Laurence Steinhardt and US State Department Chronology with Rescue in Turkey

This historic timeline will include significant milestones in the life and work of Laurence A. Steinhardt, and in particular his legal and diplomatic careers.  It will also encompass major milestones of World War II, US diplomacy, and major rescue efforts by the United States and European countries, including private and secret rescue networks and operations.  We have also included postwar Holocaust historiography and memorial programs.

October 6, 1892

Laurence A. Steinhardt is born October 6, 1892 at his family home (23 East 92nd Street) in New York City. He is the son of Adolph Maximillian Steinhardt (one of the founders and executive heads of National Enameling and Stamping Co.) and Addie Untermyer Steinhardt (a sister to noted lawyer Samuel Untermyer). Nephew of Samuel Untermyer.

1905

The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, is a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which is directed at the government. It includes worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies.

1913

Steinhardt graduates from Columbia University with an A.B.

August 1914-November 1918

World War I.  Millions of soldiers die.  At the conclusion of World War I, many of the royal families of Europe are deposed.  First of many European oligarchies and “undemocratic democracies” are formed.

November 1914

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is founded to distribute funds to aid Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere.

1915

Steinhardt earns M.A. and an LL.B. in 1915 from Columbia Law School.

He practices accountancy with Deloitte, Plender and Griffiths, was admitted to the New York bar in October 1915

The Jewish Labor Committee is founded to help Jews in the Middle East.  It soon joins the Jewish Joint.

October 1915

Steinhardt enlists in the U.S Army 60th Field Artillery in 1916 as a private/sharpshooter, honorably discharged in 1918 as a sergeant Quartermaster Corp after serving as Associate Counsel on the Provost Marshall General Staff, Counsel for Housing and Health Division of the War Department in 1919

February 5, 1917

US Congress passes Comprehensive Immigration Act of 1917.  It restricts immigrants who are “likely to become public charges” (LPC).  A special provision of this law exempts “persons fleeing persecution because of religious faith” [Jews] from taking the mandatory literacy exam.  World War I virtually sweeps from American consciousness the old belief in unrestricted immigration.

October 24, 1917

Russian Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin.  Czar Nicholas II is swept from power.  The Russian Revolution inspires Communist movements throughout Western Europe, including Germany, Italy, France, Austria and Hungary.  In response, extreme right wing and nationalistic movements, many of a fascist nature, are created.

November 11, 1918

Armistice is declared World War I ends with Germanys defeat.

January 5, 1919

The German Workers’ Party (DAP) is founded.  It is a small, right-wing political group based on German ultra-nationalism.  Hitler joins the party on September 12.

January 18, 1919

Opening of the Paris Peace Conference to negotiate peace treaties between the belligerents of World War I. Dominated by Britain, France, the United States, and Italy, it results in five treaties that rearrange the map of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands and imposes financial penalties. Germany and the other defeated nations had no say in process.

June 28, 1919

Signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

September 16, 1919

Adolf Hitler, after joining the German Workers' Party, makes his first endorsement of racial anti-Semitism.

1920

League of Nations is founded.

The idea that the Bolshevik revolution was a Jewish conspiracy for the world domination sparks worldwide interest in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In a single year, five editions are sold out in England alone. In the US Henry Ford prints 500,000 copies.

February 24, 1920

The German Workers’ Party becomes the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).  It is known as the Nazi Party.

The Nazi Party platform is written.  It expresses ultra right views on German nationalism and antisemitism.  It proposes to exclude Jews from German life by revoking their citizenship.

1921–1925

Outbreak of antisemitism in United States, led by Ku Klux Klan.

November 1921

Hitler becomes head of the National Socialist German Workers’ party (Nazi).

The Munich Post opposes Hitler and the Nazi Party in numerous articles and editorials.  The articles accuse Hitler of being a political criminal.  They characterize the Nazi Party as gangsters.  These articles appear until Hitler comes to power in 1933.  Often intimidated and threatened, these editors and journalists continue their crusade against Hitler.  They are Martin Gruber, Edmund Goldschagg, Erhard Aurer and Julius Zerfass.

1922

Josef Stalin becomes Secretary General of the Communist Party in Russia.

February 6, 1922

The Washington Naval Conference ends and results with the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. The signing parties agree to limit the size of their naval forces.

Cardinal Achille Ratti of Milan is elected Pope, takes the name Pius XI.  He serves until his death in 1939.

April 16, 1922

Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Treaty of Rapallo. It re-establishes diplomatic relations, renounces financial claims on each other and pledge future cooperation.

October 31, 1922

Italian Fascist party, under Benito Mussolini, takes control of the Italian government.

1922-1923

High inflation devalues the German Mark, devastating the German economy.  The Weimar government is blamed.

1920 to 1933

Steinhardt is a member of the law firm Guggenheimer, Untermyer and Marshall from 1920 to 1933. Other notable jurists and family members of Guggenheimer, Untermyer and Marshall were Samuel Untermyer, Louis Marshall, Charles S. Guggenheimer, Alvin Untermyer and Irwin Untermyer.

January 11, 1923

France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr in an effort to force Germany to speed up its war reparations payments.

January 15, 1923

Steinhardt marries Dulcie Yates Hofmann, daughter of Henry Hofmann (banker) and Ina Maitland Yates Hofmann, January 15, 1923. They have one daughter, Dulcie-Ann Steinhardt (1925-2001)

November 9, 1923

In the so-called beer hall putsch, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis fail in their attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich.  Hitler is arrested, convicted and imprisoned.  He serves only nine months of a five-year sentence.

January 21, 1924

Leader of the Soviet Union Vladimir Lenin dies, and Joseph Stalin begins purging rivals to clear the way for his complete dictatorship.

February 1, 1924

The United Kingdom extends diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union (USSR).

April 1, 1924

For his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg prison (he serves only 8 months).

April 6, 1924

Fascist Party in Italy win elections with a 2/3 majority.

May 26, 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924, also called the Johnson-Reed Bill, the National Origins Act, signed into law, stipulates annual immigration cap at 164,667 persons, or 2% of each Caucasian nationality as determined by the census of 1890.  This act will still be in force in 1940-1941, with slight amendments.  US consuls in Europe are required to follow this law.  This is important because the decision to grant visas to aliens is placed in the hands of consular officers rather than immigration officers at US ports of entry.  Under Section 24, “The Commissioner General, with the approval of the Secretary of Labor, shall prescribe the rules and regulations for the enforcement of the provisions of this Act; but all such rules and regulations, insofar as they relate to the administration of this Act by consular officers, shall be prescribed by the Secretary of State on the recommendation of the Secretary of Labor.”

1925

Hitler writes and publishes his manifesto entitled Mein Kampf (My Struggle).  In it, he outlines his antisemitic views on racial purity and social Darwinism.  By 1939, it will have 500 printings and more than six million books printed.

Geneva Convention of 1925 outlaws the use of poison gas in war.  It also establishes rules for humane treatment of prisoners of war, sick, wounded and dead.

1926

Hitler publishes second volume of Mein Kampf.

April 24, 1926

The Treaty of Berlin is signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, it declares neutrality if either country is attacked within five years.

September 8, 1926

Germany joins the League of Nations.

December 25, 1926

Japanese Emperor Taishō dies, and his son Hirohito becomes the Emperor of Japan.

1927

Josef Stalin ousts Trotsky from power in the USSR and becomes the absolute dictator.  The Communist government consolidates its hold on the Russian Confederation of States.

August 27, 1928

In Paris the major powers of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact or Pact of Paris, the treaty sought to outlaw aggressive warfare.  It was the basis for trial and execution of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg in 1946.

October 1, 1928

The Soviet Union launches its first five-year plan, an economic effort to increase industrialization.

November 6, 1928

Herbert Hoover is elected the 1928 US president defeating Democratic Governor of New York Al Smith.

1929

Germany signs Geneva Convention of 1925.

January 20, 1929

Heinrich Himmler is appointed head of the SS (Reichsführer SS).

February 11, 1929

Holy See and Italy sign the Lateran Treaty, normalizing relations between the Vatican and Italy. The Treaty is ratified on June 7 making the Vatican City a sovereign state.

July 1, 1929

New US immigration quota is set at 153,714.  It sets an annual quota based on the census of 1920.  It severely limits immigration from southern and eastern Europe.  Immigration from Poland, Russia and Germany is greatly limited.  The Polish quota goes from 30,977 visas in 1921 to 6,524 in 1924.

October 1929

New York Stock Exchange fails.  Stock values dissolve overnight.  This event initiates a worldwide economic depression.  It will not end until 1939.  The depression hits Germany extremely hard.

1930

Angelo Rotta is appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Budapest, Hungary.

February 7, 1930

Cardinal Pacelli is appointed Vatican Secretary of State by Pius XI.

April 22, 1930

The United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, and Japan sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting naval shipbuilding.

June 30, 1930

France withdraws all of its troops from the Rhineland ending the occupation of the Rhineland.

September 8, 1930

US Immigration Law of 1917 is enforced by the Hoover administration to limit immigration to the US.  As a result of the depression, it strictly enforces the “likely to become a public charge” clause.  It directs consular officials “before issuing a visa…to pass judgment with particular care on whether the applicant may become a public charge and if the applicant cannot convince the officer that it is not probable, the visa will be refused.”  Immigrants must have funds and produce affidavits from relatives in the US.  The demand for visas drops by 75%.  241,000 immigrate to the United States in 1930.

September 30, 1930

The Nazi party gets 18% of the popular vote in the German Reichstag election.

US Immigration Law of 1917 is enforced by the Hoover administration to limit US immigration.  This action is a result of the worldwide depression.

1931

German President von Hindenburg decrees a 25 percent emigration tax, the Reich Flight Tax. It is enacted to prevent the transfer of currency out of the country. After 1933 it becomes an impediment to Jews attempting to escape Germany.

The Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA) is established by SS chief Himmler.

Pope Pius XI launches Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on a Vatican diplomatic career as a Nuncio (Vatican diplomat).  Roncalli is appointed Archbishop of Areopolis and Apostolic Visitor to Greece.  Archbishop Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Bulgaria.  He serves there until 1934.

September 18, 1931

Japan invades Manchuria and installs puppet Manchukuo regime.

1932

Steinhardt is an active supporter of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pre-convention presidential campaign, he joined the inner campaign circle committee, composed of political notables Louis Howe, Jimmy Farley, Frank Walker, and Ed Flynn. Specifically, with his economic background on FDR’s finance committee, he wrote campaign speeches on the economics of the time for FDR.

The Soviet famine of 1932–33, also known as the Holodomor (Terror Famine) begins. It is caused in part by the collectivization of agriculture of the first five-year plan. Millions perish.

January 7, 1932

The Stimson Doctrine is announced by United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in response to Japan invading Manchuria. It declares that the United States government will not recognize border changes that are made by force.

March 1, 1932

Empire of Japan establishes the puppet state Manchukuo (1932-1945) out of occupied Manchuria in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia.

July 31, 1932

The Nazis win over 37% of the vote in a Reichstag election.

October 1932

President Hoover states, with regard to the decline in US immigration: “With the growth of democracy in foreign countries, political persecution has largely ceased.  There is no longer a necessity for the United States to provide an asylum for those persecuted because of conscience.”  Later in 1932, the American Federation of Labor states: “There is not a country in the world where there is not religious or political persecution.”

November 8, 1932

Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected President of the US by a landslide.

1933

More than 52,000 Jews leave Germany in the first year of the Nazi government.  There are 37,000 German Jews traveling who remain abroad.

Jewish organizations worldwide attempt to have the Assembly of the League of Nations adopt measures to protect the rights of minorities being persecuted in Germany.  This effort is largely unsuccessful.  Later, the League initiates the Bernheim Petition, which partially protects the rights of German minorities in Upper Silesia.

German labor unions are dissolved.

Fifty concentration camps are built throughout Germany.  They include Dachau, Oranienburg, Esterwegen and Sachsenburg (Sachsenhausen).  These brutal camps are designed to house enemies of Nazism, Socialists and Jews.  In 1933, 25,000 people are sent to these camps.

The Faith Movement of German Christians becomes an official state-sanctioned organization.

There are 4,770,000 Jews in the United States.  Most live in urban areas of the northeast.  Most Jews support Franklin Roosevelt in his bid for President.  American Jews are sympathetic to the plight of German Jews.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee involves itself in refugee issues of the League of Nations. 

January 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by German President Paul von Hindenburg.

The Nazi party becomes the ruling party in Germany.

There are 525,000 German Jews, including those living in the Saar District.  German law defines Jews by race.  Under German law, there are 566,000 Jews.  Jews comprise less than one percent of the German population.

February 1933

Lebensraum (living space) becomes an ideological principle of the Nazi party and provides the justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy ('Master Plan for the East') is based on its tenets.

February 2, 1933

All political demonstrations are forbidden in Germany.

February 20, 1933

Hitler gains support of many leading German businessmen and industrialists.

February 27-28, 1933

The German Reichstag [Parliament] is burned down under mysterious circumstances.  As a result, a state of emergency is declared.  Hitler receives emergency powers from German President Paul von Hindenburg.  Nazi storm troopers arrest ten thousand opponents of the Nazi party.  Many of these are executed or “disappear.”

March 4, 1933

Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd President of the United States.  Roosevelt appoints Cordell Hull as Secretary of State and Sumner Wells as Assistant Secretary of State.

March 5, 1933

Individual German states no longer have power.

Nazi party wins 288 seats in the Reichstag.

March 9-10, 1933

Anti-Jewish riots, organized by the Nazi Party, are carried out by the SA Storm Troopers.

March 20, 1933

Dachau concentration camp opens. Dachau is used to imprison enemies of the Nazi party.  It becomes the training camp and prototype for Nazi concentration camps under the SS.  By the end of the war, there will be more than one thousand of these camps and thousands more slave labor camps established throughout the Nazi empire.

March 24, 1933

The anti-Nazi boycott is an international boycott of German products in response to violence and harassment by members of Nazi Party against Jews following Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

March 27, 1933

Passage of the Enabling Act by the Nazi-controlled Reichstag suspends and thereby destroys all civil liberties in Germany.  It establishes a completely totalitarian system with only one leader and one political party, which controls all communication.

Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations in response to efforts by the League to curb Japan’s expansion in China.

April 1, 1933

German boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

April 4, 1933

Jews are barred from German civil service and public employment (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service).

April 26, 1933

The establishment of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) under Nazi party.

May 10, 1933

Nazis begin public burning of books by Jewish and other authors opposed to Nazism. Nazi government imposes censorship of newspapers and publishing houses throughout Germany.

June 27, 1933

A major rally in London protests Nazi persecution of Jews.

June 29, 1933

A call for a worldwide action to help German Jewry is issued and published by former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and other prominent individuals.

July 6, 1933

The British House of Commons issues a statement of sympathy for persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.

July 14, 1933

Nazi party becomes the only legal party in Germany. Any form of opposition becomes a criminal offense, punishable by law.

The Law Regarding Revocation of Naturalization and the Annulment of German Citizenship is enacted.  This law is intended to strip Eastern European Jews residing in Germany of their citizenship and rights.

Germany enacts Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.  This law allows for involuntary sterilization of potential parents and for the euthanization of disabled and handicapped persons. 

July 20, 1933

The Vatican signs Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany, which gives Hitler’s regime legitimacy.  This concordat purports to protect church rights and property; in fact, it closes Germany’s center party and withdraws the Catholic Church from German political organizations.

August 25, 1933

Ha’avarah (transfer) agreement between the German foreign office and the Jewish community in Palestine is implemented.  It allows Jews who are emigrating to Palestine to transfer their assets there.  In turn, the German foreign office receives goods or funds from Palestine.  This agreement is facilitated by sympathetic German diplomats in the Germany foreign ministry.  Eventually, more than 40,000 German Jews emigrate to Palestine under this agreement

August 28, 1933

Steinhardt enters the U.S diplomatic service at ambassadorial rank in 1933 at the behest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as First Minister to Sweden (August 1933-June, 1937).

Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), tries to persuade US Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of persecuted German Jews.

October 1933

In response to Nazi persecution of Jews and their exodus from Germany, the League of Nations establishes the High Commission for Refugees.  US diplomat James Grover MacDonald is appointed its head.  MacDonald will become a vigorous advocate on behalf of Jewish refugees throughout the war.

The American Jewish Joint works with the League of Nations to try to help resolve Jewish refugee issues.

October 21, 1933

Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

October 29, 1933

Jewish organizations meet in London to prepare to work with the League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees.

November 12, 1933

In a German general election, 92% of the electoral vote is for Nazi candidates.

November 17, 1933

The United States recognizes the USSR and resumes trade.

1934

Worldwide boycott of German goods establishes a headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Aliyah Bet begins operation to bring Jews from Europe into Palestine.  From 1934 to 1939, 17,240 Jews illegally immigrate to Palestine.

US Secretary of State Cordell Hull waves police certificate requirement for immigrants coming from Nazi Germany.  This is intended to protect immigrants from reprisals from the Nazi government.

Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps come under the administration and control of the SS.

Angelo Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Turkey and Greece (1934-1944).  He establishes friendly relations with the governments and Eastern Orthodox clergy.

January 1, 1934

All Jewish holidays are removed from the official German calendar.

January 26, 1934

Germany and Poland sign non-aggression agreement.

February 17, 1934

Great Britain, France and Italy declare that Austria must remain an independent nation.

March 23, 1934

Law Regarding Expulsion from the Reich enacted.  This law paves the way for deporting Eastern European Jews from Germany.

April 1934

Peoples’ Court (Volksgericht) is established in Germany.  It is designed to suppress anti-Nazi activities.  Under this law there is no right to trial by jury or appeal.

June 30, 1934

Hitler orders SS leader Heinrich Himmler to organize the murder of the SA (Brownshirt) leadership.  More than 100 of Hitler’s rivals are murdered.  Among them are Ernst Röhm and former German Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.  This action becomes known as the Night of the Long Knives.

July 25, 1934

Chancellor Dollfüss of Austria is assassinated by Austrian Nazis.

Hehalutz and the Revisionist Zionist Movement begin to organize illegal immigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

August 2, 1934

German President Paul von Hindenburg dies.  Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor).  German armed forces must now swear personal allegiance to Hitler as Führer (leader).

August 19, 1934

Ninety-eight percent of German voters approve of the merger of the offices of President and Chancellor.

September 27, 1934

Great Britain, France and Italy again reaffirm their support for an independent Austria.

October 1, 1934

In violation of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Germany begins the buildup of its army, navy and air force with over a half million soldiers.

November 30, 1934

Angelo Roncalli is appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Turkey and Greece (1934-1944), and titular archbishop of Mesembria, Bulgaria. He establishes friendly relations with the governments and Eastern Orthodox clergy. He becomes known in Turkey's predominantly Muslim society as "the Turcophile Pope". Roncalli took up this post in 1935 and uses his office to help the Jewish underground in saving thousands of refugees in Europe, leading some to consider him to be a Righteous Gentile. In October 1935, he led a group of Bulgarian pilgrims to Rome and introduces them to Pope Pius XI on October 14.

December 1934

The US Attorney General issues ruling that Secretary of Labor can issue a visa if immigrants post a financial bond in advance.

December 29, 1934

Japan rejects the Washington Treaties of 1922 and 1930, which impose limits on the size of its navy operating in the Pacific.

1935

62,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine.

Violent attacks against Jews in Poland cause many Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

The German military Reichswehr is renamed Wehrmacht (Army).  Hitler continues to rebuild and enlarge his armies.

The National Coordinating Committee (predecessor to the National Refugee Service) is founded to coordinate private rescue agencies.  It is created at the instigation of the US State Department.

The SA (Sturmabteilung) is incorporated into the SS.

The Gestapo enacts regulations threatening to arrest and intern in a concentration camp any refugee who returns to Germany.

January 5, 1935

Bishop Roncalli is officially promoted and transferred to Ankara, Turkey.

January 7, 1935

Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign agreement between Italy and France.

The League of Nations approves the results of the Saar plebiscite, which allows Saarland to be incorporated into Germany.

January 13, 1935

Germany retakes Saarland from France.

March 16, 1935

Germany reinstates conscription to the German Wehrmacht in direct violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

March 17, 1935

The German Confessing Church protests persecution of Jews.  It maintains its protests throughout the war.  As a result, seven hundred clergymen are arrested.  Some are sent to concentration camps.

August 31, 1935

In the United States The Neutrality Act of 1935 is passed imposing a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties at war. It also declares that American citizens traveling on ships of belligerent nations do so at their own risk.

September 15, 1935

“Nuremberg Laws”: anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens. International reaction to the Nuremberg Laws is almost universally negative.

October 3, 1935

Italian army attacks and invades Ethiopia.

November 14, 1935

The First Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law institutes a system to categorize and define degrees of Jewishness.  It specifies that “a Jew cannot be a Reich citizen.”

December 27, 1935

James MacDonald, High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations, issues a scathing report and resigns in protest over the failure of the League to help Jews.  MacDonald is concerned about the complete indifference to the plight of refugees worldwide.

December 31, 1935

Jews removed from civil service positions in Germany.

1936

Italy strengthens ties with Nazi Germany.  Italian fascism turns increasingly to militant anti-Semitism.  Escalating Italian anti-Semitic press campaigns, talks of "Jewish and Zionist danger."

The US State Department is ordered to revoke the Hoover Executive Order of 1930 and institute a more liberal version of the “likely to become a public charge” (LPC) clause.

Ambassador Laurence A. Steinhardt is awarded the Order of the Polar Star in 1936 by King Gustav V of Sweden.

March 7, 1936

Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty.

April 1936

League of Nations calls for a conference on the refugee crisis.  US Secretary of State Cordell Hull advises Roosevelt that the US should not participate.

April 1, 1936

The Arab High Committee is formed to unite against Jewish territorial claims in or immigration to Palestine.

April 19, 1936

Outbreak of an Arab revolt (1936-1939) in Palestine leads to substantial cuts in Jewish immigration by the British.

July 16, 1936

Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, right wing general Francisco Franco leads a mutiny against the Spanish Republican government.  Hitler sends thousands of German troops to support Franco’s forces.  The Germans use the Spanish Civil War to test new weapons and tactics, especially the Luftwaffe (air force), which perfects the technique of dive bombing.  Hitler also perfects the Blitzkrieg (lightening war).  Mussolini sends his Italian soldiers to fight for the Republican side. The war will last until 1939 with Franco’s victory over the legal Spanish Republican Government. 

Germany and Italy intervene on behalf of Franco’s fascist forces.

August 1936

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is founded in Geneva, Switzerland as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. It is created in reaction to the rise of Nazism and the growing wave of European anti-Semitism. The main aims of the organization were "to mobilize the Jewish people and the democratic forces against the Nazi onslaught".

August 1-16, 1936

The International Olympic Games are held in Berlin. Persecution of Jews is temporarily suspended by Hitler and the Nazis.

October 25, 1936

Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.

September 7, 1936

25% tax is levied on all Jewish property in Germany.

September 23, 1936

Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened in Oranienberg, 15 miles northeast of Berlin.  Initially, it imprisons opponents of the Nazi regime.  More than 100,000 people will die there.

October 1936

The Great Purge or the Great Terror, Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It involves large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Soviet Army; widespread police surveillance, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. The estimated total number of deaths due to Stalin’s repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million.

October 1, 1936

Criminal court judges in Berlin swear a personal oath to Adolph Hitler.

The Nationalist Rebellion appoints General Franco as Chief of State in its provisional government.

October 7, 1936

Germany imposes a 25 percent tax is imposed on all Jewish assets and property.

October 25, 1936

Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis.  This is a formal alliance between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

November 6, 1936

The Spanish Nationalists seize Madrid and begin the Spanish Nationalist government in Valencia, Spain.

November 18, 1936

Germany and Italy formally recognize Franco’s Nationalist government in Spain.  Germany sends volunteer soldiers (Condor Legion) to fight on behalf of Franco’s fascist Nationalist army.

September 13, 1937

Laurence A. Steinhardt is appointed U.S. Ambassador to Peru (1937-1939),

November 25, 1936

Germany and Japan sign Anti-Cominturn Pact against the Soviet Union. This pact attempts to thwart Soviet territorial aspirations in Europe.

Germany recognizes Japan’s puppet regime in Manchuria, China.

December 27, 1936

Great Britain and France agree to non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

January 20, 1937

Roosevelt is inaugurated for a second term as US President.

January 21, 1937

The Nansen Assistance Organization is established in Oslo, Norway.  Its goal is to aid refugees and victims of Nazism to protect the rights of stateless people.

March 14, 1937

In Germany, Catholic nuns and priests are arrested, and Catholic schools, convents and monasteries are closed, due to their anti-Nazi activities. 

Pope Pius XI issues a Papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge [With Burning Anxiety].  Although it does not mention Hitler or Nazism, it comes out strongly against racism, extreme nationalism and totalitarianism.  The encyclical is smuggled into Germany and read on Palm Sunday in all Catholic churches.

May 28, 1937

Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.

July 7, 1937

Japan invades northeast China.  Japan practices genocidal policies against the Chinese population.  Hundreds of thousands of Chinese will be brutally murdered.

July 15, 1937

Buchenwald concentration camp opens near Weimar, Germany.  Tens of thousands of prisoners will be murdered there.  Ten thousand Jews will be taken to Buchenwald after Kristallnacht.

August 28, 1937

Japanese forces occupy Beijing [Peking] and Tianjin, China.

September 7, 1937

Hitler declares the Treaty of Versailles invalid.

November 5, 1937

The Hossback Protokol is written.  These are the minutes from the meeting where Hitler outlines his war aims against Austria and Czechoslovakia.

November 6, 1937

Italy joins German-Japanese Anti-Comminturn Pact.

November 9, 1937

Japanese military forces capture and occupy Shanghai, China.  Shanghai eventually becomes a major safe haven for 18,000 Jewish refugees from Europe.

November 25, 1937

Germany and Japan sign a military and political treaty.

December 5-13, 1937

Japanese troops conquer Nanjing [Nanking], China.  250,000 Chinese are killed by the Japanese army.  It is called the Rape of Nanjing.

December 11, 1937

Italy resigns from the League of Nations.

1938

US Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd formally protests treatment of Jews in Germany.  He protests the confiscation of Jewish property and other civil rights violations.  He sends numerous reports to the State Department, many of which are ignored.

Japanese and German aggression cause Roosevelt and the US to review its position on neutrality and isolation.

Between 1938 and 1939, 17,000 Jews illegally enter Palestine.  Most of them are from Central Europe.

Between 1938 and 1941, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) helps rescue 30,000 European Jews.  Most of them are brought to the port cities of Lisbon and Milan. 

The National Refugee Service is created in the United States to help refugees immigrate to the United States.

The Jewish community initiates a worldwide boycott of German products and services to protest the treatment of German and Austrian Jews.

February 1938

Hitler removes key generals from the German Wehrmacht (Army).  These generals opposed Hitler’s war aims.

Joachim von Ribbentrop becomes German foreign minister.

February 4, 1938

Hitler declares himself Commander of the Wehrmacht.  He appoints General Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of Staff.  Joachim von Ribbentrop is appointed German Foreign Minister.

February 20, 1938

British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden resigns in protest of British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

February 21-22, 1938

Winston Churchill leads a vote of censure against Chamberlain and his appeasement policy.

March 13, 1938

Anschluss (annexation of Austria).  Austria becomes a province of the German Greater Reich and is renamed Austmark.  Vienna loses its status as a capital and becomes a provincial administrative seat.  All anti-semitic decrees imposed on German Jews are immediately applied in Austria.  Nearly 200,000 Austrian Jews come under Hitler’s control.

As a result of the Anschluss, the Roosevelt administration combines both the German and Austrian quotas together.

March 14, 1938

Cheering crowds greet Hitler as he parades triumphantly through Vienna.

April 10, 1938

Austrians vote in favor of annexation to Germany.

April 14, 1938

Rescue and relief organizations meet to “undertake a preliminary consideration of the most effective manner in which private individuals and organizations within the United States can cooperate with this government in the work to be undertaken by the International Committee which will be shortly created to facilitate the emigration of political refugees from Austria and Germany.”  This committee becomes the Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR).

May 1938

The German Nuremberg Laws, which forcibly segregate Jews in Germany and deprive them of citizenship and the means of livelihood, are officially enforced in Austria. More than 200,000 Austrian Jews would be persecuted under these laws, according to German records.

2,000 Jewish leaders in Austria are arrested from a pre-prepared list and are sent to Dachau in four transports.

To force emigration, the families of Jews arrested and deported to concentration camps are told that proof of immediate emigration would secure their release. German Property Transfer Office actively confiscates Jewish property, businesses and bank accounts.

The methods used in Austria combining economic expropriation and expulsion of Jews become the model in future Nazi-conquered territories.

May 16, 1938

The President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR) meets at the US State Department and appoints James G. MacDonald as Chairman and Samuel Cavert as its Secretary.

June 22, 1938

Pope Pius XI orders the drafting of an important encyclical letter denouncing racism and anti-Semitism, entitled Humani Generis Unitas [The Unity of the Human Race].  It denounces racism and specifically mentions the persecution of Jews.  It is more than 100 pages long.  Due to the death of Pius XI, it is never published.

July 6-15, 1938

Representatives from 32 countries and 39 private organizations, 21 of which are Jewish, meet at Evian, France, to discuss international refugee policies.  All of the participating countries refuse to help or let in more Jewish refugees.  The US does nothing to help refugees.  There is a saying among Jews in Europe: “The world is made up of two types of countries: the kind where Jews could not live and the kind where Jews could not enter.”  The lack of support for Jewish refugees signals to Hitler that the world is unconcerned with Jewish refugees.

The US State Department declares, “No country would be expected to make any changes in its immigration legislation.”

As an outcome of the Evian Conference, an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees is established to help refugees.  It is headed by Lord Winterton and George Rublee.  It is, however, highly ineffectual and fails to help Jews who are leaving Germany to take their assets with them.

Ira Hirschmann, an American Jew acting as a private citizen, attends the Evian conference and witnesses its futility.  He travels to Vienna and underwrites many dozens of affidavits for Jewish refugees.  After returning to the United States, he becomes Chairman of the Board of the University in Exile.

After the Anschluss, the Swiss government sets up policy to bar emigration of Jews. They demand that passports of Jews be stamped with a red "J" to prevent them from crossing into Switzerland.

August 8, 1938

The first concentration camp in Austria, Mauthausen, opens near Linz.  Between 1938 and 1945, 200,000 persons will be imprisoned there and more than 120,000 will be murdered.

August 17, 1938

A Nazi decree forces Jews who do not have names that are recognized as Jewish to add the names “Israel” for males and “Sarah” for females as middle names.

September 7, 1938

Pope Pius XI condemns Catholic participation in anti-Semitic activities.  He declares, “Christians are the spiritual descendants of the patriarch Abraham; we are all spiritual Semites.”

September 26, 1938

France partially mobilizes its army in the wake of the Sudeten Czechoslovakia crisis.

September 27, 1938

The League of Nations declares Japan the aggressor in China.

September 29-30, 1938

The Munich Conference is held.  It is attended by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French President Daladier, Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini, and Hitler.  Great Britain, France and Italy agree to allow the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.  Czechoslovakia is not allowed to participate in the conference. Hitler states that this will be his last territorial demand in Europe.  Chamberlain signs Friendship Treaty with Germany.  Chamberlain returns to England bearing an agreement he signed with Hitler and states that there would be “peace in our time.”

October 2, 1938

In response to its censure, Japan withdraws from the League of Nations.

October 5, 1938

Following request by Swiss authorities, Germans mark all Jewish passports with a large letter “J” to restrict Jews from crossing the border into Switzerland.

October 6, 1938

The Czech Sudetenland is annexed and occupied by the German Army.  Soon, 200,000 Czechs are expelled or flee the territory.  Czech President Eduard Benes resigns as a result of the annexation.

Italy’s Grand Fascist Council passes antisemitic laws.  Jews are to be excluded from public professions.

Polish Ministry of the Interior issues edict requiring Polish citizens to have their passports revalidated by October 29, 1938, or they cannot return to Poland.  This affects many Polish Jewish refugees.

October 7, 1938

Supreme Council of the Italian Fascist Party establishes policy and principles for anti-Semitic legislation.

October 10, 1938

Hitler gives personal instructions to “act for the deportation of 27,000 Viennese Jews of Czech nationality.”

October 28, 1938

In Austria, thousands of Jews who are Polish nationals are deported into the no-man’s-land on the German-Polish border. Austrian Jews also flee to France.

October 29, 1938

Nazis make a list of Jews who did not comply with the regulation to have their passports marked with a “J.”

November 1938

President Roosevelt meets with State Department officials to discuss the refugee crisis.  State Department issues directive to US consuls to issue fewer visas.

November 9-10, 1938

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland.  Thousands of Jews are beaten, hundreds killed; 200 synagogues set fire and destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 171 Jewish homes destroyed; 30,000 German, Austrian and Sudeten Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen), 15,000 from Austria.  680 men and women commit suicide in Austria.

The US Ambassador to Germany Hugh Wilson sends an extensive report about the Kristallnacht pogrom to the US State Department.  Wilson recommends that strong diplomatic action be taken against Germany for the persecution of Jews.

November 12, 1938

Decree forces all Austrian and German Jews to transfer retail businesses to the government or to Aryan ownership.

German Jews are fined one billion Reichsmarks for damages inflicted on them during Kristallnacht.

November 14, 1938

Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith suggests to Secretary of State Hull that the US recall Hugh Wilson, Ambassador to Germany, as a response to “this wholesale inhumanity.”

November 15, 1938

Roosevelt orders labor department to extend visitors’ visas to the US by six months.

November 17, 1938

The British ambassador to the United States in Washington meets with the Undersecretary of State, Sumner Wells, and offers to allow 32,500 German Jews to come to Great Britain.  Wells refuses the offer.

November 17, 1938

Anti-Semitic legislation in Italy is implemented.  It forbids Jewish/non-Jewish marriages, excludes Jews from serving in the armed forces, government, or municipal services.  Jews are defined as having one Jewish parent.

November 18, 1938

In response to the Kristallnacht persecution of Jews, Roosevelt recalls the US Ambassador to Germany, High Wilson, back to Washington “for consultation.”

President Roosevelt announces visitors’ visas for approximately 15,000 refugees will be extended.  This is in response to the Kristallnacht pogroms.

December 6, 1938

France and Germany sign nonaggression pact.

December 1938-January 1939

Seven thousand Austrian Jews cross the border to Switzerland, Italy or France. 

The Mossad for Aliyah Bet is established to smuggle Jews illegally into Palestine. This organization was made up of Palestinian Jews.  They are successful in helping tens of thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust.

The British cabinet allows 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia into Britain.  This is later known as the Kindertransport.  Ninety percent of these children never see their parents again.

December 27, 1938

Presidential Executive Order 8029 is signed into law.  It requires certain documents to be submitted for immigration to the US.  This is later superseded by Executive Order 8430, signed on June 4, 1940.

1939

Between 1933 and 1939, 14,000 anti-Jewish laws are passed in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

300,000 Germans, 90% of them Jewish, apply for visas to the United States.

78,000 Jews leave Germany.

100,000 Jews leave Austria by May 1939.  113,824 Jews remain.

US admits only 90,000 immigrants in 1939. 

60 anti-alien proposals are introduced into the US Congress in 1939.  These proposed laws are supported by so-called patriotic and nativist organizations.  American public opinion polls indicate that opinion against changing immigration laws to favor refugees goes from 67% in 1938 to 83% in 1939.

January 1939

Beginning of illegal immigration to British-controlled Palestine from Germany.  27,000 German Jews immigrate by the end of 1940.

The Nazi Foreign Office states that “the ultimate aim of Germany’s Jewish policy [is] the immigration of all Jews living on German territory.”

January 10, 1939

Hitler announces to the German Reichstag [Parliament] that a world war will result in “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

January 21, 1939

The French government opens first internment camp for foreigners and Jewish refugees in the district of Mende.

January 24, 1939

Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung (Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration) in Berlin is created by Göring and Eichmann.  This is based on the Austrian model.

Reinhardt Heydrich is given authority by Göring to “solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation in the way that is most favorable under the conditions prevailing at present.”

The Gestapo is given control of Jewish emigration in German-occupied territories.

January 25, 1939

Birth of the Atomic Age. A uranium atom is split for the first time at Columbia University in the United States.

January 27, 1939

Plan Z is ordered by Hitler a major 5-year naval expansion program intended to build a huge German fleet capable of defeating the Royal Navy by 1944.

January 30, 1939

Hitler states in his speech in the Reichstag: “It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole world is oozing sympathy for the poor, tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them.”

February 5, 1939

The President of France rebukes the racist policies of Nazi Germany.

February 9, 1939

The Wagner-Rogers bill is introduced into the US Congress.  It proposes to allow 10,000 refugee children under 15 years of age to be admitted to the US in 1939-1940.  The Nonsectarian Committee for German Refugee Children lobbies for this legislation.  They propose that refugee children be taken care of with private money and assistance.  The bill is supported by Eleanor Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, Francis Biddle, and former US President Herbert Hoover.  Due to anti-refugee feelings and pressure groups, the bill is stalled and eventually put aside.

February 10, 1939

Achille Ratti, Pope Pius XI, dies in Rome at age 79.

March 2, 1939

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII. Roncalli expresses happiness that Pacelli is elected, and, on radio, listens to the coronation of the new pontiff. In 1939, Roncalli is made head of the Vatican Jewish Agency in Geneva.

Pope Pius XII appoints Cardinal Luigi Maglione to be Vatican Secretary of State shortly thereafter.

March 15, 1939

German troops invade Czechoslovakia and occupy Prague. Hitler incorporates Bohemia and Moravia into the Third Reich as a “Protectorate.”  Another 120,000 Jews come under Hitler’s control.  A total of 350,000 Jews are trapped in the Nazi web.

March 17, 1939

A census determining the degree of Jewishness is taken of Austrian Jews.  Jews who have three or four Jewish grandparents are counted as a full Jew.  With two Jewish grandparents, they are categorized as “part Jew, grade I.”  With one Jewish grandparent, “part Jew, grade II.”  This census targets Jews for future arrests and deportations.

March 22, 1939

Germany annexes Memel, Lithuania, and forces Lithuania to sign Treaty of Acceptance.

March 28-29, 1939

Spanish Republican government surrenders to General Francisco Franco in Madrid, ending the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s fascist army is victorious against the Republicans.  Franco sets up a dictatorship that will last until 1975.  The Spanish Civil War claims more than 600,000 lives. 

March 31, 1939

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the French President Edouard Daladier declare that Britain and France will go to war with Germany if Poland is attacked.

April 1939

After the Spanish Civil War ends, thousands of anti-Franco Republican soldiers of the International Brigade flee to southern France.  More than 70,000 refugees enter the Bouches du Rhône region of southern France.

The US recognizes Franco’s Nationalist government.

April 3, 1939

German government declares Danzig, Poland, a free city.  This is part of a strategic plan for the future invasion and war with Poland.

Hitler orders the German military to start strategic planning for Fall Weiss (“Case White”). It is the codename for the attack on Poland, planned to be launched on August 25, 1939. The German military High Command finalizes its operational on June 15, 1939. The invasion is begun on September 1, precipitating World War II.

April 7, 1939

Italy invades and occupies Albania.  Albanian king flees to Greece.

Great Britain reinstates conscription.

Spain joins Anti-Comminturn Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan.

April 15, 1939

President Roosevelt requests Hitler to respect the independence and sovereignty of 31 independent European nations.  Hitler soon mocks this request in a speech at the Reichstag.

April 12, 1939

French government passes law against fifth column activity.  It institutes strict government control over foreigners, cultural, artistic and philanthropic associations.

April 27, 1939

Hitler nullifies 1935 naval treaty with England.

May 6, 1939

French law allows the Minister of the Interior to seize foreign publications.

French government tries to impose financial military obligation on refugees.

May 8, 1939

Franco’s Spain withdraws from the League of Nations.

May 17, 1939

White Paper (MacDonald White Paper) of 1939: The British government restricts Jewish immigration to Palestine.  As of April, only 75,000 Jewish immigrants will be allowed to enter Palestine in the next 5 years.  It also restricts the ability of Jews to purchase and own land in Palestine.

May 22, 1939

Italy and Germany sign a ten-year “Pact of Steel” political and military alliance.

July 13, 1939

British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald announces in the House of Commons that illegal immigrants to Palestine will be deducted from the established White Paper quotas.

July 20, 1939

French authorities order military registration for all men of draft age.  This includes foreign refugees.

August 2, 1939

German physicist and Nobel prize winner Albert Einstein, who has recently immigrated to the US, writes to President Roosevelt about developing an atomic bomb for the United States.

August 11, 1939

Laurence A. Steinhardt is appointed United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He serves August 11, 1939 – November 12, 1941.

Eichmann demands 70,000 Jews leave Czechoslovakia within one year.  All Jewish property in Czechoslovakia is ordered registered.  Six Jewish communities are dissolved and 50 synagogues closed.

August 23, 1939

Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact).  Germany and the USSR agree not to attack each other.  According to this pact, in the event of war, Hitler gives Stalin Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and eastern Poland, almost half of the country.

August 25, 1939

Great Britain and Poland sign an Anglo-Polish Alliance.  England agrees to defend Poland if it is attacked.

August 30, 1939

A French government memorandum reads: “All foreign nationals from territories belonging to the enemy must be brought together in special center.”  This memorandum is in response to the flood of German, Austrian, Czech and Spanish refugees entering France.

September 1, 1939

Germany invades Poland.  World War II begins. World War II begins.  This is the first major Blitzkrieg (lightening war) of World War II.  It is devastatingly effective.  48 German divisions with 1,400 aircraft invade on three fronts.  Poland’s soldiers are outnumbered three to one by Germany’s 1.5 million men.  Poland collapses in three weeks.  2,212,000 Polish Jews come under Hitler’s control.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 Polish Jews in Germany are arrested and put into concentration camps.  Few survive.

Aktion [operation] Tannenberg is started.  Einsatzgruppen [special troops] are sent to murder Jews, Polish soldiers, political leaders and intellectuals in Poland.  According to some records, nearly 500,000 Polish Jews and other civilians are killed.

The French believe that the Polish army will hold out and offer stiff resistance to the German army.  However, Poland collapses in only three weeks.

The British and French Armies mobilize, but do nothing to intervene in the attack on the West.  They lose an important opportunity to stop German aggression.

Beginning of the drôle de guerre (phony war) or Sitzkrieg (sitting war).

Three thousand German and Austrian Jews are interned in French camps as “undesirable aliens.”

The French government arrests German and Austrian nationals who have landed in French ports but who are bound for the western hemisphere.  Most of these are Jews fleeing the Nazis.  Most are interned in Les Milles detention camp.

By the outbreak of war, nearly 70% or 185,246 Jews in Austria have emigrated.  Many go to southern France.

The French government outlaws the French Communist Party.

State Department Order #810 establishes a Special Division “to handle special problems arising out of the disturbed conditions in Europe” (War Problems Division).

September 3, 1939

In response to the German invasion of Poland, France, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand officially declare war on Germany.  Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain forms a wartime cabinet with Winston Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty. “Although the UK and France declared war on Germany, little movement takes place on the western front. The offensive in the West that the Poles understood they were promised did not materialize. The Polish government is initially not fully aware of the degree of the country's isolation and the hopelessness of its situation.”

September 4, 1939

All Austrian and German male refugees residing in France between the ages of 17 and 50 years are ordered to report for internment.

Germans take Częstochowa, Poland.

September 5, 1939

Roncalli is in Rome, he meets with Pope Pius XII

September 6, 1939

State Department Order #813 appoints Breckinridge Long Special Assistant in the Department of State in charge of Special War Problems Division.

September 1-17, 1939

Soviet Army invades and occupies Poland’s eastern section.  The army enters virtually unopposed.  In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, the Soviet Union invades Poland from the east. By October 1939, the Second Polish Republic is split in half between two totalitarian powers. Germany occupies 48.4 percent of western and central Poland.

Racial policy of Nazi Germany regards Poles as "sub-human" and Polish Jews beneath that category, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence. One aspect of German foreign policy in conquered Poland is to prevent its ethnically diverse population from uniting against Germany. The Nazi plan for Polish Jews is one of concentration, isolation, and eventually total annihilation in the Holocaust also known as the Shoah. Similar policy measures toward the Polish Catholic majority focuses on the murder or suppression of political, religious, and intellectual leaders as well as the Germanization of the annexed lands which include a program to resettle ethnic Germans from the Baltic states and other regions onto farms, ventures and homes formerly owned by the expelled Poles including Polish Jews.

Hundreds of Jews trapped in the German section escape behind Soviet lines.  Eventually, between 300,000-400,000 Jewish refugees flee.  Though they are treated badly by the Soviet government, many survive the war.

Eventually, more than one million Jews escape from Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union.  Fifty percent of them enter the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).  Most of these Jews survive the war.

September 21, 1939

Chiefs of Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with German civil and military leaders, are ordered to establish Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland.  The aim of the ghettos is to segregate Jews from Polish society.  The plan is to murder Jews slowly by starvation and disease, to kill them by shooting them on the spot, and eventually to depart them to the death camps.

September 27, 1939

Warsaw surrenders after three days of intense bombardment by the Luftwaffe.

The Germans move large numbers of Jews away from more than 100 areas in western Poland.

The Reichssicherheitshauptamt [Reich Security Main Office; RSHA] is established.  This office will be one of the main instruments for the deportation and murder of millions of Jews and others throughout Europe.

September 28, 1939

Germany and the Soviet Union divide up Poland; German forces occupy Warsaw.

Fall 1939

The French government opens numerous concentration camps throughout France to house the influx of refugees entering the country.  Eventually, they become deportation centers to the Nazi death camps.

October 1939

Hitler extends power of doctors to kill mentally and physically disabled persons.

US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes submits a proposal to US President Roosevelt to allow European Jews to immigrate to the Territory of Alaska or the Virgin Islands.  Ickes is sympathetic to the plight of Jewish refugees. Roosevelt tentatively agrees to these plans, but severely limits the quota of Jews to Alaska.  These plans are never implemented.

October 1, 1939

By this date, the Marseilles police arrest more than 13,000 Germans and Austrians, most of whom are Jews.

October 10, 1939

Germany creates Generalgovernment headed by Hans Frank in German-occupied Poland.  Its headquarters are in Krakow.  The soon-to-be-established murder camps will be located in this area.

October 16, 1939

The Intergovernmental Committee meets in Washington to discuss the refugee crisis.  FDR calls for a major plan to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe into a “supplemental national home.” A number of major proposals are submitted to Roosevelt.  Because of Roosevelt’s indifference and lack of attention, no plan is adopted.

November 1939

US passes the Neutrality Act of 1939.  US repeals arms embargo.

November 4, 1939

Roosevelt signs bill enabling belligerent nations to purchase war material from the US on a cash and carry basis.  Due to the British Naval blockade, only Britain and France are able to purchase materials.

November 23, 1939

The Nazis order Polish Jews to wear the Star of David.

November 28, 1939

A law to establish Jewish councils, called Judenräte, in the Nazi general government in Poland, is enacted.  These councils convey German occupation orders to the Jewish community.

November 29, 1939

SS chief Himmler signs order to kill Jews who do not report to deportation.

November 30, 1939

Soviet Union invades Finland.  War lasts until March 13, 1940.

December 1939

By the end of 1939, approximately 1.8-1.9 million Jews live in German occupied Poland.  610,000 live in Northwest Poland.  360,000 live in the Warsaw area.  Approximately 1.3 million Jews reside in the Russian occupied area of Eastern Poland.

FDR appoints his friend Myron C. Taylor as personal representative to the Vatican.  Roosevelt hopes to move the Vatican toward the rescue of refugees.

December 2, 1939

Initiation of poison gas vans to murder mental patients in Germany.

December 5-6, 1939

Germans seize Jewish property in Poland.  This includes homes, businesses and bank accounts.

December 14, 1939

Soviet Union expelled from the League of Nations following their invasion and occupation of Poland.

1940

Roncalli is tasked by the Vatican to devote more of his time to Greece. Thus he makes several visits there in January and May of that year. The same year, Roncalli departs as head of the Vatican Jewish Agency and leaves to Turkey. However, Roncalli still maintains close relations with the Jews and later intervenes with Bulgaria's King Boris III to cancel deportations of Greek Jews during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

January 1940

President Roosevelt appoints Breckinridge Long as Assistant Secretary of State for Special Problems.  Long supervises 23 of the 42 divisions of the State Department.  Among his duties is overseeing the visa section, civilian internees, overseas relief, prisoners of war, immigration and refugee policies.  From the outset of his appointment, Long is opposed to helping refugees escape Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.  Long claims that refugees entering the country pose a major security risk for the United States.  This, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Long and his associates in the State Department implement anti-Jewish immigration policies.  This policy lasts until the creation of the War Refugee Board in January 1944.  Further, Long exploits divisions among American Jewish groups.  He states in his diary, “there is no cohesion, nor any sympathetic collaboration—rather rivalry, jealousy and antagonism…” 

Roosevelt submits a list of 200 people to the State Department to be given special consideration, i.e., emergency visas.

Numerous refugee committees are established in the US.  These committees represent refugee scholars, writers, artists, musicians, physicians, labor leaders etc.

First gassing of handicapped and mental patients in German asylums.  More than 70,000 people are murdered before protests by church leaders bring about an end to the euthanasia program.  However, this operation continues secretly until the end of the war.

January 29, 1940

State Department Order #835 appoints Breckinridge Long as Assistant Secretary of State for Administration.

February 1940

The Alaskan Development Bill is introduced into the US Congress as a possible refuge for German, Austrian and Czech Jews.  It is introduced by Senator William H. King and congressman Frank Havenner.  It is strongly supported by US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes.  It is opposed by Assistant US Secretary of State Sumner Wells.  The proposal is also opposed by government representatives and special interest groups in Alaska.  FDR opposes the idea and the bill never gets out of committee.

February 2, 1940

New law requires that Jews leaving Germany must pay large tax.

February 12-13, 1940

First deportation of Jews from Germany.

February 16 and 23, 1940

Assistant Secretary of State Adolph A. Berle, Jr., tries to persuade US Secretary of State Cordell Hull to protest treatment of Jews in Poland.  This request is based on a report by the Chargé in Warsaw, Alexander Kirk.  Berle sates: “We should register a protest.  We did so during the far less significant, though more dramatic, riots of a year ago November; and I see no reason why we should not make our feelings known regarding a policy of seemingly calculated cruelty which is beginning to be apparent now.”  The protest is ultimately quashed by Breckinridge Long.

February 17, 1940

Reorganization of the Visa Division of the US State Department.  Visa division responsibility is to “ensure the uniformity of procedures and a uniform interpretation of the immigration laws and regulations by our consular officers throughout the world.  General instructions affecting the administration of immigration laws originate in the Visa Division in cooperation, in appropriate instances, with other divisions of the Department and with the Department of Labor.”  Note: Chief of the Visa Division, Avra Warren, attends legislative committee meetings regarding proposed legislation regarding immigration.

March 12, 1940

The Russian-Finnish War ends.  Finland and Russia sign peace treaty.

April-May 1940

New administrative policy on the issuing of visas: “the consular officer may desire to have the documents submitted by such persons include evidence to show not only that the sponsors are financially able to support the applicants but that their interest in the applicants and their plans for the latter are such that the sponsors will in all probability assume the obligation of supporting the intending immigrants for an indefinite period of time.”

Unitarian Service Committee (USC) is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.  Its purpose is to help refugees in Europe.  It provides extensive aid to Jews and others in France throughout the war and afterwards.

April 8, 1940

Soviet army massacres 26,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, Russia.

April 9, 1940

Germans invades Denmark and Norway. Anti-Jewish measures are immediately applied by Nazi government.

April 10-14, 1940

British and German naval forces fight major battle off the Norwegian port of Narvik.  Ten German destroyers are sunk, greatly weakening Germany’s naval capabilities.

April 14-17, 1940

British Army lands in Namos and Andolsnes, Norway, to help Norway repel the German invasion.  This operation will soon fail.

April 15, 1940

The British begin to break the German enigma cipher codes.

May 10, 1940

Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.  136 German divisions participate in the invasion.  Germans enforce anti-Jewish measures in each area.  In the wake of the German invasions, more than 8 million persons are displaced all over Europe. In Belgium, there are between 85,000 and 90,000 Jews, among whom 30,000 are refugees.  In Holland, there are 140,000 Jews.  110,000 are native Dutch Jews, and 30,000 are refugees from Germany and Austria.  In Luxembourg, the Jewish population is 3,500, many of whom are German and Austrian refugees.

Neville Chamberlain resigns as Prime Minister of Great Britain due to the failure of the Norway expedition.  Winston Churchill becomes new Prime Minister.  Lord Halifax is appointed Foreign Secretary.

May 12, 1940

Germany invades France.

May 13, 1940

Churchill gives “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech in the House of Commons.

May 14, 1940

Luftwaffe bombs Rotterdam, Holland, heavily damaging the city.  Many civilians are killed.

May 15, 1940

The Netherlands surrender to Germany

May 16, 1940

German Governor-General Hans Frank orders AB-Aktion (extraordinary pacification) to begin in Poland.  3,500 Polish leaders are murdered, along with 33,000 others.

May 17, 1940

Commanding General of the French army Maxine Weygood declares that the invasion cannot be stopped, and France should accept reasonable terms for an armistice with Germany. A million French soldiers are taken prisoner by the German armed forces. The French government evacuates Paris.

German army enters Brussels, Belgium.

May 20, 1940

Concentration camp established at Auschwitz, Poland.  It will become the largest and deadliest death camp in the Nazi system.  More than 1.2 million Jews, and tens of thousands of others, will be systematically murdered there.

May 26-June 4, 1940

Following the encirclement of Allied forces in northeastern France, the British, French and Belgian forces are evacuated from Dunkirk, France.  338,226 soldiers are rescued by 861 ships.

May 28, 1940

Belgium surrenders to Germany. The Prime Minister and members of the Belgian cabinet flee to southern France.  King Leopold III remains in country.  65,696 Jews come under Nazi rule.  34,801 Jews will eventually be imprisoned or deported.  28,902 Jews in Belgium will be murdered.  56% of the Belgian Jewish community will survive the war.

June 1940

Marshal Pétain is installed by the Nazis as head of the French state with Pierre Laval his Vice President of the Council of Ministers.  Pétain is granted executive powers under the armistice agreement and the French National Assembly is merely a “rubber stamp.” 

Pétain abolishes the French constitution of 1875 and dismisses the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies.  Pierre Laval is a Nazi collaborationist and puppet.  Laval will eventually comply with German requests to turn over for deportation foreign Jewish refugees in France.  Ironically, Laval will protect naturalized French Jews.

The Third French Republic no longer exists.

Civil liberties in France are suspended.

France is divided into two zones.  The northern zone is administered by German military forces.  The south, called the “Free Zone,” is established in the resort town of Vichy.  The Nazi military occupation forces control about two thirds of France.

Four million French, Belgian, Luxembourg and other refugees have fled the German onslaught. 

France is forced to pay Germany 400 million francs a day as a war indemnity.

The French begin to implement Nuremberg-style antisemitic laws imposed on all Jews in France. These laws and policies are initiated entirely by the Vichy government.  These restrictive laws and decrees will eventually disenfranchise most foreign Jews in France. 

By the end of 1940, Lisbon becomes a major center of refuge for thousands of Jews escaping Nazi occupied Europe.  Until the end of June 1940, trains regularly run from Berlin, Vienna and Prague to Lisbon.  The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee provides money for destitute refugees who have escaped to Lisbon.  The US consulate in Lisbon processes hundreds of visas to Jewish refugees.

US embassies and consulates in Nazi-occupied Europe (Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg) are ordered to begin closing.  US embassy in Paris will be moved to a new headquarters in Vichy.

US visa regulations for refugees are severely tightened.  Refugees must now be able to prove that they can return to the countries of their origin from which they are fleeing.  This is, in most cases, impossible because they are subject to arrest in their home country.  Further, visa waiting periods are significantly lengthened.

After the surrender of France, a US Gallup Poll shows that 58% of Americans are willing to admit French and British children to the US during the war.

June 4, 1940

The US Immigration and Naturalization Service is transferred from the Department of Labor to the Justice Department, ostensibly for reasons of national security.

Breckinridge Long writes in his diary:  “Still engaged in preparation of papers, consultations with Justice and Labor and arranging final draft executive orders and telegrams to restrict the granting of visas and to stop up the holes of unauthorized immigrants into the United States.  Provided the President signs the Executive Order we will dispatch a long telegram which will tighten up our Consular examinations of persons requesting visas all along the line…”

June 5, 1940

Executive Order #8430 signed into law.  It remains in effect until June 3, 1941.  It supersedes Executive Order #8029 of December 1938.  Part I, Sec. 1: Nonimmigrant aliens must present unexpired passports or “travel documents showing their origin and identity” and “valid passport visas.”  Part II, Sec. 1: “Alien immigrants must present unexpired passports from country to which they owe allegiance and valid immigration visas granted by consular officers.  Part VI:  The Secretary of State and the department head charged with the administration of the immigration laws are hereby authorized to make such rules and regulations, not inconsistent with this order, as may be deemed necessary for carrying out the provisions of this order and the statues mentioned herein.”

The Secretary of State sends a cable to diplomatic and consular officers: “In view of the international situation, it is essential that all aliens seeking admission into the United States, including both immigrants and nonimmigrants be examined with the greatest care.  Effective immediately, all applications for…nonimmigration visas, transit certificates and limited entry certificates, except as hereinafter specified, shall be executed in triplicate on Form 257, under oath administered by the Consul.”

June 9, 1940

Norway surrenders to Germany. Approximately 2,000 Jews are now subject to Nazi occupation.

June 10, 1940

Italy enters the war as a German ally, declares war on Great Britain and France, and invades France.

June 11, 1940

General Weygood declares that the battle for France is lost and advises the French government to maintain order and avoid chaos of war.

A million French soldiers are taken prisoner by the German armed forces.

French government evacuates Paris.

June 14-15, 1940

Paris falls and the French government is transferred to Bordeaux.  More than 1 million refugees pour into the south of France, more than 195,000 of whom are Jews.

Soviets invade and occupy Lithuania.

First deportation to Auschwitz death camp arrives.

The US President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR) submits list of 600 refugees to be issued special emergency visas.

June 16, 1940

French Vichy government is established under World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain.  Pétain becomes head of the French cabinet.  Pétain asks for an armistice eight days before the fighting ceases.

June 21, 1940

The Bloom-Van Nuys Immigration Law is passed and takes effect on July 1.  Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long lobbies for this bill.  It was meant to encourage US consuls stationed in Europe to deny entry to the US by refugees based on the possibility that they could endanger public safety.  This law is intended to prevent refugees from receiving visas.  A clause in this law called the “close relative clause,” denies visas to people who have relatives in Nazi-occupied territories.  Almost all refugees have close relatives in their home countries.  This restrictive clause sends a clear message to US embassies and consulates that help to refugees is to be restricted and discouraged.  This act imposes upon immigrants five complicated levels of visa application review.  This complicated review is designed to take power away from local consuls to make independent decisions regarding the suitability of the immigrant to enter the US.  Decisions by diplomats often have to be reviewed by the Department of State, Navy and Army intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the FBI.  Refugees denied visas have long, complicated appeals processes.  The process often takes up to five months to process applications.  More than one half of visa applications are rejected by the US State Department.  The strict provisions of the Bloom-Van Nuys Act are not rescinded until May 1945.  For the rest of the war, only a small fraction of US immigration quotas for German, Austrian, French and other European refugees will be filled. 

Long further imposes on diplomats and consuls the regulation that potential refugees must obtain exit visas from the countries they are leaving, to include Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Southern France, before they can obtain an entry visa to the US.  By mid-1940, these exit visas from Nazi government are extremely difficult to obtain.  Long understands that these regulations will tie up refugees in elaborate rules and regulations of government red tape, stating: “We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States.  We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to resort to various administrative advices which would postpone and postpone the granting of visas.”

James McDonald, of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR) is outraged by the Bloom-Van Nuys Act: “The so-called relative rule should be cancelled or substantially modified.  Our experience with refugees has convinced us that it is unnecessary, illogical, ill-adapted to the purposes claimed for it, and cruelly burdensome on the refugees affected by it.”

A number of US diplomats independently subvert the intention of the Bloom-Van Nuys Act and provide visas to a number of Jewish refugees.

June 22, 1940

France surrenders to Germany.  The French sign an armistice with Germany; in Article 19 of this document, the French agree to “surrender on demand” all persons named by the German authorities in France.  France is divided into two zones.  The French Army is limited to 125,000 officers and soldiers in metropolitan France.

Approximately 350,000 Jews reside in France at the time of the German invasion.  They constitute less than one percent of the total population of France, which is 45 million.  France becomes the largest population center for Jews in Western Europe. 

France is divided into two zones.  The northern zone is administered by German military forces.  The south, called the “Free Zone,” is established in the resort town of Vichy.  The Nazi military occupation forces control about two thirds of France.

June 23, 1940

General Charles de Gaulle, head of the French National Committee in London, pledges war against Germany.

June 24, 1940

France signs an armistice agreement with Italy.

June 26, 1940

Assistant US Secretary of State Breckinridge Long implements a policy to effectively block or obstruct the granting of US visas to Jews seeking asylum in the US.  Long argues that immigration can be “delayed and effectively stopped” by ordering US consuls “to put every obstacle in the way [to] postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas.”

June 27, 1940

Joseph Buttinger and Paul Hagen go to Washington, DC, to petition Mrs. Roosevelt to influence her husband to issue emergency visas to notable Jewish artists, labor leaders and other refugees in France.  Mrs. Roosevelt immediately calls her husband and persuades her husband to authorize the emergency visas.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and influential refugee advocates, including Thomas Mann and Joseph Chamberlain, influence the President to authorize the issuance of emergency visas to notable Jewish artists, labor leaders and other refugees in France who are endangered.  As a result, the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees draws up a list of prominent refugees to receive temporary emergency visas to the US.  In all, the names of 3,286 individuals of “superior intellectual attainment, of indomitable spirit, experienced and vigorous support of the precepts of liberal government, and who are in danger of persecution or death at the hands of autocracies.”  This rescue project is undermined by Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long and senior State Department officials in Washington.  The State Department cuts the list down and slows the processing of temporary emergency visas.  By December 19, 1940, only 238 emergency visas are issued by the State Department.  When the rescue effort is ended in January 1941, only 1,236 emergency visas will have been issued.  The refusal of Long and his deputies to approve and expedite these visas leads to complaints among members of PACPR.

June 28, 1940

US Congress passes the Alien Registration Act of 1940.  It requires registration and fingerprinting of all resident aliens above 14 years of age.

The British government recognizes General Charles de Gaulle as leader of the Free French organization during the German occupation of France.

June 29, 1940

Cable from the Secretary of State to diplomatic and consular officers: “All applications for immigration visas must be examined with extreme care during the present period of emergency no such visa should be issued if there is any doubt whatsoever concerning the alien.  Although a drastic reduction in the number of quota and non-quota immigration visas will result therefrom and quotas against which there is a heavy demand will be underissued, it is essential to take every precaution at this time to safeguard the best interests of the United States.”

June 30, 1940

Otto Abetz becomes German Foreign Ministry designate as Ambassador to France in Paris.  His deputy is Schleir.  Deputies in charge of Jewish Affairs are SS Sturmbahnführer Carl Theodore Zeitchel and Dr. Ernst Achenbach.

July 1940

20,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg are interned in the 31 French camps in the southern unoccupied zone.

An estimated 30,000 Jews escape from France into Spain and Portugal with the help of rescuers and relief organizations.  Upon arrival in Lisbon, these refugees are helped by Jewish relief agencies such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Hebrew Immigration and Sheltering Society (HIAS).

July 1, 1940

The French government moves to Vichy, France.

July 5, 1940

Vichy France severs relationship with Britain.

Roosevelt bans shipment of oil and strategic materials to Japan.

July 10, 1940

The French National Assembly gives Pétain full powers to govern occupied France.  The next day, Pétain abolishes the French constitution of 1875 and dismisses the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

July 10, 1940

America First committee is established in the United States.  This is an isolationist group that lobbies to keep America out of the war.  There are strongly antisemitic elements to this organization.

July 11, 1940

Marshall Petain becomes President of Vichy France. 

July 12, 1940

Pierre Laval is appointed Prime Minister of France.

July 21, 1940

The British government recognizes the Czech national government in exile in London.

August 1, 1940

Institution of antisemitic laws to be enforced in the General Government in Poland.

August 5, 1940

Britain recognizes the Polish government in exile in London of General Sikorski.

August 7, 1940

British government signs agreement with the Free French organization of French exiles under Charles de Gaulle.

August 8, 1940

The Battle of Britain begins with an attack by the Luftwaffe in southern England.

July 10, 1940

Hitler orders the implementation of the invasion of England, called Operation Sea Lion.  He orders the Luftwaffe to attack British air bases, convoys and ports.  Battle of Britain begins.

The French National Assembly gives Pétain full powers to govern occupied France.  The next day, Pétain abolishes the French constitution of 1875 and dismisses the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

America First committee is established in the United States.  This is an isolationist group that lobbies to keep America out of the war.  There are strongly antisemitic elements to this organization.

August 9, 1940

Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles signs Departmental order #870.  Functions of the Visa Divisions: “To have general charge, within the scope of the authority of the Department of State, of the administration of the Immigration laws and regulations,” and “To initiate the policy action of the Department and to advise the Secretary of State in respect to problems arising from the measures necessary for the strengthening of the national defense; and to supervise the carrying out of these policies,” and “To maintain liaison with other Departments and Agencies of this Government and with Committees of the Congress concerned with entry and expulsion of aliens.”

August 15, 1940

Madagascar Plan is announced by Adolph Eichmann to send the Jews of Europe to the island of Madagascar.

August 23, 1940

Germans launch an all-night air raid against London, England.

August 25, 1940

British Royal Air Force (RAF) conducts night bombing raid against Berlin.  This escalates into a terror bombing campaign between Germany and Great Britain.

August 27, 1940

The US Congress amends US Neutrality Act with the enactment of the Hennings Bill.  It permits rescue and refugee ships to evacuate and bring refugee children under 16 years old from war zones, including France and Portugal, to the United States.  4,200 children and 1,100 adults come to the US by the fall of 1940 under this provision.

August 30, 1940

Hungary annexes northern Transylvania.

US State Department authorizes the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USC) to evacuate 5,000 Jewish children from Vichy France.  The Allied invasion of North Africa on November 8 prevents this rescue.

September 5, 1940

Vatican nuncio in Slovakia, Msgr. Giuseppe Burzio, writes an official dispatch to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione informing him of anti-Jewish regulations and persecutions in Slovakia.

Germans impose antisemitic Nuremberg Laws in occupied Luxembourg.  Jewish businesses and property are confiscated.

Cardinal Roncalli of Turkey is told of the fate of Jews in Nazi occupied Poland.

September 7, 1940

Hitler initiates terror bombing of London.  Called the “Blitz,” it lasts for 57 days.

September 11, 1940

The Quanza, a Jewish refugee ship chartered out of Lisbon with nearly 300 refugees, is granted temporary asylum in Virginia.  Eleanor Roosevelt intercedes on behalf of these refugees.

September 17, 1940

Due to the setbacks of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, Hitler puts off the invasion of England.  This is the first major setback for Hitler.

50,000 Jews, mostly refugees and elderly, are driven from the Warsaw district into the capital.

September 18, 1940

Breckinridge Long writes in his diary: “A number of developments in our procedure in granting visas in [excess] of the quota have troubled me recently…”  Long goes on to discuss how he wishes to take the power to grant visas away from the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR).  “I layed [sic] it before the Secretary [of State Cordell Hull], and he authorized me to present the whole matter to the attention of the President.  I did this today in the form of a letter which reviewed the situation and asked his consent to change the procedure, which would place in our Consuls abroad rather than in the President’s Committee in New York the final determination as to whether the person was entitled to entry into the United States…And now it remains for the President’s Committee to be curbed in its activities so that the laws again can operate in their normal course.  I have felt that the procedure of extending visas to persons in the categories indicated was a perfectly legitimate practice provided the bars were not thrown down to the extent that the categories were expanded and a lot of person admitted to the United States in contravention of the law.  I have been very careful to limit the authorization of visas to the end that the law be observed, and in my opinion a departure from this practice would be in effect to render the immigration laws nugatory.”

September 19, 1940

Cable from Secretary of State to certain diplomatic and consular officers (Lisbon, London, Moscow, Stockholm, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Casablanca, Oporto, Zurich): “To correct any misunderstanding regarding visa work, all visa applications should be carefully examined and if any doubt exists regarding alien’s activities in the past and possible activities in the United States which might be inimical to the United States, action in the case should be suspended and the alien should be requested to present clear evidence to establish essential facts.”

September 24, 1940

Long writes in his diary: “A long session this evening with James G. McDonald and his man Warren and Welles.  McDonald is very wroth at the limitation upon the activities of his Committee, which were set out in a letter sent to him by the Secretary.  He looks upon me as an obstructionist and was very bitter and somewhat denunciatory.  There were a few warm words between us, but it straightened out.  He said he wanted to see the President, and I said I hoped he would and would lay the whole matter before him.”

September 27, 1940

Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis alliance is signed.

First antisemitic German law (Verordnung) is enacted in the occupied zone of France.  It defines Jews by race and requires Jews to register with the police in the French prefects.

October 1940

The German government in Poland abolishes exit visas for Jews.

Jews of Warsaw are ordered into a ghetto.  In mid-November, the ghetto is sealed. 350,000 Jews, out of a total of 1.9 million, are now in German ghettoes in Poland.

October 3, 1940

Breckinridge Long meets with President Roosevelt and convinces him to implement a policy that will let local US consuls make the final decision regarding visas to be issued to refugees.  Long does this because he believes most US consulates will deny visas on the issue of a possible threat by the refugee to “national security.”  He states in his diary, “About noon I had a long satisfactory conversation with the President on the subject of refugees.  McDonald, Chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Refugees, has developed a very definite and violent antagonism to me.  He thinks I have been non-cooperative and obstructive and has given evidence of his personal animosity.  In a recent conversation in Mr. Welles’ office he indicated that he had a superlative ego and a vindictive mentality added to his disregard, to put it lightly, of me.”  He goes on to say: “I found that [Roosevelt] was 100% in accord with my ideas.”

Rescue leaders such as Myron C. Taylor, James Grover McDonald and Stephen Wise find it very difficult meeting with the President to advocate rescue.

Statute des Juifs, a set of Nuremberg-style anti-Jewish laws, is passed by the French Vichy government.  Law removes many civil rights for Jews in France.

October 4, 1940

Vichy government is empowered to arrest and imprison Jews in concentration camps in the southern unoccupied zone in France.  31 of these camps are established throughout France.  Eventually, more than 50,000 Jews will be interned in these French-administered camps.  4,000 Jews will die from the poor health conditions in the camps.  Eventually, these will become centers for deportation to the death camps in Poland.

October 7, 1940

German troops enter Romania.  Romania allows Germany to take control of oil fields.

The Bulgarian government approves the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the Nation.  The Law severely curtails Jewish civil rights.  21 leaders in the Bulgarian parliament will send a protest letter to the Prime Minister.

The Vichy Law of October 7, 1940, strips Algerian Jews of citizenship.  They had been citizens for more than 75 years.

October 8, 1940

James G. McDonald and representatives of rescue groups meet with FDR to complain that Undersecretary Breckinridge Long and the US State Department are unjustly using security as a reason to block legitimate rescue of needy refugees.  McDonald states: “[I] cannot believe, that those without visas present threats to the national interest.”  Specifically, McDonald criticizes US consuls in Europe.  FDR takes no action on this.  567 names are submitted to the State Department in August and September, yet only 40 visas are issued.

James McDonald states that refugees, despite reaching Portugal, “are still refused visas.  To close this last avenue of escape is to condemn many scientists, scholars, writers, labor leaders and other refugees to further sacrifices for their belief in democracy and to bring to an end our tradition of hospitality to the politically oppressed.  The original arrangements were wisely and soundly planned.  Their purpose is still to be achieved.”  Breckinridge Long defends his policies using the security issue as a rationale.  After the complaint by McDonald, Long states: “In view of reports indicating that Nazi and other totalitarian agents are endeavoring to enter the United States in the guise of refugees, it has been considered essential in the national interest to scrutinize all applications carefully.”  Reports by the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover state that there was negligible entry of foreign agents into the United States during World War II. 

October 12, 1940

Warsaw ghetto is established.  Ghetto walls begin to be constructed on October 16.

Hitler again postpones Operation Sea Lion (the amphibious invasion of Great Britain).  The German air force switches its attacks from military targets to English cities.

October 18, 1940

German decree in France orders all Jewish property to be transferred to Aryan ownership.

October 28, 1940

Italy invades Greece.

October 31, 1940

The Belgian government in exile is established in London.  It agrees to support the Allied cause.

November 1940

Roosevelt elected to an unprecedented third term as US President.  Democrats retain a majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.

New and more complicated screening procedures for approving visas to refugees are implemented by the State Department.  The procedure involves a review of visa applicants not only by the State Department, but also by the Justice Department, the FBI and US Military and Naval Intelligence.  This system requires that if a diplomat or consul in the field rejects an applicant for any reason, the visa would have to be approved by these various government departments.  The visa process is slowed to a trickle.

In the two and a half years between November 1940 and May 1943, 100,000 Jews die in the Warsaw Ghetto of starvation and disease.

November 7, 1940

In France, Jews must have passports, visas stamped with “Jew” in prominent letters.

November 11, 1940

An article appears in the New Republic magazine exposing terrible conditions in the French concentration camp Le Vernet.  They call it the “French Dachau.”

November 13, 1940

Avra Warren, head of the Visa Division of the US State Department, serving under Breckinridge Long, criticizes and vetoes plan to permit 12,000 German Jews residing in Portugal safe refuge in the US Virgin Islands.

November 15, 1940

The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed.  There are 450,000 Jews crammed into a few square blocks.

November 16, 1940

Undercover Polish diplomat Jan Karski visits the Warsaw ghetto and a concentration camp.  He prepares a written report for the Polish government in exile on his observations.

November 20-24, 1940

Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

December 1940

Myron Taylor, a friend of Roosevelt, is appointed Special US Envoy to the Vatican (Holy See) to elicit help from the Vatican for refugees.

US Justice Department rules that all refugees coming to the United States are protected by the Constitution with all rights guaranteed to citizens.

US Congressman Samuel Dickstein introduces new bill to utilize Alaska as a refugee haven.  The bill dies in subcommittee.

December 9, 1940

Operation Compass begins in North Africa.  The British Army advances from Egypt to Libya.

1941

Roosevelt announces Lend-Lease policy to furnish Allies with ships and armaments.  This is the beginning of the end of US isolation.

The United States, a non-belligerent in the war, has a more rigid screening procedure for refugees than does Britain, who had been fighting for two years.  As a result of the US State Department’s interference and antisemitic policies, many European Jews are unable to obtain refuge in the United States.  In the crucial year of 1941, only 47% of quota for German-Austrian immigration to the United States is filled.

US Minister to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther, stationed in Bucharest, reports to the State Department about the murder of Jews by the fascist Horia Sim Iron Guard.

The New Republic magazine writes a series of articles in 1941 calling for an inquiry into antisemitism in the US State Department.  The article categorically states that there is “widespread antisemitism in the Foreign Service.”

January 1941

State Department communication with consulates in the field, Foreign Service Regulations, ch. XXII: “Visas for aliens” sec. 1: “Officers of the Foreign Service, except consular agents, shall familiarize themselves with the existing laws on the subject of immigration and visas and with the rules and regulations established thereunder by the Attorney General, the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, or other officials acting in the name of the President, and they shall perform the duties prescribed therein for them.”  This law reminds diplomats in the field that they must strictly adhere to the regulations.

January 4, 1941

Great Britain sends soldiers to help its ally Greece.

January 22, 1941

Bulgarian parliament enacts the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the Nation.  It is based on the German Nuremberg Laws. 

January 23, 1941

Communication from Adolf A. Berle to Eliot B. Coulter regarding inconsistencies among European consulates regarding documentation required to assure aliens will not become public charges.  Berle expresses concern that some consuls interpret the “likely to become a public charge” clause too strictly. 

February 4, 1941

Avra Warren, head of the Visa Division of the US State Department, rejects rescue plan to settle Jewish refugees in the US territory of Alaska.  He states “Nearly all of them belong to a particular race.”

February 5, 1941

Reinhardt Heydrich states in memorandum that he sees the “later total solution to the Jewish problem” is to “send them off to whatever country will be chosen later on.”

February 7, 1941

Undersecretary of State Breckinridge Long writes to Mr. Adolf Berle, also of the State Department: “From time to time, some of our consuls, as is natural with any group of human beings with different reactions, have given different interpretations to the Department’s instructions.  We have communicated with them directly by cablegram and by telephone in order to bring them in line with the Department’s policy.  Our consulates in Germany, Switzerland, unoccupied France, and Portugal have been painstakingly supervised in this respect and are conforming to the pattern of the Department’s instructions. The requirements of the immigration law are specific.  Irrespective of what the Department might desire, our policies are necessarily bound by the law in force.”

February 14, 1941

Heydrich tells German foreign ministry representative in France Martin Luther, “After the conclusion of the peace, they [Jews] will be the first transported to leave fortress Europe in the total evacuation of the continent we plan.”  Luther then tells his diplomatic representatives that forced Jewish emigration from German territories must take priority.

February 25, 1941

Thousands of Dutch Christians go out on general strike to protest the deportation of Jews to Buchenwald.  This is the only such strike in Europe in reaction to Jewish persecution.  

March 1, 1941

Bulgaria joins the Tripartite Pact.

Himmler orders the construction of a second death camp in Auschwitz called Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

March 2, 1941

German troops enter Bulgaria.

March 25, 1941

Yugoslavia joins the Tripartite Pact.

March 26, 1941

The German general staff gives the approval for the activities of the Einsatzgruppen (murder squads) in the Soviet Union.  The Wehrmacht will participate directly in the murder of civilians.

March 30, 1941

Hitler informs German military leaders that the upcoming war against the Soviet Union will be a war of “extermination.”

April 6, 1941

German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.

April 9, 1941

German forces occupy Salonica (Thessaloníki).  Fifty thousand Jews reside there.

April 27, 1941

Greece surrenders to the German and Italian armies.  After a protracted battle for conquering Greece, Germany intervenes on behalf of the Italian army.  This delays Hitler’s planned attack on the Soviet Union.

May 1941

As a result of Germany’s invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia, Roosevelt declares a national emergency.  The declaration will enable the US Congress to pass extraordinary legislation.

May 10, 1941

Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess commandeers an airplane and goes on a secret mission to negotiate a separate peace with the British government.  This action has not been authorized by Hitler and it is disavowed.  Hess is imprisoned by British authorities.

May 14, 1941

Thousands of Jews in Paris are rounded up pending deportation.

May 15, 1941

Vichy France declares policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany.

May 20, 1941

Gestapo issues circular prohibiting Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria.

Spring 1941

Defeated Greece is divided into three occupation zones.  Italy occupies most of the Greek peninsula, including Athens, Epirus and the Ionic Islands.  The zone is controlled by the Italian army and the Italian Foreign Ministry.  This zone has approximately 13,000 Jews.

June 1941

US State Department closes German consulates in the United States.  It bans pro-Nazi propaganda in the US.

US Congress passes Russell Bill, which permits US diplomats and consults in Europe to deny visas to refugees who, in their opinion, would “endanger the public safety of the United States.”  Breckinridge Long, who lobbied for this bill, did it to keep State Department diplomats in check. In response head of the Justice Department Francis Biddle asserts the right of the Justice Department to rule in favor of refugees in certain visa cases.  This removes some power from Breckinridge Long at the State Department.

June 1, 1942

Treblinka death camp begins operation.  More than 700,000 Jews are murdered there by mid-1943.

June 5, 1941

US State Department institutes additional policies discouraging help for refugees from German occupied countries.  It requires consuls in Europe to submit visa applications to Washington for review of those applicants who have “close relatives” in Nazi-occupied territories.  Since most of these applicants in fact have relatives, this slows down their visa applications.  This law applies to immigrants from Germany, Austria, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, occupied France, Poland and the Balkans.  The “close relative” clause states: “…the fact that a relative of the first degree of consanguinity, with whom the applicant had maintained close family ties [father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children], remains abroad in any country or territory under the control of a country whose form of government is opposed to the form of government of the United States may be considered with other evidence that the ties between such relative and the applicant would make the entry of the applicant prejudicial to the public safety or inimical to the interests of the United States.”

In addition to the above, all refugees are required to get the endorsement of two US sponsors.  One sponsor must vouch for the financial solvency of the refugee and the other to attest to their moral qualifications.  Under these regulations, refugees are forced to go through three separate review committees: a primary committee, an independent visa review committee, and if the application is denied a Board of Appeals. An elaborate visa application is then filled out in sextuplicate and distributed to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI, Military and Naval Intelligence, and the State Department.  It takes 3-6 weeks to process the forms.  As a result, the application process falls 4-5 months behind schedule for each applicant.  Applicants are divided between “friendly aliens” (not escaping from Nazi-occupied countries) and “enemy aliens” (escaping from Germany, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria or Hungary).  Applicants who are rejected have to wait six months to reapply for a visa.  They are not told the reason that their visa was turned down.  If the applicant clears all these hurdles, the local consulate is cabled by Washington and the visa can be approved at the discretion of the consul if the immigration quota is not yet filled.  The refugee must on their own obtain exit visas to leave the country from which they are escaping.  They must also obtain transportation to the point of departure and, ultimately, to the United States.  The visa process is time-sensitive.  If the refugee cannot secure paperwork from the foreign government and transportation, his US visa application could be cancelled and the whole process started over.

These regulations immediately trap 3,000 refugees in Lisbon bound for the United States.  Many thousands more are trapped in Germany and Nazi-occupied areas.

June 6, 1941

Hitler issues the Commissar Order.  It authorizes the German army to murder any and all Soviet authorities in the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union.

June 7, 1941

Jews are ordered to wear the yellow star in occupied France.  Many Jews refuse to wear the star and some French citizens wear stars and yellow flowers in solidarity with persecuted Jews.

June 18, 1941

Turkey and Germany sign a friendship treaty.

June 20, 1941

Act denying aliens who would endanger the public safety admission to the US: “whenever any American diplomatic or consular officer knows or has reason to believe that any alien seeks to enter the United States for the purpose of engaging in activities which will endanger the public safety of the United States, he shall refuse to issue to such alien any immigration visa, passport visa, transit certificate, or other document entitling such alien to present himself for admission to the United States.”

June 21, 1941

The Bloom-Van Nuys Immigration Law is passed and takes effect on July 1.  Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long lobbies for this bill.  It was meant to encourage US consuls stationed in Europe to deny entry to the US by refugees based on the possibility that they could endanger public safety.  This law is intended to prevent refugees from receiving visas.  A clause in this law called the “close relative clause,” denies visas to people who have relatives in Nazi-occupied territories.  Almost all refugees have close relatives in their home countries.  This restrictive clause sends a clear message to US embassies and consulates that help to refugees is to be restricted and discouraged.  This act imposes upon immigrants five complicated levels of visa application review.  This complicated review is designed to take power away from local consuls to make independent decisions regarding the suitability of the immigrant to enter the US.  Decisions by diplomats often have to be reviewed by the Department of State, Navy and Army intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the FBI.  Refugees denied visas have long, complicated appeals processes.  The process often takes up to five months to process applications.  More than one half of visa applications are rejected by the US State Department.  The strict provisions of the Bloom-Van Nuys Act are not rescinded until May 1945.  For the rest of the war, only a small fraction of US immigration quotas for German, Austrian, French and other European refugees will be filled. 

Long further imposes on diplomats and consuls the regulation that potential refugees must obtain exit visas from the countries they are leaving, to include Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Southern France, before they can obtain an entry visa to the US.  These exit visas from Nazi government are extremely difficult to obtain.  Long understands that these regulations will tie up refugees in elaborate rules and regulations of government red tape, stating: “We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States.  We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to resort to various administrative advices which would postpone and postpone the granting of visas.”

James McDonald, of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees (PACPR) is outraged by the Bloom-Van Nuys Act: “The so-called relative rule should be cancelled or substantially modified.  Our experience with refugees has convinced us that it is unnecessary, illogical, ill-adapted to the purposes claimed for it, and cruelly burdensome on the refugees affected by it.”

A number of US diplomats independently subvert the intention of the Bloom-Van Nuys Act and provide visas to a number of Jewish refugees.

June 22, 1941

Breaking the non-aggression pact of 1939, German army invades Soviet Union; called “Operation Barbarossa;” Germany is now fighting a two-front war.  The Wehrmacht, with 150 divisions and more than three million men, invade and occupy much of the western Soviet Union.

Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) begin mass murder of Jews, civilians and Communist leaders. More than one and a half million people are murdered by the Einsatzgruppen.

June 24, 1941

Wehrmacht occupies Kovno and Vilna, Lithuania.  Einsatzgruppen [murder squads] immediately begin murdering Jews.

June 27, 1941

Hungary enters the war against the Allies.

June 28, 1941

The Wehrmacht occupies the Soviet city of Minsk in the western USSR.  It surrounds 27 Soviet divisions.

June 30-July 29, 1941

A series of Lviv actions are committed by the Ukrainian militia, German murder squads, Ukrainian nationalists (specifically, the OUN), and urban population. In the eastern city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), 6,000-7,000 Polish Jews are murdered in addition to 3,000 arrests and mass shootings by Einsatzgruppe C.

July 1, 1941

New regulations by the State Department centralize alien visa control at the US Department of State.  Applications for visas are required to be submitted to the State Department before they are referred to the consuls in the field.  “As cases will be considered and action taken by the consuls under the law strictly according to the facts of the cases, special consideration may not be accorded and should not be requested.”

Wehrmacht occupies Riga, Latvia.  18,000 Jews are murdered by the end of the month.

July 9, 1941

Unable to win the air war over England, Hitler calls off Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Great Britain.

July 15, 1941

US consulates in Nazi occupied Europe are closed.  These include consulates in Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium.  Escape routes from these areas are cut off from legal emigration.

July 23, 1941

In July, the famed photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, managed to get into Moscow to the embassy residence so as to document the German bombings. On the nights of July 23 and July 26 she and Steinhardt lay on their backs on the roof of Spaso House while she photographed German bombs, Nazi parachute flares, tracer bullets, and anti-aircraft gunshots streaking across the nighttime sky overhead. Her portfolio assignment produced startling visual imagery to the American public in the issue of Life Magazine Vol 11, No 9., pp. 15-21. dated September 1, 1941. Kuybyshev

July 28, 1941

Former US diplomat Alfred Wagg publishes a series of articles in the New Republic magazine highly critical of the visa policy of the US State Department.  He accuses the State Department of widespread antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiments in the US Foreign Service.

July 31, 1941

Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the “Final Solution.”

August 1942

Reports about the gassings of Jews at Belzec death camp, near Lublin, are relayed to the Vatican.  Jewish agencies send memoranda outlining the murder in Poland.

August 14, 1941

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sign Atlantic Charter.  This is an eight point document declaring joint US and British peace aims.

August 15, 1941

German government stops issuing exit visas to Jews.

August 17, 1941

Sikorski-Mayski agreement between Soviet Union and Poland is signed in London. Stalin agrees to declare all previous pacts that he made with Nazi Germany null and void, to invalidate the September 1939 partition of Poland.

August 21-September 26, 1941

Wehrmacht encircles city of Kiev and captures 665,000 Soviet prisoners.

August 27, 1941

Breckinridge Long meets with FDR to reinforce Long’s negative views on issuing visas to refugees.  In his diary, Long claims FDR is in agreement with this restrictive policy.

July 28, 1941

Former US diplomat Alfred Wagg publishes a series of articles in the New Republic magazine highly critical of the visa policy of the US State Department.  He accuses the State Department of widespread antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiments in the US Foreign Service.

July 31, 1941

Hermann Göring appoints Reinhardt Heydrich to implement the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

September 1941

Representative Emanuel Celler introduces a bill into the US House of Representatives that calls for letting refugees from France enter the US. Celler’s bill dies in committee.

September 3, 1941

Experimental gassing of Soviet POWs in Auschwitz.

September 2, 1941

Francis Biddle and James G. MacDonald convince FDR to liberalize the “close relative clause” and the visa policy for refugees.  In a small way, this helps refugees in their appeals process.  The rate of visa rejection is lowered by 15%.

Rabbi Wise contacts US State Department with information about the Nazis’ plan to murder European Jews.  The State Department advises Wise to remain silent until the information is verified.

September 3, 1941

Experimental gassing of Soviet POWs in Auschwitz.

September 17, 1941

The beginning of the general deportation of German Jews to the death camps.

September 19, 1941

In Germany, Jews are forced to wear the yellow star.

September 26, 1942

Kazimierz Papée, the Polish Ambassador to the Vatican, and American envoy Myron C. Taylor prepare memos to Vatican Secretary of State reporting on the mass murder of Jews at killing centers.

September 29-30, 1941

German murder squads kill 33,771 Jews in Babi Yar, near Kiev.  Eventually more than 100,000 people will be murdered there.

October 1941

German and Austrian Jews are deported to ghettoes in Eastern Europe.

Only 4,800 visa applications out of 9,500 have been approved by the US State Department for refugees.  The US State Department and Department of Justice disagree on refugee visa policy and security issues.

October 1, 1941

All legal emigration out of German occupied territories is stopped by Gestapo order.  It is estimated that 163,000 Jews are still living in the Greater Reich.

October 10, 1941

Cardinal Roncalli, Nuncio to Turkey, has an audience with Pope Pius XII.  Roncalli writes in his private diary, “He [the Pope] asked me if his silence regarding Nazism was not judged badly.”

Roncalli arranges for shiploads of wheat and other food for the starving Greek people.

October 12, 1941

In Stanisławów – a provincial capital in the Kresy macroregion (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) – the single largest massacre of Polish Jews prior to Aktion Reinhardt is perpetrated. 10-12,000 Jews are murdered in one day. It is known as the Blutsonntag (de), or the Bloody Sunday.

October 15, 1941

Nazi authorities pass a law imposing the death penalty for all Jews who leave the ghettoes without permission or for “persons who knowingly provide hiding places for Jews.”

October 16, 1941

Wehrmacht occupies Odessa, Russia.  Soon 19,000 Jews are murdered by Einsatzgruppen [killing squads].

October 23, 1941

Himmler orders that no more Jews are to emigrate from the German occupied zones.  This order takes effect in France in February 1942.

October 27, 1941

Monsignor Burzio sends a detailed report to the Vatican regarding the systematic murder of Jews in Europe.  This is the first Vatican-produced report regarding the massacre of Jews.

October 29, 1942

An American consul in Geneva, Paul Squire, attempts to disseminate information on the Holocaust.  He is unsuccessful.

November 10, 1941

All emigration of Jews from Austria now officially prohibited.  126,445 Jews have been able to emigrate from Austria, thousands with diplomatic visa. 

November 11, 1942

Germans and Italians occupy southern France. The Italian Army and Foreign Ministry officials occupy and administer eight French departments east of the Rhône River, in southern France.  A French government remains in place, but the Italians control the area.  In these zones, French Jews and other refugees are protected until the Italians surrender and leave southern France in September 1943. Italian forces and diplomats refuse to enforce anti-Semitic measures in their zones.  They refuse to allow any forced labor camps in their occupation zones.  Further, the Italian occupying Army prevent any arrests or deportations of Jews in their area.  By 1943, more than 50,000 Jews flee to the Italian zone.   

November 12, 1941

Franklin Mott Gunther, the US Minister in Bucharest, Romania, sends Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull a detailed report describing the atrocities committed by the Iron Guard in Romania against Jews. 

November 25, 1941

American rescue activist Varian Fry writes to his replacement Daniel Bénédite from New York City.  He states: “It is also growing harder and harder to get money for our work.  It was never a very popular appeal, the idea of bringing foreigners over in time of war.  There is an exaggerated zenophobia [sic] in all countries in war time: today not even the ‘experts’ in the Department of State seem able to distinguish between friend and foe.”  Fry continues about the visa situation: “The visa situation is despairing.  The requirement of two affidavits of support is alone enough to make it almost impossible to get visas for people who have no rich and close relatives here.  Then the Department grants visas with record speed to Italian princes and the like but holds up those of refugees for months.  I am afraid that there is a situation in Washington similar to that which prevailed at the Faubourg St. Germain not so long ago.  You know what I mean, I guess.  I am writing an article about it, and will send you a copy, when it appears.  One might almost say that the State Department has become America’s open scandal.  Everybody talks about, but nobody does anything about, this extraordinary situation.  And yet wars have been lost by Trojan Horses within the gates.”

December 1941

Germany Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories declares, “As a matter of principle, no consideration should be given to economic interest…”  This statement declares that killing Jews takes precedence over all other considerations, including use of Jewish labor for the war effort.

December 1941

The US Congress authorizes $10 billion of lend-lease assistance to the Allies.

December 1-5, 1941

The German army reaches the outer suburbs of Moscow.

December 5, 1941

The Soviets launch a major counteroffensive against the German army’s attack on Moscow.  

December 7, 1941

Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.  America declares war on Japan and, the next day, on Germany.

Night and Fog Decree: Hitler orders the suppression of anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Western Europe.

December 8, 1941

The United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Japan.

Gassing of Jews begins at Chelmno extermination camp in Poland.  Jews are herded into trucks and vans, where they are asphyxiated.  320,000 Jews are eventually murdered in Chelmno.

By the end of December 1941, the Nazis have murdered more than one million Jews.

December 10, 1941

The United States declares war on Germany and Italy.  The vast majority of the war effort will be directed at winning the war against Germany.

December 14, 1941

Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Washington, DC.

December 16, 1941

The German army forces of Army Group Center, who are attacking Moscow, begin to retreat as a result of Soviet Marshall Zhukov’s counterattack.

December 25, 1941

British armed forces in Hong Kong surrender to the Japanese army.

1942

By the end of December 1941, the Nazis have murdered more than one million Jews.

2.7 million Jews will be murdered this year.  The Aktion Reinhardt death camps are established in Poland.  They are Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.  These camps are established with the specific purpose of murdering Jews.  They are named after SS security chief Reinhardt Heydrich, who was assassinated earlier in Czechoslovakia.  1.7 million Jews are killed in these camps from March 1942 through November 1943.  Most of the Jews killed are from the area of the General Government of Poland.

Numerous reports reach the Allies regarding the murder of millions of Jews in Eastern Europe.

1942

Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Papal Nuncio to Greece and Turkey, participates in the aid and rescue of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe.  He reports to the Vatican on the murder of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  He works with other Nuncios, including Monsignor Angelo Rotta in Hungary.  He also works with US Ambassador in Turkey Laurence A. Steinhardt and Raymond Courvoiser, International Red Cross Director in Turkey.  Among the Jews saved by Roncalli are Slovakian Jews caught in Hungary and Slovakia, Jews trapped in Transnistra, a Romanian-administered territory, and Jews in Budapest.  He distributes, by diplomatic pouch to Vatican representatives, various Vatican documents that place Jews under the protection of the Holy See.  He also works with the Agency for Palestine (Yishuv) and distributes immigration certificates.  Roncalli eventually participates in helping an estimated 24,000 Jews.

January 1, 1942

The United Nations is founded in Washington, DC.  26 nations sign an agreement to defeat Hitler and his allies.

The U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps is established to investigate and apprehend Nazi war criminals.  Many Holocaust survivors will volunteer for this organization after liberation.

January 12, 1942,

Steinhardt is appointed Ambassador to Turkey. His mission directives included buying up all the available sources of chrome the Nazis needed for the manufacture of steel for their war machine. More importantly and much more challenging was the deep rooted presence in Istanbul of the highest flange of German diplomats led by German Ambassador Franz von Papen whose objective was to bring Turkey into the German side of the war. Steinhardt's mission directive was to bring Turkey into the allied side of the war. From this posting, Ambassador Steinhardt becomes extremely active in helping Jews and other refugees escape from Eastern Europe.  Turkey becomes a natural area of refuge and an escape route for Jews from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.

January 13, 1942

The governments in exile of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia condemn the murder of their citizens by the Germans.  Jews are not specifically mentioned.

January 20, 1942

Wannsee Conference in Berlin; Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe’s Jews. Between 1942 and 1944, the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the mass murder of millions of Jews from Poland and all over Europe was carried out in six death camps.

January 27, 1942

President Roosevelt, in a private conversation with Leo Crowley, Wartime Alien Property Custodian, states: “Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance.  It is up to both of you [Crowley and Henry Morgenthau, a Jew and Secretary of the Treasury] to go along with anything that I want at this time.”

February 2, 1942

Varian Fry writes from his home in New York City to his replacement in Marseille, Daniel Bénédite.  “The visa situation becomes more and more despairing every day.  It has now boiled down to a question of wire-pulling, as we say in America.  In other words, about the only way to get a visa for anybody now is to get some very important, influential person to bring pressure on the State Department for it.  All the Modern Art cases are being held up for no reason under the sun, so far as anybody can see, and the Modern Art people are scurrying around trying to get somebody like Ambassador Bullitt or Mrs. Secretary Perkins, to speak to Sumner Welles about them.  But Ambassador Bullitt and Mrs. Secretary Perkins are naturally extremely busy and it is very hard to get at them.  It’s rather like the atmosphere at the court of Louis XIV, isn’t it?  If only you can get the ear of someone who has the ear of le Roi Soleil, perhaps you can get the favor you want.  Otherwise, there is no hope at all.  I often wonder how the boys in the Visa Division put in their days.  Sharpening pencils, I suppose, which they then chew until they need sharpening again.”  Fry continues: “I doubt whether there will be more than extremely rare exceptions to the rule that no more visas are to be given to ‘enemy aliens’—if, in fact, there are any exceptions at all.”

February 15, 1942

First transport of Jews murdered at Auschwitz using Zyklon B gas.

British army surrenders to Japan in Singapore.

February 24, 1942

The ship SS Struma is sunk off the coast of Turkey.  The ship is carrying 700 Jewish refugees attempting to reach Palestine.  All drown except one.

March 1, 1942

Construction of the Sobibor death camp in Poland begins.  It begins its murderous activities in May 1942. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Belzec, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

March 10, 1942

Catholic Archbishop Fellipo Bernardini, the Vatican nuncio in Switzerland, appeals to leaders in Slovakia to cancel deportations.

March 13, 1942

Vatican Nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, forwards an appeal from the World Jewish Congress requesting the Pope to persuade Slovakian leader and Catholic Monsignor Tiso to cancel the deportation of Slovakian Jews.  A subsequent note of protest to the Slovak government from the Vatican Secretary of State is ignored.

March 19, 1942

Archbishop Bernardini sends a report to the Vatican on the condition of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe.  He reports information received from Gerhardt Riegner of the World Jewish Congress.  Bernardini asks for Papal intervention on behalf of Jews.

March 21, 1942

Rotta sends a second appeal to Tiso.  The chief rabbi of Budapest asks Rotta to petition the Pope to intervene on behalf of Jews with the Slovakian government: “at least to alleviate as much as possible the sad lot of these unfortunate people, among whom there are many women and children, destined in large part to a certain death.” 

March 25, 1942

British envoy to the Holy See, Francis de Arcy Osborne, requests that the Vatican intervene on behalf of Jews being deported in Slovakia.

March 27, 1942

First deportation of Jews from France to Auschwitz.

Introduction of the yellow star in Belgium leads to widespread protest by the Belgian people to this order.  Many Belgians wore a similar badge in solidarity with their Jewish countrymen.

May 5, 1943

Deputy Head of the US Visa Section of the State Department Robert Alexander suggests in a memo that Jews in the United States are “in league with Hitler” and are hampering the US war effort.

Cordell Hull writes FDR, “The unknown cost of moving an undetermined number of persons from an undisclosed place to an unknown destination, a scheme advocated by certain pressure groups, is, of course, out of the question.”

May 7, 1942

Battle of the Coral Sea. Victory of the US Navy over Japanese.

May 10-11, 1942

The Biltmore Resolution is adopted by the Conference of American Zionists.  It advocates a policy to establish a state to be the Jewish homeland in Palestine.

May 19, 1943

President Roosevelt writes Secretary of State Hull rejecting the idea of using North Africa as a safe refuge for Jews.  Roosevelt says: “That would be extremely unwise.”

May 27, 1942

Forcing the Jews to wear yellow stars leads to protests in Belgium.  The Greater Brussels City Council will not distribute the star.

May 28, 1942

Varian Fry writes from his home in New York City to Daniel Bénédite in Marseille.  Fry is writing about the visa situation.  “Alas, the visa outlook is growing darker and darker every day.  You know that Cuban visas have been stopped, and even those already granted to so-called ‘enemy aliens’ have been cancelled…The United States continues to grant visas, but so slowly and after such long delays that one goes almost frantic waiting for them.  There seems to be absolutely nothing to do to speed up a case even when it is a very urgent and important one.”

May 30-31, 1942

A “thousand bomber” air raid by the British air force is launched against Cologne, Germany.

June 1, 1942

Treblinka death camp begins operation.  More than 700,000 Jews are murdered there by mid-1943.

June 3-6, 1942

The Battle of Midway, between US and Japanese naval forces.  The US sinks three Japanese aircraft carries, resulting in the turning of the tide in the war of the Pacific in favor of the Allies.

June 7, 1942

All Jews in France are ordered to wear the Jewish star.  Many Jews decide not to wear the star.  French population resists identifying Jews with the stars, and the French people are outspoken in their protests.

June 25, 1942

Roosevelt and Churchill meet in Washington, DC.

June 26, 1942

Deportations from the Netherlands to Auschwitz begin.

July 1942

Deportation of Jews to killing centers from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland.

The World Jewish Congress publishes a report about the Nazi mass murder in Eastern Europe.  According to this report, gathered from reliable sources, the Congress estimates that more than a million Jews have been murdered.

When Nazi deportations begin in Belgium, there are widespread rescue efforts on behalf of Jews in Belgium.  As many as 80,000 Jews go into hiding to avoid forced labor. More than 25,000 Jews remain in hiding in Belgium.  Many of them are helped to escape to Switzerland.

July 1, 1942

The Polish government in exile issues a report to the Allied nations detailing the murder of 700,000 Jews since the German invasion and occupation in September 1939.  This report reveals the use of mobile gas vans at Chelmno.  Ninety Jews are murdered at a time in each of these vans by carbon monoxide.  More than a thousand people are murdered a day.

July 4, 1942

Deportation of Jews from Belgium to Auschwitz begins.  25,000 Jews go into hiding with non-Jewish Belgian families.

July 19, 1942

Himmler orders the Jews in the General Government of Poland to be killed by the end of the year.

July 22, 1942

Construction begins on the Treblinka death camp near Warsaw.  It begins its murderous operation in August 1942.  More than 870,000 Jews are murdered there.  Most are from the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, 265,000 Jews from Warsaw are murdered in Treblinka.

August 1942

25,000 Jews in France are deported to Auschwitz.  Most of them are murdered upon arrival.

Reports about the gassings at Belzec, near Lublin, are relayed to the Vatican.  Jewish agencies send memoranda outlining the murder in Poland.

Following the mass deportations of Jews from the occupied and unoccupied zones of France, Spain’s border continues as a vital escape route for Jewish refugees.  By October, several hundred Jewish refugees have escaped across the border.

Eduard Schulte, an important Germany industry leader, reports on the planned murder of Jews in Europe.

August 1, 1942

Gerhardt Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, learns from a top German industrialist, Eduard Schulte, that Nazi Germany is planning to murder Jews using poisonous prussic acid gas (Zyklon B).

August 8, 1942

Gerhardt Riegner cables Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in New York and Sydney Silverman in London regarding Nazi implementation of a plan to murder European Jewry.  Riegner hopes that this report will initiate a worldwide mass rescue effort to save Jews.  Most of Europe’s Jews are still alive.  The US State Department delays delivery of the cable to Wise. 

This information is sent to the State Department by US diplomat Howard Elting, Jr., who is stationed at the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

August 21, 1942

Goran von Otter, a Swedish consular official in Berlin, receives a secret report from German SS officer Kurt Gerstein, who has personally witnessed a gassing of Jews in a Polish killing center.  Gerstein is a member of a Protestant resistance group.

August 26, 1942

Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., the US Ambassador to several European governments in exile, forwards a report written by Ernest Frischer, a member of the Czechoslovakian State Council, to the US State Department.  It outlines the murder of Jews in central Europe.  Frischer’s report stresses that the Jews are being singled out for total destruction by the Nazis.

August 27 and 31, 1942

US Consul Paul Chapin Squire, stationed at the embassy in Bern, Switzerland, forwards a report to the US State Department by Dr. Donald A. Lowrie representing the YMCA in Geneva.  Lowrie describes the deportation of Jews from southern France.  He concludes that the deportation would eventually lead to their murder.

August 28, 1942

US Secretary of State Sumner Wells meets with Dr. Stephen Wise regarding the reports from the Swiss embassy in Bern.  He confirms the accuracy of the reports and tells Dr. Wise, “I regret to tell you that these [reports] confirm and justify your deepest fears.”

Summer 1942-September 1943 - Italian Diplomatic Rescue in Croatia and Yugoslavia

With German cooperation, the anti-Semitic Ustasha party in Croatia destroys entire villages and murders thousands of Jews and Serbs.  Italian soldiers and diplomats refuse to look the other way.  Without instructions, they rescue thousands of Jews by allowing them into the Italian protected zones.  Word spreads in Croatia and thousands of other Jews and Serbs flee from German to Italian zones.  Germans vigorously protest these rescue activities. Eventually, these complaints go all the way to fascist leader Mussolini. Convinced by his diplomatic corps, Mussolini resists Hitler’s order to deport Jews to concentration camps. 

September 1942

Several Vatican diplomats request that Pope Pius XII end his public silence on Nazi atrocities against Jews.  The Pope secretly tells nuncios to take direct action to help Jews who are being murdered.  He states: “The Holy See has done, is doing, and will do all in its power to help.”

September 6, 1942

Catholic Cardinal Pierre Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyons, protests deportation of Jews from France.

September 26, 1942

Kazimierz Papée, the Polish Ambassador to the Vatican, and American envoy Myron C. Taylor prepare memos to Vatican Secretary of State reporting on the mass murder of Jews at killing centers.

November 1942

The Allied armies turn the tide of the war in North Africa at the battle of El Alamein in Egypt.  German General Rommel’s army retreats.

President Roosevelt announces that the US will propose the establishment of a war crimes commission to collect information on the acts of war criminals and to establish criteria for punishment of the perpetrators after the war.  The US Ambassador to Britain, John G. Winant, is asked to prepare information regarding the proposed war crimes commission.  He collects additional reports and information about Nazi war crimes.  Winant receives more than 200 appeals demanding support for the creation of this commission and in support of actions on behalf of Jews.  The US State Department delays issuing its recommendations.

The Jewish community in British controlled Palestine, called the Yishuv, receives information about the murder of Jews in Europe.

November 9, 1942

The German and Italian armies occupy Tunisia in reaction to the Allied invasion of North Africa.  Italian occupying officials will protect Jews in Tunisia.

November 8-16, 1942

The Allies land in North Africa, in Algeria and Morocco.  As a response, the Germans and Italians occupy southern France.  This occupation extends to the Mediterranean coast.  The operation is called “Torch.”  There is no French resistance to this occupation. 

November 1942-September 1943 - France

Beginning in November of 1942, the Italian Army and Foreign Ministry officials occupy and administer eight French departments east of the Rhône River, in southern France.  A French government remains in place, but the Italians control the area.  In these zones, French Jews and other refugees are protected until the Italians surrender and leave southern France in September 1943.

November 24, 1943

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drafts a letter to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, objecting to the State Department’s slow approval of the transfer of funds for the rescue of Jews in France and Romania.

November 26, 1943

Breckinridge Long continues his campaign against Jewish immigration to the United States.  He gives misleading testimony about immigration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Long intentionally exaggerates the number of refugees admitted to the country.  Long claims that 547,775 refugees have entered the country.  Yet, between December 1941 and the end of the war, only 163,843 Jewish refugees are admitted to the US and they comprise only 5.9% of the US quota available for Axis-controlled countries.

Jewish groups and refugee advocates sharply criticize Long for his gross exaggeration of the number of refugees entering the country.  They also criticize the State Department’s restrictive immigration policy and regulations.

Breckinridge Long also testifies before a Congressional committee that there is inadequate shipping to take Jewish refugees from Europe to the United States.  Yet, by this time, more than 200,000 prisoners of war are shipped to the US.  By the end of the war, 435,400 POWs are sent from Europe to the US.

December 7, 1942

The London Times observes, “The question now arises whether the Allied governments, even now, can do anything to prevent Hitler’s threat of extermination from being literally carried out.”  The German government gives occupied countries deadlines for the expulsion of their Jews.  The Times further reports, “The dates are freely given on the Axis wireless or in reports from Berlin… In all parts of Europe, the Germans are calling meetings, or issuing orders, about what they call ‘the final solution of the Jewish problem.’”  German newspapers state that since September 1942, 185,000 Jews have been deported from Romania to Transnistria.  They report that all the Jews of Croatia and Slovakia have been moved to Eastern Poland.

December 8, 1942

Stephen Wise and a Jewish delegation meet with President Roosevelt in the White House.  They give the President a document entitled Blueprint for Extermination.  It is a detailed analysis of the murder of millions of Jews.  The President expresses profound shock.

December 10, 1942

The Polish government in London issues a report called The Mass Extermination of Jews in German-Occupied Poland.  This report is widely publicized.

December 12, 1942

Archbishop Anthony Springovics of Riga, Latvia, reports to the Vatican that most of the Jews of Riga have been murdered.

December 13, 1942

Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, Josef Goebbels, enters in his diary, “The question of Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top news priority by the English and the Americans…At bottom, however, I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff raff.”  He also complains about Italy’s halfhearted persecution of its Jews.

December 17, 1942

The United States, Great Britain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French government in exile make a joint declaration of condemnation against the murder of European Jews.  They declare their intention to prosecute Nazi war criminals after the war.  This declaration makes headlines around the world.  Thousands of letters are sent to the US State Department and the British Foreign Ministry at Whitehall regarding this declaration.  Swiss officials continue to state that reports of atrocities are unverified Allied propaganda.  These reports are, in fact, verified by the liberal press in Switzerland.

December 24, 1942

Pope Pius XII, in his Christmas message, in a thinly veiled reference to Jews, states “hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or slow decline.”

1943

Hundreds of thousands of Jews are murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka, near Warsaw.  250,000 Jews are murdered in Sobibor’s gas chambers.  On November 3, 1943, 42,000 Jews are rounded up and shot in the Lublin district of Poland.  The code name for this operation is Erntefest, which means harvest festival.  In 1943, it is estimated that 500,000 Jews are murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe.

January 14-24, 1943

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt hold conference in Casablanca, Morocco, to discuss the future of the Allied war effort against Germany.

January 18-22, 1943

Second phase of the deportation of the Jews of Warsaw begins. 

First Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins. Jewish partisan organizations resist, German attempts for additional deportations to Auschwitz and Treblinka. A highly developed network of bunkers and fortifications are constructed. The Ghetto fighters receive support from the Polish Underground (Armia Krajowa). It takes the Germans twenty-seven days to put down the uprising, after very heavy fighting. The final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto is four months later.

January 21, 1943

Gerhardt Riegner provides additional information about the murder of Jews to Minister Harrison at the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.  He reports that 6,000 Jews are being killed every day in Poland.  He further reports on the 130,000 Romanian Jews who had been forcibly deported to Transnistria in 1941.  Sixty thousand Jews had already been murdered, and the rest were being starved.

February 2, 1943

The German Sixth Army surrenders to the Soviet Army at Stalingrad, Russia.  This event is considered the major turning point in World War II.  Total German casualties in the Sixth Army are 160,000 dead and 107,000 captured.

February 4, 1943

Field Marshall Montgomery’s British forces are victorious over Rommel’s Africa Corps at El Alemein.

February 4, 1943

Archbishop of Canterbury, in England, condemns murder of Jews in Europe.

February 10, 1943

US Ambassador to Switzerland Leland Harrison is sent a message from the US State Department not to communicate with private citizens regarding reports of atrocities against Jews.  This is sent despite the US and British pledges to help Jews and punish war criminals.

February 12, 1943

The New York Times reports, “The Romanian government has communicated to United Nations officials that it is prepared to cooperate in the transferring of 70,000 Romanian Jews from Transnistria to any refuge selected by the Allies, according to neutral sources.  This proposal, which was made in specific terms, suggests the refugees would be moved in Romanian ships which would be permitted to display the insignia of the Vatican to ensure safe passage.”  The Allies fail to respond to this offer.

February 22, 1943

Bulgaria and Germany sign an agreement stipulating the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to Poland.  Bulgaria agrees to deliver 50,000 Jews to the Germans.  This is the only time that a formal contract for the murder of Jews is written.

February 25, 1943

The US and Britain begin day and night bombing raids of Germany.

February 26, 1943

H. Shoemaker, the former US Ambassador to Bulgaria, makes a broadcast appeal to the Bulgarian people to resist the impending deportation of Jews. 

February 27, 1943

Christian wives of Jews who have been arrested begin protest at the Berlin Gestapo headquarters on Rosenstrasse.  By March, the protest gains the attention of Goebbels and Hitler.  The husbands are soon released.

February 26, 1943

Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta in Budapest reports to the Vatican that there are 27,000 Jews remaining in Slovakia.  Many of them are converts who are in danger of being deported.

March 1943

King Boris X and the Bulgarian parliament defy the Nazis by rescinding the order to deport Bulgarian Jews.  Although the Bulgarians have previously allowed the deportation of thousands of Jews to Treblinka from Thrace, Macedonia and Serbia, they stop the deportation of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, who survive the war.  This amounts to 100% of the Bulgarian Jews.

March 1943

The US State Department blocks the rescue of 70,000 Jews from France and Romania by refusing to transfer money to support a plan worked out by the World Jewish Congress.  Funds are blocked in Swiss bank accounts until the end of the war.  Agents of the Treasury Department discover this intentional delaying of the transfer of money.  They determine that this is being done by Breckinridge Long and other officials at the State Department.  A report on these activities is eventually submitted to Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury.  Morgenthau submits this report to President Roosevelt, which eventually leads to the creation of the War Refugee Board.

The Hebrew Immigration Aid Society releases a report that shows that only 228,964 visas, fewer than half of the 460,000 visas available, were issued by the US State Department.

The Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency in Turkey (Va’ad ha-Hatsala be-Kushta), acting on behalf of the Jewish Rescue Committee, is established in Istanbul, Turkey.  Headed by Chaim Barlas, it helps thousands of Jews escape from the Balkans to Palestine.

March 1, 1943

A massive rally in support of the rescue of Jews is held in Madison Square Garden.  The rally is sponsored by the Church Peace Union, the AFofL/CIO, and many other groups.  37,000 people attend the rally.

March 6, 1943

Vatican Secretary of State Maglione orders Monsignor Burzio to check Rotta’s report and to make every effort to prevent the deportations of Jews.

March 9, 1943

The US Senate passes the Barkley Resolution, which strongly advocates for the punishment of Nazis for war crimes.  The US House of Representatives passes a similar resolution on March 18.

King Boris X and members of the Bulgarian parliament defy the Nazis by rescinding the order to deport Bulgarian Jews.  Although Bulgaria has previously allowed the deportation of thousands of Jews to Treblinka from Thrace, Macedonia and Serbia, they prevent the deportation of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews.  With the help of the local population, Jews are dispersed and hidden in the countryside.

March 23, 1943

Archbishop Papandreou Damaskinos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, publishes a letter denouncing the deportation of Greece’s 77,000 Jews.  The letter is signed by 28 Greek leaders.  The letter further states that all Greek citizens must be entitled to the same treatment from the occupation authorities, regardless of race or religion.

March 25, 1943

Von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister, complains to Mussolini regarding lack of cooperation by the Italian diplomatic corps and Army in the Italian occupied zone of southern France.

March 27, 1943

Rabbi Wise receives information regarding the mass murder of Jews in Treblinka.  He calls on presidential envoy to the Vatican Myron Taylor with a proposal to establish a rescue group.

March 28, 1943

Jewish Congressional delegation and committee meet with FDR to protest State Department’s sabotaging of rescue efforts by its complicated screening procedure for visa applicants.  FDR does nothing.

April 1943

US Ambassador to Turkey Laurence Steinhardt is instrumental in getting Turkey to accept nearly 30,000 Balkan Jews, including many from Romania, for temporary refuge and transit for Palestine.

April 2, 1943

Bulgarian church leader Metropolitan Stephan, in meeting Holy Synod, warns of the imminent danger of deportation of Bulgarian Jews.

April 10, 1943

Spanish officials give approval for American relief organizations to operate in Spain.  These relief organizations have offices in the US embassy and funds for rescue efforts are provided by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

April 17, 1943

Hitler summons Hungarian Regent Admiral Horthy to Salzburg, Austria, to urge him to allow the Jews of Hungary to be ‘resettled.’  Horthy refuses: “The Jews cannot be exterminated or beaten to death.”

April 19-30, 1943

Bermuda Conference: British and American representatives meet in Bermuda to discuss rescue options, but fail to come up with any significant possibilities. The US has guaranteed the failure of this conference by significantly limiting any realistic or significant actions that could aid in the rescue of Jews.  The conferees declare “it would be unfair to put nationals who profess the Jewish faith on a priority list for relief.”

April 19-May 16, 1943

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Jews in the Warsaw ghetto resist German deportations to the Treblinka death camp.  This uprising lasts nearly a month and is the most successful Jewish revolt in Nazi-occupied Europe.  The news of the revolt spreads throughout Europe and inspires other ghettoes to resist.

May 4, 1943

Advertisement in the "The New York Times" is taken out by Jewish activists criticizes the Bermuda Conference as: "a mockery and a cruel jest." 

May 13, 1943

Tunisia is liberated by the Allied armed forces.

May 14, 1943

President Roosevelt decides it would be “extremely unwise” to bring Jewish refugees to camps in military zones in North Africa.

May 18, 1943

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is established.

May 19, 1943

The British Foreign Office approves of the idea of a Swedish proposal that would request that Germany release 20,000 Jewish children who would be transferred and taken care of in Sweden until the end of the war.  The Swedish government requests the United States and Great Britain to share the cost of food and medicine for these refugees.  The Swedish government had already allowed 35,000 Jews into Sweden up until this time.  The US State Department and British Foreign Ministry do not reply until January 1944, nearly eight months later.  The Swedish plan is abandoned.

May 20, 1943

The Italian Army establishes an internment camp as a safe haven for Yugoslavian and Slovakian Jews on the island of Rab (Arbe).

May 24, 1943

Bulgarians hold protest in Sofia against the proposed deportation of Jews.

June 1943

Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union.

Chief of the U.S. Visa Division admits that Spanish consulates are withholding visas from refugees who had advisory approvals. 

June 6, 1943

19,153 Bulgarian Jews are dispersed from Sofia into the Bulgarian countryside.  They are housed and fed by their neighbors.

June 28, 1943

Herbert Morrison, British Home Secretary, comes out against sending life-saving Palestine immigration certificates to Jews under Nazi control.  His objection is on the grounds that the Allies should not negotiate with the Nazis.

June 30, 1943

Churchill asks Roosevelt to provide relief for victims of the Nazis.  A refugee camp is set up in Fedhalla in North Africa.  By August 1944, 630 Jewish refugees will be moved to Fedhalla from Spain.

July 1943

Eichmann sends his SS assistant Alois Brunner to Paris with 25 men to speed up the deportations.  Brunner takes over operations at the Drancy camp.  Vichy announces it will no longer actively cooperate with the Germans in the arrest of French Jews.

July 9-10, 1943

Allied forces invade Sicily. This is the beginning of the liberation of mainland Europe.

July 16, 1943

British government tells Jewish Agency for Palestine that Jewish refugees who escape to Turkey will be given permission to enter Palestine.

Catholic priest Father Marie-Benoit has audience with Pope Pius XII.  He presents the Pope with documents regarding the persecution of Jews in France.  He asks for assistance in rescuing Jews in the Italian occupied zone in France. 

July 20, 1943

The Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe is held in New York City. More than 1500 people attend.

July 25, 1943

Benito Mussolini is overthrown; Pietro Badoglio sets up a new government in Italy. Italian Foreign Ministry orders the Defense Ministry not to release Jews on the island of Rab into German custody. The Italian Foreign Ministry reiterates to the Italian army not to release Jews from its zone for deportation.  In addition, the Foreign Ministry tries to arrange for transport of Jewish refugees to Italy.

July 28, 1943

A report is received by Jewish leaders in the U.S. tells that the death toll of European Jews has reached four million. 

Jan Karski, Polish diplomat/courier, meets with President Roosevelt and gives him eyewitness details of the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe.

August 1943

King Boris X of Bulgaria, whose country was officially aligned with Germany, refuses Hitler’s orders to deport Bulgaria’s Jews to Germany for extermination.  Jews hide in the countryside.  Two weeks later, on August 28, the king dies under mysterious circumstances. Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII, intercedes on behalf of Bulgarian Jews with King Boris.

August 1, 1943, 

“Operation Tidal Wave, the air attack by US Army Air Forces based in Libya and Southern Italy, began their daring strategic bombing mission over the Ploiesti refineries and oilfields in Romania in order to deny the German war machine of needed fuel. This was aided by the uses of the Norden bombsight for pinpoint accuracy. This is now considered by many WWII military historians as one of the costliest and bloodiest missions of WWII. Of the 53 aircraft and 660 crew members lost, many had little or no fuel to return to their bases, so they were instructed to ditch in neutral Turkey where there was a substantial American presence to assist and fall back on. Many a dark unlit night following the bombing raid, Steinhardt and his daughter, in a jeep with a small convoy of his embassy military personnel, sortied out into the wilds and desserts attempting to locate and return wounded American pilots, destroy the bombsights so the Germans would not know of their existence, return with the wounded, secretly patching them up by the embassy medical team and moving them quietly through channels back to their points of origin. Some were slipped out to the coast at Izmir and quietly put on sailboats bound for Lebanon or Palestine. Two flyers were smuggled out when Mrs. Steinhardt and her daughter suddenly announced their "shopping trip" to Beirut. Hidden under the sleeper bunks of Mrs. Steinhardt's train compartment, they remain unknown to all until arrival at the border when they wiggled out and off”.

August 14-24, 1943

The Quadrant Conference between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill is held in Quebec, Canada.  Churchill and Roosevelt agree to defeat Germany before Japan and aim for an invasion of France in May 1944.

September 1943

A bill is introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow refugees who don't endanger public safety to come to the U.S. temporarily. The bill doesn't reach the floor of either the House or Senate. 

September 3-8, 1943

The Allies invade southern Italy.  Italy surrenders.  An armistice is signed with the Allies, with Italian Marshal Badoglio.  The German Army and SS units move into Italy.  Mussolini is arrested.

September 8, 1943

The Italian government surrenders to the Allies and withdraws from the war.  Italian Armed Forces in Yugoslavia, southern France and parts of Greece return to Italy.  Thousands of Jewish refugees attempt to flee with them. The German Army and SS units move into Italy.

September 9, 1943

Nazis occupy former Italian zone in southern France.  Thousands of Jews are trapped around Nice.

Italy is cut in two.  The south is held by the Allies.  The central and north of Italy are occupied by the German army.

September 10, 1943

Germany Army occupies Rome.

Pope Pius XII opens Vatican properties, including churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, to house Jewish refugees who are seeking protection.  Some Jews are even hidden in Vatican City. After the German takeover, most Italian Jews go into hiding and into the underground.  Most get sanctuary from their neighbors and the general population.  Many are hidden in houses, farms and in the rural countryside.  Despite the extreme danger of hiding Jews from the Nazis, the greater part of the Italian people, for humanitarian reasons alone, risked their lives to save Jews. 

October 2, 1943

Beginning of rescue of 7,900 Danish Jews. Danish fisherman and policemen smuggle 98% of the nation’s Jews to neutral Sweden.  This is the most successful rescue operation by percentage of Jews in the war.  This action is supported by virtually the entire nation.  400 Jews are captured during the Nazi roundups.  Of these, fewer than 50 are killed by the Nazis, largely due to the interest and intervention by the Danish King and parliament.

October 13, 1943

Italy declares war on Germany.

October 15-16, 1943

SS troops begin “Black Sabbath” raid on the Jews of Rome.  1,127 Jews are rounded up and deported to Auschwitz.  Thousands of Jews go into hiding.  The German ambassador warns the Pope about the imminent deportation. The Pope subsequently instructs priests to give the Jews sanctuary.  The Vatican hides 477 Jews and 4,238 Jews are hidden in convents and monasteries in Rome.  In all, 5,615 Jews of Rome could not be found by the Nazis.

October 18, 1943

Italy declares war on Germany. 

In Nazi-occupied Rome, 1,035 Jews are arrested and deported to Auschwitz.

October 18-30, 1943

The Moscow Conference, between US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, is held.  It discusses the future of Europe after the Allied victory.

October 20, 1943

The World Jewish Congress requests that the American Red Cross declare Jews in ghettos and concentration camps to be treated as Prisoners of War.  This would provide Jews with Red Cross and Geneva Convention protection.  The Red Cross rejects the idea on the grounds that Germans consider Jews to be an internal problem.

November 1, 1943

Moscow Declaration is signed by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, notifying German leaders that they will be held responsible for crimes against humanity for the murder of Jews and others, and will be subject to extradition to the countries where the crimes were committed.  The declaration does not mention Jews.

November 9, 1943

US Senator Guy Gillette, along with Congressmen Will Rogers, Jr., and Joseph Baldwin, introduces a resolution to establish a presidential commission “of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of action to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe.”  The resolution becomes the basis for the War Refugee Board, which will be created in January 1944.

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) is established.

November 30, 1943

The Nazis order all Italian Jews into concentration camps.

November 1943

Breckinridge Long continues his campaign against Jewish immigration to the United States.  He gives misleading testimony about immigration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Between December 1941 and the end of the war, only 21,000 refugees are admitted to the US and they comprise only ten percent of the US quota available for Axis-controlled countries.

Roosevelt elected President of the US for a fourth term.

November 22-26, 1943

The Cairo Conference (codenamed Sextant) is held in Cairo, Egypt, it outlines the Allied war strategy against Japan during World War II and made decisions about postwar Asia. The meeting is attended by President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China.

November 24, 1943

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drafts a letter to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, objecting to the State Department’s slow approval of the transfer of funds for the rescue of Jews in France and Romania.

November 26, 1943

Breckinridge Long continues his campaign against Jewish immigration to the United States.  He gives misleading testimony about immigration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Long intentionally exaggerates the number of refugees admitted to the country.  Long claims that 547,775 refugees have entered the country.  Yet, between December 1941 and the end of the war, only 163,843 Jewish refugees are admitted to the US and they comprise only 5.9% of the US quota available for Axis-controlled countries.

Jewish groups and refugee advocates sharply criticize Long for his gross exaggeration of the number of refugees entering the country.  They also criticize the State Department’s restrictive immigration policy and regulations.

Breckinridge Long also testifies before a Congressional committee that there is inadequate shipping to take Jewish refugees from Europe to the United States.  Yet, by this time, more than 200,000 prisoners of war are shipped to the US.  By the end of the war, 435,400 POWs are sent from Europe to the US. 

November 27, 1943

The Cairo Declaration is issued and released in a Cairo Communiqué through radio on December 1, 1943, stating the Allies' intentions to continue using military force until Japan's unconditional surrender. The main clauses of the Cairo Declaration are that the three great allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan in the Pacific.

November 28-December 1, 1943

Teheran Conference is held with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.

December 1943

By the end of 1943, 28 countries are at war with Germany.  Not one country, including the United States and Great Britain, is actively involved in the rescue of Jews.

John Pehle and Josiah Dubois two agents from the U.S. Treasury Department discover the State Department’s cable telegrams suppressing information about the murder of Jews in Europe.  The cables are sent to Secretary of the Treasure Morgenthau, who is infuriated.  Morgenthau and Treasury agents draft a document outlining the failure of the State Department to help Jews.

December 20, 1943

US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and his assistant, John Pehle, meet with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and his assistant, Breckinridge Long.  Morgenthau complains about the State Department’s almost complete non-cooperation in approving the transfer of funds to be used for the rescue of Jews.  Morgenthau assigns Randolph Paul, General Counsel of the Treasury Department, to prepare a background paper documenting the eight month delay in granting World Jewish Congress representative Gerhardt Riegner the license to transfer money.  Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., prepares the paper with John Pehle and the Foreign Funds Control Division.  Pehle and DuBois investigate the State Department’s inaction on this and other matters, and they prepare a document entitled Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of Jews.  It is signed by Randolph Paul.  The full report is never published. (see appendix)

1944

Turkey has turned west to the Allies, an historical orientation originally seeded by Gamal Ataturk in 1923 to turn Turkey into a modern secular nation while still keeping its foundational character.

Early in 1944, US Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt manages to have the Turkish government intercede on behalf of ten thousand Turkish Jews living in France.  Steinhardt uses his good relationship with Turkish foreign minister Noman Menenencioglu in helping to untangle bureaucratic rules that prevented Jews from passing through Turkey as an escape route.  Hirschmann and Steinhardt are able to get Turkish official in charge of visas, Kemel Aziz Payman, to liberalize some of the Turkish immigration laws.  The World Jewish Congress estimates that by the end of the 1944, 14,164 Jews escaped through Turkey.  Many more, however, entered Turkey illegally through Romania.

In 1944, more than 600,000 European Jews will be murdered.

January 14, 1944

Soviet Army launches a major offensive against the German siege of Leningrad. 

January 16, 1944

US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Treasury Department officials meet with President Roosevelt and present to him a report on the State Department’s suppression of information on the murder of the Jews of Europe.  In his report, renamed Personal Report to the President, Morgenthau states that the State Department:

1. Utterly failed to prevent the extermination of Jews in German-controlled Europe…

2. Hid their gross procrastination behind such window dressing as “intergovernmental organizations to survey the whole refugee problem…”

3. “The matter of rescuing the Jews from extermination is a trust too great to remain in the hands of men who are indifferent, callous, perhaps even hostile.”

January 22, 1944

President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board (WRB) in response to the report by Morgenthau and the Treasury Department regarding the failure of the US State Department to take significant action to protect Jews from mass murder.  The WRB is put under the administration of Henry Morgenthau and the Treasury Department.  It is charged with “taking all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.”  John Pehle, of the Treasury Department, is appointed Director of the WRB.  He has 30 employees.  The US government appropriates one million dollars for the operation of this new agency.  The vast majority of funds for operating the WRB will come from Jewish rescue and relief agencies, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Hebrew Immigration Aid and Sheltering Society (HIAS).

Raoul Wallenberg is later selected for a mission representing the War Refugee Board to protect Hungarian Jews from deportation.

Notable employees of the War Refugee Board include Josiah E. DuBois and Randolph Paul (headquarters), Ira Hirschmann (Turkey), Roswell McClelland (Switzerland), Iver Olson (Sweden), Leonard Ackermann (North Africa and Italy).

In joint operations between the World Jewish Congress, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the War Refugee Board, between October 1943 and October 1944, 1,350 children and adolescents escaped to Switzerland, 770 children reached Spain with 200 parents, 700 children were hidden in Vichy France along with 4,000-5,000 adults.  During this period, Lisbon was a center of false papers, including baptismal certificates, birth certificates and legitimate and illegitimate passports, visas and affidavits.  By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews and other refugees escaped through Lisbon.

Statistics will later indicate that the War Refugee Board was successful in saving as many as 200,000 Jews in Eastern Europe.

January 27, 1944

The siege of Leningrad is broken, after more than 900 days and one million civilian deaths.

January 31, 1944

The National Committee Against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of Jews is organized.  It is headed by Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy and includes Wendell Wilkie, Vice President Henry A. Wallis, and other prominent members of the Roosevelt administration.

February 2, 1944

The WRB proposes that the US State Department urge Spain to remove restrictions on refugees entering its territory.  The US ambassador to Spain refuses to implement the plan.

February 12, 1944

Ira Hirschmann, appointed a War Refugee Board representative, is assigned to Ankara, Turkey.  He works closely with Ambassador Steinhardt in the rescue of thousands of Jews.  Hirschmann effectively streamlines the procedure by which refugees escape through Turkey.  Hirschmann actively publicizes the Turkish rescue operation and Steinhardt’s role in it.  

While Ambassador to Turkey, Steinhardt, in part due of his Jewish heritage, played a significant but not openly known role (due to his public diplomatic position) in numerous Jewish related refugee transit evacuations: the rescue of Hungarian Jews from Bergen Belsen, Jewish children from Romania, and many eminent intellectuals fleeing Europe to find refuge in Turkey, Palestine and the United States. In personal subterranean concert with the Vatican's representative to Turkey, Papal Nuncio Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (1881-1963), they devised false visas schemes to facilitate the documents needed for transit through Turkey for fleeing refugees. Steinhardt and Ira Hirschmann of The War Refugee Board secured leaky boats wherever possible with no assurance of the safety of such vessels but the hope that anything might succeed if tried. Ira Hirschmann, persuades the Romanian ambassador to Turkey, Alexander Cretzianu, to persuade the Romanian government to transfer 48,000 Jews to the interior of the country, thus saving their lives.

Steinhardt is Inscribed in The Golden Book, Jewish National Fund, Jewish Agency for Palestine.

January 22, 1944

President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board (WRB) in response to the failure of the Allies to protect Jews from extermination.  The WRB is charged with “taking all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.”  Raoul Wallenberg is later selected for a mission to protect Hungarian Jews from deportation.

March 6, 1944

US Army Air Force (AAF) begins major daylight bombing of Berlin.

March 19, 1944

Germany occupies Hungary and immediately implements anti-Jewish decrees; places the Hungarian government at the disposal of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Final Solution. 

March 23-May 15, 1944

Monsignor Angelo Rotta, the Apostolic delegate of the Vatican (Dean of the diplomatic corps in Budapest) takes the leadership among the diplomatic corps in protesting the deportation and murders of the Jews to the newly established Sztójay government.  Rotta urges the churches of Hungary to protest and intervene on behalf of Jews.

March 24, 1944

Roosevelt sends warning to Hungarian officials against mistreating the Jews.

April 5, 1944

Jews of Hungary forced to wear the star; Jewish businesses and bank accounts confiscated; Jews placed in ghettoes.

April 7, 1944

The Auschwitz Protocols: Two Jewish prisoners, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, escape Auschwitz and reach Slovakia with detailed information about the mass murder of Jews in the camp.  Their report (supplemented by information brought by two more escapees) reaches the free world in June.

April 11-18, 1944

The Allied forces in Italy break through the major German defensive line at Monte Cassino.  This enables Allied troops to break out of the Anzio beachhead.

April 28, 1944

Deportations of Hungarian Jews from the ghettoes in the countryside to Auschwitz begin.

May 15-July 9, 1944

More than 438,000 Hungarian Jews from the countryside are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them are gassed.  It takes 148 trains to carry them there.

May 27, 1944

Two additional Jewish prisoners escape from Auschwitz.  They are Czeslan Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin.  They report on the murder in the death camp to members of the Working Group in Slovakia.

June 3, 1944

German troops withdraw from Rome, declaring it an open city.

June 4, 1944

The 5th US Army, commanded by General Mark Clark, liberates Rome.

June 6, 1944

D-Day: Operation Overlord is launched.  Allied invasion at Normandy, in northwestern France, opens second front.  Seven Allied divisions attack in the largest amphibious operation in history.  The invasion involves more than 4,000 ships and 1,000 transport planes.

June 13, 1944

Germany launches secret weapon called the V-1 (Vergeltungswaffen [vengeance weapon]).  This is an unmanned flying bomb that uses jet technology.  It is launched from mainland France to bomb English cities.

June 24, 1944

Jews in Budapest ordered to wear the yellow Star of David.

June 25, 1944

Pope Pius XII sends telegram to Hungarian Regent Horthy to stop persecution of “a large segment of the Hungarian people because of their race.”  The Pope does not specifically mention Jews.

June 27, 1944

US government issues warning to Hungarian government and people regarding treatment of Hungarian Jews.

June 29, 1944

US War Department refuses request to bomb Auschwitz.  The request is denied on the grounds that it would ostensibly divert resources needed in order to win the war.  It is later discovered that US Air Force bombing raids routinely flew over the Auschwitz death camp.

July 1944

The War Refugee Board organizes the establishment of a temporary safe haven for more than 1,000 Jewish refugees.  It is established in an old Army base in Oswego, New York.

July 6, 1944

Angelo Rotta confronts Sztojay regarding the treatment of Jews, which he calls “abominable.”

July 7, 1944

Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy reassumes power, temporarily halts deportation of Jews; there are 200,000 Jews left in Budapest; they are concentrated into two ghettoes; Lutz and other neutral diplomats place Jews under their diplomatic protection in over 100 safe houses; Nazi and Arrow Cross gangs continue to raid and murder in these areas.

July 18, 1944

Horthy announces deportation of Jews will be halted in Hungary.

July 19, 1944

Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, Vatican Nuncio in Turkey, future Pope John XXIII, appeals to Hungarian Regent Horthy on behalf of 5,000 Hungarian Jews with Palestine visas.  Roncalli provides Vatican certificates for Jews in hiding.

July 20, 1944

Attempted assassination of Hitler by opposition forces in Germany fails.

August 1-October 2, 1944

Polish resistance army in Warsaw begins actions against the German occupiers.  It is by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa). The Soviet Army outside the city refuses to come to their aid. Some 166,000 people lose their lives in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The Uprising is fought for 63 days with little outside support. It is the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.

Warsaw is razed to the ground by the Germans, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945.

August 14, 1944

Operation Anvil.  Allied forces land on the south coast of France.  They quickly advance 20 miles on the first day.

August 17, 1944

US forces break out of the German defenses in western Normandy. 

August 20, 1944

One hundred twenty-seven U.S. Army Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses drop high-explosives on the Buna factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles east of the gas chambers.

August 21, 1944

Neutral diplomatic legations of the Vatican, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland in Budapest protest the resumption of deportations of Jews to Auschwitz.  These legations begin to issue thousands of protective passes to Jews in danger of deportation.

August 23, 1944

Horthy informs Eichmann that he will not cooperate with the deportation of Hungarian Jews. Eichmann is then forced to leave Budapest, takes refuge with Laszlo Endre at Velem.

August 25, 1944

Paris is liberated by Allied forces. The French forces, led by de Gaulle, lead the victory procession.

September 8, 1944

Bulgaria changes sides and declares war on Germany.

The first V-2, German-built rocket, is launched against London.  V-2s are built by Jewish slave laborers in the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp.

September 11-16, 1944

The Octagon Conference is held in Quebec, Canada, between Roosevelt and Churchill.  They plan the postwar occupation and demilitarization of Germany.

September 20, 1944

Monsignor Angelo Roncalli sends protest about deportations to Dr. Stefan Tiso.

October 5, 1944

The British Colonial Office allows only 10,300 Jews to immigrate to Palestine.  This will be at the rate of only 1,500 per month.  This order rescinds an original offer made to the Jewish Agency of Palestine, which would originally allow all Jews reaching Turkey to enter Palestine.

October 6, 1944

Soviet Army enters Hungary.

October 9-19, 1944

Churchill, Stalin and Averell Harriman of the US, meet at the Moscow Conference in the Soviet Union.  They discuss the war.

October 14, 1944

British Army liberates Athens.

October 15, 1944

Admiral Horthy tries to sue for peace with Soviet Union.  Horthy is soon arrested by Nazi puppet government.  Hungarian Arrow Cross and Nazis introduce new reign of terror and murder tens of thousands of Budapest Jews.

October 31, 1944

Himmler orders the murder of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau to cease.  The SS begin dismantling the death camp.

November 7, 1944

Roosevelt elected President of the US for a fourth term.

December 16, 1944

German Army launches major offensive against the Allied Armies in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium.  It is called the Battle of the Bulge.

December 26, 1944

The US Third Army, under General Patton, liberates trapped US forces in the Belgian town of Bastogne.

December 22, 1944

Pope Pius XII named Roncalli to be the new Apostolic Nuncio to recently liberated France. In this capacity he had to negotiate the retirement of bishops who had collaborated with the German occupying power. Roncalli is chosen among several other candidates, one of whom was Archbishop Joseph Fietta.

December 27, 1944

Roncalli leaves Ankara on a series of short flights. He arrives in Rome on  December 28 and meets with both Tardini and his friend Giovanni Battista Montini. He leaves for France the next day to commence his newest assignment.

December 23, 1944

Eichmann flees Budapest.

1945

It is estimated that 250,000-350,000 Jews are liberated from the concentration camps.  1.6 million come out of hiding.  The first wave of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust emigrate to Palestine (142,000), the United States (72,000), Canada (16,000), Belgium (8,000), and other places (10,000), including Central and South America and Australia.  A very few stay in Europe.

Steinhardt awarded the United States Typhus Commission Medal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

January 1-16, 1945

By the beginning of 1945, the German Ardennes offensive, called the “Battle of the Bulge,” for which the Nazi leadership had risked so much, fails.

January 5, 1945

Last deportation of Jews from Hungary.

January 16, 1945

Soviets liberate Budapest. House to house fighting and artillery severely damage Budapest.  It takes nearly a month to fully liberate Budapest.

January 17, 1945

Auschwitz is closed and evacuated, 66,000 prisoners are taken away on a death march.

January 27, 1945

Soviet troops enter Auschwitz and liberate the camps.

February 4-11, 1945

An Allied conference is held at Yalta in the Russian Ukraine between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.  It defines the postwar spheres of influence in Europe and Germany.

February 23, 1945

Turkey declares war on Germany.

March 22, 1945

US Army crosses the Rhine River into Germany at Oppenheim.

April 12, 1945

US President Franklin Roosevelt dies.  Harry Truman becomes the new President.

April 25, 1945

The United Nations meeting in San Francisco, California, drafts charter of the United Nations.

April 28, 1945

Italian partisans shoot Mussolini as he tries to escape to Switzerland.

April 29, 1945

The German Army unconditionally surrenders in Italy.

In the day before he commits suicide, Hitler dictates his last will and testament.  In it, he exhorts “the government and the people to uphold the race laws to limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoners of all nations, international Jewry.”

April 30, 1945

Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

May 2, 1945

Berlin falls to the Soviet Army.  The German troops defending Berlin surrender.

May 8, 1945

Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day): German General Alfred Jodl surrenders at Eisenhower’s headquarters, the end of the Third Reich.

More than six million Jews and five million others have been murdered.  Two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe is murdered.  90% of the Jewish Polish population has been murdered.  However, in more than half of the countries in Europe, 50% or more of the population of Jews survives.  These include the countries of Denmark, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany and Austria.

July 17-August 2, 1945

A conference is convened in Potsdam, Germany, between Stalin, Churchill (Attlee), and President Truman.

August 6, 1945

Americans detonate atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan.  It destroys two-thirds of the city.

August 8, 1945

The victorious Allied powers meet and develop an outline for an International Military Tribunal to try German war criminals.

July 20, 1945

Laurence Steinhardt is appointed United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia by President Harry S. Truman. He serves until September 28, 1948.

August 13, 1945

The World Zionist Congress demands the admission of one million Jewish refugees to Palestine.

August 14, 1945

Japanese Emperor Hirohito accepts Allied surrender terms.  He tells his people to accept the terms and not to resist the occupation.

August 15, 1945

V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed.

September 2, 1945

Victory in Japan (V-J Day).  Japanese diplomats and soldiers surrender at MacArthur’s headquarters aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.  End of World War II.

More than 55 million people have been killed in the deadliest war in history.  For the first time in history, more civilians are killed than soldiers. 

Europe and Japan are in ruins.

September 20, 1945

The Jewish Agency for Palestine submits a claim against Germany for war crimes committed against the Jewish people.

October 24, 1945

The United Nations comes into formal existence after its charter is ratified in New York City.

November 1945

Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull is awarded Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in creating the United Nations. 

November 22, 1945 – August 31, 1946

Nazi war leaders are put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for crimes against humanity.  They are tried by the International Military Tribunal (IMT).  The IMT rules that obedience to superiors’ orders is insufficient defense for crimes against humanity.  The defendants include Hermann Göring, Rudolph Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Julius Streicher, Joachim von Ribbentrop, General Wilhelm Keitel, General Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. They are charged with: 1) crimes against the peace, 2) war crimes, 3) crimes against humanity, and 4) conspiracy to commit any of these crimes.  The military tribunal finds 12 of the defendants guilty and sentences them to death.  Seven others receive prison terms and three are acquitted.

1945-1948

Thousands of survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps emigrate to the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Australia and Israel.  A very few return to Europe.

1946

Laurence Steinhardt is awarded the Medal for Merit in 1946 by President Harry S. Truman.

May 14, 1948

Britain’s mandate to govern Palestine officially expires.  The state of Israel is established.  Palestine is divided between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.

After 1944 Cardinal Roncalli plays an active role in gaining Catholic Church support for the establishment of the State of Israel. His support for Zionism and the establishment of Israel is the result of his cultural and religious openness toward other faiths and cultures, and especially concern with the fate of Jews after the war. He is one of the Vatican's most sympathetic diplomats toward Jewish immigration to Palestine, which he sees as a humanitarian issue, and not a matter of Biblical theology.

November 1, 1948

Steinhardt is appointed United States Ambassador to Canada oy President Harry S. Truman.

July 1, 1945

The State Department removes strict screening procedures for refugees.  It reverts to prewar regulations.

1946

The International Court of Justice is established in The Hague, The Netherlands.  It is the official judicial body of the United Nations.

The United Nations establishes International Refugee Organization (IRO).  It takes over from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA).

Steinhardt is Awarded the Medal for Merit in by President Harry S. Truman.

Life Line to a Promised Land, by Ira Hirschmann, (New York: Vanguard Press, 1946). Hirschman was the War Refugee Board (WRB) Representative in Turkey 1944-1945.

1946-1949

Twelve separate trials are conducted against Nazi war criminals.  185 war criminals are prosecuted.

April 29, 1946

US/British commission report advises against partition of the British mandate in Palestine between Jewish and Arab states.

May 1, 1946

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommends allowing 100,000 Jewish survivors to immigrate to Palestine.  The British government refuses the recommendation.

August 13, 1946

British government opens detention camps on the island of Cypress to detain Jewish refugees who try to enter Palestine.

October 1, 1946

Nuremberg trial verdicts are pronounced.  Guilty:  Göring, Borman (in absentia), Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Jodl, Sauckel – all to hang; Funk, Räder, Hess – life sentences;  Speer, Donitz, Schirach – 20 years; Von Neurath – 15 years.  Acquitted:  Fritzche, Schacht, von Poppen.

The Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal conclude that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Jews, Poles, Roma, and others – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term.”

December 31, 1946

U.S. Harry President Truman declares: "Although a state of war still exists, it is at this time possible to declare, and I find it to be in the public interest to declare, that hostilities have terminated. Now, therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the cessation of hostilities of World War II, effective twelve o'clock noon, December 31, 1946."

1947

The American Friends’ Service Committee (AFSC) of the Society of Friends/Quakers, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for its activities in helping refugees escape the Nazis in Europe.

The first exhibition in the barracks at Auschwitz I is opened to the public.

July 11, 1947

Ship SS Exodus leaves France for the British Mandate of Palestine.  4,515 passengers, mostly Holocaust survivors, are intercepted by the British Navy and shipped back to displaced persons camps in Germany.

November 29, 1947

The United Nations votes for partition of Palestine.  This leads to the creation of a Jewish state.

December 22, 1947

The Auschwitz trial ends. The Supreme National Tribunal presiding in Kraków issues 23 death sentences, and 17 imprisonments ranging from life sentences to 3 years. All executions are carried out on January 28, 1948, at the Kraków Montelupich Prison, "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in occupied Poland" used by Gestapo throughout World War II.

1948

The United Nations General Assembly adopts Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act allowing 200,000 displaced persons to enter the United States.

May 14, 1948

Britain’s mandate to govern Palestine officially expires.  The state of Israel is established.  Palestine is divided between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.

May 15, 1948

The Egyptian and Jordanian armed forces invade the newly-created State of Israel.

December 9, 1948

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or Genocide Convention, is signed. It is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

1949

Separate postwar civilian governments in East and West Germany are formed beginning of the Cold War.

1949

A new Geneva Convention is signed in 1949.  It establishes rules for treatment of civilians in times of war.

January 7, 1949

A cease-fire is signed between Arab and Israeli governments.

April 4, 1949

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is signed It is also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries and 2 North American countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. NATO constitutes a system of collective security.

May 11, 1949

United Nations votes to admit Israel.

1950

Steinhardt is awarded posthumously the Honorary Doctor of Laws, by Hamilton College.

March 28, 1950

Laurence Adolph Steinhardt  is killed in a U.S. embassy plane crash on March 28, 1950, in Ramsayville, Ontario, Canada, while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Canada. He was the first United States Ambassador to be killed in the line of duty. He was 57 years old. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

1951

Forest of the Martyrs (Hebrew: יער הקדושים‎) (Ya'ar HaKdoshim) is inaugurated. It is a forest on the outskirts of West Jerusalem. It is on the western edge of the Jerusalem Forest near Beit Meir. It was planted as a memorial to those who died in the Holocaust and contains six million trees, symbolizing the six million Jews who perished.

January 12, 1951

The United Nations Genocide Convention Treaty is passed.  Article 56 of the UN charter bans murder and deportation of peoples based on racial, religious or political reasons.

March 1951

“A request is made by Israel's foreign minister Moshe Sharett to Germany which claim global recompense to Israel of $1.5 billion based on the financial cost absorbed by Israel for the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish holocaust survivors. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer accepts these terms and declares he is ready to negotiate additional reparations. A Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany was opened in New York City by Nahum Goldmann in order to help with individual claims. After negotiations, the claim was reduced to a sum of $845 million direct and indirect compensations to be installed in a period of 14 years. In 1988, West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations”.

April 12, 1951

The Israeli parliament establishes an annual commemorative memorial day to honor victims of the Holocaust.

September 27, 1951

German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer apologizes for the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews.  Adenauer further offers to pay reparations.

October 19, 1951

“End of state of war with Germany is granted by the U.S. Congress, after a request by President Truman on 9 July. In the Petersberg Agreement of November 22, 1949, it is noted that the West German government wants an end to the state of war, but the request could not be granted. The U.S. state of war with Germany is being maintained for legal reasons, and though it was softened somewhat it was not suspended since ‘the U.S. wants to retain a legal basis for keeping a U.S. force in Western Germany”".

The last displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe are closed, with most of its inhabitants having been successfully resettled worldwide.

1952

Germany agrees to pay restitution for the persecution of Jews during World War II.

1953

Establishment of a Holocaust Museum in Israel.  It is called Yad Vashem [Hebrew for place and name], the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority.

The state of Israel passes a law to honor those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust; a commission was established to recognize Righteous Among the Nations, non-Jews who saved Jews during the war.

January 20, 1953

President Truman's term ends.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II, is inaugurated as President of the United States

March 5, 1953

Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, dies. He is replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who began a period of De-Stalinization.

August 19, 1953

The Knesset, Israel's Parliament, unanimously passed the Yad Vashem Law, establishing the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, the aim of which was "the commemoration in the Homeland of all those members of the Jewish people who gave their lives, or rose up and fought the Nazi enemy and its collaborators," and to set up "a memorial to them, and to the communities, organizations and institutions that were destroyed because they belonged to the Jewish people."

July 29, 1954

The cornerstone for the Yad Vashem building was laid on a hill in western Jerusalem, to be known as the Mount of Remembrance (Hebrew: Har HaZikaron‎); the organization had already begun projects to collect the names of individuals killed in the Holocaust; acquire Holocaust documentation and personal testimonies of survivors for the Archives and Library; and develop research and publications.

May 14, 1955

Signing of the Warsaw Pact, an alliance established between the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

1957

The Yad Vashem memorial and museum opens to the public. It Publishes Yad Vashem Studies a peer-reviewed semi-annual scholarly journal on the Holocaust. Published since 1957, it is in both English and Hebrew editions.

November 6, 1957

A memorial to “Christian Heroes who helped their Jewish Brethren escape the Nazi terror” is dedicated in New York City by the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith.

October 9, 1958

Pope Pius XII dies.

October 20, 1958

Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Papal nuncio in Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and France during World War II, is elected Pope.  He takes the name John XXIII.  During his term as Pope, he institutes major reforms in the Catholic Church, including the Vatican II council.  He becomes the first Pope to enter a synagogue.

January 25, 1959

Pope John XXIII announces his intention to convene an Ecumenical Council.  It becomes known as Vatican II.

1959

The Jewish community of Italy gives gold medals to Christians who played important roles in rescuing Jews.  Monsignor Montini (later Pope Paul VI), head of the Holy See’s Aid Service to Refugees during the war, declines to accept a medal.  He states: “I acted in the line of duty and for that I am not entitled to a medal.”

1960

Pope John XXIII calls for a change in the Catholic church’s relationship with Jews.  He eliminates the phrase “perfidious Jews” from the Good Friday liturgy.

April 1960

Former SS officer responsible for the deportation of Jews to death camps, Adolf Eichmann, is captured by Israeli agents in Buenos Aires, Argentine.

May 1960

Adolf Eichmann trial opens in Jerusalem, Israel.

1961

Simon Wiesenthal reopens his Documentation Center in Vienna.

December 15, 1961

Adolf Eichmann is convicted by an Israeli court and sentenced to death.

1962

Israel’s Holocaust museum inaugurates the Avenue and Forest of the Righteous.  Carob trees are planted in honor of individuals who saved Jews during the Shoah.

Ira A. Hirschmann publishes Caution to the Winds.  (New York: David McKay Co., 1962). He was the War Refugee Board (WRB) representative in Turkey 1945-1945 and worked with Ambassador Steinhardt.

October 11, 1962

Pope John XXIII opens Vatican II.  Jewish and Protestant clergy, as well as scholars, are invited as observers.

1963

Israel honors first of the Righteous Among the Nations.  Every person honored for saving Jews receives a tree planted in his or her name and is awarded a certificate and medal.  German businessman Oskar Schindler was the third person so honored.

February 20, 1963

A play by Rolf Hochhuth entitled Der Stellvertreter [The Deputy] opens in Berlin.  The play is critical of Pope Pius XXII’s silence during the Holocaust.

June 3, 1963

Pope John XXIII dies.

1964

65,000 Nazi war criminals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced.

1965

Catholic Vatican II Council issue the decree Dignitatis humanae (Religious Freedom) that states that all people must have the right to religious freedom.  The Catholic 1983 Code of Canon Law states:

Can. 748 §1. All persons are bound to seek the truth in those things which regard God and his Church and by virtue of divine law are bound by the obligation and possess the right of embracing and observing the truth which they have come to know. §2. No one is ever permitted to coerce persons to embrace the Catholic faith against their conscience.

October 1965

Nostra Aetate [In Our Time] is approved as part of the final session of Vatican II.  It includes key statements pertaining to Jewish-Catholic relations.  The document deplores anti-Semitism and rejects the idea that Jews be charged and implicated in the death of Jesus.

1965-1981

The Vatican Secretary of State publishes an 11-volume series pertaining to the actions of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in World War II.  These volumes are entitled Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (ADDSS). It has information on Monsignors Rotta and Roncalli and other Vatican nuncios and representatives who helped Jews during the period of the Holocaust.

1966

Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio passes away in Rome at age 65.

June 5-10, 1967

Responding to continuing threats along its border, Israel fights Six Day War against Syria, Jordan and Egypt.  Israel occupies the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula.

1967

Lapide, Pinchas E. Three Popes and the Jews. (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967) is published.

August 20, 1968

Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia – raises new hopes of democratic reforms among students and intelligentsia in communist Europe. The Czechoslovak unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

December 16, 1968

“The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews was formally and symbolically revoked following the Second Vatican Council. This was a full century after Jews had been openly practicing their religion in Spain and synagogues were once more legal places of worship under Spain's Laws of Religious Freedom.

1970

After the Second Vatican Council, the Good Friday prayer for the Jews was completely revised for the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal. Because of the possibility of a misinterpretation similar to that of the word "perfidis" (see above in 1959), the reference to the veil on the hearts of the Jews, which was based on 2 Corinthians 3:14, was removed.

1971

To further the goal of reconciliation, the Catholic Church establishes an internal International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. (This Committee is not a part of the Church's Magisterium.)

The ban on Jewish immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union was lifted in 1971 leading to the 1970s Soviet Union Aliyah.

October 6, 1973

Yom Kippur War.  Syria’s military engages in surprise attack against Israel.  Its forces are turned back.

April 1974

Israel’s Holocaust museum holds a major conference entitled Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust.  The conference papers are published in 1977.  

1975

The United Nations passes a resolution determining that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." (It is revoked in 1991.)

January 1975

Vatican issues Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing “Nostra Aetate.”

1978

Presidential commission to establish an American memorial to the victims of the Holocaust is convened by Jimmy Carter.

October 16, 1978

Election of Pope John Paul II. As a priest in wartime in Nazi occupied Poland, he aided Jews.

1979

A House Joint resolution 1014 designated 28 and 29 April 1979 as "The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH)." After that the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) has been an annual 8-day period designated by the United States Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is designated as a World Heritage Site.

Controversy ensues when the newly elected Pope John Paul II holds a mass in Birkenau and called the camp a "Golgotha of our times". 500,000 people attend, and it is announced that Edith Stein would be beatified. Catholics erect a cross near Bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been murdered. A short while later, a Star of David appears at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols, which are taken down.

October 1980

US Congress passes a law creating the United States Holocaust Memorial Council for the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

1981

A national registry of Holocaust survivors is established by US Holocaust survivors.

US Congress and President Ronald Reagan award Raoul Wallenberg honorary citizenship.  Wallenberg is only the third person to receive this honor, after Winston Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette.

1985

Claude Lanzmans’ landmark 9-hour documentary Shoah is broadcast worldwide.

November 1985

Vatican publishes paper on Jewish-Christian relations.  It is called “The Common Bond: Christians and Jews:  Notes for Preaching and Teaching.”  It is the first time that the Holocaust and Israel are mentioned in a Vatican document.

April 13, 1986

Pope John Paul II makes an unexpected visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome. This event marked the first known visit by a pope to a synagogue since the early history of the Roman Catholic Church. He prayed with Rabbi Elio Toaff, the then Chief Rabbi of Rome.

1987

The Topography of Terror (German: Topographie des Terrors) is an outdoor and indoor history museum in Berlin, Germany. It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings, which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 was the SS Reich Security Main Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo.

1988

Samuel and Pearl Oliner publish their landmark study of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

1990

The Soviet Union collapses.

East and West Germany are reunited.

September 12, 1990

The U.S., USSR, United Kingdom, and France, with the governments of East and West Germany, sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the final treaty ending the war, paving the way for German reunification.

April 27, 1993

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is formally dedicated by President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel.  Many European heads of state are present.

December 30, 1993

The Vatican diplomatically and officially recognizes the State of Israel.  It exchanges ambassadors with Israel.

April 7, 1994

The Vatican organizes its first memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  More than 200 Jewish Holocaust survivors are asked to participate in the commemoration.

January 1995

The 50th anniversary of the liberation ceremony is held in Auschwitz I in 1995. About a thousand Jewish ex-prisoners attended it.

March 1998

“We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” is issued by the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.  This document acknowledges the Catholic Church’s role in antisemitic actions against Jews.

August 1998

Swiss banks agree to pay 1.25 billion dollars to Holocaust victims who had assets in Swiss banks during World War II.

October 1999

The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, under the Vatican’s auspices, announce the creation of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission to review the previously published 11 volumes of material published by the Vatican between 1965 and 1981.  Three Jewish and three Catholic scholars serve on the Commission.

March 12, 2000

Pope John Paul II, along with Cardinals and officials, officiates at a special service at St. Peter’s asking God’s forgiveness for the church’s sins against the Jewish people.

March 20-26, 2000

Jubilee Pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Israel.  He visits Jordan and Israel, meeting with religious and government leaders.  This is the first time that a Pope officially visits Israel and enters through the front door. 

March 23, 2000

Pope John Paul II visits the memorial hall at Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel.  He gives a speech and greets Holocaust survivors.

May 4, 2000

A 1000-person dinner is sponsored by the American Jewish Committee in honor of the "Righteous Diplomats" at Union Station's Convention Center, Washington, DC. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is the keynote speaker. Visas for life program learns of the rescue work of Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt from his nephew Peter Rosenblatt. He is included in the Visas for Life exhibit.

September 3, 2000

Pope John Paul II beatifies (declares “blessed”) Pope John XXIII.  This is the last step before sainthood or canonization.  This raises an individual who is so honored as a public model of heroic sanctity.  Pope John XXIII was formerly Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Papal Nuncio in Turkey who saved 24,000 Jews. 

2000

The remains of Pope John Paul XXIII are moved to the main floor of St. Peter’s Basilica to accommodate the many pilgrims who flock to his sarcophagus.  This Pope has been called the most beloved Pope of all time.

May 4, 2001

At the 17th meeting of the International Liaison Committee in New York, Catholic Church officials state that they will change how Judaism is dealt with in Catholic seminaries and schools. In part, they state:

The curricula of Catholic seminaries and schools of theology should reflect the central importance of the Church's new understanding of its relationship to Jews....Courses on Bible, developments by which both the Church and rabbinic Judaism emerged from early Judaism will establish a substantial foundation for ameliorating "the painful ignorance of the history and traditions of Judaism of which only negative aspects and often caricature seem to form part of the stock ideas of many Christians".

March 15, 2005

Yad Vashem opens its new museum, making it the largest installation on the Holocaust in the world. It is a new Museum complex four times larger than the old one.

May 10, 2005

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), opens. It is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

November 1, 2005

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.

May 30, 2006

US Postal Service honors American diplomat Hiram “Harry” Bingham with a commemorative postage stamp as part of a “Distinguished American Diplomat” series.

June 2006

As part of its mission, ISRAH will document and honor Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.  ISRAH begins compiling a list of Jewish organizations and individuals. Ambassador Steinhardt is prominently listed.

2009

“Auschwitz–Birkenau Foundation is created. The purpose of the Foundation is to build a fund for preserving the site of the Memorial. European subsidies are donated to preserve two prisoners blocks in Auschwitz I and five wooden barracks at Birkenau. Special message regarding the protection of integrity and authenticity of the Memorials was included in the final declaration of the conference dedicated to the issues of property plundered during the Holocaust and World War II with the participation of delegations of 46 countries.

August 23, 2009

The Black Ribbon Day, officially known in the European Union as the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is observed for the first time. “It is an international day of remembrance for victims of totalitarian regimes, specifically Stalinist, communist, Nazi, and fascist regimes. It is formally recognized by the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and some other countries.

April 27, 2014

Pope John XIII and Pope John Paul II are canonized as saints by the Catholic Church.

December 2015

The Vatican releases a 10,000-word document that, among other things, states that Jews do not need to be converted to find salvation, and that Catholics should work with Jews to fight antisemitism. 

January 17, 2016

Pope Francis visits the Great Synagogue of Rome. During his visit, the pope denounced all violence committed in the name of God and joined in the diaspora as a sign of interfaith friendship. Pope Francis repeated several times the words first spoken by Pope John Paul, saying that Jews were the "elder brothers" of Christians. Pope Francis added Christian "elder sisters" of the Jewish faith to his words.

2021

Yad Vashem officially recognizes 52 international diplomats who were involved in the aid and rescue of Jews in the Shoah.

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For further reading about Holocaust rescue, please visit HolocaustRescue.org