Historical Events

On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down. Nazi leadership and Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to pass emergency legislation, paving the way for Nazi dictatorship.

Dachau was the first regular Nazi concentration camp.

Facing persecution and violence for his anti-Nazi stance and as a Jew, Albert Einstein renounced his German citizenship.

In the first nationwide, planned action against Jews, Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses and professionals throughout Germany.

University students in towns throughout Germany burned tens of thousands of “un-German” books as part of the Nazi push for state censorship and control of culture.

On July 14, 1933, Germany declared a new law that authorized forced sterilization of certain people with mental or physical disabilities or illnesses.

Roland Velz was one of several American citizens assaulted by Nazi storm troopers or German mobs in 1933.

During the 1930s, an estimated 400,000 to 1,000,000 Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent from throughout the United States were deported or “repatriated” to Mexico.

On June 30, 1934, Hitler ordered a violent purge of the top leadership of the Nazi Party paramilitary formation, the SA (Sturmabteilungen) or Storm Troopers. This event later became known as “the Röhm Affair” or the “the Night of the Long Knives.”

She was the first American journalist ousted for criticism of the Nazi regime.

At their annual party rally, Nazi leaders announced new laws that defined Jews as a “race” and stripped them of basic citizenship rights.

After months of public debate about whether the US should send a team to the "Nazi Olympics," the AAU narrowly voted against a boycott of the Games.

The Anschluss expanded the German Reich and set into motion a Jewish refugee crisis.

Delegates from 32 countries meet in Evian, France, seeking solution to refugee crisis. They express sympathy for refugees, followed by excuses and inaction.

In an organized act of nationwide violence, Nazis and collaborators burned synagogues, looted Jewish businesses, and killed dozens of Jewish people.

In the weeks after Kristallnacht, Coughlin defended Nazi antisemitic violence, arguing it was justified as retaliation for Soviet persecution of Christians.

On February 20, 1939, the pro-Nazi German American Bund drew more than 20,000 people to a rally in Madison Square Garden.

Rejected by segregationist Daughters of the American Revolution, Marian Anderson performs before an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial.

The St. Louis was forced to leave Havana harbor. As the ship traveled up the Florida coast, passengers anxiously plead for refuge in the United States.

Senator Robert Wagner withdrew support for his own bill after opponents amended it to maintain the existing immigration quota.

The law required men between 21-35 to register with local draft boards.

The United States Committee for the Care of European Children organized one of the largest American efforts to aid refugee children during World War II.

Demanding equal access to defense jobs and desegregation of the military, A. Philip Randolph launched the March on Washington Movement.

Despite strong protests from isolationists, the Lend-Lease Act passed both houses of Congress by wide margins.

On August 3, 1941, the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count von Galen, delivered a sermon protesting the Nazi program to kill people with mental and physical disabilities.

Germany decreed that Jews over the age of six were required to wear a yellow Star of David on their outer clothing in public at all times.

The famous aviator blamed Jews, British, and the Roosevelt administration as war agitators.

In late September 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries perpetrated one of the largest massacres of World War II. It took place at a ravine called Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) just outside the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv (Kiev).

Executive Order 9066 authorized removal of Japanese Americans from designated military zones on the West Coast and their detention in internment camps.

On the night of June 9-10, 1942, German police and SS officials shot or deported the inhabitants of Lidice, razing the town to the ground.

French police round up thousands of Jewish men, women, and children throughout Paris and detain them under appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver (Winter Cycling Track).

Rabbi Stephen Wise’s press conference was the first time the Nazi plan to kill all Jews was publicized.

Allied governments issued a declaration promising retribution for the murder of European Jews.

The dramatic pageant "We Will Never Die" premieres before an audience of 40,000 at Madison Square Garden to raise public awareness of the mass murder of European Jews.

The Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. It took the Germans a month to crush the resistance.

From September 20 into October 1943, over 7,000 Danish Jews escaped to Sweden with help from fellow Danes.

President Roosevelt issued an executive order to provide relief and rescue for Jews in Europe.

In less than two months, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz.

President Roosevelt calls for a “free port” for refugees at Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY.

The War Refugee Board released a detailed report about mass murder by gassing at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

In his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Raphael Lemkin invents a new word, “genocide,” to describe the coordinated, planned destruction of a national group.

President Roosevelt talks to war-weary Americans about their role in establishing a lasting peace.

General Eisenhower invited members of Congress and journalists to see the newly liberated camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public.

The Truman Directive did not increase immigration quotas, but it required that existing quotas be filled by displaced persons.

On July 4, 1946, civilians, soldiers, and police killed 42 Polish Jews and injured 40 others in the southeastern town of Kielce.

These are noteworthy articles about Holocaust-era events that fall outside the parameters of the listed events.