An Auschwitz warehouse full of shoes and clothes taken from
prisoners gassed upon their arrival.
|
January 24
Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board, transferring control from Cordell Hull and Breckenridge Long of the State Department to Henry Morgenthau of the Treasury Department.
March 19
Germany invades Hungary.
April 10
Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz and carry detailed information about the death camp to outside world.
April 14
First transport of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz.
May 15 to July 8
Deportation of 438,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.
June
Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt.
June 4
Allies enter Rome.
June 6
D-Day, start of the Allied invasion in Normandy.
June 14
Rosenberg orders the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children ages 10-14 for slave labor in the Reich.
June 23
Start of the Soviet offensive.
Some of the 40,000 children kidnapped from eastern Europe
for "re-Germanization" in Germany await transport out of
their temporary home at Auschwitz, July 1944.
|
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary and begins to issue diplomatic papers to save Hungarian Jews.
July 20
Soviet troops liberate concentration camp Majdanek. German assassination attempt on Hitler fails.
July 25
Ghetto in Kovno, Lithuania, evacuated.
August 4
Gestapo arrests Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam.
August 6
Deportation to Germany of 27,000 Jews from camps east of the Vistula River in Poland.
August 23
Holding camp Drancy (near Paris) liberated. Romania capitulates.
September 5
Lodz Ghetto evacuated.
September 11
British troops arrive in Holland.
September 13
Soviet troops reach the Slovakian border.
An aerial reconnaissance photo of the main camp at
Auschwitz, shot at 23,000 feet by members of the 15th
U.S. Army Air Force, September 13, 1944.
|
Transport of all Jews in Dutch camps to Germany. New deportations from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Last transport from France to Auschwitz.
September 14
American troops reach the German border.
September 23
Massacre of Jews in the concentration camp in Kluga, Estonia. Resumption of deportations from Slovakia.
October 7
Escape attempts in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
October 15
Germany installs new puppet Hungarian government, which resumes deportation of Jews.
October 18
Hitler orders the establishment of the Volkssturms (mobilization of all men from 16 to 60).
October 23
Allied armies liberate Paris.
End October
Survivors of concentration camp Plaszow (Krakow) transported to Auschwitz.
October 31
Approximately 14,000 Jews transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz.
November
Trial of the leaders of the extermination camp Majdanek held in Lublin.
Door to an Auschwitz gas chamber. The sign reads, "Harmful
gas! Entering endangers your life."
|
Gassings in Auschwitz terminated.
November 3-8
Soviet troops near Budapest.
November 18
Eichmann deports 38,000 Jews from Budapest to the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Ravensbruck and other camps.
November 26
Himmler orders destruction of the crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as Nazis try to hide evidence of the death camps.
December 17
Members of Waffen SS (an arm of the SS) murder 81 U.S. POWs at Malmedy.
Continue: 1945
Photos: Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives.
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