German authorities establish two ghettos in Vilna

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...

A police decree required Jews over age six in the Reich to wear a yellow Star of David in public. Forced marking extended social isolation and facilitated police control and deportation; comparable...

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...

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...