Jews in the German Reich are forced to wear the yellow star

Following the Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Ustaša authorities proclaimed the German- and Italian-sponsored NDH. Its regime enacted racial laws and organized persecution and mass...

Operation 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...

Romanian officials and military units, sometimes assisted by German soldiers, carried out a pogrom in Iași as Romania joined Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. At least 8,000 Jews were...

Romanian authorities forced survivors of the Iași pogrom onto death trains. Two trains departed on June 30 for Călărași and Podu Iloaiei; thousands died from thirst, heat, suffocation, and abuse...

Hermann Göring authorized Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a plan for a “total solution” to the so-called Jewish question in German-controlled Europe. The document records bureaucratic coordination at a...

German occupation authorities established two ghettos in Vilna (Vilnius). Lithuanian auxiliaries took part in persecution and mass shootings, while Jewish residents faced confinement, forced labor,...

German forces and auxiliaries ordered Kyiv’s Jews to assemble, then shot 33,771 people at the Babyn Yar ravine on September 29–30, according to German reports. The massacre relied on organized state...

Romanian and German forces occupied Odesa, a major Black Sea port with a large, multiethnic Jewish community. Romanian occupation quickly brought anti-Jewish policies, forced labor, deportations,...

After a bomb killed Romanian officials at the Odesa command headquarters, Romanian authorities began a reprisal massacre of Jews. Over several days, tens of thousands were shot, hanged, or burned....

German occupation officials selected more than 9,200 Jewish residents at Demokratų Square during the so-called Great Action. Those selected included many children, older people, and people...