Historical Events

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.