timeline of the Holocaust

| German composer Richard Wagner republishes his antisemitic article Das Judenthum in der Musik. Now, with his name explicitly linked to the text, Wagner makes several attacks targeted to Jewish composers and believes that the influence of these people on German culture is degrading.

|Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial antisemitism, blaming Jews for political movements promoting constitutional democracy, equality of rights under the law, socialism, and pacifism.{{Cite web|title=Antisemitism|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism|access-date=2 January 2023}}

|Adolf Hitler was born in a small town in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary (now Austria).

| The Dreyfus affair begins, this event would inspired hungarian jornalist Theodor Herzl to create the Zionist movement.

|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 eventually influences the Nazi Party.{{Cite book|title=The Holocaust : the fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945|last=Yahil, Leni.|year=1990|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=019504522X|location=New York|oclc=20169748}}

|The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document forged by the Okhrana 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 antisemitic tract even after it was proved to have been forged and plagiarized.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion|title=Protocols of the Elders of Zion|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in the town of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, triggering World War I.

|The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin take power in Russia with the October Revolution. The subsequent Revolutions of 1917–1923 cause fears of Communist expansion into Europe that would influence the European far right.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-russian-revolution-1917|title=The Russian Revolution, 1917|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 March 2019}}

|World War I ends with the Compiègne Armistice after the German Empire collapses due to the Revolution.

|France deploys African colonial troops in the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, resulting in mixed-race children between the troops and German women. The children, disparagingly called "Rhineland Bastards" are subject to racial discrimination and prejudice.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blacks-during-the-holocaust-era|title=Blacks during the Holocaust Era|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The German Workers' Party is founded by Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer as an offshoot of the Thule Society, one of the many far-right, antisemitic, anti-communist and völkisch groups which were formed in Germany after the war.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof00benz|title=A concise history of the Third Reich|last=Wolfgang.|first=Benz|year=2006|publisher=University of California Press|others=Dunlap, Thomas, 1959–|isbn=0520234898|location=Berkeley|oclc=61520300|url-access=registration}}

|The Treaty of Versailles is presented to the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Most Germans disapprove of the reparations payments and the forced acceptance of German war guilt entailed in Article 231.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/before-1933/treaty-of-versailles-presented-to-german-delegation|title=Treaty of Versailles Presented to German Delegation – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=ushmm.org|access-date=30 March 2019}}

|Adolf Hitler, having joined the German Workers' Party, makes his first endorsement of racial antisemitism.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/before-1933/adolf-hitler-issues-comment-on-the-jewish-question|title=Adolf Hitler Issues Comment on the "Jewish Question" – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=ushmm.org|access-date=30 March 2019}}

|Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg gives testimony to the Weimar National Assembly's committee of inquiry into guilt for the war, 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.{{Cite book|title=Stenographischer Bericht über die öffentlichen Verhandlungen des 15. Untersuchungsausschusses der verfassungsgebenden Nationalversammlung|publisher=Norddeutschen Buchdruckerei und Verlagsanstalt|year=1920|location=Berlin|pages=700–701}}{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/stab-in-the-back_myth|title=Stab-in-the-back Myth {{!}} International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)|website=encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net|access-date=30 March 2019}} He is later elected President of Germany in the 1925 presidential election.

|In a speech before approximately 2,000 people in the Munich Festival of the Hofbräuhaus, Hitler proclaimed the 25-point program of the German Workers' Party, later renamed the National Socialist (Nazi) German Workers' Party. Among other things, the program called for the establishment of a Pan-German state, with citizenship, residency, and other civil rights only reserved for ethnic Germans, explicitly excluding Jews and all non-Germans.

|The Nazi Party forms the Sturmabteilung (SA) under the Division for Propaganda and Sports.

|The first issue of Der Stürmer, a highly antisemitic tabloid-format newspaper published by Julius Streicher, is released.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/julius-streicher-biography|title=Julius Streicher: Biography|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 March 2019}}

|Inspired by the March on Rome, Hitler organizes the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coup d'état. Although Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg Prison and the Nazi Party is briefly proscribed, Hitler gains public notice for the first time.

|Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.

|The Wall Street crash of 1929 occurs, beginning the Great Depression and allowing Hitler to gain support.

|To prevent the transfer of currency out of the country, President von Hindenburg decrees a 25 percent emigration tax, the Reich Flight Tax. The Tax later becomes a hindrance to Jews trying to emigrate out of Germany.

|Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, capturing 230 of the 608 seats in the German federal election of July 1932.

|Chancellor Hitler sets his military policy as "the conquest of new Lebensraum (living space) in the East and its ruthless Germanization" in a secret meeting with the Reichswehr.

|The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is established under Joseph Goebbels.

|Oranienburg concentration camp is opened at a former brewery in Oranienburg by an SA brigade near Berlin.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oranienburg-1|title=Oranienburg|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Hanns Kerrl and Hans Frank issue legislation in the states of Prussia and Bavaria dismissing Jewish judges and prosecutors and imposing quotas for lawyers and notaries.

|The Decree Licensing Physicians from the National Health Service passed on the pressure of Dr. Gerhard Wagner excludes Jewish doctors from medical service.

|The Law for Preventing Overcrowding in German Schools and Schools of Higher Education severely limits Jewish enrollment in German public schools.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1933|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1933|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|German trade unions banned and replaced by the German Labor Front under the leadership of Robert Ley.

|Nazi book burnings begin. Books deemed "un-German", including all works by Jewish authors and writers are consumed in ceremonial bonfires, including a large one on the Unter den Linden adjacent to the University of Berlin.

|The Law for the Prevention of Unemployment provides marriage loans to genetically "fit" Germans.

|Inmates from Düsseldorf begin arriving at Emslandlager.

|The Reichskonkordat is concluded after negotiations between Franz von Papen and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later become Pope Pius XII, ensuring Nazi Germany legitimacy with the international community and allowing the government to gain the loyalty of German Catholics.

|The American Jewish Congress begins the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933.

|The Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden is established as the legal representative body of German Jews under the leadership of Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/central-organization-of-german-jews-formed|title=Central Organization of German Jews Formed – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The Reich Chamber of Culture is established, effectively barring Jews from the arts.

|German Jews and Germans with any Jewish ancestry dating to 1800 are banned from farming under the Reichserbhofgesetz, and their land is redistributed to ethnic Germans.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1933-key-dates|title=1933: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Jews are prohibited from journalism under the Editor Law.

|The government passes a law allowing "dangerous and habitual criminals" – including vagrants, alcoholics, the unemployed, and the homeless – to be interned in concentration camps. The law is later amended to allow for their compulsory sterilization.

|Hitler removes all Jewish holidays from the German calendar.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1934|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1934|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|All Jews are expelled from the German Labor Front.

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

|The Office of Racial Policy is established within the Nazi Party.

|Jews lose access to statutory health insurance. The German American Bund holds a rally in Madison Square Garden.

|The SD is established as the Nazi Party's intelligence agency.

|Hitler begins a purge of the SA and the non-Nazi conservative revolutionary movement through the SS under pressure from the Reichswehr. Hitler's colleague Ernst Röhm, the former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr are killed. The move guarantees Hitler military support, quashes his opposition, and enhances the power of the SS.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roehm-purge|title=Röhm Purge|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}} It also begins an increase in the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany.

|The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (IKL) is established under Theodor Eicke.

|Hitler becomes President of Germany upon the death of Paul von Hindenburg, and becomes an absolute dictator by merging the office with the Chancellor to become the Führer.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1934-key-dates|title=1934: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}} All Reichswehr members swear the Hitler oath.

|Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany issue letters protesting the persecution of their religion and affirming their political neutrality.

|Himmler gains control of the Gestapo through his subordinate Reinhard Heydrich.

|Antisemitic legislation is expanded to the Saarland after the 1935 Saar status referendum.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1935|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1935|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Jews are excluded from the Wehrmacht, military members are banned from marrying "non-Aryans".{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1935-key-dates|title=1935: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is amended to institute compulsory abortion.

|Paragraph 175 is expanded to prohibit all homosexual acts.

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

|The Gestapo is given extrajudicial authority.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1936|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1936|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|German Jewish doctors are banned from practicing on German patients.

|Germany remilitarization of the Rhineland.

Using the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance as a pretext, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march 20,000 German troops into the Rhineland. The United Kingdom and France did not resist German actions.

|The SS-Totenkopfverbände is established.

|Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick authorizes the deportation of the Romani people to concentration camps such as Marzahn.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1936-key-dates|title=1936: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Himmler becomes Chief of German Police, and establishes the Orpo, the Sipo, and the Kripo under SS control.

|Concentration camp inmates are transferred to Oranienburg to begin construction on Sachsenhausen concentration camp.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/sachsenhausen-key-dates|title=Sachsenhausen: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, leading to a temporary abatement in open antisemitism.

|Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses begin.

|A 25 percent tax is imposed on Jewish assets.

|Beginning of the Nazis' policy of seizure of Jewish property through "Aryanization".{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1937|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1937|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The Kripo begins the first mass roundup of political opponents.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1937-key-dates|title=1937: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Pope Pius XI publishes an encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, condemning the Nazis and accusing them of violating the Reichkonkordat.

|Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) exhibition opens in Munich.

|Himmler issues a decree that the German Criminal Police (Kripo) does not have to have evidence of a specific criminal act to detain persons suspected of asocial or criminal behavior indefinitely.

|Flossenbürg concentration camp is opened in Flossenbürg, Bavaria, ten miles from the border with Czechoslovakia.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/flossenbuerg|title=Flossenbürg|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Jews are required to register all property over ℛℳ5,000 under the Four Year Plan.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1938-key-dates|title=1938: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The first mass arrests of Jews begin through Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1938|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1938|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convenes the Évian Conference in Évian-les-Bains, France, to settle the issue of Jewish refugees, but only Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic allow more refugees.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/emigration-and-the-evian-conference|title=Emigration and the Evian Conference|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The SS opens the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex near Linz, and establishes DEST to operate a stone quarry.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mauthausen|title=Mauthausen|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The German government completely prohibits Jews from practicing law.{{Cite book|last=Niewyk, Donald L., 1940–|title=The Columbia guide to the Holocaust|year=2000|publisher=Columbia University Press|others=Nicosia, Francis R., 1944–|isbn=0-231-11200-9|location=New York|oclc=43385495}}

|The German government completely prohibits Jews from practicing medicine.

|The United Kingdom and France agree to allow Hitler to seize control of the Sudetenland under the Munich Agreement.

|Jews are required to have a red J in their passports.

| Kristallnacht "the night of the broken glass"

|Jews are banned from buying and selling goods under Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life, and are fined $400 million to repair damage from Kristallnacht.

|All Jewish children are expelled from German public schools.

|German Jewish child refugees are allowed to emigrate to the United Kingdom and France through the Kindertransport program.

|All Jewish-owned businesses are closed under the Law Excluding Jews from Commercial Enterprises.

|Hitler directs Heydrich to establish the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1939-key-dates|title=1939: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|Hitler declares his 30 January 1939 speech in Reichstag, which states that an outbreak of World War II will result in the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe.

|Czechoslovakia is dissolved as Slovakia declares independence as a satellite state, and the Nazis occupy the remainder as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1939|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1939|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The Klaipėda Region is annexed by Germany.

|Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine is curtailed by the British government through the MacDonald White Paper.

|The Wagner–Rogers Bill, which would have increased Immigration quotas for German Jewish children, dies in committee despite endorsement from the Roosevelt administration.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/wagner-rogers-bill|title=Wagner-Rogers Bill|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The Interior Ministry requires midwives and pediatricians to report infants with hereditary disorders.

|Stutthof concentration camp is established near Danzig.

|Heydrich orders all German Jews to be shipped to Poland and for all Polish Jews to be concentrated in major cities.

|Thousands of Jews are shipped from Vienna, Ostrava, and Katowice to the Lublin Reservation in Zarzecze, Nisko County.

|The Netherlands establishes a refugee camp for Central European Jewish refugees at Westerbork, Drenthe. After the German invasion the camp is converted into a transit camp to transport Jews to death camps.

|The first Nazi ghetto is completed in Piotrków Trybunalski.

|All territory not directly annexed by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union is placed under the Generalgouvernment.

|The Generalgouvernment imposes compulsory labor requirements on Jews.

|Bergen-Belsen is opened near Celle as a prisoner-of-war camp.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bergen-belsen|title=Bergen-Belsen|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The German government decides to expel Gypsies to Poland.

|Rudolf Höss visits Oświęcim to inspect its suitability as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners and as a colony for German settlers in Lower Silesia. Himmler approves construction of Auschwitz concentration camp.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-auschwitz-birkenau|title=History & Overview of Auschwitz-Birkenau|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The German invasion of Denmark and the Norwegian Campaign begin.

|The Łódź Ghetto, the first Nazi ghetto, is sealed.

|The Battle of France begins, and Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg quickly fall under German control.

|The Netherlands capitulates to the Germans, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart is appointed to lead the Reichskommissariat Niederlande.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/holocaust-chronology-of-1940|title=Holocaust Chronology of 1940|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Belgium capitulates to the Germans

|The National Assembly votes to surrender with the Armistice of 22 June 1940. Vichy France is established as a collaborationist state under Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/france|title=France|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=5 April 2019}}

|The IKL designates Neuengamme concentration camp in the outskirts of Hamburg as an independent concentration camp.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1940-key-dates|title=1940: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz.

|All telephones are confiscated from Jews.

|The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states, Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia with German support.

|Germany directly annexes Alsace and Lorraine, and 3,000 Alsatian Jews are deported to the zone libre of southern France.

|Non-French aliens are banned from taking public posts in Vichy France, a measure targeting Jews.

|Adolf Eichmann proposes the Madagascar Plan.

|The Vichy government converts Refugee camps established for Spanish Republican and German Jewish refugees, such as Gurs and Rivesaltes, into transit camps.

|Antisemitic legislation is formulated in Slovakia under pressure from the German government.

|All public officials in the Reichskommissariat Niederlande are forced to attest to their Aryan background, and all Jews are eventually ordered to resign by 31 December.

|King Carol II abdicates after the Second Vienna Award forces Romania to surrender Transylvania to Hungary. The National Legionary State, a coalition between the Romanian army under Ion Antonescu and the fascist Iron Guard under Horia Simia, comes to power.

|Breendonk internment camp, a former National Redoubt fortress in Antwerp, is opened for prisoners in Nazi-occupied Belgium.

|Veit Harlan's antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß premieres in Germany.

|Vichy France issues the Statut des Juifs discriminating against Jews. The law leads to similar antisemitic actions in French North Africa.

|All Jews are deported from Luxembourg on the orders of Gustav Simon. The Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in the General Government, is established.

|General Alexander von Falkenhausen issues an order prohibiting Jews from working as civil servants, teachers, lawyers, broadcasters, or newspaper editors in the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France.

|The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed.

|Fritz Hippler's antisemitic pseudo-documentary The Eternal Jew premieres.

|Hitler approves Operation Barbarossa, the plan for the German invasion of the Soviet Union

|The Iron Guard attempts a coup d'état against Antonescu in the Legionnaires' rebellion. The Army suppresses the coup with aid from the Wehrmacht and the German Foreign Office, and executes a pogrom in Bucharest.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/1941-key-dates|title=1941: Key Dates|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The February strike is organized by the Dutch Communist Party to protest deportations of Jews. Although suppressed, the strike leads to a temporary abatement of antisemitic policy.

|The Kraków Ghetto is established.

|Himmler orders the expansion of Auschwitz.

|Nazi Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

|The Independent State of Croatia is established.

|The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp is established near Strasbourg.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/natzweiler-struthof|title=Natzweiler-Struthof|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The Einsatzgruppen begin extermination operations.

|Minsk is captured after the Wehrmacht offensive in Belarus.

|Riga and Lviv are captured by the Wehrmacht.

|The Kovno Ghetto is established.

|The Minsk Ghetto is established.

|Bessarabian Jews are massacred by the Wehrmacht, the Romanian Army, and Einsatzgruppe D.

|The Drancy internment camp is established by the Sipo near Paris, and is staffed by French gendarmes.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/drancy|title=Drancy|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Eastern Galicia and Lvov are annexed to the General Government, and the Białystok Ghetto is established.

|Dutch Jews are prohibited from appearing in public and are deprived of the majority of their assets. The deportation of Romanian Jews to Transnistria begins.

|Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau of the German Sixth Army issues a secret memorandum ordering the Wehrmacht to approve violations of international law in the invasion of the Soviet Union.{{Cite book|title=Nazi conspiracy and aggression|last=Criminality.|first=United States. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis|year=1996|publisher=W.S. Hein|isbn=1575882027|location=Buffalo, N.Y.|oclc=37862414}}

|Jews are rounded up in Lublin and interned in Majdanek concentration camp{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lublin-majdanek-concentration-camp-conditions|title=Lublin/Majdanek Concentration Camp: Conditions|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Jewish internees at Breendonk are sent to the Mechelen transit camp in preparation for deportation to Auschwitz.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mechelen|title=Mechelen|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Jewish emigration from Nazi-controlled territory is prohibited.

|Bergen-Belsen is converted into a concentration camp.

|The Białystok Ghetto is liquidated.

|The Tarnów Ghetto is liquidated.

|The Minsk Ghetto is liquidated.

|German forces commence Operation Harvest Festival, resulting in the deaths of 43,000 Jews in the Lublin District.

|The 43-nation United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is founded by the Allied Powers at the White House, and is placed under the authority of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/united-nations-relief-and-rehabilitation-administration|title=United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Raphael Lemkin, a former law lecturer at Duke University and U.S. War Department analyst, coins the term genocide in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin|title=Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|Miklós Horthy halts deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.

|Greek Jews in Rhodes are deported to Auschwitz.

|Nazi authorities flee the Drancy camp, and it is taken by the French Red Cross.

|The final transport of Dutch Jews from Westerbork leaves for Auschwitz.

|Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, created the previous summer when Buchenwald inmates were sent to Nordhausen to construct underground aircraft factories to produce V-2 rockets, is made an independent concentration camp.

|Miklós Horthy's government in Hungary is overthrown in Operation Panzerfaust and deportations to Auschwitz resume under the Government of National Unity.

|Adolf Eichmann authorizes the first death marches to the Budapest Ghetto.

|Ohrdruf of Buchenwald is liberated by the 4th Armored Division, and is the first German concentration camp to be reached by American military forces

|Westerbork transit camp is liberated by the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/westerbork|title=Westerbork|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|9,000 prisoners of Neuengamme are evacuated to Lübeck due to the advancing British Army, while 3,000 prisoners are murdered and 700 German prisoners remain behind to destroy files and are conscripted into the SS.

|The SS attempts to evacuate the remaining prisoners on Ocean liners, resulting in the deaths of thousands of prisoners after a Royal Air Force raid sinks the Cap Ancona and the Thielbek.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/neuengamme|title=Neuengamme|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The U.S. State Department commissions a report on UNRRA displaced persons camps by Earl G. Harrison, who protests poor conditions in the camps. The Harrison Report is read by U.S. President Harry S Truman and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and published in The New York Times{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/earl-g-harrison-biography|title=Earl G. Harrison: Biography|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The Allied Control Council issues Law No. 22 allowing individual courts to try war criminals and Holocaust perpetrators.

|President Truman issues an executive order mandating that displaced persons from the Holocaust be given preference in the U.S. immigration system.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/chronology-of-jewish-persecution-1945|title=Chronology of Jewish Persecution: 1945|website=jewishvirtuallibrary.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|UNRRA is superseded by the International Refugee Organization

|The 80th United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act allowing 200,000 displaced persons to enter the United States{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displaced-persons|title=Displaced Persons|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The United Nations ratifies the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide

|Separate postwar civilian governments in East and West Germany are formed due to the beginning of the Cold War{{Cite web|url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/federal-republic-of-germany-is-established|title=Federal Republic of Germany is established|website=HISTORY|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The Displaced Persons Act is amended to remove restrictions to Jewish displaced persons.

|West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion begin negotiations for an agreement on reparations.

|The last displaced persons camps in Europe are closed, with most of its inhabitants having been successfully resettled

|Israel and West Germany ratify the Reparations Agreement in Luxembourg allowing for reparations payments between the two countries between 1953 and 1965.{{Cite web|url=https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/summer/germany-japan-reconciliation/|title=Other nations could learn from Germany's efforts to reconcile after WWII|last=Rienzi|first=Greg|date=4 June 2015|website=The Hub|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The Knesset founds Yad Vashem.

|The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials occur, the first trial of German Holocaust perpetrators by the West German civilian judicial system

| The Graphic Novel Maus is first serialized at the Raw Magazine.

|Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and the author of the 1958 semi-autobiographical book Night, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/press-release/|title=The Nobel Peace Prize 1986|website=NobelPrize.org|access-date=30 May 2019}}

|The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is founded in Washington, D.C.

| Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List is first released to the public at Washington, D.C.https://wtop.com/entertainment/2023/11/remembering-the-legacy-of-schindlers-list-30-years-after-its-world-premiere-in-dc/

|Maurice Papon, a former civil servant who facilitated the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux, is convicted for crimes against humanity by a French court, renewing public awareness of the role of French collaborationists in the Holocaust.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/world/europe/18papon.html|title=Maurice Papon, Convicted Vichy Official, 96, Dies|last=Whitney|first=Craig R.|date=18 February 2007|work=The New York Times|access-date=30 May 2019|issn=0362-4331}}