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Margeride - Arrêt de tramway Ligne A, Rue Roche Genès, Aubière, France

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1930s: White Bird is set in Margeride Mountains in France

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1930s: White Bird is set in Margeride Mountains in France

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The story of Sara Blum begins in the 1930s. She lives in the fictional town of Aubervilliers-aux-Bois in the Margeeride mountains. The town is surrounded by the forest called the Mernuit.

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1. January 30, 1933: Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany

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1. January 30, 1933: Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany

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Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor gave the Nazi party the political power to turn its hateful ideas into government policy. This was the critical first step that allowed all subsequent actions to take place.

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2. March 22, 1933: The First Concentration Camp Opens

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2. March 22, 1933: The First Concentration Camp Opens

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The opening of Dachau concentration camp near Munich marked the beginning of the Nazi camp system. Initially, it was used to imprison political opponents, but it created the blueprint for the network of forced-labor and death camps that followed.

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Dachau was the first and longest operating Nazi concentration camp. Learn about the camp’s early years, prisoners, medical experiments, and liberation.

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3. September 15, 1935: The Nuremberg Laws Are Passed

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3. September 15, 1935: The Nuremberg Laws Are Passed

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These laws made antisemitism official government policy. The Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship, forbid them from marrying non-Jewish Germans, and took away most of their political and civil rights. This legally separated Jewish people from the rest of German society.

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4. November 9-10, 1938: Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)

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4. November 9-10, 1938: Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass)

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This event was a massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout Nazi Germany. Nazi supporters destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, burned synagogues, and killed nearly 100 Jewish people. It marked a brutal shift from legal and social discrimination to large-scale, open violence. About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps for the first time simply for being Jewish.

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5. September 1, 1939: Germany Invades Poland

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5. September 1, 1939: Germany Invades Poland

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This invasion started World War II and brought millions more Jewish people under Nazi control. Soon after the invasion, the Nazis began forcing Polish Jews into overcrowded, sealed-off neighborhoods called ghettos, concentrating them in miserable conditions and isolating them from the outside world.

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6. December 8, 1941: The First Mass Killing with Poison Gas

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6. December 8, 1941: The First Mass Killing with Poison Gas

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At the Chelmno extermination camp in occupied Poland, the Nazis began their first mass killings of Jews using poison gas in mobile gas vans. This marked the start of the "Final Solution" and the shift from persecution and imprisonment to systematic, industrialized murder.

Both countries were forced to surrender almost immediately.

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“Zyklon-B” redirects here. For the band, see Zyklon-B (band).

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7. January 20, 1942: The Wannsee Conference

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7. January 20, 1942: The Wannsee Conference

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Top Nazi officials met in a villa in Wannsee, Berlin, to coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." They didn't decide to murder Europe's Jews (that had already begun), but they formalized the plan, making it a systematic, state-organized genocide that would involve all arms of the German government across Europe.

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Participants at the Wannsee Conference

Representing the SS at the Wannsee Conference were:

SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA) and one of Reichsführer-SS (SS chief) Heinrich Himmler's top deputies

SS Major General Heinrich Müller, chief of RSHA Department IV (Gestapo)

SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, chief of the RSHA Department IV B 4 (Jewish Affairs)

SS Colonel Eberhard Schöngarth, commander of the RSHA field office for the Government General in Krakow, Poland

SS Major Rudolf Lange, commander of RSHA Einsatzkommando 2, deployed in Latvia in the autumn of 1941

SS Major General Otto Hofmann, the chief of SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

Representing the agencies of the State were:

State Secretary Roland Freisler (Ministry of Justice)

Ministerial Director Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Cabinet)

State Secretary Alfred Meyer (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories-German-occupied USSR)

Ministerial Director Georg Leibrandt (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)

Undersecretary of State Martin Luther (Foreign Office)

State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart (Ministry of the Interior)

State Secretary Erich Naumann (Office of Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan)

State Secretary Josef Bühler (Office of the Government of the Governor General-German-occupied Poland)

Ministerial Director Gerhard Klopfer (Nazi Party Chancellery)

Not present at the meeting were representatives of the German Armed Forces ( Wehrmacht) and the Reich Railroads ( Reichsbahn) in the German Ministry of Transportation. The SS and police had already negotiated agreements with the German Army High Command on the murder of civilians, including Soviet Jews, in the spring of 1941, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. In late September 1941, Hitler had authorized the Reich Railroads to transport German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to locations in German-occupied Poland and the German-occupied Soviet Union, where German authorities would kill the overwhelming majority of them.

Goals of the Conference

The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Adolf Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference

to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the "Final Solution"

to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation

The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime.

Coordinating the "Final Solution"

At the time of the Wannsee Conference, most participants were already aware that the Nazi regime had engaged in mass murder of Jews and other civilians in the German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union and in Serbia. Some had learned of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen and other police and military units, which were already slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Others were aware that units of the German Army and the SS and police were killing Jews in Serbia. None of the officials present at the meeting objected to the "Final Solution" policy that Heydrich announced.

Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution." In this figure, he included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom, and the neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). For Jews residing in the Greater German Reich and holding the status of subjects of the German Reich, the Nuremberg Laws would serve as a basis for determining who was a Jew.

Heydrich announced that

"during the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the fruit of natural selection, they are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival."

The participants discussed a number of other issues raised by the new policy, including the establishment of the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto as a destination for elderly Jews as well Jews who were disabled or decorated in World War I, the deferment until after the war of "Final Solution" measures against Jews married to non-Jews or persons of mixed descent as defined by the Nuremberg laws, prospects for inducing Germany's Axis partners to give up their Jewish populations, and preparatory measures for the "evacuations."

Despite the euphemisms which appeared in the protocols of the meeting, the aim of the Wannsee Conference was clear to its participants: to further the coordination of a policy aimed at the physical annihilation of the European Jews.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"

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At the Wannsee conference of January 1942, Nazi Party and German government officials gathered to coordinate implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."

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8. March 17, 1942: Operation Reinhard Begins

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8. March 17, 1942: Operation Reinhard Begins

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This was the deadliest phase of the Holocaust. The Nazis opened the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka extermination camps in Poland, which were built for the sole purpose of mass murder. Over the next year and a half, approximately 1.7 million Jews, mostly from Poland, were killed as part of this operation.

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9. Summer 1942 - 1944: Deportations from Across Europe Intensify

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9. Summer 1942 - 1944: Deportations from Across Europe Intensify

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Nazi officials met at the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the implementation of the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question' - the plan to systematically murder all European Jews. The meeting, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, formalized the industrial-scale genocide that was already beginning. This conference represents the bureaucratic planning of the Holocaust, transforming genocide into an organized government policy.

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Deportations In the months following the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime continued to carry out their plans for the "Final Solution." Jews were "deported"-transported by trains or trucks to six camps, all located in occupied Poland: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek-Lublin.

The Nazis called these six camps "extermination camps." Most of the deportees were immediately murdered in large groups by poisonous gas. The Germans continued to murder Jews in mass shootings as well, especially in territory they seized from the Soviet Union. The killing centers were in semi-rural, isolated areas, fairly well hidden from public view. They were located near major railroad lines, allowing trains to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the killing sites.

Many of the victims were deported from nearby ghettos, some as early as December 1941, even before the Wannsee meeting. The SS began in earnest to empty the ghettos, however, in the summer of 1942. In two years' time, more than two million Jews were taken out of the ghettos. By the summer of 1944, few ghettos remained in eastern Europe.

At the same time that ghettos were being emptied, masses of Jews and also Roma (Gypsies) were transported from the many distant countries occupied or controlled by Germany, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Italy, North Africa, and Greece. The deportations required the help of many people and all branches of the German government. The victims in Poland were already imprisoned in ghettos and totally under German control. The deportation of Jews from other parts of Europe, however, was a far more complex problem. The German Foreign Ministry succeeded in pressuring most governments of occupied and allied nations to assist the Germans in the deportation of Jews living in their countries.

Key Dates

July 15, 1942
Systematic deportations from the Netherlands begin
Jews in the Netherlands have been systematically concentrated in the Westerbork transit camp. The majority of Jews sent to Westerbork remain there only a short time before their deportation to killing centers in the east. Beginning on July 15, 1942, the Germans deport nearly 100,000 Jews from Westerbork: about 60,000 to Auschwitz, over 34,000 to Sobibor, almost 5,000 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and nearly 4,000 to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The overwhelming majority of those deported are killed upon arrival in the camps.

July 22, 1942
Warsaw Jews deported to Treblinka killing center
Between July 22 and mid-September 1942, over 300,000 people are deported from the Warsaw ghetto: more than 250,000 of them are deported to the Treblinka killing center. Deportees are forced to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point), which is connected to the Warsaw-Malkinia rail line. They are crowded into freight cars and most are deported, via Malkinia, to Treblinka. The overwhelming majority of the deportees are killed upon arrival in Treblinka. In September, at the end of the 1942 mass deportation, only about 55,000 Jews remain in the ghetto.

May 15, 1944
Systematic deportations of Jews from Hungary begin
German forces occupy Hungary on March 19, 1944. In April 1944, all Jews except those in Budapest are ordered into ghettos. Systematic deportations from the ghettos in Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau begin the next month, in May 1944. In less than three months, nearly 440,000 Jews are deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. The overwhelming majority are killed upon arrival in Auschwitz.

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As part of the "Final Solution," Nazi Germany organized systematic deportations of Jews from across Europe to ghettos and killing centers. Read more.

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10. January 27, 1945: Liberation of Auschwitz

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10. January 27, 1945: Liberation of Auschwitz

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Soviet troops entered and liberated the Auschwitz concentration and death camp, the largest established by the Nazi regime. The discovery of Auschwitz and other camps finally exposed the full, horrifying scale of the Nazi genocide to the world, revealing the ultimate result of years of escalating prejudice and violence.

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November 20, 1945 - October 1, 1946: Nuremberg Trials

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November 20, 1945 - October 1, 1946: Nuremberg Trials

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The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held to prosecute prominent members of Nazi Germany for war crimes and crimes against humanity. These trials established important principles in international law and were the first to prosecute the crime of genocide. The trials set legal precedents for holding government officials accountable for their actions during wartime and established the principle that 'following orders' was not a defense for committing atrocities.