Historical Organization
SS
SS
Details
Organization Timeline
Dachau concentration camp opens
đź“… 22 March 1933The SS opened Dachau near Munich, initially imprisoning political opponents and other people defined by the regime as enemies. The camp became a model for the concentration-camp system; the legal...
Nazi-organized boycott targets Jewish businesses
đź“… 1 April 1933The Nazi Party and affiliated organizations staged a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned shops, lawyers, and doctors. The action made exclusion visible in public space and foreshadowed the state-backed...
Himmler is appointed Chief of German Police
đź“… 17 June 1936Hitler appointed SS leader Heinrich Himmler Chief of German Police, consolidating authority over police forces within the Interior Ministry. This centralization connected policing to SS racial...
Kristallnacht unleashes coordinated anti-Jewish violence
📅 9 November 1938After a Nazi-organized pogrom began on the night of November 9–10, synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses and homes destroyed, and Jewish people assaulted and killed. Police and fire services...
Nazi pogroms target Jewish communities across Germany and Austria
đź“… 9 November 1938A state-orchestrated pogrom on the night of 9-10 November destroyed synagogues, shops, homes, and community institutions; Jewish people were murdered and tens of thousands arrested and sent to...
Himmler authorizes racialized persecution of Roma and Sinti
📅 8 December 1938Himmler’s decree instructed police to treat Roma and Sinti as a racial population and to intensify registration and segregation. It marked a major escalation from locally varying discrimination toward...
Germany invades the Soviet Union
đź“… 22 June 1941Operation Barbarossa began a war of conquest framed by Nazi leaders as a racial and anti-Bolshevik campaign. Einsatzgruppen, police units, military formations, Romanian forces, and local collaborators...
Chełmno killing center begins murdering Jews
📅 8 December 1941German authorities began mass murder at Chełmno, where victims were killed in gas vans and buried or burned in nearby forests. It was the first stationary killing center used by Nazi Germany for the...
Wannsee meeting coordinates deportation and mass murder
📅 20 January 1942At Wannsee, senior Nazi officials coordinated how state ministries would assist the already developing genocide of Europe’s Jews. The meeting did not initiate the Holocaust or make the first...
Mass murder begins at Bełżec
📅 17 March 1942German SS authorities began gassing Jews at Bełżec, one of the Operation Reinhard killing centers built in occupied Poland. Deportation trains brought Jewish communities from ghettos to a site...
Mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka begin
đź“… 22 July 1942German SS and police units, assisted by auxiliaries, began mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. By September, about 265,000 Jews had been deported and murdered;...
First transport from TerezĂn arrives at Auschwitz
đź“… 26 October 1942The first transport of Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz arrived on this date. Deportations linked a ghetto used for propaganda and transit to the killing-center system.
Himmler orders deportation of Roma and Sinti to Auschwitz
đź“… 16 December 1942Himmler authorized the deportation of Roma and Sinti from the Greater German Reich to Auschwitz. Police began sending people in February 1943 to the camp section known in German records by a racist...
First transport of Roma and Sinti from Germany arrives at Auschwitz
📅 26 February 1943The first transport of Roma and Sinti from Germany arrived at Auschwitz, beginning mass deportations under Himmler’s December 1942 order. The camp incarcerated families in a designated section,...
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins
đź“… 19 April 1943Jewish underground fighters resisted German forces as they entered the ghetto to complete its liquidation. The uprising lasted nearly a month and was defeated with overwhelming force, but it...
German forces declare the Warsaw ghetto uprising defeated
đź“… 16 May 1943After weeks of resistance, German forces declared the Warsaw ghetto operation complete and blew up the Great Synagogue as a symbol of destruction. The uprising had been crushed, but Jewish fighters...
SS murders 1,035 Roma prisoners during an epidemic-prevention selection
📅 25 May 1943SS authorities murdered 1,035 Roma from the Auschwitz family camp, including Roma from Białystok and Austria. The killings were justified as a measure to prevent typhus, converting a crisis created by...
Fourteen-year-old Johann Winterstein is executed at Auschwitz
đź“… 25 June 1943Fourteen-year-old Sinto Johann Winterstein was shot at the so-called Death Wall after fleeing or being suspected of trying to escape. On the same day, eleven other Sinti and Roma were murdered...
Jewish prisoners revolt at Treblinka killing center
đź“… 2 August 1943Prisoners seized weapons, set parts of the camp on fire, and broke through the perimeter. Around 300 escaped, though many were later captured or killed. The uprising was planned by prisoners who...
Prisoners launch uprising at Sobibor killing center
đź“… 14 October 1943Jewish prisoners killed SS personnel, set the camp on fire, and attempted a mass escape. Roughly 300 broke out; about 58 survived the war. The revolt undermines accounts that portray victims as...
Deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begin
đź“… 15 May 1944Hungarian authorities and German officials began deporting Jews from the provinces to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In less than two months, hundreds of thousands were deported; most were murdered on arrival....
Roma and Sinti prisoners resist an attempted liquidation at Auschwitz
đź“… 16 May 1944Prisoners in the Auschwitz family camp resisted an SS attempt to liquidate the camp. Armed with improvised tools and refusing orders, they forced the SS to postpone the operation; later selections and...
Twenty-two Lithuanian Romnja are entered in the Auschwitz camp register
đź“… 21 July 1944Twenty-two Lithuanian Romnja, most of them toddlers and children, were registered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Roma family camp. These are the last entries in the surviving register for Roma prisoners in...
Deportation of Rhodes Jews begins
📅 23 July 1944German authorities began deporting the Jewish community of Rhodes; about 1,600 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The island had come under German control after Italy’s 1943 surrender, extending...
SS murders the remaining prisoners in the Roma and Sinti family camp
📅 2 August 1944The SS liquidated the remaining Roma and Sinti family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered approximately 4,200–4,300 people, including children and older adults. The murder followed the...
Two hundred Sinti and Roma boys and young men are deported from Buchenwald
đź“… 25 September 1944Two hundred male Sinti and Roma children and adolescents were transported from Buchenwald to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only two survivors of this transport are known. The deportation demonstrates how Nazi...
Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
đź“… 7 October 1944Prisoners assigned to forced corpse disposal attacked SS guards and damaged Crematorium IV using explosives smuggled by women laborers. Hundreds were killed during and after the revolt. Their...
One hundred fifty-seven Hungarian Roma men are deported to Dachau
đź“… 14 November 1944A transport of 157 Hungarian Roma men was sent to Dachau for forced labour. By 21 December, around 1,100 Roma from Hungary had been sent there; women were transferred onward to RavensbrĂĽck and...
Two hundred ninety Hungarian Romnja are deported to RavensbrĂĽck
📅 28 November 1944Two hundred ninety Hungarian Roma women were deported with Jewish women from the Komárom camp to Ravensbrück. The transport reveals how Roma women were swept into the German concentration-camp network...
SS begins evacuating Auschwitz prisoners on death marches
đź“… 17 January 1945As Soviet forces advanced, SS guards forced tens of thousands of prisoners westward in winter conditions. Many died from exposure, exhaustion, starvation, or execution. The evacuations continued...
Evacuation of Stutthof prisoners begins
đź“… 25 January 1945SS forces began a death march from Stutthof and its subcamps toward the west. Thousands of prisoners died during evacuations by land and sea. Jewish prisoners were among those subjected to the...
Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and find surviving prisoners
đź“… 27 January 1945Soviet forces entered Auschwitz-Birkenau and Monowitz, finding thousands of prisoners left behind after the SS forced many others on death marches. Survivors faced illness, grief, and uncertain...
Seventeen-year-old Anton Reinhardt is murdered after an escape
đź“… 31 March 1945After escaping from the Nazi camp system, Anton Reinhardt was captured by a Volkssturm unit and condemned by a summary tribunal. SS officer Karl Hauger murdered him on 31 March. Reinhardt had...