Mass murder begins at Bełżec

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...

German SS and police units and Lithuanian police auxiliaries murdered approximately 9,200 people from the Kovno ghetto at Fort IX. The previous day, German officials had selected the victims. The...

German 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...

Abba Kovner urged Jewish youth and resistance factions in the Vilna ghetto to resist Nazi Germany and its collaborators, warning that deportations meant murder. The appeal helped bring divided...

Senior Nazi officials met at Wannsee to coordinate the deportation of Europe’s Jews into a program euphemistically called the “Final Solution.” The conference did not initiate the genocide: mass...

Slovak authorities began systematic deportations by sending a transport of young Jewish women and girls from Poprad into German custody. Slovakia was then a nominally sovereign Axis partner; its...

The first transport of Slovak Jewish women arrived at Auschwitz. Most were young women and teenagers deported the previous day from Poprad by the Slovak state. Their arrival marks the start of mass...

A train carrying 1,112 Jews departed the Drancy transit camp for Auschwitz. French police and administrators helped operate the arrest and internment system, while German authorities directed...

A German ordinance required Jews aged six and older in the occupied zone to wear a yellow star beginning June 7. It marked Jewish people for public humiliation and facilitated exclusion and...

German occupation authorities deported the first group of Dutch Jews from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Dutch police and administrative bodies participated in the machinery of arrest and deportation; the...