Germany occupies Bohemia and Moravia

After 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...

The German government imposed a one-billion-Reichsmark fine on German Jews and ordered the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses. Perpetrators turned mob violence into state-enforced economic...

The Nazi government barred Jewish children from public schools, completing an accelerating process of isolation. Families faced decisions about emigration and children’s safety while other governments...

The first group of children evacuated from Nazi-controlled territory arrived in Britain, beginning a rescue effort that brought nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children to safety before the war. The...

In a Reichstag speech, Hitler threatened the “annihilation” of Jews in Europe if war came, using antisemitic conspiracy claims to frame Jews as a collective enemy. The speech is evidence of...

The German liner St. Louis left Hamburg carrying more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees seeking safety in Cuba. Cuban authorities denied entry to most passengers; the voyage exposed how immigration...

Britain’s White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years and proposed ending it thereafter without Arab consent. It constrained refuge as Nazi persecution escalated, within a colonial...

Cuban authorities denied landing to most passengers aboard the St. Louis, despite many holding documents they believed would admit them. After the ship was turned away from the United States, Britain,...

Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II in Europe. German occupation brought mass violence, forced labor, expulsion, and racial reordering; the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on...

Reinhard Heydrich instructed security-police leaders to concentrate Jews in larger towns near rail lines and establish Jewish councils to implement German orders. These measures created conditions for...