Embedded Files
This timeline has been constructed to support, contextualise and enrich your knowledge and understanding of Noemie's Journey. As you are following the journey, you may like to look at the timeline to understand what is happening in France, Germany and other areas in Europe from 1933-1945.
Some events & dates are linked to further information - click on the event to find out more.
1933
January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
January 1933: Many Jewish workers are fired from their jobs
March 22: Dachau concentration camp opens
April 1: Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses
April 26: Gestapo established
May 10: Public burning of books written by Jews, 'political opponents', and others not approved by the state
1934
Febraury 10: Renee Koenig is born, in Strasbourg, France
August: Hitler declares himself the Fuhrer (Leader) and Chancellor of the Reich
1935
May 31: Jews barred from serving in the German armed forces
September 15: "Nuremberg Laws": anti-Jewish racial laws introduces; Jews are no longer considered German citizens
1936
March 3: Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in German institutions
June 17: Himmler is appointed as the Chief of German Police
July: Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens
1937
July: Buchenwald concentration camp opens
1938
April 26: Jews owning property in the Reich had to register it with the authorities
October 5: Germans mark all Jewish passports with a letter "J" to restrict Jews from movement
November 9-10: November Pogrom (sometimes referred to as 'Kristallnacht' or 'Night of Broken Glass': anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen). In Frankfurt, the largest Orthodox and Reform synagogues were burned to the ground and most synagogues in Frankfurt were badly damaged or destroyed
November 12: Law passed forcing all Jews to transfer shops or retail businesses to Aryan ownership
November 15: All Jewish students permanently excluded from German schools
December 12: One billion Marks fine to be paid by German Jews for the destruction of property during November Pogrom
1939
Spring: Renee Koenig, her parents, older sister Helen and younger brother Joe, move to the small town of Saint-Junien in SW France
September 1: Beginning of World War II: Germany invades Poland
September 21: Heydrich gives orders to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
October 12: Germany begins deportation of Austrian and Czech Jews to Poland
October 28: First Polish ghetto established in Piotrków
November 23: Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or yellow star
1940
May: German invasion of France
May 7: Lodz Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles
May 20: Concentration camp established at Auschwitz
June 9: Internment camp Compiegne is taken over by German forces and re-named Frontstalag 170 to house British and French prisoners of war
June 14: German forces enter Paris
June 22: Division of France in to occupied and unoccupied zones as part of France signing armistice agreement with Germany
Autumn: Vichy (France) government administrators establish antisemitic legislation in the 'Statut de Juifs' (Jewish Statute) excluding Jews from public life, regulating their dismissal from positions in the civil service and the military, and barring them from occupations in industry, commerce, and the free professions (including medicine, law, and teaching). The second part of the Statute was passed in June 1941.
November 16: Warsaw Ghetto sealed, containing 500,000 people
1941
February 1: Rounding up of Polish Jews by German authorities for transfer to Warsaw Ghetto
March: Adolf Eichmann appointed head of the department for Jewish Affairs of the Reich Security Main Office
March: Vichy government created a central agency, the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives), to coordinate anti-Jewish legislation and policy
June: Second part of the Vichy Statut de Juifs actioned
June: Frontstalag 170 (Compiegne) internment camp is renamed Frontstalag 122 and re-designated to imprison foreign internees, political prisoners and Jews until they could be deported to Germany and points further east
June 22: Germany invades the Soviet Union
July: Laval's government introduced an extensive program of 'Aryanisation', seizing Jewish-owned property and re-appropriating it for the French state
July 31: Heydrich appointed by Göring to implement the "Final Solution"
August 20: German authorities open an internment and transit camp for 'foreign' or 'stateless' Jews in Drancy, France
September 1: German Jews required to wear yellow star of David with the word "Jude"
September: Hitler orders the deportation of all Jews still in the 'Greater German Reich'
September 28-29: Massacre of 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar
October: Opening of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for the purpose of extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and others
December 8: Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp begins operations: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943
1942
January 20: Wannsee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews
March 17: Extermination begins in Belzec; by end of 1942 600,000 Jews murdered
March 27: Initial transport of more than 1000 Jews leave from Compiegne (France) to be deported to Auschwitz
April: Pierre Laval joins the Vichy government as Prime Minister. Laval pushes the government to fully collaborate with the Nazis
May: Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor extermination camp; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered
May 29: German authorities issue a decree, to take place from June 7, instructing all Jews in occupied France to wear the yellow star badge
June: Jewish partisan units established in the forests of Belorussia and the Baltic States
July 16-17: Under the direction of Rene Bousquet, Secretary General of the Vichy police, French police arrested 13,000 Jews in Paris, interning them for several days under appalling conditions in the Velodrome d'Hiver sports arena
July 22: Germans establish Treblinka concentration camp
Summer: Deportation of Jews to extermination centres from Belgium, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lakhva, Mir, Tuchin, and Weisweiz
Autumn: To this date, over 42,000 Jews have passed through Drancy transit camp, on the outskirts of Paris. Nearly 1/3 of this number gave come from unoccupied France. These deportees final destination is that of Auschwitz
November: German forces occupy Vichy's 'free zone'
Winter: Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to extermination centres: Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin
1943
March: Liquidation of ghetto in Krakow
April 19: Warsaw Ghetto revolt begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June
May: Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
June: Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union
Summer: Armed resistance by Jews in Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnów ghettos
Autumn: Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna (Vilnius), and Riga
October 14: Armed revolt in Sobibor extermination camp
1944
May 31: Marianne Cohn, the resistance activist, was caught by a German patrol while travelling in a truck with 28 children aged 4-15. Marianne claimed that they were on their way to a holiday resort in the area, but this claim was refuted and she and the children were sent to prison in the Pax hotel in Annemasse, one section of which had been converted into a Gestapo jail
June 6: D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy: liberation of France begins
July 8: Marianne Cohn was taken from the prison in Annemasse, tortured and brutally murdered by French militiamen
July 24: Russians liberate Majdanek extermination camp
August: Lord Mayor of Annemasse negotiates freedom of children held in prison. Underground resistance group 'Le Maki' takes children to a Red Cross Refugee Centre in Geneva, Switzerland
October 7: Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz; one crematorium blown up
November: Renee Koenig is re-united with her parents
November: Last transport of Jews deported from Theresienstadt (Terezin) to Auschwitz
1945
January 17: Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march
January 25: Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof
April 6-10: Death march of inmates of Buchenwald
April 30: Hitler commits suicide
May 8: V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich
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