User:Makabika

= GHETTOS IN POLAND = Millions of Jews lived in eastern Europe. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, more than two million Polish Jews came under German control. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, several million more Jews came under Nazi rule. The Germans aimed to control this sizable Jewish population by forcing Jews to reside in marked-off sections of towns and cities the Nazis called "ghettos" or "Jewish residential quarters." Altogether, the Germans created at least 1,000 ghettos in occupied territories. The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, the Polish capital, where almost half a million Jews were confined.

Many ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jews were already concentrated. Jews as well as some Roma (Gypsies) were also brought to ghettos from surrounding regions and from western Europe. Between October and December 1941, thousands of German and Austrian Jews were transported to ghettos in eastern Europe. The Germans usually marked off the oldest, most run-down sections of cities for the ghettos. They sometimes had to evict non-Jewish residents from the buildings to make room for Jewish families. Many of the ghettos were enclosed by barbed-wire fences or walls, with entrances guarded by local and German police and SS members. During curfew hours at night the residents were forced to stay inside their apartments.

In the Polish cities of Lodz and Warsaw, trolley lines ran through the middle of the ghetto. Rather than reroute the lines, workers fenced them off, and policemen guarded the area to keep the Jews from escaping on the trolley cars. The passengers from outside the ghetto used the cars to get to work on weekdays, and some rode them on Sunday outings just to gawk and sneer at the ghetto prison

October 12, 1940

= Warsaw Jews ordered into a ghetto = The Germans announce the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw. All Jewish residents of Warsaw are ordered into the designated area, which will be sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. Construction of a wall, more than 10 feet high and topped with barbed wire, begins. The Germans guard the ghetto boundary closely to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. The Warsaw ghetto is the largest of the ghettos in both area and population. More than 350,000 Jews—about 30 percent of the city's population—are confined in about 2.4 percent of the city's total area.

July 22, 1942

= Warsaw Jews deported to Treblinka killing center = Between July 22 and mid-September 1942, over 300,000 people are deported from the Warsaw ghetto: more than 250,000 of them are deported to the Treblinka killing center. Deportees are forced to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point), which is connected to the Warsaw-Malkinia rail line. They are crowded into freight cars and most are deported, via Malkinia, to Treblinka. The overwhelming majority of the deportees are killed upon arrival in Treblinka. In September, at the end of the 1942 mass deportation, only about 55,000 Jews remain in the ghetto.

April 19, 1943

Jewish fighters resist Germans in the Warsaw ghetto

The Germans decide to eliminate the Warsaw ghetto and announce new deportations in April 1943. The renewal of deportations is the signal for an armed uprising within the ghetto. Most people in the ghetto refuse to report for deportation. Many hide from the Germans in previously prepared bunkers and shelters. Jewish fighters battle the Germans in the streets and from the hidden bunkers. The Germans set fire to the ghetto to force the population into the open, reducing the ghetto area to rubble. On May 16, 1943, the battle is over. Thousands have been killed and most of the ghetto population is deported to forced-labor camps. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest and most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe.The SS begins evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners are forced on death marches from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands are killed in the days before the death march. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shoot anyone who falls behind or cannot continue. More than 15,000 die during the death marches from Auschwitz. In Wodzislaw, the prisoners are put on unheated freight trains and deported to concentration camps in Germany, particularly to Flossenbuerg, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army enters Auschwitz and liberates the few remaining prisoners.

January 25, 1945

The evacuation and death march from Stutthof concentration camp

The evacuation of nearly 50,000 prisoners, the overwhelming majority of them Jews, begins from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland. About 5,000 prisoners from Stutthof subcamps are marched to the Baltic Sea coast, forced into the water, and machine gunned. Other prisoners are put on a death march to Lauenburg in eastern Germany, where they are cut off by advancing Soviet forces. The Germans force the prisoners back to Stutthof. Marching in severe winter conditions and treated brutally by SS guards, thousands die during the death march. In late April 1945, the remaining prisoners are removed from Stutthof by sea, since Stutthof is completely encircled by Soviet forces. Again, hundreds of prisoners are forced into the sea and shot. Over 25,000 prisoners, one out of two, die during the evacuation from Stutthof. Soviet forces enter Stutthof on May 9, 1945.

April 7, 1945

= Death march from Buchenwald concentration camp = As American forces approach, the Nazis begin a mass evacuation of prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp and its subcamps. Almost 30,000 prisoners are forced on death marches away from the advancing American forces. About a third of these prisoners die during the marches. On April 11, 1945, the surviving prisoners take control of the camp, shortly before American forces enter on the same day.

APRIL 26, 1945

Death march from Dachau concentration camp

Just three days before the liberation of the Dachau camp, the SS forces about 7,000 prisoners on a death march from Dachau south to Tegernsee. During the six-day death march, anyone who cannot keep up or continue is shot. Many others die of exposure, hunger, or exhaustion. American forces liberate the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945. In early May 1945, American troops liberate the surviving prisoners from the death march to Tegernsee.

= THE "FINAL SOLUTION" =

= January 20, 1942 =

= Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution" =

= The Wannsee Conference, a meeting between the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and German government agencies, opens in Berlin. They discuss and coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution," which is already under way. At Wannsee, the SS estimates that the "Final Solution" will involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Between the fall of 1941 and the fall of 1944, the German railways transport millions of people to their deaths in killing centers in occupied Poland. = June 22, 1941

Killing squads deployed against Jews

German mobile killing squads, called special duty units (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army, as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go they shoot all Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. By the spring of 1943, the mobile killing squads will have killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political officials.

September 29–30, 1941

About 34,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar

The Germans order the Jewish residents of Kiev to assemble on Melnik Street for resettlement outside the city. In reality, those who report are directed along Melnik Street toward the Jewish cemetery and the ravine, called Babi Yar. Jews are forced to hand over their valuables, disrobe, and move into the ravine in small groups. German killing squads and Ukrainian auxiliary units shoot them. The massacre continues for two days. About 34,000 Jews—men, women, and children—are killed in this operation. In the months that follow, thousands more Jews are shot at Babi Yar. Many non-Jews, including Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war, are also killed in the ravine.

December 1, 1941

A killing squad commander reports 137,346 killed

In the so-called "Jaeger Report," SS Colonel Karl Jaeger reports on the killings his unit carried out in Lithuania between July 2 and December 1, 1941. He reports that his squad killed 137,346 Jewish men, women, and children. Jews in the cities of Kovno, Ukmerge, and Vilna are killed in a series of massacres throughout the summer of 1941. Almost all Jews living in small Lithuanian towns and villages are killed. Jaeger reports that only about 35,000 Jews remain, mostly as forced laborers in the Kovno, Vilna, and Siauliai ghettos.

The Nazi camp system began as a system of repression directed against political opponents of the Nazi state. In the early years of the Third Reich, the Nazis imprisoned primarily Communists and Socialists. In about 1935, the regime also began to imprison those whom it designated as racially or biologically inferior, especially Jews. During World War II, the organization and scale of the Nazi camp system expanded rapidly and the purpose of the camps evolved beyond imprisonment toward forced labor and outright murder.

Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The war brought unprecedented growth in both the number of camps and the number of prisoners. Within three years the number of prisoners quadrupled, from about 25,000 before the war to about 100,000 in March 1942. The camp population came to include prisoners from almost every European nation. Prisoners in all the concentration camps were literally worked to death. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945.

The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were drafted for forced labor—"extermination through work." Several hundred thousand Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war were also systematically murdered.

= Treblinka killing center = September 3, 1939

Defeatists deported to concentration camps

Three days after the beginning of World War II, Reinhard Heydrich, commander of the Security Service (SD), orders the immediate arrest of any person who publicly voices doubts concerning Germany's victory in the war or the nature of the war being fought. As the war progresses, an increasing number of people are arrested. Many are deported without trial directly to concentration camps.

December 7, 1941

Hitler orders "Night and Fog" policy

On Adolf Hitler's orders, Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German Armed Forces High Command, issues the "Night and Fog" decree. Those who resist German rule in occupied territories are to be arrested and deported to concentration camps in Germany. Those arrested are simply to disappear into the "Night and Fog." Their relatives are not to be informed. About 7,000 people, mostly from France, are arrested under the provisions of this decree. Most are deported to the Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camps.

September 18, 1942

Prisoners subject to "extermination through work"

The ministry of justice and the SS reach agreement on the systematic transfer of prisoners to the jurisdiction of the SS. The ministry of justice agrees that all Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Ukrainians, as well as Poles sentenced to more than three years, and Czechs and Germans to more than eight years, are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS. Prisoners in these categories are subject to "extermination through work"; they are to be worked to death in the concentration camps.

December 1, 1941

A killing squad commander reports 137,346 killed

In the so-called "Jaeger Report," SS Colonel Karl Jaeger reports on the killings his unit carried out in Lithuania between July 2 and December 1, 1941. He reports that his squad killed 137,346 Jewish men, women, and children. Jews in the cities of Kovno, Ukmerge, and Vilna are killed in a series of massacres throughout the summer of 1941. Almost all Jews living in small Lithuanian towns and villages are killed. Jaeger reports that only about 35,000 Jews remain, mostly as forced laborers in the Kovno, Vilna, and Siauliai ghettos.June 22, 1941

Killing squads deployed against Jews

German mobile killing squads, called special duty units (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army, as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go they shoot all Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. By the spring of 1943, the mobile killing squads will have killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political officials.

September 29–30, 1941

= About 34,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar = The Germans order the Jewish residents of Kiev to assemble on Melnik Street for resettlement outside the city. In reality, those who report are directed along Melnik Street toward the Jewish cemetery and the ravine, called Babi Yar. Jews are forced to hand over their valuables, disrobe, and move into the ravine in small groups. German killing squads and Ukrainian auxiliary units shoot them. The massacre continues for two days. About 34,000 Jews—men, women, and children—are killed in this operation. In the months that follow, thousands more Jews are shot at Babi Yar. Many non-Jews, including Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war, are also killed in the ravine.