The American Experience.America and the Holocaust.Timeline (1933-1945)

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1944	January 13 -- Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. receives "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews."
	January 16 -- Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. proposes to FDR that a rescue commission be established.
	January 22 -- President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board.
	March 24 -- President Roosevelt issues a war-crimes statement.
	March -- War Refugee Board helps organize the evacuation of 1200 Jewish refugees from Rumania aboard three tiny Bulgarian vessels.
	March -- War Refugee Board convinces Rumania to move 48,000 Jews from Transnistria, out of the path of retreating German troops.
	April -- The Nazis begin concentrating Jews into central locations in Hungary.
	April -- Gallup poll shows 70% of Americans approve setting up emergency refugees camps in the U. S.
	April -- Two escapees from Auschwitz provide Jewish underground in Slovakia with full description of the death camp.
	May -- The War Refugee Board opens its first refugee camp at Fedala in North Africa.
	May 15 -- Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Four trains leave per day, each carrying 3,000 Jews.
	June 1 -- President Roosevelt agrees to allow 1,000 refugees in Italy to come to a camp in the U.S.
	June 6 -- The Allies land at Normandy in the D-Day invasion of France.
	June 25 -- Pope Pius XII makes a plea to the Hungarian head of state Miklós Horthy to save Hungarian Jews.
	June -- Appeals from the Jewish underground in Slovakia to bomb the deportation routes to Auschwitz reach Switzerland.
	June -- War Department turn downs appeals to bomb rail links between Hungary and Auschwitz.
	July -- War Refugee Board secures Rumanian commitment to accept Jews fleeing the Nazis in Hungary.
	July 31 -- The American Jewish Conference sponsors a rally in Madison Square Park to draw attention to the plight of Hungary's Jews.
	August -- In large part because of the efforts of the War Refugee Board official in Turkey, Ira Hirschmann, Bulgaria abolishes its anti-Jewish laws.
	August -- Nine hundred eighty-two refugees, most of them Jewish, arrive at Fort Ontario in upstate New York.
	August 14 -- War Department writes that bombing Auschwitz would divert air power from "decisive operations elsewhere."
	August 20 -- One hundred twenty-seven Flying Fortresses drop high-explosives on the factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles east of the gas chambers.
	September 13 -- U.S. heavy bombers rain destruction on factory areas of Auschwitz, but not on crematoria just a few miles away.
	October 7 -- In a suicidal uprising, Jewish inmates in Auschwitz manage to destroy one and damage another of the crematorium buildings.
	November 2 -- SS Chief Heinrich Himmler orders a halt to the gassing of Jews, followed by destruction of gas chambers and crematoria.
	December 16 -- The Germans begin the Battle of the Bulge as a way of striking back at U.S. troops.
1945	January -- Death marches into the interior of Germany begin, taking 250,000 Jewish lives.
	January 27 -- Soviet forces capture Auschwitz.
	February 1 -- State Department announces that perpetrators of all crimes against Jews and other minorities will be published.
	February 13 -- Soviet forces capture Budapest saving the lives of 120,000 Jews.
	April 30 -- U.S. troops occupy Munich. Hitler commits suicide.
	May 7 -- Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Allies.
	July 1 -- The U.S. visa system reverts to pre-war procedures, ending Washington's complex security-screening machinery.
	November 20 -- Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal commences.
1933 - 1940 \| 1941 - 1942 \| 1943 \| 1944 - 1945

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