Nanking, China · November 22, 1937 On this date in 1937 in Nanking (today’s Nanjing), China’s capital at the time, fifteen foreign businessmen, missionaries, and journalists under the leadership of German national and Nazi Party member John Rabe organized the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone to shelter Chinese refugees against the looming Japanese…
Rome, Italy · November 17, 1938 On July 15, 1938, Italy’s Manifesto of Racial Scientists (Manifesto Degli Scienziati Razzisti) laid out a scientific explanation for the politics of racism. The anonymous authors declared that Italians belonged to the Nordic race and were completely “Aryan,” while Jews, being “Semitic,” “do not belong to the Italian race”…
Paris, France · November 7, 1938 On this date in 1938, 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, an unemployed German-born Polish Jew living illegally in Paris, France, fatally wounded Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary at the German embassy. He shot Rath, he told authorities, out “of love for my parents and for my people.” His was an act…
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · November 4, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Nazi-occupied Poland, newly appointed Governor-General Hans Frank established the Warsaw ghetto and began forcing the city’s Jews into a single area. Ten days later Frank and his deputy Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered Jews in Poland to wear a white bracelet bearing a “Star…
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Occupied Poland · October 30, 1944 On this date in 1944 in Poland, the last murders by poison gas took place at the Nazis’ largest and arguably most infamous death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Polish, Oświęcim), one of eight camps used for mass murder during World War II. (Six were in what is today’s Poland, one…
Berlin, Germany · October 26, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, 56 days after Germany invaded that country, Dr. Hans Frank, Germany’s chief jurist and one of the most vicious products of Nazism, was appointed Governor-General of the General Government—that half of Nazi-occupied Poland not directly incorporated into the Reich. It included much…
Belgrade, Yugoslavia · October 22, 1944 On April 6, 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers, primarily by Germany but also by Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Yugoslav Army on April 17 and the flight of King Peter II…
Kragujevac, Serbia, Yugoslavia · October 21, 1941 From Europe, to Africa, to the Far East, regular Axis troops, as well as specialized killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), murdered millions of unarmed civilians. These mass murders often targeted ethnic or political groups. Sometimes they were committed in retaliation for acts of resistance, whether or not the victims were…
Posen, Occupied Poland · October 6, 1943 On this date in 1943 in occupied Posen (Poznań), Poland, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, stunned an assembly of Nazi Party big-wigs when he stated that he intended to convert all factories producing for the German civilian market to war production. Having discussed…
Kiev, Occupied Ukraine · September 29, 1941 By the end of 1940, sixteen months after Adolf Hitler had plunged Europe into war by invading Poland, the number of Jews killed by Nazi Germany approached 100,000. But in 1941 the death toll grew exponentially as mass murder of Jews became state policy. By the end of…