A Trail of Nazi Genocide
Mass Murder in Europe
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This post provides an index of places associated with the Nazis’ reign of terror across Europe.
The Nazis intentionally and systematically murdered about 17 million people identified as enemies of the German people or undesirables. The largest and most targeted group were the Jews but many others were specifically targeted as well.
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There are four sections to this post.
1. An index with links to posts of places I have visited associated with the genocide
2. A brief description of the scope of the genocide
3. A timeline of select events by year, month, date.
4. Resources: Books and Films I have reviewed and a selection of articles I have read.
1. An A to Z index of Nazi Terror: Museums, Memorials, Sites
Anne Frank museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Auschwitz 1, Poland; concentration camp
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) Poland; concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen, Germany; concentration camp
Euthanasia Memorial (Aktion T4), Berlin Germany
Hitler's Bunker site, Berlin, Germany
Gleis 17 Memorial Berlin, Germany
Holocaust memorial, Berlin, Germany
Krakow Ghetto, Poland
Nuremberg Coliseum, Zeppelin Field, Courthouse (Nazi trials)
Operation Anthropoid, Assassination of Heydrich in Prague
Oskar Schindler Factory Museum Krakow Poland
Roma & Sinti Memorial Berlin, Germany
Sachsenhausen camp, Oranienburg, Germany
Shoes on the Danube Memorial, Budapest, Hungary
Terezin (Theresienstadt) camp, Czech Republic
Topographies Des Terror Museum, Berlin, Germany
United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
Wannsee Conference Memorial - Likely site of the Final Solution - Murder of the Jews
Westerbork Transit Camp, Netherlands
Museums with Related Information
Imperial War Museum, London, UK
World War II Museum - Road to Berlin, New Orleans, Louisiana USA
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2. A Brief Description of Nazi Genocide 1930s to 1945
The Nazi worldview identified groups of people unworthy of life in the German Reich. As they rose to power in Germany in the 1930s and throughout their war, they systematically dehumanized targeted groups and passed laws to discriminate against them. In the 1940s, Nazi terror increased. Millions were brutally terrorized, tortured, and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. The nazis focused most of their efforts on the extermination of the Jews, who were identified as the primary enemy of the German people. By 1945, the Nazis and their collaborators had murdered some 6 million Jews. Although the term holocaust can mean the systematic murder of a group of people, it is commonly used to mean the extermination of the Jews most evident in the large-scale gassing and burning in the death camps.
I use the term genocide to include all people murdered by the Nazis and their sympathizers, which has been estimate at around 17 million (O’Neill, 2024, August 9). Additional groups of people murdered by the Nazis and their supporters included those in the list below (see the Holocaust Encyclopedia).
Africans or Blacks
Homosexuals (the older and insulting term for gays)
Jehovah’s Witnesses
People with disabilities
Poles
Political enemies and members of the resistance
Roma and Sinti called gypsies
Social outcasts identified as asocials, professional criminals
Soviet POWs
The Nazis murdered millions by shootings, lethal injections, mobile gas units, starvation, brutal beatings, nontreatment of diseases, deadly experiments, and life-threatening work assignments. In 1941 to 1942, they built killing centres where Nazis and their collaborators gassed and burned Jews.
3. A Timeline of select events
1933
January 30: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
March 22: The first concentration camp, Dachau, is established.
Law passed to sterilise unfit people (Law for the prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring)
1935
April 30: Jews cannot display the German flag.
May 12: Antisemitism increases in Poland after dictator Pilsuduski died
June 26: Law amendment requires abortion of unfit fetuses up to 6 months.
September 15: Nuremberg Laws are enacted, stripping Jews of their citizenship and rights.
November 15: Christian churches cooperate to identify Christians.
1936
February 4: Polish Cardinal August Hlond advocates discrimination against Jews.
September 7: Jewish assets taxed at 25%
September 23: Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.
1937
April 24: Pastor Martin Niemoller "it is unfortunate that God perimitted Jesus to be born a Jew." (HC, P. 117)
July 15: Buchenwald concentration camp established
1938
January 21: Romania Jews lose their citizenship
March 12: German laws govern Austria after the troops arrive
April 23: Jews in Vienna rounded up and forced to eat grass
May 3: Concentration camp at Flossenburg established
June 4: Dr. Sigmund Freud left his Vienna home for London with his wife Marth and daughter Anna.
July 25: Germany cancels licenses of Jewish doctors
August 10 destruction of The Great Synagogue, Nuremberg
November 9-10: Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a violent pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria.
1939
September 1: World War II begins with the invasion of Poland.
September 6, Nazis enter Krakow, Poland
September: Murder of people with disabilities began (T4 Programme)
October 8: Establishment of the first Jewish ghettos in Poland.
1940
May 20: Auschwitz concentration camp is established.
October 12: Warsaw Ghetto is established.
1941
June 22: Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, begins.
September 3: First mass murder at Auschwitz using Zyklon B (c 600 Soviet, 250 Poles)
September 29-30: Babi Yar massacre, where over 33,000 Jews are killed in Kiev.
December 8: Chelmno extermination camp begins operations.
1942
January 20: Wannsee Conference, where the "Final Solution" is planned.
March 01: Auschwitz begins operation
March 17: Belzec extermination camp begins operations.
May 4: SS selection/ murder begins at Birkenau
May 27: Czechs attack Reinhard Heydrich, he dies soon after
July 23: Treblinka extermination camp begins operations.
July 29: Edward Schulte, informs allies 499 Jews murdered at Auschwitz, Himmler present
April 19: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
September: Dr. Viktor Frankl began four-camp imprisonment at Theresienstadt
October 14: Sobibor extermination camp uprising.
1943
February 26: Gypsy camp set for "Gypsies"
1944
February 28: Corrie ten Boom arrested (The Hiding Place story)
May 15: Deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins.
May: Hungarian Edith Eva Eger deported to Auschwitz (later became a psychologist; published The Choice in 2017)
July 10-12 Nazis murder 7,000 Jews at Theresienstadt
October 7: Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando uprising.
December 31: Corrie ten Boom released
1945
January 17: Death march begins c 60,000 from Auschwitz
January 21-26: Nazis blow up gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau
January 27: Liberation of c 7,000 at Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces. January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day
February: Approximate date, Anne Frank died from Typhus, age 15
April 15: Liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British forces.
May 5: Liberation of Mauthausen by American forces.
May 8: Germany surrenders, ending World War II in Europe.
June 26: London Conference-decisions on procedures for Nazi trials
November 20: Nuremberg trials begin for 24 Nazis
1946
October 1: Nuremberg trials end
1947
April 30: Karl Rahm, commander of Theresienstadt found guilty, hanged
4. Resources
Books and Films
Inheritance: A Legacy of Hatred and the Journey to Change It (film)
Man's Search for Meaning by survivor, Victor Frankl
Schindler's List (film)
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by survivor and psychologist, Edith Eger
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, by Simon Wiesenthal
Articles
O’Neill, A. (2024, August 9). Number of victims of the holocaust and nazi persecution 1933-1945, by background. statista.com. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/
Stone L. (2019). Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide. Science advances, 5(1), eaau7292. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7292
Geoffrey W. Sutton has a PhD in psychology and writes about psychology and culture.
Website: https://www.suttong.com/
Amazon Author: https://author.amazon.com/home
ResearchGate page: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Geoffrey-Sutton-2
Academia Page: https://evangel.academia.edu/GeoffSutton
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