Chronology of Jewish History - Part 3

1890 - 1936

Chronology of Jewish History - Parts 1-9

Chronology of Jews in Denmark

Mid-19th Century

1890’s

1890
The term "Zionism" is coined by an Austrian Jewish publicist Nathan Birnbaum in his journal Self Emancipation and was defined as the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. [Wikipedia]

1891
Expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Moscow, Russia. The Congress of the United States eases immigration restrictions for Jews from the Russian Empire. (Webster-Campster report)

1891
Leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia.

1891
Most Jews are deported from Moscow and a newly built synagogue is closed by the city's authorities, headed by governor-general Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar's brother. About 20,000 Jews are expelled, causing international criticism.

1891
Blood libel in Xanten, Germany.

December 27, 1891
Aleksander Wacław Ładoś 1891 – 1963) was a Polish politician and diplomat, who 1940–45 headed the Legation of Poland to Switzerland is born. Ładoś was a member and de facto leader of the Ładoś Group, also known as Bernese Group,[1][2] a secret action by the Polish diplomats and Jewish organizations who helped save several hundred Jews from the Holocaust by providing them with illegal Latin American, mostly Paraguayan passports.

1892
In Russia new measures ban Jewish participation in local elections despite their large numbers in many towns in the Pale of settlement. "The Town Regulations of 1892 prohibit Jews from the right to elect or be elected to town Dumas (a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions.

1892
Mulla Abdullah issues a fatwa to kill all the Jews of Hamadan if they refuse to abide by Jewish restrictions. The local Persian Jews were later ordered to become Muslims or face death.

1892
Two Persian Jews go out to sell merchandise and end up killed with all of their property stolen. Their relatives went out to search for the bodies and when they found them, they were killed by the same villagers. Even after many attempts to plea for their, the governor of Savojbolagh County paid them no mind.

1892
Justinas Bonaventure Pranaitis writes The Talmud Unmasked an antisemitic and misleading inaccurate anti-Talmudic work.

1893
In Russia the Law Concerning the Names impose criminal punishment on Jews who tried to "adopt Christian names" and declare that Jews must use their birth names in business, writings, advertisements, nametags, etc.

1893
Karl Lueger establishes antisemitic Christian Social Party and becomes the Mayor of Vienna in 1897.

1894
The Dreyfus Affair in France. In 1898 Émile Zola publishes open letter J'accuse!

1895
A. C. Cuza organizes the Alliance Anti-semitique Universelle in Bucharest, Romania.

1895
Captain Alfred Dreyfus is dishonorably discharged in France.

1895
Sigmund Freud publishes his first book.

1897
Results of the first Russian Empire Census: 5,200,000 of Jews, 4,900,000 in the Pale of Settlement. The lands of former Poland have 1,300,000 Jews or 14% of total population.

1897
The General Jewish Labor Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia generally called The Bund, (federation or union) or the Jewish Labor Bund, is established. It is a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire and active between 1897 and 1920.

1897
Synagogues and Jewish homes are pillaged in Oran.

1897
Synagogues are ransacked and Jews are murdered in Tripolitania.

1898
Violent anti-Jewish riots erupt in Algiers.

1899
The British-German racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain publishes The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, in which he writes that the 19th century is "the Jewish age" and he also writes that Europe's social problems are the result of its domination by the Jews. The book eventually influences the Nazi Party. [Wikipedia]

June 16, 1899
Konstanty Rokicki is born Lucerne, Switzerland. He is a Polish consular officer, vice consul of the Republic of Poland in Riga and Bern. Between 1941 and 1943 he was a member of the Ładoś Group also called the Bernese Group. He used his diplomatic position as vice consul to produce illegal Latin American passports and had them smuggled to the German-occupied Poland and Netherlands. They saved lives of numerous Jews. He is honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in 2019.

1900’s

1900
The Boxer Rebellion in China. The Russians and the Japanese both contribute troops to the eight-member international force sent in 1900 to quell the Boxer Rebellion and to relieve the international legations under siege in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Russia had already sent 177,000 soldiers to Manchuria, nominally to protect its railways under construction. [Wikipedia]

1901
Poale Zion ("Workers of Zion") is a movement of Marxist–Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe and the Russian Empire in about the turn of the 20th century after the Bund rejected Zionism in 1901. [Wikipedia]

May 13, 1901
Witold Pilecki (1901 – 1948) is born. He was a Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. Early in World War II he co-founded the Secret Polish Army resistance movement.

December 11, 1901
George Mantello (1901 – 1992), a businessman with various diplomatic activities, is born into a Jewish family from Transylvania. He helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust while working for the Salvadoran consulate in Geneva, Switzerland from 1942 to 1945.

1903
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document forged by the Okhrana (Russian secret police) purporting to reveal the secret plans of a conspiracy of Jewish religious leaders for world conquest through the imposition of liberal democracy, is published in Znamya in the Russian Empire. It is later distributed across the world after 1917 by white Russian émigrés and becomes a popular anti-Semitic tract even after it was proved to have been forged and plagiarized. [Wikipedia]

April 19-21, 1903
The Kishinev pogroms an anti-Jewish riot takes place on Easter Day in Kishinev (modern Chișinău, Moldova) 49 Jews are murdered.

December 26, 1903
Stefan Jan Ryniewicz (1903 – 1988) is born in Tarnapol. He is a Polish diplomat and counselor of the Legation of Poland in Bern between 1940 and 1945. As member of the Ładoś Group he a played a key role in issuing of thousands of illegal Latin American passports to save Jews from the Nazis.

1904-1905
The Russo-Japanese War is fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of military operations are the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. Many Jews leave Russia to avoid conscription. [Wikipedia]

1904
The Limerick boycott is an economic boycott waged against the small Jewish community in Limerick, Ireland. It was accompanied by a number of assaults, stone throwing and intimidation, which caused many Jews to leave the city.

1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, is a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which is directed at the government. It includes worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to constitutional reform (namely the "October Manifesto"), including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. [Wikipedia]

Recha Sternbuch (née Rottenberg; 1905–1971), a Swiss woman of Orthodox Jewish heritage, a Holocaust era Jewish rescuer is born in Krakow, Poland.

1905
Pogrom in Yekaterinoslav. 66 Jews are killed, and 125 wounded and Jewish homes and shops were looted.

1905
The 1905 Kiev pogrom is a massacre of 100 Jews.

October 19-20, 1905
A second pogrom takes place in Kishinev. The riots began as political protests against the Tsar but turn into an attack on Jews. More than,19 Jews are killed and 56 injured.

1906
Alfred Dreyfus is exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army.

June 14-16, 1906
The Białystok pogrom in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). Between 81 and 88 Jews are killed by soldiers of the Russian Army, the Black Hundreds and the Chernoe Znamia, and about 80 Jews are wounded.

1907
Over 60 Jews in the Mellah of Casablanca are killed in a pogrom by Kabyle Muslims. Many more were wounded, and a large number of women and children were carried off.

1909
Salomon Reinach and Florence Simmonds refer to "this new antisemitism, masquerading as patriotism, which was first propagated at Berlin by the court chaplain Stöcker, with the connivance of Bismarck." Similarly, Peter N. Stearns comments that "the ideology behind the new anti-Semitism [in Germany] was more racist than religious."

1910’s

1910
The 1910 Shiraz blood libel was a pogrom of the Jewish quarter in Shiraz, Iran. It was sparked by accusations that the Jews had ritually murdered a Muslim girl. By the end of the pogrom, 12 Jews were killed, 50 or so were wounded, and 6,000 were robbed of all their possessions.

1912
World Agudath Israel is founded in Kattowitz, German Empire (now Katowice, Poland), in 1912, with the purpose of providing an umbrella organization for observant Jews who oppose the Zionist movement.

1912
The Tritl, or the 1912 Fez massacre left 42 Moroccan Jews dead.

1913
The Blood libel trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis in Kiev.

June 24, 1913
Juliusz Kühl (1913 – 1985) also known as Julius or Yehiel Kühl is born in Sanok, Poland. He is a Polish diplomat, and Jewish Holocaust rescuer. Kühl was a member of the Ładoś Group also known as the Bernese Group. He is known for his role in the manufacturing of false Latin American passports by the Polish Legation in Bern, Switzerland. As a result, several thousand Jews in German-occupied Poland and Netherlands survived the Nazi Holocaust.

1915
In one 48-hour interval in May 1915, all 40,000 Jews living in Kaunas, Lithuania are forcibly removed from the city.

1915
The Leo Frank trial and lynching in Atlanta, Georgia turns the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States and leads to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.

August 1914-November 1918
World War I. Millions of soldiers die. At the conclusion of World War I, many of the royal families of Europe are deposed. First of many European oligarchies and “undemocratic democracies” are formed.

Poland regains its independence in the aftermath of World War I. It is the center of the European Jewish world with one of the world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Antisemitism is a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishments and the general population. Throughout the interwar period, Poland actively supports Jewish emigration from Poland and, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. [Wikipedia]

While most Polish Jews are neutral to the idea of a Polish state, many play a significant role in the fight for Poland's independence during World War I; around 650 Jews joined the Legiony Polskie formed by Józef Piłsudski, more than all other minorities combined. Prominent Jews were among the members of KTSSN, the nucleus of the interim government of re-emerging sovereign Poland including Herman Feldstein, Henryk Eile, Porucznik Samuel Herschthal, Dr. Zygmunt Leser, Henryk Orlean, Wiktor Chajes and others. [Wikipedia]

After the 1918 reconstitution of an independent Polish state, about 500,000 refugees from the Soviet republics come to Poland in the first spontaneous flight from persecution especially in Ukraine where up to 2,000 pogroms take place during the Civil War. [Wikipedia]

November 1914
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is founded to distribute funds to aid Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere.

1915
The Jewish Labor Committee is founded to help Jews in the Middle East. It soon joins the Jewish Joint.

The Leo Frank trial and lynching in Atlanta, Georgia turns attention to antisemitism in the United States and leads to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League.

November 6, 1916
The Act of 5th November of 1916 was a declaration by Emperors Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Joseph of Austria. The act promises to create a Kingdom of Poland out of territory of Congress Poland. The had an important impact among the Allies of World War I. In December 1916, the Italian Parliament supports the independence of Poland. In early 1917, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia returns to an earlier proposal of an independent Poland, tied with the Russian Empire that Russian officials had proposed in 1914. At the same time, US President Woodrow Wilson also publicly expresses his support of a free Polish state. [Wikipedia]

March 3, 1917
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed. It is a separate peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ends Russia's participation in World War I.

October 24, 1917
Russian Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin. Czar Nicholas II is swept from power. The Russian Revolution inspires Communist movements throughout Western Europe, including Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and Hungary. In response, extreme right wing, and nationalistic movements, many of a fascist nature, are created.

1918-1919
Many attacks are launched against Jews during the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Ukrainian War, and the Polish–Soviet War ending with the Treaty of Riga. Almost half of the Jewish men thought to have supported the Bolshevik Russia in these incidents were in their 20s. Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. Pressure for government action reaches the point where U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sends an official commission to investigate the matter. The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., concludes in its Morgenthau Report that allegations of pogroms are exaggerated. It identifies eight incidents in the years 1918–1919 out of 37 claims for damages and estimated the number of victims at 280. [Wikipedia]

Many other events in Poland are found to have been exaggerated, especially by contemporary newspapers such as although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continue elsewhere, especially in Ukraine. Atrocities committed by the young Polish army and its allies in 1919 during their Kiev operation against the Bolsheviks has a profound impact on the foreign perception of the re-emerging Polish state. The result of the concerns over the fate of Poland's Jews is a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by the Western powers, and President Paderewski, protecting the rights of minorities in new Poland including Germans. [Wikipedia]

November 1918
The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) is founded in the US. It later protests

The Nazi regime in Europe. Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and others join to lay the groundwork for a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the country, to rally for equal rights for all Americans regardless of race, religion, or national ancestry. [Wikipedia]

November 1, 1918
Polish-Ukrainian War Begins. It is a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces (both the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic).

November 11, 1918
Polish Independence Day. (Polish: Narodowe Święto Niepodległości). It commemorates the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918 from the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires. Marshall Józef Piłsudski becomes “head of the state”.

November 21-23, 1918
The Lwów pogrom of 1918 an attack on the Jewish population of Lwów takes place during the Polish–Ukrainian War. After the pogrom is over, an estimated 52–150 Jewish residents are killed, and hundreds are injured.

1918-1939
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, is an independent republic, that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established in 1918, after of the end of World War I. It ceased to exist in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the World War II in Europe. [Wikipedia]

December 27, 1918
The Greater Poland uprising of 1918–1919, or Wielkopolska uprising of 1918–1919 or Posnanian War begins. It is a military insurrection of Poles in the Greater Poland region (German: Grand Duchy of Posen or Provinz Posen) against German rule.

1919
The Kyiv (Ukraine) pogroms of 1919 a series of anti-Jewish pogroms in various places around Kyiv carried out by White Volunteer Army troops.

1919
There are a total of 1,326 pogroms across Ukraine around that time, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews are massacred. Thousands of women are raped. Hundreds of shtetlekh (small Towns) are pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods are destroyed. The pogroms of 1918-1921, leave half a million Jews homeless.

1919
During the Russian Civil War the Jews of Uman in eastern Podolia were subjected to two pogroms in 1919, as the town changed hands several times. The first pogrom, in spring, claimed 170 victims; the second one, in summer, more than 90. This time the Christian inhabitants helped to hide the Jews. The Council for Public Peace, with a Christian majority and a Jewish minority, saved the city from danger several times. In 1920, for example, it stopped the pogrom initiated by the troops of General Denikin.

1919
Aleksander Ładoś returns to newly independent Poland in spring 1919 to join the Polish diplomatic service. Until spring 1920 he served as plebiscite delegate at Cieszyn Silesia, Spiš and Orava.

January 5, 1919
The German Workers’ Party (DAP) is founded. It is a small, right-wing political group based on German ultra-nationalism. Hitler joins the party on September 12.

January 23-30, 1919
The Poland–Czechoslovakia War, also known in Czech as the Seven-day war is fought. It is a military dispute between Czechoslovakia and Poland over the territory of Cieszyn Silesia.

January 18, 1919
Opening of the Paris Peace Conference to negotiate peace treaties between the belligerents of World War I. Dominated by Britain, France, the United States, and Italy, it resulted in five treaties that rearranged the map of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands and imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other defeated nations had no say. [Wikipedia]

January 26, 1919
Parliamentary elections are held in Poland, electing the first Sejm of the Second Polish Republic. The elections, based on universal suffrage and proportional representation, was the first free election in Poland’s history. It produces a parliament balanced between the right, left and center. The elections are boycotted by the Polish communists and the Jewish Bund. [Wikipedia]

February 14, 1919
The Polish–Soviet War (late autumn 1918 – 18 March 1921) begins. It is fought between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic after World War I.

Feb 20, 1919
Small Constitution is adopted in Poland. It is the first constitution of the Second Polish Republic. It was formally called the "Legislative Sejm's ordinance of 20 February 1919. Józef Piłsudski is “Chief of State"

March 2, 1919
Foundation of the Third International, or Comintern in Moscow. Comintern's stated aim is to create a global Soviet republic.

April 5, 1919
The Pinsk massacre was the mass execution of thirty-five Jewish residents of Pinsk.

May 7, 1919
The Treaty of Versailles is presented to the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Most Germans disapprove of the reparation’s payments and the forced acceptance of German war guilt entailed in Article 231.

June 28, 1919
Signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Under the provisions of the Little Treaty of Versailles or the Polish Minority Treaty, Poland is declared a sovereign state and gains access to the Baltic Sea.

September 10, 1919
German Austria signs the Treaty of Saint-Germain. The peace treaty with the Allies regulates the borders of Austria, forbids union with Germany and German Austria has to change its name to Austria. The United States did not ratify the treaty and later makes a separate peace treaty with Austria. [Wikipedia]

September 16, 1919
Adolf Hitler, after joining the German Workers' Party, makes his first endorsement of racial anti-Semitism.

November 1919
Between November 1919 and June 1924, 1,200,000 people leave the territory of the USSR for new Poland. It is estimated that some 460,000 refugees speak Polish as their first language. [Wikipedia]

November 1, 1919
The Polish–Ukrainian War begins. It lasts from November 1918 to July 1919. It was a conflict between the Second Polish Republic and Ukrainian forces (both the West Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian People's Republic).

November 18, 1919
Paul von Hindenburg gives testimony to the Weimar National Assembly blaming the loss of World War I on "the secret intentional mutilation of the fleet and the army" and made misleading claims that a British general admitted that the German Army was "stabbed in the back", giving rise to the popular stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory. He is elected President of Germany in the 1925 presidential election. [Wikipedia]

1919–1922
Soviet Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the Communist Party) attacks Bund and Zionist parties for "Jewish cultural particularism". In April 1920, the All-Russian Zionist Congress is broken up by Cheka led by Bolsheviks, whose leadership and ranks included many anti-Jewish Jews. Thousands are arrested and sent to Gulag for "counter-revolutionary... collusion in the interests of Anglo-French bourgeoisie... to restore the Palestine state." Hebrew language is banned, Judaism is suppressed, along with other religions.

1920’s

1920
The Jerusalem pogrom of April 1920 of old Yishuv.

1920
The idea that the Bolshevik revolution was a Jewish conspiracy for the world domination sparks worldwide interest in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In a single year, five editions are sold out in England alone. In the US Henry Ford prints 500,000 copies.

1920
In the Spring of 1920, Henry Ford made his personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, chronicle what he considered the "Jewish menace". Every week for 91 issues, the paper exposed some sort of Jewish-inspired evil major story in a headline. The most popular and aggressive stories were then chosen to be reprinted into four volumes called The International Jew.

1920
League of Nations is founded.

February 24, 1920
The German Workers’ Party becomes the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). It is known as the Nazi Party.

The Nazi Party platform is written. It expresses ultra-right views on German nationalism and antisemitism. It proposes to exclude Jews from German life by revoking their citizenship.

April 21, 1920
Treaty of Warsaw, also known as the Polish-Ukrainian Alliance, is signed during the Polish-Soviet War.

1921
Adoption of the modern Polish constitution known as the March Constitution.

According to the Polish national census of 1921, there are 2,845,364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic. 74.2% of Polish Jews list Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language; the number rises to 87% by 1931, contributing to growing tensions between Jews and Poles. Jews are often not identified as Polish nationals, a problem caused not only by the reversal of assimilation shown in national censuses between 1921 and 1931, but also by the influx of Russian Jews escaping persecution—especially in Ukraine, where up to 2,000 pogroms took place during the Civil War, an estimated 30,000 Jews were massacred directly, and a total of 150,000 died. A large number of Russian Jews emigrate to Poland, as they are entitled by the Peace treaty of Riga to choose the country, they preferred. Several hundred thousand refugees join the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic. [Wikipedia]

1921
The Nazi Party creates the Sturmabteilung (SA) under the Division for Propaganda.

1921
All Jews in Mongolia are expelled by Russian anti-Bolshevik forces retreating after being defeated in Central Asia.

1921
Jaffa riots in Palestine.

1921–1925
Outbreak of antisemitism in United States, led by Ku Klux Klan.

April 21, 1920
Signing of Treaty of Warsaw. It is a military-economical alliance between the Second Polish Republic, by Józef Piłsudski, and the Ukrainian People's Republic, by Symon Petliura, against Bolshevik Russia.

September 1, 1920
Polish–Lithuanian War continues over the Vilnius and Suwałki Regions

February 19, 1921
The Franco-Polish alliance is signed It is the military alliance between Poland and France that is active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements are signed in February 1921 and formally take effect in 1923.

March 17, 1921
The Second Polish Republic adopts the March Constitution, after ousting the occupation of the German/Prussian forces in the 1918 Greater Poland Uprising and avoiding conquest by the Soviets in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. The Constitution, based on the Constitution of the Third French Republic, was regarded as very democratic. Among others, it expressly ruled out discrimination on racial or religious grounds. It also abolished all royal titles It is superseded by the Polish Constitution of 1935 (April Constitution). [Wikipedia]

March 18, 1921
The Peace of Riga, also known as the Treaty of Riga, is signed in Riga between Poland, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine. The treaty ends the Polish–Soviet War. The Soviet-Polish borders established by the treaty remained in force until World War II. [Wikipedia]

November 1921
Hitler becomes head of the National Socialist German Workers’ party (Nazi).

The Munich Post opposes Hitler and the Nazi Party in numerous articles and editorials. The articles accuse Hitler of being a political criminal. They characterize the Nazi Party as gangsters. These articles appear until Hitler comes to power in 1933. Often intimidated and threatened, these editors and journalists continue their crusade against Hitler. They are Martin Gruber, Edmund Goldschagg, Erhard Aurer and Julius Zerfass.

1922
Josef Stalin becomes Secretary General of the Communist Party in Russia.

1922
Non-aligned groups and individuals establish the Organization of General Zionists as a non-ideological party within the Zionist Organization (later the World Zionist Organization) Eventually the General Zionists became identified with European liberal and middle class beliefs in private property and capitalism.

1922
Soviet Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the Communist Party) attacks Bund and Zionist parties for "Jewish cultural particularism".

February 6, 1922
The Washington Naval Conference ends and results with the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. The signing parties agree to limit the size of their naval forces.

Cardinal Achille Ratti of Milan is elected Pope, takes the name Pius XI. He serves until his death in 1939.

April 16, 1922
Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Treaty of Rapallo. It re-establishes diplomatic relations, renounces financial claims on each other and pledge future cooperation.

October 29-31, 1922
Italian Fascist party, under Benito Mussolini, takes control of the Italian government.

November 5-12, 1922
Legislative election in Poland Gabriel Narutowicz becomes President of Poland on December 9.

December 16, 1922
President of Poland Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated and Stanisław Wojciechowski becomes President on December 22.

1922-1923
High inflation devalues the German Mark, devastating the German economy. The Weimar government is blamed.

1923
Aleksander Ładoś, is appointed envoy to Latvia (1923–26) and latter a consul general in Munich (1927–31).

January 11, 1923
France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr in an effort to force Germany to speed up its war reparations payments.

March 1923
The Schutzstaffel (SS) is formed as a part of the Nazi Party. Originally it was designed to be Hitler’s bodyguards. It will become the organization responsible for carrying out the murder of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

April 20, 1923
The first issue of Der Stürmer, (lit. "the Attacker") a highly anti-Semitic newspaper published by Nazi party editor Julius Streicher, is released. It is published from 1923 to the end of World War II. It was a significant part of Nazi propaganda.

June 1923
The great inflation of 1923, the value of the German mark is ruined.

August 2, 1923
President of the United States Warren G. Harding dies in office and is succeeded by his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge.

November 9, 1923
In the so-called beer hall putsch, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis fail in their attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. Hitler is arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. He serves only nine months of a five-year sentence.

1924
The National Origins Quota of 1924 and Immigration Act of 1924 largely halted immigration to the U.S. from Eastern Europe and Russia; this was meant to restrict Eastern European Jews among others, as a great many of these immigrants coming from Russia and Eastern Europe were Jews (the "outbreak of antisemitism" mentioned in the above entry may have also played a part in the passage of these acts).

In Spain, the regime of Prime minister Primo de Rivera grants Spanish citizenship to the entire Sephardic Jewish diaspora.

January 21, 1924
Leader of the Soviet Union Vladimir Lenin dies, and Joseph Stalin begins purging rivals to clear the way for his complete dictatorship.

February 1, 1924
The United Kingdom extends diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union (USSR).

April 1, 1924
For his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in Landsberg prison (he serves only 8 months).

April 6, 1924
Fascist Party in Italy win elections with a 2/3 majority.

August 16, 1924
Allied occupation of the German Ruhr ends and establishes a staggered payment plan for Germany's payment of war reparations.

August 18, 1924
France begins withdrawing its forces from the Ruhr in Germany.

1925
Hitler writes and publishes his manifesto entitled Mein Kampf (My Struggle). In it, he outlines his antisemitic views on racial purity and social Darwinism. By 1939, it will have 500 printings and more than six million books printed.

1925
Geneva Convention of 1925 outlaws the use of poison gas in war. It also establishes rules for humane treatment of prisoners of war, sick, wounded, and dead.

1925
YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute), established in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia. It relocated to New York City during WW II.

1925
The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy is a 144-page book written by Bishop Alma Bridwell White in 1925 and illustrated by Reverend Branford Clarke. This book primarily espouses White's deep fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic Church while also promoting antisemitism, racism against African Americans, white supremacy, and women's equality.

May 12, 1925
Retired Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg is elected President of Germany.

December 1, 1925
The Locarno Treaties are signed. Negotiated in Locarno, Switzerland, in October 1925 and formally signed in London on December 1. First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe seek to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the defeated Germany (the Weimar Republic). It also states that Germany will never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divides borders in Europe into two categories: western, which are guaranteed by the Locarno treaties, and eastern borders of Germany with Poland. [Wikipedia]

1926
Administration of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935). Piłsudski counters Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens are judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality. The years 1926–1935 are favorably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski’s appointee Kazimierz Bartel. [Wikipedia]

1926
Hitler publishes second volume of his manifesto Mein Kampf.

April 24, 1926
The Treaty of Berlin is signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, it declares neutrality if either country is attacked within five years.

May 12-14, 1926
In a coups Marshal Józef Piłsudski, overthrows the government of Polish President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos. A new government is installed, and Ignacy Mościcki becomes President on June 4.

September 8, 1926
Germany joins the League of Nations.

December 25, 1926
Japanese Emperor Taishō dies, and his son Hirohito becomes the Emperor of Japan.

1927
The Schwartzbard trial was a sensational 1927 French murder trial that resulted in a mistrial of international proportions. At the trial Sholom Schwartzbard was accused of murdering the Ukrainian immigrant and head of the Ukrainian government-in-exile Symon Petlura in Paris. While the defendant fully admitted to the crime the trial at the end turned in accusation of Petlura's responsibility for the massive 1919–1920 pogroms in Ukraine in which Schwartzbard had lost all 15 members of his family. Instead of Schwartzbard's murder case the trial was turned into a political case against the Ukrainian government. Schwartzbard was acquitted.

1927
Polish diplomat Aleksander Ładoś, a pre-war envoy to Latvia (1923–26) is appointed consul general in Munich (1927–31).

November 12, 1927
Josef Stalin ousts Leon Trotsky from power in the USSR and becomes the absolute dictator. The Communist government consolidates its hold on the Russian Confederation of States.

1928
Hitler writes his third book, detailing his race theory. He promotes antisemitism as a central aspect of his personal and political career. The book is not published until 1961.

1928
The Massena blood libel was an instance of blood libel against Jews in which the Jews of Massena, New York, were falsely accused of the kidnapping and ritual murder of a Christian girl in September 1928.

March 4-11, 1928
In Poland Józef Piłsudski's Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government, a coalition of the Sanation faction, is elected. It is considered the last free election in Poland until 1989.

August 2, 1928
Italy and Ethiopia sign the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty, pledging cooperation and friendship.

August 27, 1928
In Paris the major powers of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact or Pact of Paris, the treaty sought to outlaw aggressive warfare. It was the basis for trial and execution of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg in 1946.

October 1, 1928
The Soviet Union launches its first five-year plan, an economic effort to increase industrialization.

November 6, 1928
Herbert Hoover is elected the 1928 US president defeating Democratic Governor of New York Al Smith.

1929
British diplomat Frank Foley is stationed in Berlin. After 1933, he issues thousands of destination visas to England for German Jews. He is responsible for saving more than 10,000 Jewish refugees.

1929
General Zionists establish a worldwide organization, holding their first conference in 1931.

1929
Germany signs Geneva Convention of 1925.

1929
The ancient Jewish community of Hebron is massacred by local Muslims over rumors that the Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

1929
18–20 Jewish residents of Safed were brutally killed in the Safed massacre.

January 20, 1929
Heinrich Himmler is appointed head of the SS (Reichsführer SS).

February 11, 1929
Holy See and Italy sign the Lateran Treaty, normalizing relations between the Vatican and Italy. The Treaty is ratified on June 7 making the Vatican City a sovereign state.

August 31, 1929
The Young Plan, which sets the total World War I reparations owed by Germany at US $26,350,000,000 to be paid over a period of 58½ years, is finalized. It replaces the earlier Dawes Plan.

October 1929
New York Stock Exchange fails. Stock values dissolve overnight. This event initiates a worldwide economic depression. It will not end until 1939. The depression hits Germany extremely hard.

1930’s

1930
Pogrom against the Jews of Bălți.

April 22, 1930
The United Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, and Japan sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting naval shipbuilding. It addresses issues not covered in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty.

June 30, 1930
France withdraws all of its troops from the Rhineland ending the occupation of the Rhineland.

September 30, 1930
The Nazi party gets 18% of the popular vote in the German Reichstag election. The Nazis becoming the second-largest party in the Reichstag.

US Immigration Law of 1917 is enforced by the Hoover administration to limit US immigration. This action is a result of the worldwide depression.

1931
According to the 1931 Polish National Census there were 3,130,581 Polish Jews measured by the declaration of religion. The Polish language, rather than Yiddish, is increasingly used by the young Warsaw Jews who do not have a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Varsovians and Poles. Jews such as Bruno Schulz were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. Most children were enrolled in Jewish religious schools, which limit their ability to speak Polish. As a result, according to the 1931 census, 79% of the Jews declare Yiddish as their first language, and only 12% listed Polish, with the remaining 9% being Hebrew. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of German-born Jews of this period spoke German as their first language. [Wikipedia]

1931
The Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA) is established by SS chief Himmler.

1931
President von Hindenburg decrees a 25 percent emigration tax, the Reich Flight Tax. It is enacted to prevent the transfer of currency out of the country. The Tax later becomes a impediment to Jews attempting to emigrate out of Germany.

1931
Pope Pius XI launches Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli on a Vatican diplomatic career as a Nuncio (Vatican diplomat). Roncalli is appointed Archbishop of Areopolis and Apostolic Visitor to Greece. Archbishop Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Bulgaria. He serves there until 1934.

1931
Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) is founded in Palestine. It founds the Af-Al-Pi rescue operation in 1937.

1931
Konstanty Rokicki joins the consular service of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 1932 and 1933, he is a contract employee of the Polish Consulate in Minsk, at that time capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1934–1936 he is appointed vice-consul in Riga, and in the years 1936–1938 a contract employee of the Polish Legation in Cairo. From 1939 to 1945, he was the vice-consul of the Republic of Poland in Bern.

September 18-19, 1931
Japan invades Manchuria and installs puppet Manchukuo regime. It is called the Mukden Incident. The Japanese Military stage a false flag bombing against a Japanese-owned railroad in the Chinese region of Manchuria, blaming Chinese dissidents for the attack, an event that some claim is the official start of the Second World War.

October 30, 1931
Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend) is established.

December 9, 1931
The Munich Post publishes a major article revealing Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s plans to eventually remove Jews from German society and enslave them.

1932
The Soviet famine of 1932–33, also known as the Holodomor (Terror Famine) begins. It is caused in part by the collectivization of agriculture of the first five-year plan. It has been estimated that between 3.3 and 3.9 million die in Ukraine, between 2 and 3 million die in Russia, and 1.5–2 million (1.3 million of whom were ethnic Kazakhs) die in Kazakhstan. [Wikipedia]

1932
The Faith Movement of German Christians is established by the Nazi Party. It fosters ultra-nationalism and antisemitism.

1932
American journalist Dorothy Thompson publishes major anti-Nazi book entitled I saw Hitler!

1932
Youth Aliyah (Youth Immigration) is founded in Germany by Recha Freier. It brings thousands of Jews from Nazi Europe to Palestine.

January 7, 1932
The Stimson Doctrine is announced by United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in response to Japan invading Manchuria. It declares that the United States government will not recognize border changes that are made by force.

January 28, 1932
The Japanese military attack Shanghai, China. Fighting ends on March 6, and on May 5 a ceasefire agreement is signed, and Shanghai is declared a demilitarized zone.

February 27, 1932
Cease fire between China and Japan in Manchuria ends fighting leaving Japan in control of Manchuria.

March 1, 1932
Empire of Japan establishes the puppet state Manchukuo (1932-1945) out of occupied Manchuria in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia.

April 10, 1932
Paul von Hindenburg is reelected President of Germany. He defeats Adolf Hitler in a run-off.

June 14, 1932
German law prohibiting activities of Nazi Storm Troopers is lifted.

July 5, 1932
Oliviera Salazar elected Premier of Portugal. He establishes his leadership as a fascist dictatorship.

July 25, 1932
The Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed. The pact is broken by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939, during the Soviet invasion of Poland.

July 31, 1932
The Nazis win more than 37% of the vote in a Reichstag election. Nazis became the largest political party in Germany, winning 230 of the 608 seats in the German federal election of July 1932.

August 30, 1932
Hermann Göring is elected chairman of the German Senate.

November 8, 1932
Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected President of the US by a landslide.

1933
More than 52,000 Jews leave Germany in the first year of the Nazi government. There are 37,000 German Jews traveling who remain abroad.

1933
In 1933, Agudat Yisrael enters into an agreement with the Jewish Agency in Palestine, according to which would receive 6.5% of the immigration permits. In the wake of the Holocaust, anti-Zionist rabbis who lead Agudat Israel recognize the great utility of a Jewish state, and it became non-Zionist, rather than anti-Zionist. It did not actively participate in the creation of Israel, but it ceased its opposition to it. [Wikipedia]

1933
The French Jewish Aid Society, the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés (CAR), is founded to help German Jews emigrate to safety in France.

1933
Jewish organizations worldwide attempt to have the Assembly of the League of Nations adopt measures to protect the rights of minorities being persecuted in Germany. This effort is largely unsuccessful. Later, the League initiates the Bernheim Petition, which partially protects the rights of German minorities in Upper Silesia.

1933
German labor unions are dissolved.

1933
Fifty concentration camps are built throughout Germany. They include Dachau, Oranienburg, Esterwegen and Sachsenburg (Sachsenhausen). These brutal camps are designed to house enemies of Nazism, Socialists and Jews. In 1933, 25,000 people are sent to these camps.

1933
The Faith Movement of German Christians becomes an official state-sanctioned organization.

1933
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee involves itself in refugee issues of the League of Nations.

1933
In a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1933, published under the title After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934), T.S. Eliot wrote of societal tradition and coherence, "What is still more important [than cultural homogeneity] is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable." Eliot never re-published this book/lecture.

January 1, 1933
Japan attacks the fortified eastern end of the Great Wall of China in Rehe Province in Inner Mongolia. Fighting commences between the armies of Republic of China and Empire of Japan.

January 30, 1933
Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by German President Paul von Hindenburg.

The Nazi party becomes the ruling party in Germany.

There is 525,000 German Jews, including those living in the Saar District. German law defines Jews by race. Under German law, there are 566,000 Jews. Jews comprise less than one percent of the German population.

Voluntary Aryanization of Jewish businesses begins. Under pressure to leave Germany, many Jews turn over their businesses to Nazi administrators or sell their businesses at a greatly reduced rate.

February 1933
Lebensraum became an ideological principle of the Nazi party and provides the justification for the German territorial expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy ('Master Plan for the East') is based on its tenets.

February 2, 1933
All political demonstrations are forbidden in Germany.

February 20, 1933
Hitler gains support of many leading German businessmen and industrialists.

February 27-28, 1933
The German Reichstag [Parliament] is burned down under mysterious circumstances. As a result, a state of emergency is declared. Hitler receives emergency powers from German President Paul von Hindenburg. Nazi storm troopers arrest ten thousand opponents of the Nazi party. Many of these are executed or “disappear.”

February 28, 1933
The Reichstag Fire Decree issued by German President Paul von Hindenburg on the advice of Chancellor Adolf Hitler in immediate response to the Reichstag fire. The decree nullifies many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. The decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. [Wikipedia]

March 4, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated as 32nd President of the United States. Roosevelt appoints Cordell Hull as Secretary of State and Sumner Wells as Assistant Secretary of State.

March 5, 1933
Individual German states no longer have power.

Nazi party wins 288 seats in the Reichstag.

March 9, 1933
Dachau concentration camp opens near Munich, Germany. Dachau is used to imprison enemies of the Nazi party. It becomes the training camp and prototype for Nazi concentration camps under the SS. By the end of the war, there will be more than one thousand of these camps and thousands more slave labor camps established throughout the Nazi Empire.

March 9-10, 1933
Anti-Jewish riots, organized by the Nazi Party, are carried out by the SA Storm Troopers.

March 13, 1933
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is created under the leadership of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

March 21, 1933
Nazis set up special courts to prosecute anti-Nazi dissidents.

Oranienburg concentration camp is opened in Oranienburg by an SA brigade near Berlin.

March 23, 1933
Passage of the Enabling Act by the Nazi-controlled Reichstag suspends and thereby destroys all civil liberties in Germany. It establishes a completely totalitarian system with only one leader and one political party, which controls all communication.

March 24, 1933
The anti-Nazi boycott is an international boycott of German products in response to violence and harassment by members of Nazi Party against Jews following his appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

March 27, 1933
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) organizes an anti-Nazi rally in New York City. It protests the Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.

Japan announces it will leave the League of Nations in response to efforts by the League to curb Japan’s expansion in China.

March 30, 1933
The American Committee in Religious Rights and Minorities sends a delegation to Germany to investigate the actions against Jews. The committee consists of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergymen.

March 31, 1933
Nazi leaders Hanns Kerrl and Hans Frank issue legislation in the German states of Prussia and Bavaria dismissing Jewish judges and prosecutors and imposing quotas for lawyers.

April 1933
All Jewish welfare and social institutions in Germany are united in a single organization. It is the Zentralausschuss für Hilfe und Aufbau (ZA).

April 1, 1933
Nationwide boycott of Jewish shops and businesses in Germany. It is unsuccessful.

April 4, 1933
Jews are barred from German civil service and public employment (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). Soon a similar law affects lawyers, doctors, musicians, and notaries.

April 6, 1933
The Belgian Federation of Protestant Churches protests the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

April 7, 1933
Nazi government defines non-Aryan descent.

April 11, 1933
Economic sanctions are implemented against Jews.

The Lutheran Church in Germany actively protests recently enacted antisemitic laws.

April 13, 1933
The British House of Commons condemns Nazi policy against Jews.

April 22, 1933
The Nazi Decree Licensing Physicians from the National Health Service passed under Dr. Gerhard Wagner. It excludes Jewish doctors from medical practice.

April 25, 1933
A law restricting Jews from schools and universities is enforced (the Law for Preventing Overcrowding in Schools and Schools of Higher Education).

April 29, 1933
The establishment of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) under Nazi party rule by Hermann Göring.

May 2, 1933
Under the leadership of Nazi Robert Ley German trade unions are banned and replaced by the German Labor Front.

May 10, 1933
Nazis begin public burning of books by Jewish authors and others opposed to Nazism. Nazi government imposes censorship of newspapers and publishing houses throughout Germany.

May 15, 1933
The establishment of the German air force (Luftwaffe) built in secret in violation of the Treaty of Versailles

May 17, 1933
The Bernheim Petition, protesting Nazi anti-Jewish legislation in German Upper Silesia, is submitted to the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. The petition is granted June 1, 1933.

May 23, 1933
Prominent Dutch church leaders protest Nazi treatment of German Jews.

May 26, 1933
1,200 US Protestant clergymen sign a manifesto protesting Nazi treatment of German Jews.

Spring 1933
King Gustav V of Sweden and other prominent Swedes warn Hitler that continued persecution of Jews would erode sympathy for Germany.

René de Weck is appointed Plenipotentiary Minister for Switzerland in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, stationed in Bucharest, Romania. From this post, de Weck is eventually instrumental in helping to save thousands of Jews.

June 21, 1933
All non-Nazi parties are officially banned in Germany.

June 26, 1933
The Nazis establish the Academy for German Law. The Academy rewrites German law to conform to Nazi ideals and policies.

June 27, 1933
A major rally in London protests Nazi persecution of Jews.

June 29, 1933
A call for a worldwide action to help German Jewry is issued and published by former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and other prominent individuals.

July 6, 1933
The British House of Commons issues a statement of sympathy for persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.

July 14, 1933
Nazi party becomes the only legal party in Germany. Any form of opposition becomes a criminal offense, punishable by law.

The Law Regarding Revocation of Naturalization and the Annulment of German Citizenship is enacted. This law is intended to strip Eastern European Jews residing in Germany of their citizenship and rights.

Germany enacts Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. This law allows for involuntary sterilization of potential parents and for the euthanization of disabled and handicapped persons. The Nazis label people with disabilities as “defective” and “useless eaters.” They are declared Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life). By 1937, 200,000 persons are involuntarily sterilized.

July 20, 1933
The Vatican signs Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany, which gives Hitler’s regime legitimacy. This concordat purports to protect church rights and property; in fact, it closes Germany’s center party and withdraws the Catholic Church from German political organizations.

30,000 Londoners protest Nazi persecution of German Jews.

August 16, 1933
Christie Pits riot takes place in Toronto, Ontario.

August 25, 1933
Ha’avarah (transfer) agreement between the German foreign office and the Jewish community in Palestine is implemented. It allows Jews who are emigrating to Palestine to transfer their assets there. In turn, the German foreign office receives goods or funds from Palestine. This agreement is facilitated by sympathetic German diplomats in the Germany foreign ministry. Eventually, more than 40,000 German Jews emigrate to Palestine under this agreement.

September 1933
Dr. Leo Baeck elected to a new Jewish organization called Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (Representative Council of Jews in Germany). This organization is established in Berlin.

September 1933
German Jews are banned from journalism and all cultural endeavors, including art, music, literature, theater, and broadcasting.

September 1933
Himmler is appointed head of all police units in Germany except in Prussia.

September 22, 1933
The Reich Chamber of Culture is established, it bars Jews from the arts in Germany.

September 29, 1933
Under the Reichserbhofgesetz German Jews and Germans with any Jewish ancestry dating to 1800 are prohibited from agriculture, and their land is redistributed to ethnic Germans.

October 1933
In response to Nazi persecution of Jews and their exodus from Germany, the League of Nations establishes the High Commission for Refugees. US diplomat James Grover MacDonald is appointed its head. MacDonald will become a vigorous advocate on behalf of Jewish refugees throughout the war.

The American Jewish Joint works with the League of Nations to try to help resolve Jewish refugee issues.

October 4, 1933
Under the German Editor Law all Jews are prohibited from journalism.

October 21, 1933
Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

October 29, 1933
Jewish organizations meet in London to prepare to work with the League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees.

November 12, 1933
In a German general election, 92% of the electoral vote is for Nazi candidates.

November 17, 1933
The United States recognizes the USSR and resumes trade.

December 1933
The Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, which was originally founded in 1901, becomes the Emigration Section of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RVE).

1934
Aliyah Bet begins operation to bring Jews from Europe into Palestine. From 1934 to 1939, 17,240 Jews illegally immigrate to Palestine.

1934
Angelo Roncalli appointed Apostolic Delegate (nuncio) to Turkey and Greece (1934-1944). He establishes friendly relations with the governments and Eastern Orthodox clergy.

1934
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara resigns from position as Deputy Consul General in Manchuria in protest of the inhumane treatment of the Chinese.

1934
The Dutch Catholic Church prohibits Dutch Catholics from joining the Dutch Nazi party.

1934
Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps come under the administration and control of the SS.

1934
Worldwide boycott of German goods is established in Geneva.

1934
2,000 Afghani Jews are expelled from their towns and forced to live in the wilderness.

1934
The 1934 Thrace pogroms were a series of violent attacks that occurred in Tekirdağ, Edirne, Kırklareli, and Çanakkale. Over 15,000 Jews had to flee from the region.

1934
34 Algerian Jews were killed, and hundreds were injured by Muslim mobs during the 1934 Constantine pogrom. 200 Jewish stores were raided, the total property damage was estimated at over 150 million Poincare francs. It also sent a quarter of Constantine's Jewish population into poverty.

1934
The first appearance of The Franklin Prophecy on the pages of William Dudley Pelley's pro-Nazi weekly magazine Liberation. According to the US Congress report:

"The Franklin "Prophecy" is a classic antisemitic canard that falsely claims that American statesman Benjamin Franklin made anti-Jewish statements during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It has found widening acceptance in Muslim and Arab media, where it has been used to criticize Israel and Jews..."

1934
In his 1934 pageant play The Rock, T.S. Eliot distances himself from Fascist movements of the thirties by caricaturing Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, who 'firmly

January 1, 1934
All Jewish holidays are removed from the official German calendar.

January 26, 1934
Germany and Poland sign non-aggression agreement. Both countries pledge to resolve their problems by bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of 10 years. The agreement effectively normalizes relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. Germany effectively recognizes Poland's borders and moved to end an economically damaging customs war between the two countries that had taken place over the previous decade. [Wikipedia]

February 17, 1934
Great Britain, France and Italy declare that Austria must remain an independent nation.

March 23, 1934
Law Regarding Expulsion from the Reich enacted. This law paves the way for deporting Eastern European Jews from Germany.

April 1934
Peoples’ Court (Volksgericht) is established in Germany. It is designed to suppress anti-Nazi activities. Under this law there is no right to trial by jury or appeal.

Heinrich Himmler, who had become the leader of the entire German police force outside of Prussia the in 1933, is appointed Reichsführer-SS. The Volksgericht is established to prosecute political dissidents.

June 30, 1934
Hitler orders SS leader Heinrich Himmler to organize the murder of the SA (Brownshirt) leadership. More than 100 of Hitler’s rivals are murdered. Among them are Ernst Röhm and former German Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher. This action becomes known as the Night of the Long Knives.

May 1, 1934
The Office of Racial Policy is established within the Nazi Party.

June 9, 1934
The Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), SD is established as the Nazi Party's intelligence agency. Following Germany's defeat in World War II, the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared the SD a criminal organization.

July 4, 1934
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (IKL) is established under SS officer Theodor Eicke.

July 20, 1934
The SS becomes an independent organization of the Nazi Party, directly responsible to Hitler.

July 25, 1934
Chancellor Dollfüss of Austria is assassinated by Austrian Nazis.

Hehalutz and the Revisionist Zionist Movement begin to organize illegal immigration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

August 2, 1934
German President Paul von Hindenburg dies. Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). As of August 8, German armed forces must swear personal allegiance to Hitler as Führer (leader).

August 19, 1934
Ninety-eight percent of German voters approve of the merger of the offices of President and Chancellor.

September 27, 1934
Great Britain, France and Italy again reaffirm their support for an independent Austria.

October 1, 1934
In violation of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, Germany begins the buildup of its army, navy, and air force with over a half million soldiers.

December 1934
The US Attorney General issues ruling that Secretary of Labor can issue a visa if immigrants post a financial bond in advance.

December 1934
SS commander Himmler becomes head of the Gestapo through his subordinate Reinhard Heydrich.

December 29, 1934
Japan rejects the Washington Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which impose limits on the size of its navy operating in the Pacific.

1935
Nuremberg Laws introduced. Jewish rights rescinded. The Reich Citizenship Law strips them of citizenship. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor:

Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden.
Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden.
Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens of German or kindred blood as domestic servants.
Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colors. On the other hand, they are permitted to display the Jewish colors.

1935
Anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland had reaches its zenith in the years leading to the Second World War. Between 1935 and 1937 seventy-nine Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents. After the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the Sanation government of his political followers, along with President Ignacy Mościcki, embark on a military reform and rearmament of the Polish Army in the face of the changing political climate in Europe. [Wikipedia]

1935
Holland takes in 34,000 German Jewish refugees. 15,000 Jews become permanent residents.

1935
62,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine.

1935
Violent attacks against Jews in Poland cause many Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

1935
The German military Reichswehr is renamed Wehrmacht (Army). Hitler continues to rebuild and enlarge its armies. This contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles – the foundation of the post-World War I international order.

1935
The National Coordinating Committee (predecessor to the National Refugee Service) is founded to coordinate private rescue agencies. It is created at the instigation of the US State Department.

1935
The antisemitic Union of Protestant Churches is created and controlled by the Nazi government to disseminate its ideas.

1935
The SA (Sturmabteilung) is incorporated into the SS.

1935
The Gestapo enacts regulations threatening to arrest and intern in a concentration camp any refugee who returns to Germany.

1935-1941
Carl Lutz is named Vice-Consul at Swiss General Consulate, Jaffa; he is also responsible for the German interests and the Swiss Consulate, Tel Aviv.

1935-1937
In Poland seventy-nine Jews are killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents.

1935-1953
Filippo Bernardini an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church is assigned to the position of Apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland where he served from 1935 to 1953. During World War II, he was active in the Catholic resistance to Nazism and aided Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. He sent intelligence to the Vatican about the Nazi plans against the Jews. In 1944, he was instrumental in maintaining the lines of communication between Lelio Vittorio Valobra, head of the clandestine DELASEM Jewish rescue organization (settled in Zurich) and the organization’s Fr. Francesco Repetto, who was still in Genoa. At the Genoa Curia many letters arrived from Jews in the Vatican seeking news of their relatives and acquaintances in northern Italy. The flow of money between Switzerland (where Valobra and Raffaele Cantoni operated) and the DELASEM headquarters in Genoa always remained active due in part to the assistance of Bernardini. [Wikipedia]

January 5, 1935
Archbishop Angelo Roncalli is transferred as Papal Nuncio to Ankara, Turkey.

January 7, 1935
Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval sign agreement between Italy and France.

January 7, 1935
The League of Nations approves the results of the Saar plebiscite, which allows Saarland to be incorporated into Germany.

January 13, 1935
Germany retakes Saarland from France.

March 16, 1935
Germany reinstates conscription to the German Wehrmacht in direct violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

March 17, 1935
The German Confessing Church protests persecution of Jews. It maintains its protests throughout the war. As a result, seven hundred clergymen are arrested. Some are sent to concentration camps.

April 23, 1935
The April Constitution of Poland is passed. It is a general law passed by the act of the Polish Sejm. It limits the powers of the Sejm and Senate while strengthening the authority of the President. It introduces into Second Polish Republic a presidential system with have some elements of executive authoritarianism.

May 12, 1935
Polish President Józef Pilsudski dies. Pilsudski has protected Jews against antisemitism in Poland. After his death, antisemitism spreads widely throughout Poland.

May 21, 1935
Law in Germany forbids non-Aryans from joining German armed forces.

August 31, 1935
In the United States The Neutrality Act of 1935 is passed imposing a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties at war It also declares that American citizens traveling on ships of belligerent nations do so at their own risk.

September 8, 1935
Parliamentary elections are held in Poland with Senate elections held a week later on September 15. They were held under the April Constitution, drawn up earlier in 1935 by the Sanation movement.

September 15, 1935
Anti-Jewish laws known as “Nuremberg Laws” are enacted in Germany. These include the Law Respecting Reich Citizenship and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Jews are no longer considered German citizens. Soon, hundreds of additional edicts are enacted.

International reaction to the Nuremberg Laws is almost universally negative.

October 3, 1935
Italian army attacks and invades Ethiopia. It is the beginning the of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War. The League of Nations denounces Italy and calls for an oil embargo.

November 14, 1935
The First Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law institutes a system to categorize and define degrees of Jewishness. It specifies that “a Jew cannot be a Reich citizen.”

In a General Election Stanley Baldwin replaces Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

December 1935
The SS Race and Settlement Main Office establishes the Lebensborn program.

December 20, 1935
The Church of England condemns Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany.

December 27, 1935
James MacDonald, High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations, issues a scathing report and resigns in protest over the failure of the League to help Jews and in response to world indifference to the refugee crisis.

December 31, 1935
Jews removed from civil service positions in Germany.

1936
Italy strengthens ties with Nazi Germany. Italian fascism turns increasingly to militant anti-Semitism. Escalating Italian anti-Semitic press campaigns, talks of "Jewish and Zionist danger."

1936
Due in part to a financial loan from France, Poland's new Central Industrial Region participates in a rearmament project in an attempt to catch-up with the advanced weapons development by Poland's neighbors. Foreign Minister Józef Beck continues to resist the growing pressure on Poland from the West to cooperate with the Soviet Union in order to contain Nazi Germany. [Wikipedia]

1936
Council for German Jewry (CFGJ) is established in London, England. It helps more than 100,000 Jews to emigrate from Germany.

1936
The US State Department is ordered to revoke the Hoover Executive Order of 1930 and institute a more liberal version of the “likely to become a public charge” (LPC) clause.

1936
Cardinal August Hlond, as Primate of Poland issues a pastoral letter on Catholic moral principles. The long (5600-word) letter covers Catholic ethics policy, ethics principles and a section on "sins" (Z Naszych Grzechów) that addressed Christian shortcomings to love one's neighbours in accordance with God's law. The latter section included a brief discussion of the "Jewish problem" (Problem żydowski): "So long as Jews remain Jews, a Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist (...) It is a fact that Jews are waging war against the Catholic church, that they are steeped in free-thinking, and constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement, and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that Jews have a corruptive influence on morals and that their publishing houses are spreading pornography. It is true that Jews are perpetrating fraud, practicing usury, and dealing in prostitution. It is true that, from a religious and ethical point of view, Jewish youth are having a negative influence on the Catholic youth in our schools."

January 26, 1936
George V, King of the United Kingdom, dies. He is succeeded by King Edward VII.

March 7, 1936
German’s march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty. The United States, Great Britain and France denounce the invasion.

March 9, 1936
Jews of Przytyk, Poland, are attacked by local citizens.

March 17, 1936
Jews and Poles protest pogroms against Jews in Poland.

April 1, 1936
The Arab High Committee is formed to unite against Jewish territorial claims in or immigration to Palestine.

April 19, 1936
Arab Revolt (1936-1939) begins in Palestine. This leads to substantial cuts in Jewish immigration by British authorities.

May 5, 1936
Ethiopia falls to Italy. Italian troops occupy the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, it is the end of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War.

June 1936
Léon Blum, a Jew, is elected Premier of France.

June 17, 1936
Heinrich Himmler, SS Chief, appointed to head all German police, and establishes the Orpo, the Sipo, and the Kripo under SS control.

The failed Spanish coup of July 1936, designed to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic by Nationalist forces signals the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

June 30, 1936
Jews in Poland organize general strike to protest recent pogroms.

July 12, 1936
Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens.

July 16-18, 1936
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In Spain, right wing general Francisco Franco leads a mutiny against the Spanish Republican government. Hitler sends thousands of German troops to support Franco’s forces. The Germans use the Spanish Civil War to test new weapons and tactics, especially the Luftwaffe (air force), which perfects the technique of dive bombing. Hitler also perfects the Blitzkrieg (lightening war). Mussolini sends his Italian soldiers to fight for the Republican side. The war will last until 1939 with Franco’s victory over the legal Spanish Republican Government.

8,000 Jews go to Spain as volunteers in the International Brigade. They comprise an estimated 30% of the total volunteers who fight against the Nationalist forces.

August 1936
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is founded in Geneva, Switzerland as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. It is created in reaction to the rise of Nazism and the growing wave of European anti-Semitism. The main aims of the organization were "to mobilize the Jewish people and the democratic forces against the Nazi onslaught", to "fight for equal political and economic rights everywhere, and particularly for the Jewish minorities in Central and Eastern Europe" According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress' main purpose is to act as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people."

August 1-16, 1936
The International Olympic Games are held in Berlin. Persecution of Jews is temporarily suspended by Hitler and the Nazis.

September 7, 1936
25% tax is levied on all Jewish property in Germany.

September 23, 1936
Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened in Oranienberg, 15 miles northeast of Berlin. Initially, it imprisons opponents of the Nazi regime. More than 100,000 people will die there.

October 1936
The Great Purge or the Great Terror, Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It involved large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Soviet Army; widespread police surveillance, and counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. The estimated total number of deaths due to Stalin’s repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million. [Wikipedia]

October 1, 1936
Criminal court judges in Berlin swear a personal oath to Adolph Hitler.

October 1, 1936
The Nationalist Rebellion appoints General Franco as Chief of State in its provisional government.

October 7, 1936
Germany imposes a 25 percent tax is imposed on all Jewish assets and property.

October 25, 1936
Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis. This is a formal alliance between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

November 3, 1936
Franklin D. Roosevelt wins reelection as president of the U.S.

November 6, 1936
The Spanish Nationalists seize Madrid and begin the Spanish Nationalist government in Valencia, Spain.

November 18, 1936
Germany and Italy formally recognize Franco’s Nationalist government in Spain. Germany sends volunteer soldiers (Condor Legion) to fight on behalf of Franco’s fascist Nationalist army.

November 25, 1936
Germany and Japan sign Anti-Cominturn Pact against the Soviet Union. This pact attempts to thwart Soviet territorial aspirations in Europe.

Germany recognizes Japan’s puppet regime in Manchuria, China.

December 27, 1936
Great Britain and France agree to non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

Return to Chronology of Jewish History - Parts 1-9

Updated November 23, 2021