March 4, 1945
Finland declares war on Germany.

March 5, 1945
The Ninth US Army reaches the Rhine River near Düsseldorf.

March 12, 1945
Head of the International Committee for the Red Cross Carl Burckhardt meets with SS RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner at Swiss border to plan have the Red Cross take over the administration and supervision of the concentration camps.

March 17, 1945
New Hungarian provisional government rescinds anti-Jewish laws.

March 19, 1945
Hitler issues the Nero Order (Nero-Befehl).  This orders German troops to leave German cities ruined for advancing troops.

March 22, 1945
US Army crosses the Rhine River into Germany at Oppenheim.

April 1945
Himmler orders the evacuation of thousands of Jews in deadly death marches away from the concentration camps.

Bernadotte’s negotiations with Himmler are successful.  He secures the release of over 400 Danish Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt.  Later, he arranges for the release of thousands of women from the Ravensbrück and Bergen Belsen concentration camps.  He arranges for busses, converted to ambulances, known as the “white busses,” to take them from the camps.  The refugees are transported safely to Sweden.

US and British troops liberate the concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, Nordhausen, Bergen-Belsen and other camps.

April 1, 1945
US Army lands on the island of Okinawa, in the Pacific.

April 2, 1945
Soviets launch Vienna Offensive against the German army in the Austrian capital city.

German armies are encircled in the Ruhr Pocket.

Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, is overrun by Soviet forces.

April 4, 1945
German Army withdraws from Hungary.

Ohrdruf concentration camp is liberated by the US Army.

April 7, 1945
The Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk in the waters off of Okinawa, this the Japanese last major naval operation.

April 9, 1945
New Allied offensive in Italy begins.  It is called the Gothic Line campaign.

SS begins evacuating prisoners from Mauthausen.

April 10, 1945
US Army captures Hanover, Germany.

April 11, 1945
US troops reach the Elbe River, near Wittenberg.

Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated by the US Army.

April 12, 1945
US President Franklin Roosevelt dies.  Harry Truman becomes the new President.

Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton visit the liberated Ohrdruf camp.  Eisenhower orders troops and local Germans to witness the atrocities.  Eisenhower also encourages the press to cover the liberation of the camps.

April 13, 1945
Soviet Army enters and liberates Vienna, Austria.

Gardelegen Massacre takes place. More than 1000 slave laborers are closed in a barn which is was set on fire. It was one of the last massacres on civil population perpetrated by Germans.

April 14, 1945
Massive firebombing of Tokyo by U.S. Army Air Force.

April 15, 1945
British soldiers liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Red Cross transfers 413 Danish Jews from Czechoslovakia to Sweden.

April 16, 1945
The Soviet Army launches its last assault on Berlin.

April 19, 1945
The Soviet Army advances towards Berlin and soon reaches the suburbs.

In Italy Allied Armies continue their advance toward the Po Valley.

Danish Red Cross volunteers help with the release of surviving inmates at the Neuengamme concentration camp, who are brought safely to Denmark.

April 20, 1945
Himmler meets with Swedish diplomat Norbert Masur to arrange to free 7,000 women from Ravensbrück.  More than half of them is Jewish.

April 21, 1945
Soviet forces under General Georgie Zhukov's launch assaults on the German forces in and around Berlin in the opening stages of the Battle of Berlin.

April 23, 1945
US Army liberates Flossenberg concentration camp.

April 25, 1945
US and Soviet troops link up at Torgau, Germany, on the Elbe River.

The United Nations meeting in San Francisco, California, drafts charter of the United Nations.

April 27, 1945
Sachsenhausen concentration camp is liberated by the Soviet Army.

The Landsberg-Kaufering concentration camps are liberated by the 36th Division of the US Army.

April 28, 1945
Italian partisans kill Mussolini as he tries to escape to Switzerland.

April 29, 1945
The German Army unconditionally surrenders to the Allies in Italy.

The Soviet Army occupies Slovakia.

In the day before he commits suicide, Hitler dictates his last will and testament.  In it, he exhorts “the government and the people to uphold the race laws to limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoners of all nations, international Jewry.”

Hitler appoints Admiral Karl Donitz to be his successor.

Dachau concentration camp is liberated by the 42nd and 45th US Divisions of the 7th US Army.

April 30, 1945
Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

US Army captures Munich, Germany.

The Soviet Army captures the old German Reichstag building in Berlin.

The Soviet Army liberates Ravensbrück concentration camp.  They find 3,500 women there.

May 1945
Pio Perucchi dies at the age of 75 in Lugano, Switzerland.

May 1, 1945
The Soviet Army liberates the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.

May 2, 1945
Berlin falls to the Soviet Army.  The German troops defending Berlin surrender.

May 4, 1945
German forces Denmark, Northern Germany and The Netherlands surrender to British Commander Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

The German occupying forces in the Netherlands and Denmark surrender.

Soviet Army liberates concentration camp in Oranienberg.

The Red Cross takes over concentration camp at Theresienstadt.

May 5, 1945
Mauthausen concentration camp is liberated by the US Eleventh Armored Division.

The German Army in Norway surrenders.

The 71st Division of the US Army liberates the Gunskirchen concentration camp in Austria.

May 6, 1945
The Eleventh Armored Division of the US Army liberates the Ebensee concentration camp in Austria.

May 8, 1945
Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day): German General Alfred Jodl surrenders at Eisenhower’s headquarters, the end of the Third Reich.

The German army in northeast Germany surrenders to Field Marshal Montgomery.

55 million people are dead.  Nearly half are civilians.

More than six million Jews and five million others have been murdered.  Two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe is murdered. 

90% of the Jewish Polish population has been murdered.  One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, made up half of all Poles killed during the war. The number of Polish Jews who survive the Holocaust is difficult to ascertain. The majority of Polish Jewish survivors were individuals who were able to find refuge in the territories of Soviet Union that were not occupied by Germans and thus safe from the Holocaust. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 800,000 Polish Jews survive the war, out of which between 50,000 and 100,000 were survivors from occupied Poland, and the remainder, survivors who made it abroad (mostly to the Soviet Union). [Wikipedia]

However, in more than half of the countries in Europe, 50% or more of the population of Jews survives.  These include the countries of Denmark, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany and Austria.

The Soviet Army liberates Grossrosen concentration camp.

The US Army captures Hermann Göring.

Jewish returnees to Denmark have their property, including houses, businesses and money, returned to them.  All Jews are granted the sum of $4,505 Kroner to help rebuild their lives.

May 9, 1945
Prague, Czechoslovakia, is liberated by the Soviet Army.

May 10, 1945
The German Army in Czechoslovakia surrenders to the Soviet Army.

May 23, 1945
SS chief Himmler is arrested by a British Army unit.  Later that day, he commits suicide by taking a cyanide capsule.

June 18-21, 1945
The Trial of the Sixteen is a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet authorities in Moscow in 1945. All captives were kidnapped by the NKVD secret service and falsely accused of various forms of 'illegal activity' against the Red Army.  The verdict was issued on 21 June, with most of the defendants coerced into pleading guilty by the NKVD.

July 6, 1945
The United Kingdom and the USA withdrew support for the legitimate Polish government in exile, and all its agendas in Poland. Soviet and Polish Communist repressions aimed at former members of the Polish Secret State and the Armia Krajowa lasted well into the 1960s. [Wikipedia]

July 16, 1945
First detonation of an atomic bomb in New Mexico.  The bomb in code-named “Trinity.”

July 17-August 2, 1945
A conference is convened in Potsdam, Germany, between Stalin, Churchill (Attlee), and President Truman. At the conference, Stalin repeats previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "Sovietization" of Eastern Europe. Stalin pushed for reparations from Germany without regard to the minimum supply for German citizens' survival. This worries Truman and Churchill who believe that Germany will become a financial burden for the Western powers.  Germany is divided into four zones: Soviet, U.S., British, and French, with Berlin itself—located within the Soviet area.

August 6, 1945
Americans detonate atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan.  It destroys two-thirds of the city.

August 8, 1945
The victorious Allied powers meet and develop an outline for an International Military Tribunal to try German war criminals.

August 8, 1945
The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Japanese occupied Manchuria.

August 9, 1945
Americans detonate atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.  It destroys half of the city.

August 11, 1945
Anti-Jewish riots in Crackow, Poland.

August 12, 1945
The Soviet Army occupies Japanese-held North Korea.

August 13, 1945
The World Zionist Congress demands the admission of one million Jewish refugees to Palestine.

August 14, 1945
Japanese Emperor Hirohito accepts Allied surrender terms.  He tells his people to accept the terms and not to resist the occupation.

August 15, 1945
V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed.

Marshal Philippe Pétain, former head of the Vichy government, is convicted in a French court of treason and is sentenced to death.  His sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment.

August 26, 1945
British Labor Party wins in a landslide. 

August 28, 1945
First US troops land in Japan to prepare for surrender and occupation.

September 2, 1945
Victory in Japan (V-J Day).  Japanese diplomats and soldiers surrender at MacArthur’s headquarters aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.  End of World War II.

More than 55 million people have been killed in the deadliest war in history.  For the first time in history, more civilians are killed than soldiers. 

Much of Europe and Japan are in ruins.

September 20, 1945
The Jewish Agency for Palestine submits a claim against Germany for war crimes committed against the Jewish people.

October 9, 1945
Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of France in Vichy, is convicted in a French court of treason.  He is sentenced to death.

October 24, 1945
The United Nations comes into formal existence after its charter is ratified in New York City.

November 1945
Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull is awarded Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in creating the United Nations. 

November 13, 1945
Charles de Gaulle is elected President of France.

November 15 – December 14, 1945
Dachau trials are conducted at the site of the former concentration camp.  Forty former guards and administrators are tried.  Many are sentenced to death.

November 22, 1945 – August 31, 1946
Nazi war leaders are put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for crimes against humanity.  They are tried by the International Military Tribunal (IMT).  The IMT rules that obedience to superiors’ orders is insufficient defense for crimes against humanity.  The defendants include Hermann Göring, Rudolph Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Julius Streicher, Joachim von Ribbentrop, General Wilhelm Keitel, General Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. They are charged with:  1) crimes against the peace, 2) war crimes, 3) crimes against humanity, and 4) conspiracy to commit any of these crimes.  The military tribunal finds 12 of the defendants guilty and sentences them to death.  Seven others receive prison terms and three are acquitted.

Late 1945
US diplomat Hiram Bingham resigns from US Foreign Service in protest for the US government failing to thwart Nazis’ activities in South America during and after the war.