Holocaust Timeline

(January 30, 1933 – May 8, 1945)

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews, along with millions of others including Roma, disabled individuals, and political prisoners, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. More Less

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Persecution and Discrimination

Nazi party rises to power in Germany

Jan 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, marking the beginning of Nazi rule. The Nazis quickly move to consolidate power and implement their antisemitic ideology, initiating a systematic campaign against Jews that would escalate over the following years into the Holocaust.

Image source: Adolf Hitler's rise to power

Dachau concentration camp opens

Mar 22, 1933

The Dachau concentration camp opens near Munich, initially holding political prisoners. It became a model for the vast network of Nazi camps and a training ground for SS guards who would later run the extermination camps of the Holocaust.

Image source: Dachau concentration camp

Nazis boycott Jewish businesses

Apr 1, 1933

The Nazi regime organizes a nationwide one-day boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, shops, and professionals. SA members stood outside stores to intimidate customers, marking the first major state-sponsored antisemitic action against Germany's Jewish community.

Image source: Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses

Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service

Apr 7, 1933

Germany enacts legislation excluding Jews from government employment, including positions as teachers, professors, judges, and other civil servants. This was the first of hundreds of anti-Jewish laws that progressively stripped Jews of their rights and livelihoods.

Image source: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service

Nuremberg Laws enacted

Sep 15, 1935

At the annual Nuremberg party rally, the Nazis pass the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour. These laws stripped Jews of citizenship, prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and defined Jews by ancestry, institutionalizing racial antisemitism.

Image source: Nuremberg Laws

Evian Conference on Jewish refugees

Jul 6, 1938 - Jul 15, 1938

Delegates from 32 countries meet in Évian-les-Bains, France to address the Jewish refugee crisis, but almost none agree to increase their immigration quotas. The conference's failure left hundreds of thousands of Jews with few options to escape Nazi persecution.

Image source: Évian Conference

Kristallnacht pogrom sweeps Germany

Nov 9, 1938 - Nov 10, 1938

In a nationwide pogrom known as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, Nazis destroy thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses, arrest around 30,000 Jewish men and send them to concentration camps, and kill dozens of Jews, escalating persecution to open violence.

Image source: Kristallnacht

St. Louis voyage and forced return to Europe

May 13, 1939 - Jun 17, 1939

The MS St. Louis carrying over 900 Jewish refugees is denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada before being forced back to Europe. Many passengers were later accepted by European countries, though roughly a quarter ultimately died in the Holocaust.

Image source: MS St. Louis

St. Louis voyage and forced return to Europe

Ghettos and Deportations

German invasion of Poland begins World War II

Sep 1, 1939

Germany invades Poland, home to Europe's largest Jewish population, beginning World War II. The occupation brought brutal repression, forced labor, and mass shootings of Polish Jews, setting the stage for the ghettoization and eventual extermination of Polish Jewry.

Image source: Invasion of Poland

First ghettos established in occupied Poland

Oct 1939

Following the occupation of Poland, the Nazis begin confining Jewish populations into overcrowded, sealed ghettos in cities such as Piotrków Trybunalski and Łódź. Hundreds of ghettos would eventually be created across Eastern Europe, isolating and impoverishing millions of Jews.

Image source: Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany

Warsaw Ghetto established

Oct 2, 1940

The Nazis order the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, sealing it off in November 1940. At its peak it confined over 400,000 Jews behind walls in horrific conditions, with starvation and disease killing tens of thousands before deportations to Treblinka began in 1942.

Image source: Warsaw Ghetto

Great Deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto

Jul 22, 1942 - Sep 21, 1942

During the Grossaktion, the SS deportes approximately 254,000 to 300,000 Warsaw Jews to Treblinka over two months. News of the fate of the deportees galvanized resistance groups inside the ghetto to prepare armed opposition.

Image source: Grossaktion Warsaw

Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz

May 15, 1944 - Jul 9, 1944

After Germany occupies Hungary, the Nazis, aided by Hungarian authorities, deport over 430,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in under two months, with the majority sent directly to the gas chambers — one of the fastest and deadliest deportation campaigns of the Holocaust.

Image source: Hungary in World War II

Lodz Ghetto liquidated

Jun 23, 1944 - Aug 1944

The Nazis liquidate the last major ghetto in occupied Poland, deporting most of its remaining residents to Auschwitz and Chelmno. Of more than 200,000 Jews who had passed through the Litzmannstadt ghetto, fewer than 1,000 remained alive there at liberation.

Image source: Łódź Ghetto

Extermination Camps

Auschwitz concentration camp established

Apr 1940

The SS establishes Auschwitz I near Oświęcim in occupied Poland, originally to hold Polish political prisoners. It would expand into the largest complex of Nazi camps, including Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where over a million people, most of them Jews, were murdered.

Operation Barbarossa and Einsatzgruppen massacres begin

Jun 22, 1941

As Germany invades the Soviet Union, mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen follow the army to systematically shoot Jews and other victims. Mass shootings such as those at Kamianets-Podilskyi and Babyn Yar killed well over a million Soviet Jews by 1943.

Image source: Einsatzgruppen

Babyn Yar massacre in Kyiv

Sep 29, 1941 - Sep 30, 1941

Over two days, Einsatzgruppe C and German police murder approximately 33,771 Jews at the Babyn Yar ravine outside Kyiv, one of the largest single mass shootings of the Holocaust and a symbol of the 'Holocaust by bullets' in Eastern Europe.

Image source: Babi Yar

Chelmno killing center begins operations

Dec 8, 1941

The Chelmno killing center in occupied Poland begins murdering Jews using gas vans, becoming the first facility dedicated solely to extermination. Around 150,000 people, mostly Jews from the Łódź area, were killed there before its liberation.

Image source: Chełmno extermination camp

Chelmno killing center begins operations

Wannsee Conference coordinates Final Solution

Jan 20, 1942

Fifteen senior Nazi officials meet at Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, to coordinate the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question.' Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, the meeting formalized plans to deport and murder the Jews of Europe in extermination camps.

Image source: Wannsee Conference

Auschwitz-Birkenau begins mass gassings

Mar 1942

Auschwitz II-Birkenau begins functioning as a major killing center, using Zyklon B in purpose-built gas chambers. By 1944 it had become the site where approximately 1.1 million people, including nearly a million Jews deported from across Europe, were murdered.

Image source: Auschwitz concentration camp

Belzec extermination camp begins gassing operations

Mar 17, 1942

Belzec, part of Operation Reinhard, starts killing Jews from Lublin and Galicia with exhaust fumes in gas chambers. Approximately 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec, which operated until December 1942 as the Nazis liquidated ghettos across the region.

Image source: Belzec extermination camp

Sobibor extermination camp opens

Apr 1942

Sobibor begins operations in occupied Poland as another Operation Reinhard death camp. Roughly 170,000 to 250,000 Jews were gassed there until an uprising by prisoners in October 1943 led the SS to dismantle the camp.

Image source: Sobibor extermination camp

Treblinka II extermination camp begins operations

Jul 23, 1942

Treblinka II opens northeast of Warsaw and rapidly becomes one of the deadliest Nazi camps, murdering about 900,000 Jews, primarily from the Warsaw Ghetto, between July 1942 and October 1943 when a prisoner revolt occurred.

Image source: Treblinka extermination camp

Resistance and Liberation

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Apr 19, 1943 - May 16, 1943

Jewish fighters of the ZOB and ZZW resist the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto with smuggled weapons, fighting the heavily armed SS for weeks. Though the revolt was crushed and the ghetto burned, it became the largest single act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

Image source: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Bermuda Conference on refugees fails

Apr 19, 1943 - May 6, 1943

British and American delegates meet in Bermuda to discuss rescue of Holocaust victims but produce no meaningful action, refusing to significantly relax immigration quotas or aid refugees. Critics called it a gesture intended to quiet public pressure rather than save lives.

Image source: Bermuda Conference

Sobibor prisoner uprising

Oct 14, 1943

Prisoners led by Alexander Pechersky and Leon Feldhendler stage a revolt at Sobibor, killing several SS guards and enabling about 300 inmates to escape. Roughly 50 survived the war; the camp was closed shortly afterward, one of only two successful death camp uprisings.

Auschwitz Protocols reach Allied governments

Jun 1944

The Vrba–Wetzler report and related escapee testimony, compiled as the Auschwitz Protocols, provide detailed evidence of mass murder at Auschwitz. Their publication helped prompt international appeals to Hungary to halt deportations, contributing to the suspension of transports in July 1944.

Image source: Auschwitz Protocols

Death marches from evacuated camps begin

Jan 1945 - May 1945

As Soviet forces advance, the SS evacuates prisoners westward on foot in brutal death marches. Thousands die from exposure, starvation, exhaustion, or are shot along the routes, as the Nazis attempt to prevent prisoners from being liberated.

Image source: Death marches during the Holocaust

Liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces

Jan 27, 1945

Red Army soldiers liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau, finding around 7,000 surviving prisoners and evidence of industrial-scale murder. January 27 is now observed internationally as Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring victims and survivors of the genocide.

Image source: Liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp

Liberation of Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen

Apr 11, 1945 - Apr 15, 1945

American troops liberate Buchenwald on April 11, and British forces enter Bergen-Belsen on April 15, discovering tens of thousands of starving prisoners and unburied corpses. The shocking scenes documented by Allied photographers revealed the full horror of the camp system to the world.

Image source: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

Mauthausen camp liberated

May 5, 1945

American forces liberate Mauthausen in Austria, one of the last major camps to be freed. Its network had imprisoned and worked to death over 190,000 people, including many political prisoners, and its liberation came just days before Germany surrendered.

Image source: Mauthausen concentration camp

Germany surrenders, ending war in Europe

May 8, 1945

Nazi Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. In the aftermath, Allied forces care for tens of thousands of displaced survivors in DP camps while documenting the atrocities committed across the continent.

Image source: Victory in Europe Day

Nuremberg trials begin

Nov 20, 1945 - Oct 1, 1946

Allied prosecutors try leading Nazi officials at Nuremberg for crimes including crimes against humanity. The trials exposed the scale and machinery of the Holocaust to the world, established legal accountability for genocide, and laid foundations for modern international law.

Image source: Nuremberg trials

Key Facts

The Holocaust began after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, leading to the rapid persecution of Jewish citizens through laws such as the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' on November 9-10, 1938, marked a major escalation with synagogues burned, Jewish businesses destroyed, and around 30,000 Jewish men arrested.
At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Nazi officials coordinated the 'Final Solution,' the plan to systematically exterminate Europe's Jewish population in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.
Approximately six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, along with millions of other victims including Roma, people with disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents.
The Holocaust ended with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in May 1945, when surviving concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen and Dachau were liberated.

Source

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