Chronology of Jewish History - Part 8

1946 - 1989

Chronology of Jewish History - Parts 1-9

Chronology of Jews in Denmark

20th Century

1940’s

1946
Poland's borders are redrawn by the Allies due to demands made by Josef Stalin during the Tehran Conference, and at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The Polish government-in-exile is excluded from the negotiations. The territory of Poland was reduced by approximately 20 percent. Before the end of 1946 some 1.8 million Polish citizens are expelled and forcibly resettled within the new borders. For the first time in its history Poland becomes a homogeneous one nation-state by force, with its national wealth reduced by 38 percent. Poland's financial system has been destroyed. Intelligentsia is largely obliterated along with the Jews, and the population reduced by about 33 percent. [Wikipedia]

The Majdanek State Museum in Lublin is declared a national monument. It has intact gas chambers and crematoria from World War II. Branches of the Majdanek Museum include the Bełżec, and the Sobibór Museums where advanced geophysical studies are being conducted by Israeli and Polish archaeologists. [Wikipedia]

January 1946
The Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP) registers the first wave of some 86,000 survivors from the vicinity. By the end of that summer, the number has risen to about 205,000–210,000 (with 240,000 registrations and more than 30,000 duplicates). The survivors included 180,000 Jews who arrive from the Soviet-controlled territories as a result of repatriation agreements. [Wikipedia]

January 1946
The International Court of Justice is established in The Hague, The Netherlands. It is the official judicial body of the United Nations.

January 1946
The United Nations establishes International Refugee Organization (IRO). It takes over from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA).

January 1946
In 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish Aliyah to Israel, without visas or exit permits.

1946
Nikita Khrushchev, then the first secretary of the Communist party of Ukraine, closes many synagogues (the number declines from 450 to 60) and prevents Jewish refugees from returning to their homes.

1946
The post-WW2 Kunmadaras pogrom was the killing of 6 Jewish Holocaust survivors in Kunmadaras, Hungary.

1946
The Miskolc pogrom.

January 3, 1946
On trial SS Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, former head of Einsatzgruppe D, admits to the murder of around 90,000 Jews. Many of the killing operations were personally overseen by Ohlendorf himself. He is hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on June 7, 1951

January 3, 1946
On trial Witness SS officer Dieter Wisliceny describes the organization of RSHA Department IV-B-4, in charge of the Final Solution.

January 7, 1946
On trial former SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski admits to the organized mass murder of Jews and other groups in the Soviet Union.

January 28, 1946
In Nuremberg trial Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, member of the French Resistance and concentration camp survivor, testifies on the Holocaust, becoming the first Holocaust survivor to do so. [Wikipedia]

February 14, 1946
In Nuremberg trial Soviet prosecutors try to blame the Katyn massacre of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia on the Germans.

February 27, 1946
Nuremberg trial Witness Abraham Sutzkever testifies on the murder of almost 80,000 Jews in Vilnius by the Germans occupying the city on the afternoon of October 1, 1943.

April 1946
The Auschwitz museum is created in by Tadeusz Wąsowicz and other former Auschwitz prisoners, under the direction of Poland's Ministry of Culture and Art. It is formally founded on 2 July 1947 by an act of the Polish parliament. More than 25 million people have visited the museum.

April 27, 1946 – November 12, 1948
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East opens war crimes trials against members of the Japanese Imperial government and the armed forces. The IMT indicts former war Prime Minister Tojo and 27 others.

April 29, 1946
US/British commission report advises against partition of the British mandate in Palestine between Jewish and Arab states.

May 1, 1946
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommends allowing 100,000 Jewish survivors to immigrate to Palestine. The British government refuses the recommendation.

June 20, 1946
Albert Speer takes the stand at Nuremberg trial. He is a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. He is the only defendant to take personal responsibility for his actions.

June 30, 1946
In Poland the People's referendum, also known as Three Times Yes (Trzy razy tak), on the authority of the State National Council is adopted.

July 4, 1946
A violent attack against Jews breaks out in Kielce, Poland. A Polish mob kills 42 Jews, including two children. Other anti-Jewish pogroms break out across Poland. Many Jews decide not to try to return to Poland. The pogrom prompted General Spychalski of PWP from wartime Warsaw, to sign a legislative decree allowing the remaining survivors to leave Poland without Western visas or Polish exit permits. This also serves to strengthen the government's acceptance among the anti-Communist right, as well as weaken the British hold in the Middle East. Most refugees crossing the new borders left Poland without a valid passport. [Wikipedia]

August 13, 1946
British government opens detention camps on the island of Cypress to detain Jewish refugees who try to enter Palestine.

October 1, 1946
Nuremberg trial verdicts are pronounced. Guilty: Göring, Borman (in absentia), Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Jodl, Sauckel – all to hang; Funk, Räder, Hess – life sentences; Speer, Donitz, Schirach – 20 years; Von Neurath – 15 years. Acquitted: Fritzche, Schacht, von Poppen.

The Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal conclude that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Jews, Poles, Roma, and others – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term.”

October 11, 1946
Nuremberg defendants are denied appeals of their convictions.

October 15, 1946
Göring commits suicide just before he is scheduled to be hanged.

October 16, 1946
Nuremberg trial Nazi war criminals are hanged.

October 25, 1946
The Nuremberg doctor’s trial. 23 Nazi doctors are tried for war crimes. The charges include performing medical experiments on prisoners.

December 31, 1946
U.S. Harry President Truman declares: "Although a state of war still exists, it is at this time possible to declare, and I find it to be in the public interest to declare, that hostilities have terminated. Now, therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the cessation of hostilities of World War II, effective twelve o'clock noon, December 31, 1946."

1946-1949
Twelve separate trials are conducted against Nazi war criminals. 185 war criminals are prosecuted.

1947
Anti-Jewish riots erupt in Aleppo, resulting in some 75 Jews murdered and several hundred wounded.

1947
A mob of Muslim sailors looted Jewish homes and shops in the Manama riots. In the end one Jewish woman was dead and a Synagogue was destroyed.

1947
A three-day riot broke out between the Jews of Aden and the local Muslim population. When it was over, 82 Jews were killed, and 76 Jews were injured.

1947
Uninterrupted traffic across Polish borders increased dramatically. By the spring of 1947 only 90,000 Jews remain in Poland. Britain demands that Poland (among other nations) end the Jewish exodus, but their pressure is largely unsuccessful. [Wikipedia]

Approximately 7,000 Jewish men and women of military age leave Poland for Palestine between 1947 and 1948 as members of Haganah organization, trained in Poland. The camp is set up in Bolków, Lower Silesia, with Polish-Jewish instructors. It was financed by the American Jewish Joint (JDC) in agreement with the Polish administration. [Wikipedia]

1947
In Austria, the Verbotsgesetz 1947 provided the legal framework for the process of denazification in Austria and the suppression of any potential revival of Nazism. In 1992, it was amended to prohibit the denial or gross minimization of the Holocaust.

National Socialism Prohibition Law (1947, amendments of 1992)

§ 3g. He who operates in a manner characterized other than that in § § 3a – 3f will be punished (revitalizing of the NSDAP or identification with), with imprisonment from one to up to ten years, and in cases of particularly dangerous suspects or activity, be punished with up to twenty years' imprisonment.

§ 3h. As an amendment to § 3 g., whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.

1947
Belgian government institutes a law to memorialize Jewish victims of the Nazis.

1947
Chiune Sugihara is forced to resign from the Japanese Foreign Ministry because of “that incident in Lithuania.”

1947
Soviet Union produces a death certificate to substantiate claim that Raoul Wallenberg died of a heart attack in Lubianca prison in 1947. Few actually believe the authenticity of this statement.

1947
The American Friends’ Service Committee (AFSC) of the Society of Friends/Quakers, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for its activities in helping refugees escape the Nazis in Europe.

1947
The first exhibition in the barracks at Auschwitz is opened.

1947
It is decided to convert the Small Fortress Theresienstadt Ghetto into a memorial to the victims of Nazi persecution. The Terezín Ghetto Museum is inaugurated in October 1991.

1947
The Pit is dedicated It is a monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust Minsk, Belarus. The memorial is located at the site where on March 2, 1942, the Nazi forces shot about 5,000 Jewish residents of the nearby Minsk Ghetto. In 2000 a bronze sculpture titled "The Last Way" is added.

January 4-December 4, 1947
The Nazi Judges’ Trial in Nuremberg, Germany.

February 19, 1947
Adoption of "Small Constitution" of 1947 in Poland. It is a temporary constitution issued by the Sejm and is renewed until the adoption of the new 1952 constitution.

March 29, 1947
Rudolph Höss, former commander of the Auschwitz death camp, is sentenced to death by hanging.

March 29, 1947
Simon Wiesenthal founds Documentation Center of Nazi War Criminals in Linz, Austria.

April 16, 1947
Rudolph Höss is hanged. Rudolf Höss, sentenced in a previous trial, is executed in front of the crematorium at Auschwitz I. The trial of camp commandant Höss, which took place at the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw throughout March 1947, was the first trial held at Auschwitz, followed by the trials in Kraków several months later. [Wikipedia]

May 8, 1947 – July 30, 1948
I. G. Farben board of directors’ trial at Nuremberg. Of the 24 board members, 13 are convicted, 10 are acquitted, and one is not tried.

Witness to the Nazi holocaust Witold Pilecki is arrested by the communist authorities. He is tortured and, despite pleas for pardon written to Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz (also an Auschwitz survivor) and President Bolesław Bierut, is executed on May 25, 1948. Pilecki's burial place has never been found, though it is thought to be in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.

May 10, 1947 – February 1948
“Hostage trial” of senior German Army officers at Nuremberg. 8 are convicted, 2 acquitted, 1 commits suicide and 1 is released due to ill health.

June 25, 1947
Anne Frank's diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, is published in the Netherlands.

July 1, 1947 – March 10, 1948
14 SS leaders are tried in Nuremberg. 13 are tried and convicted and sentenced to prison. One is acquitted.

July 3, 1947 – April 10, 1948
24 senior SS and SD commanders are tried at Nuremberg. 14 sentenced to death.

July 11, 1947
Ship SS Exodus leaves France for the British Mandate of Palestine. 4,515 passengers, mostly Holocaust survivors, are intercepted by the British Navy and shipped back to displaced persons camps in Germany.

August 16, 1947 – July 31, 1948
The Krupp trial is held. 12 Krupp officials are tried. 11 are sentenced to prison and one is acquitted.

November 24, 1947
The Auschwitz trial began in Kraków, when Polish authorities (the Supreme National Tribunal) tried forty-one former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947.

The best-known defendants were Arthur Liebehenschel, former commandant; Maria Mandel, head of the Auschwitz women's camps; and SS-doctor Johann Kremer. Thirty-eight other SS officers — thirty-four men and four women — who had served as guards or doctors in the camps were also tried.

November 29, 1947
The United Nations votes for partition of Palestine. This leads to the creation of a Jewish state.

December 5, 1947
1947 Manama riots.

December 22, 1947
The Auschwitz trial ends. The Supreme National Tribunal presiding in Kraków issued 23 death sentences, and 17 imprisonments ranging from life sentences to 3 years. All executions were carried out on January 28, 1948, at the Kraków Montelupich Prison, "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in occupied Poland" used by Gestapo throughout World War II.

1948–2001
Antisemitism played a central role in the Jewish exodus from Arab lands. The Jewish population in the Arab Middle East and North Africa has decreased from 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 in 2001.

1948
During the Siege of Jerusalem of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Arab armies were able to conquer the part of the West Bank and Jerusalem; they expelled all Jews (about 2,000) from the Old City (the Jewish Quarter) and destroyed the ancient synagogues that were in the Old City as well.

1948
The Djereda was a pogrom against the tiny Jewish population of Jerada at the hands of the local Muslims. It ended with 43 Jews dead and around 150 Jews injured.

1948
The 1948 Anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania was a riot between the Jewish and Arab populations of Tripoli. Unlike the previous Tripoli pogrom, the Jewish community of Tripoli fought back against the Muslim rioters. When it was over, 14 Jews and 4 Muslims were dead and many on both sides were injured.

1948
The 1948 Cairo bombings were several bombings which targeted the Jewish population of Cairo. The bombings claimed the lives of 70 Jews and 200 other Jews were wounded.

1949
The Menarsha synagogue attack was a grenade attack in the Jewish quarter of Damascus that took 12 lives.

1948
The United Nations General Assembly adopts Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

1948
Pope Pius XII requests mercy for Nazi war criminals condemned to death. This appeal is turned down.

1948
United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act allowing 200,000 displaced persons to enter the United States.

1948
On the eve of the Israeli Declaration of Independence (1948), Agudat Yisrael yielded to pressure from the Zionist movement, and has been a participant in most governments since that time. The movement realized the benefits of more active participation in politics over time, and agrees to become a coalition partner in several Israeli governments.

April 19, 1948
The Monument to the Ghetto Fighters and Heroes in Warsaw is unveiled. It is sculpted by Nathan Rapoport.

May 14, 1948
Britain’s mandate to govern Palestine officially expires. The state of Israel is established. Palestine is divided between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.

May 15, 1948
The Egyptian and Jordanian armed forces invade the newly-created State of Israel.

May 20, 1948
United Nations Security Council appoints Folke Bernadotte to mediate between Jewish and Arab armies. Bernadotte is able to secure a 4-week temporary truce and cease-fire.

May 25, 1948
Witold Pilecki dies Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. Early in World War II he co-founded the Secret Polish Army resistance movement.

September 17, 1948
UN mediator Folke Bernadotte is assassinated by Jewish resistance group called Hazit ha-Moleder [Fatherland Front] in Jerusalem.

December 1948
A genocide convention, enacted to react against future genocidal wars, is called by the United Nations.

December 9, 1948
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or Genocide Convention, is signed. It is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

December 23, 1948
Japanese "Class A" war criminals, including two former Prime Ministers, are put to death by hanging.

1949
Separate postwar civilian governments in East and West Germany are formed beginning of the Cold War.

1949
A new Geneva Convention is signed in 1949. It establishes rules for treatment of civilians in times of war.

1949
Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria is declared a national memorial site.

January 7, 1949
A cease-fire is signed between Arab and Israeli governments.

April 4, 1949
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is signed It is also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries and 2 North American countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. NATO constitutes a system of collective security.

May 11, 1949
United Nations votes to admit Israel.

1950’s

1950
The State of Israel passes the “Law of Judging Nazi Criminals and the Helpers.” This allows the Israeli government to try former SS and Nazis.

1950
The Displaced Persons Act is amended to remove restrictions to Jewish displaced persons.

June 1950
Swiss diplomatic rescuer René de Weck dies in Rome at the age of 63.

July 6, 1950
Signing of the Treaty of Zgorzelec in Poland. It is also known as The Agreement Concerning the Demarcation of the Established and the Existing Polish-German borders.

1951
In Poland less than 80,000 Jews remain, after the government prohibit emigration to Israel. An additional 30,000 Jews arrive from the Soviet Union in 1957.

1951
Leon Poliakov's Bréviaire de la haine (Harvest of Hate), the first major work on the genocide, first begins to reach a wider audience and receive some good reviews in opposition to the prevailing opinion in studies at the time that a major genocide of six million Jews was logistically impossible and thus could not have happened. [Wikipedia]

January 12, 1951
The United Nations Genocide Convention Treaty is passed. Article 56 of the UN charter bans murder and deportation of peoples based on racial, religious or political reasons.

March 1951
A request was made by Israel's foreign minister Moshe Sharett to Germany which claimed global recompense to Israel of $1.5 billion based on the financial cost absorbed by Israel for the rehabilitation of 500,000 Jewish holocaust survivors. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer accepts these terms and declares he is ready to negotiate additional reparations. A Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany was opened in New York City by Nahum Goldmann in order to help with individual claims. After negotiations, the claim was reduced to a sum of $845 million direct and indirect compensations to be installed in a period of 14 years. In 1988, West Germany allocated another $125 million for reparations. [Wikipedia]

April 12, 1951
The Israeli parliament establishes an annual commemorative memorial day to honor victims of the Holocaust.

July 30, -August 30, 1951
The Trial of the Generals (Polish: proces generałów) was a totalitarian show trial organized by the communist authorities of the Government of the Polish People's Republic, (Today Poland), between July 31 and August 31, 1951. Its purpose was to cleanse the new pro-Soviet Polish Army of officers who had served in the armed forces of the interwar Poland or in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. [Wikipedia]

September 27, 1951
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer apologizes for the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews. Adenauer further offers to pay reparations.

October 19, 1951
End of state of war with Germany was granted by the U.S. Congress, after a request by President Truman on 9 July. In the Petersberg Agreement of November 22, 1949 it was noted that the West German government wanted an end to the state of war, but the request could not be granted. The U.S. state of war with Germany was being maintained for legal reasons, and though it was softened somewhat it was not suspended since "the U.S. wants to retain a legal basis for keeping a U.S. force in Western Germany". [Wikipedia]

December 30, 1951
Adolf Henryk Silberschein, also known as Abraham Silberschein (born March 1882), dies in Geneva and is buried in the local Jewish cemetery. During the Holocaust he was a member of the Ładoś Group an informal cooperation of Jewish organizations and Polish diplomats who fabricated and smuggled illegal Latin American passports to occupied Poland, saving Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps.

1952
Germany agrees to pay restitution for the persecution and mass genocide of Jews during World War II.

1952
The last displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe are closed, with most of its inhabitants having been successfully resettled world wide.

1952
The Night of the Murdered Poets. The thirteen most prominent Soviet Yiddish writers, poets, actors and other intellectuals were executed, among them Peretz Markish, Leib Kwitko, David Hofstein, Itzik Pfeffer, David Bergelson. In 1955 UN General Assembly's session a high Soviet official still denied the "rumors" about their disappearance.

1952
The Prague Trials in Czechoslovakia.

1952
Carl Lutz is named Consul General in Bregenz, Austria.

April 28, 1952
The Treaty of San Francisco formally ends the United States and the British Commonwealth's state of war with Japan.

July 22, 1952
Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland is adopted.

September 10, 1952
Luxembourg Treaty is signed by Israel and West Germany.

West Germany agrees to pay reparations in the amount of 820 million dollars.

1953
Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel is inaugurated.

1953
Establishment of a Holocaust Museum in Israel. It is called Yad Vashem [Hebrew for place and name], the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority.

1953
The state of Israel passes a law to honor those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust; a commission was established to recognize Righteous Among the Nations, non-Jews who saved Jews during the war.

1953
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz is awarded the Cross of the Commander of the Dannebrog Order by the Danish King Frederik IX for his actions in saving Danish Jews.

1953
Gilberto Bosques is appointed Mexican Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Cuba. He becomes a lifelong mentor to Cuban President Fidel Castro and Latin American revolutionary Che Guevarra.

1953
The Doctors' plot false accusation in the USSR. Scores of Soviet Jews dismissed from their jobs, arrested, some executed. The USSR was accused of pursuing a "new antisemitism." Stalinist opposition to "rootless cosmopolitans" – a euphemism for Jews – was rooted in the belief, as expressed by Klement Gottwald, that "treason and espionage infiltrate the ranks of the Communist Party. This channel is Zionism." This newer antisemitism was, in effect, a species of anti-Zionism.

January 12, 1953
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli is made a Cardinal by Pope Pius XII.

January 20, 1953
President Truman's term ends. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II, is inaugurated as President of the United States

March 5, 1953
Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, dies. He is replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who began a period of De-Stalinization.

1954
Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes dies in poverty in a hospital for the poor in Lisbon at the age of 69.

1954
Luis Martins de Souza Dantas dies in Paris, France, at the age of 78.

1954
Jews under the Italian Occupation, by Leon Poliakov and Jacques Sabille, is published. It outlines the rescue of Jews by Italian soldiers in France, Yugoslavia, and Croatia.

August 26, 1954
Filippo Bernardini an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church Dies. He was 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.

1955
Last major repatriation of German Prisoners of War (POW) and German civilians who were used as forced labor by the Allies after World War II.

1955
The three-volume Le commissariat General aux Question Juives by Joseph Billig published in 3 volumes in 1955-60 documents that French officials were actively profiting from the deportation of French Jews and were indifferent to their fate.

February 28, 1955
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz is appointed German Ambassador to Denmark.

May 5, 1955
End of occupation of West Germany. West Berlin remains as a special territory. The Eastern quarter of Germany remains annexed by the Allies. Germany does not legally accept this until in 1970 when West Germany signs treaties with the Soviet Union (Treaty of Moscow) and Poland (Treaty of Warsaw).

May 14, 1955
Signing of the Warsaw Pact, an alliance established between the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

1956
Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation moves to the Marais, the Jewish district of Paris in the 4th arrondissement, in the building containing the memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr. The Memorial of the Unknown Jewish martyr (Mémorial du martyr Juif inconnu) is dedicated at the CDJC and became the central memorial and symbol of Jewish memory in France, serving as the venue for Holocaust commemorations. [Wikipedia]

1956
Antisemitism swept across Poland as part of a purge of Stalinists.

March 12, 1956
Former President and Prime Minister of Poland Bolesław Bierut dies. The office of Prime Minister temporarily abolished, and he is later succeeded by Aleksander Zawadzki, Chairman of the Council of State.

June 28, 1956
Poznań protests - the first of several protests are held in opposition of the communist government of the Polish People's Republic.

1957
In Poland 30,000 Jews arrive from the Soviet Union. 50,000, Jews leave Poland in 1957–59, under Gomułka and with his government's encouragement.

Street named after Carl Lutz in Haifa, Israel.

February 1957
Soviet government asserts that Raoul Wallenberg died of a heart attack in prison in 1947. The Soviet Union produces documents to support their claim. No major efforts by the US or Sweden to find Wallenberg are instituted.

March 1957
Swedish government officials announce that the search for Raoul Wallenberg is over.

November 6, 1957
A memorial to “Christian Heroes who helped their Jewish Brethren escape the Nazi terror” is dedicated in New York City by the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith.

April 28, 1958,
Birmingham, Alabama, 54 sticks of dynamite were placed outside Temple Beth-El in a bombing attempt. According to police reports, the burning fuses were doused by heavy rainfall, preventing the dynamite from exploding. Although the crime was never solved, police considered Bobby Frank Cherry, later convicted of bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, to be a suspect.

October 8, 1958
Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Papal nuncio in Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and France during World War II, is elected Pope. He takes the name John XXIII. During his term as Pope, he institutes major reforms in the Catholic Church, including the Vatican II council. He becomes the first Pope to enter a synagogue.

October 12, 1958
The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple bombing occurs. The Temple, on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, housed a Reform Jewish congregation. The building was damaged extensively by the dynamite-fueled explosion, although no one was injured. Five suspects were arrested almost immediately after the bombing. One of them, George Bright, was tried twice. His first trial ended with a hung jury and his second with an acquittal. As a result of Bright's acquittal the other suspects were not tried, and no one was ever convicted of the bombing.

October 1958
British diplomat in Berlin Frank Foley dies.

Swiss Minister in Budapest Maximilian Jaeger dies in Switzerland at the age of 74.

1959
The Jewish community of Italy gives gold medals to Christians who played important roles in rescuing Jews. Monsignor Montini (later Pope Paul VI), head of the Holy See’s Aid Service to Refugees during the war, declines to accept a medal. He states: “I acted in the line of duty and for that I am not entitled to a medal.”

1959
A fire destroyed part of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in 1959 and the rest of the structure was demolished. A block of flats and a building now stand on the site. A plaque marking the Vel' d'Hiv' Roundup was placed on the track building after the War and moved to 8 boulevard de Grenelle in 1959. [Wikipedia]

January 25, 1959
Pope John XXIII announces his intention to convene an Ecumenical Council. It becomes known as Vatican II.

March 21, 1959
Pope John XXIII ordered that the word "faithless" (Latin: perfidis) be removed from the prayer for the conversion of the Jews, actually interrupting the Service and asking the prayer to be repeated without that word. This word had caused much trouble in recent times because of misconceptions that the Latin perfidis was equivalent to "perfidious", giving birth to the view that the prayer accused the Jews of treachery (perfidy), though the word is more correctly translated as "faithless" or "unbelieving". Accordingly, the prayer was revised to read:

Let us pray also for the Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. On Good Friday of 1963, by mistake the old text of the prayer was given to the deacon, who read "perfidis". Pope John XXIII interrupted the liturgy again, and ordered that the prayer be repeated with the word omitted.

1960’s

1960
Pope John XXIII calls for a further changes in the Catholic church’s relationship with Jews. He eliminates the phrase “perfidious Jews” from the Good Friday liturgy. He also removes the phrase “let us pray for the unbelieving Jews.”

Portuguese diplomat Sampayo Garrido dies at age 77.

March 25, 1960
Congregation Beth Israel and its members were subject to an antisemitic attack. About 180 members were attending a Friday evening service to dedicate the new Zemurray Social Hall, and led by then-rabbi Saul Rubin and Rev. John Speaks and Dr. Franklin Denson of First Methodist Church, when windows were smashed and the synagogue fire-bombed. Two congregants are shot and wounded.

April 1960
Former SS officer responsible for the deportation of Jews to death camps, Adolf Eichmann, is captured by Israeli agents in Buenos Aires, Argentine.

May 1960
Adolf Eichmann trial opens in Jerusalem, Israel.

1961
Between 1961 and 1967, the average rate of Jewish emigration from Poland is 500–900 persons per year.

1961
Simon Wiesenthal reopens his Documentation Center in Vienna.

1961
In 1961, a protégé of Harry Elmer Barnes, David Hoggan published Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though Der Erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion Reich-mark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht.

1961
Consul Lutz retires in Berne, Switzerland.

December 15, 1961
Adolf Eichmann is convicted by an Israeli court and sentenced to death.

1962
In 1962, a preservation zone around the museum in Birkenau (and in 1977, one around the museum in Auschwitz) was established to maintain the historical condition of the camp. These zones were confirmed by the Polish parliament in 1999.

1962
Israel’s Holocaust museum inaugurates the Avenue and Forest of the Righteous. Carob trees are planted in honor of individuals who saved Jews during the Shoah.

1962
In his 1962 pamphlet, Revisionism and Brainwashing, Harry Elmer Barnes claimed that there was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct". Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans". He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of the Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds.

April 12, 1962
The Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation ("Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation") is dedicated by Charles de Gaulle. It is a memorial to the 200,000 people who were deported from Vichy France to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It lacks specific references to Jewish victims, and "its dedication to 'the two hundred thousand French martyrs who died in the deportation camps'…

May 31, 1962
Eichmann is hanged, and his ashes are scattered in the Mediterranean.

October 11, 1962
Pope John XXIII opens Vatican II. Jewish and Protestant clergy, as well as scholars, are invited as observers.

February 20, 1963
A play by Rolf Hochhuth entitled Der Stellvertreter [The Deputy] opens in Berlin. The play is critical of Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust.

June 3, 1963
Pope John XXIII dies.

1963
Israel honors first of the Righteous Among the Nations. Every person honored for saving Jews receives a tree planted in his or her name and is awarded a certificate and medal. German businessman Oskar Schindler was the third person so honored.

1963
Raoul Wallenberg awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

1963
Red Cross representative in Budapest Friedrich Born dies in Switzerland.

1963
"Judaism Without Embellishments" published by the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1963.

August 8, 1963 - January 21, 1965
The Belzec trial (German: Belzec-Prozess, Polish: proces Bełżec) in the mid-1960s was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members of Bełżec death camp.

This is the first trial connected with the three death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. The trial was held at the 1st Munich District Court. Amongst the seven defendants were five of the accused who later appeared in the Sobibor trial. Seven of the eight defendants are acquitted, one received 4.5 years of imprisonment. The defense of obeying superior orders, in the Belzec trial, was a factor that inhibited the award of sanctions.

December 20, 1963-August 19, 1965
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials occur, the first trial of German Holocaust perpetrators by the West German civilian judicial system. 22 defendants under German criminal law are tried for their roles in the Holocaust as mid-to lower-level officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp complex (an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 are thought to have been involved in the administration and operation Auschwitz-Birkenau). The trial comprised 183 days of hearings held from 1963 to 1965. The testimony of 319 witnesses, including 181 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp and 80 members of the camp staff, the SS, and the police. 17 defendants are convicted and imprisoned. [Wikipedia]

Only 789 individuals of the approximately 8,200 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz and its sub-camps are ever tried, of whom 750 received sentences. [Wikipedia]

A public opinion poll conducted after the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials indicated that 57% of the German public were not in favor of additional Nazi trials. [Wikipedia]

December 29, 1963
Aleksander Wacław Ładoś a Polish politician and diplomat, who 1940–45 headed the Legation of Poland in Switzerland dies.

1964
65,000 Nazi war criminals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced.

1964
Egyptian President Nasser told a German newspaper in 1964 that "no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust]."

1964
The Roman Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issues the document Nostra aetate as part of Vatican II, repudiating the doctrine of Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion.

1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on religion, race, color, sex, or national origin.

1964
Carl Lutz is honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

1965
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as der Auschwitz-Prozess, or der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess, (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp complex. Hans Hofmeyer led as Chief Judge the "criminal case against Mulka and others" (reference number 4 Ks 2/63).

Overall, only 789 individuals of the approximately 6,500 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz and its sub-camps were ever tried, of which 750 received sentences. Unlike the first trial in Poland held almost two decades earlier, the trials in Frankfurt were not based on the legal definition of crimes against humanity as recognized by international law, but according to the state laws of the Federal Republic.

1965
Catholic Vatican II Council issue the decree Dignitatis humanae (Religious Freedom) that states that all people must have the right to religious freedom. The Catholic 1983 Code of Canon Law states:

Can. 748 §1. All persons are bound to seek the truth in those things which regard God and his Church and by virtue of divine law are bound by the obligation and possess the right of embracing and observing the truth which they have come to know. §2. No one is ever permitted to coerce persons to embrace the Catholic faith against their conscience.

1965
Swedish Red Cross rescuers in Budapest Dr. Valdemar and Nina Langlet are honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

1965
Spanish Minister in Budapest Don Angel Sanz-Briz is designated Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

1965
The first monument to Sobibór Death Camp victims is erected on the historic site

May 18, 1965
Yad Vashem recognized Ferdynand Marek Arczynski as Righteous Among the Nations. “In December 1942, Ferdynand Marek Arczynski, known to the underground as “Marek,” became a member of the board of Zegota (The Council for Aid to Jews). Ferdynand acted as the organization’s treasurer, and from 1943 was one of a select group of Poles who distinguished themselves in their attempts to rescue the surviving Jews on Polish soil. A representative of the underground Democratic Party (SD - Stronnictwo Demokratyczne), Arczynski dedicated himself courageously to the rescue of his Jewish countrymen. He headed the “Legalization Department” (Referat legalizacyjny), which produced forged documents – work permits, identity cards (Kennkarten), passes, marriage certificates, etc. – which were distributed to Jews in the care of Zegota”.

October 1965
Nostra Aetate [In Our Time] is approved as part of the final session of Vatican II. It includes key statements pertaining to Jewish-Catholic relations. The document deplores anti-Semitism and rescinds the idea that Jews are “rejected, cursed, or guilty of deicide [killing of Jesus].”

November 18, 1965
Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops is issued. It is one part of the extensive groundbreaking invitation and letter, where they declared: "We forgive and ask for forgiveness" (for the crimes of World War II). It was one of the first attempts at reconciliation after the tragedies of the Second World War, in which Germany invaded Poland; both countries lost millions of people, while millions more, both Poles and Germans, had to flee from their homes or were forcibly resettled. It was an attempt by the Catholic bishops to gain distance from the Communists who were ruling Poland. Among prominent supporters of this letter was Krakow's Archbishop, Karol Wojtyła, who later became Pope John Paul II in 1978. [Wikipedia]

1967
The Poland a Communist Party anti-Jewish campaign begins. It is carried out in conjunction with the USSR's withdrawal of all diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War, and a power struggle within the PZPR itself. This results in an exile from Poland of thousands of individuals of Jewish Poles, including professionals, party officials and others. In carefully staged public displays of support, factory workers across Poland were assembled to publicly denounce Zionism. At least 13,000 Jewish Poles (Approximately 25,000–30,000 Jews live in Poland in 1967) emigrate in 1968–72 as a result of being fired from their positions and various other forms of harassment. [Wikipedia]

1967
All Jewish men in Egypt were placed in camps in 1967 during the Six-Day War, and they were kept there for more than two years; Karaite Jews were the last to leave.

1967
Portuguese Consul General in Bordeaux Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes receives Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem.

1967
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz is appointed Staatssekretär (State Secretary), the highest civilian post in the German Foreign Ministry. He is given this posting for life.

1967
The first large memorial monument is inaugurated at the he Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

June 5-10, 1967
Responding to continuing threats along its border, Israel fights Six Day War against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Israel occupies the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula.

September 18, 1967
Congregation Beth Israel a building on Old Canton Road was wrecked by a dynamite bomb placed by Klan members in a recessed doorway. According to Nelson, the explosion had "ripped through administrative offices and a conference room, torn a hole in the ceiling, blown out windows, ruptured a water pipe and buckled a wall." The perpetrators were not discovered.

1968
In Poland a there is a series of protests in opposition of the communist government of the Polish People's Republic. It coincides with the events of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia.

Many of the remaining 25,000 Jews leave Poland in late 1968 as the result of the "anti-Zionist" campaign. Only between 5,000 and 10,000 Jews remain in the country.

Historian Szymon Datner compiles list of 105 poles killed by Germans for aiding Jews in occupied Poland

The first Jewish Sugihara survivor finds Chiune Sugihara.

January 5, 1968
The political turmoil of the late 1960s is exemplified in the West by increasingly violent protests against the Vietnam War and included numerous instances of protest and revolt, especially among students, that spreads across Europe in 1968. The movement is reflected in the Eastern Bloc by the events of the Prague Spring, beginning January 5, 1968. A wave of protests in Czechoslovakia marks the high point of a broader series of dissident social mobilization. [Wikipedia]

March 1968
The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968, Students' March, or March events It was a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the communist regime of the Polish People's Republic. The crisis led to the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centers across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement. It was also accompanied by mass emigration following an antisemitic (branded "anti-Zionist") campaign.

August 20, 1968
Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia – raises new hopes of democratic reforms among students and intelligentsia in communist Europe. The Czechoslovak unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

December 16, 1968
The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews was formally and symbolically revoked following the Second Vatican Council. This was a full century after Jews had been openly practicing their religion in Spain and synagogues were once more legal places of worship under Spain's Laws of Religious Freedom. [Wikipedia]

January 1969
Between January and August 1969, 7,300 Jews emigrate from Poland.

November 9, 1969
Tupamaros West-Berlin attempted to bomb of West Berlin's Jewish Community Centre. The bomb, supplied by the undercover government agent Peter Urbach, failed to explode.

1970’s

1970
Canada has no legislation specifically restricting the ownership, display, purchase, import or export of Nazi flags. However, sections 318–320 of the Criminal Code, adopted by Canada's parliament in 1970 and based in large part on the 1965 Cohen Committee recommendations, provide law enforcement agencies with broad scope to intervene if such flags are used to communicate hatred in a public place (particularly sections 319(1), 319(2), and 319(7).

1970
After the Second Vatican Council, the Good Friday prayer for the Jews was completely revised for the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal. Because of the possibility of a misinterpretation similar to that of the word "perfidis" (see above in 1959), the reference to the veil on the hearts of the Jews, which was based on 2 Corinthians 3:14, was removed. The 1973 ICEL English translation of the revised prayer is as follows:

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. (Prayer in silence. Then the priest says:) Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

April 1970
Bruno Kreisky, an Austrian Jew, is elected Chancellor of Austria. He is the first Jew to be elected to this high office. Kreisky left Austria in 1938 as a refugee.

October 22, 1970
The American dramatic television series Holocaust is broadcast in West Germany.

December 7, 1970
Signing of Treaty of Warsaw, between West Germany and the People's Republic of Poland. The treaty is one of the Brandt-initiated policy steps (the 'Ostpolitik') to ease tensions between West and East during the Cold War. After laying a wreath, at the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Monument Brandt unexpectedly, and apparently spontaneously, knelt. Brandt gained much renown for this act, and it is thought to be one of the reasons he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.

A monument to Willy Brandt was unveiled on December 6, 2000, in Willy Brandt Square in Warsaw (near the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument) on the eve of the 30th anniversary of his famous gesture. [Wikipedia]

December 14-19, 1970
In Poland widespread strikes take place as a result of the increase in cost of food and goods.

1971
The ban on Jewish immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union was lifted in 1971 leading to the 1970s Soviet Union Aliyah.

1971
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt Receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

1971
The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating in part, "we point out particularly one area of concern known as anti-Semitism, which some think erroneously is inherent in Christianity, and which we disavow."

1971
To further the goal of reconciliation, the Catholic Church established an internal International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. (This Committee is not a part of the Church's Magisterium.)

1971
German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz and Swiss policeman Paul Grüninger are awarded Righteous Among the Nations medals.

1972
The Southern Baptist Convention passed a "Resolution on Anti-Semitism" stating in part:

"Therefore, be it RESOLVED, That this Convention go on record as opposed to any and all forms of anti-Semitism; that it declare anti-Semitism unchristian; that we messengers to this Convention pledge ourselves to combat anti-Semitism in every honorable, Christian way."

"Be it further RESOLVED That Southern Baptists covenant to work positively to replace all anti-Semitic bias with the Christian attitude and practice of love for Jews, who along with all other men, are equally beloved of God."

1972
11 Israeli Olympic athletes are taken hostage and eventually tortured and killed in the Munich massacre.

1972
Former Swiss Police Captain Paul Grüninger dies at the age of 81.

The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944, by Frederick B. Chary, is published. It details the rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria.

1973
Ambassador Feng Shan Ho retires to San Francisco after four decades of diplomatic service for the Chinese Nationalists. He is discredited through a political vendetta by his own government and denied a pension.

Portuguese diplomat Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho dies at the age of 71.

February 16, 1973
Ambassador Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz passes away in his hometown of Bremen, Germany, at the age of 68.

October 6, 1973
Yom Kippur War. Syria’s military engages in surprise attack against Israel. Its forces are turned back.

1974
Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last is a Holocaust denial pamphlet allegedly written by British National Front member Richard Verrall under the pseudonym Richard E. Harwood and published by Ernst Zündel in 1974.

April 1974
Israel’s Holocaust museum holds a major conference entitled Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust. The conference papers are published in 1977.

1975
The United Nations passes a resolution determining that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." (It is revoked in 1991.)

1975
Polish diplomat Jan Karski is honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel.

1975
Witold Pilecki's life has been a subject of several monographs. The first in English was Józef Garliński's published this year.

1975
Acting Swiss diplomat rescuer in Budapest Peter Zürcher dies in Zürich at the age of 61.

January 1975
Vatican issues Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing “Nostra Aetate.”

February 13, 1975
Swiss Vice Consul in Budapest Carl Lutz dies in Bern, Switzerland at the age of 80.

May 3, 1975
Bruno Kreisky, the Chancellor of Austria, officially opens the Mauthausen Museum, 30 years after the camp's liberation. A visitor center was inaugurated in 2003.

1976
Arthur Butz's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry was published.

1977
The Memorial to the Deportation at Drancy internment camp in France is created by sculptor Shlomo Selinger to commemorate the French Jews imprisoned in the camp. Between 22 June 1942 and 31 July 1944, during its use as an internment camp, 67,400 French, Polish, and German Jews were deported from the camp in 64 rail transports, which included 6,000 children.

1977
Polish diplomat Henryk Slawik is designated Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

1977
National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977) (also known as Smith v. Collin; sometimes referred to as the Skokie Affair), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with freedom of assembly. The outcome was that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the use of the swastika is a symbolic form of free speech entitled to First Amendment protections and determined that the swastika itself did not constitute "fighting words." Its ruling allowed the National Socialist Party of America to march.

1977
David Irving's Holocaust denying book Hitler's War was published.

May 12-13, 1977
During the night of 12–13 May 1976, neo-Nazis burned the Natzweiler-Struthof Nazi concentration camp museum, located in the Vosges Mountains in France with the loss of museum artifacts. Structures were rebuilt, placing the artifacts that survived the fire on display. The reconstructed camp museum was officially opened on 29 June 1980.

December 1977
Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies opens in Los Angeles.

1978
Presidential commission to establish an American memorial to the victims of the Holocaust is convened by Jimmy Carter.

1978
Biography of Witold Pilecki by M.R.D. Foot Six Faces of Courage is published.

1978
In 1978 Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.

October 16, 1978
Election of Pope John Paul II. As a priest in wartime in Nazi occupied Poland, he aided Jews.

1978/1979
In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon, wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist.

1979
The Office of Special Investigations is created by the US Congress to investigate Nazi war criminals in the US.

1979
Auschwitz-Birkenau is designated as a World Heritage Site.

1979
Controversy ensues when the newly elected Pope John Paul II holds a mass in Birkenau and called the camp a "Golgotha of our times". 500,000 people attend, and it is announced that Edith Stein would be beatified. Catholics erect a cross near Bunker 2 of Auschwitz II where she had been murdered. A short while later, a Star of David appears at the site, leading to a proliferation of religious symbols, which are taken down.

1979
A House Joint resolution 1014 designated 28 and 29 April 1979 as "The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH)." After that the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) has been an annual 8-day period designated by the United States Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust.

1979
On the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Gurs internment camp in Southwest France the region's the community begins inviting old inmates-prisoners to conferences and lectures. The French government interned 4,000 German Jews as "enemy aliens", and thousands of Spanish Republican Soldiers.

1979
The Montreal Holocaust Museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, is dedicated. The Museum was originally founded as the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.

1979
When the Anti-Defamation League accused Lyndon LaRouche of antisemitism in 1979, he filed a $26-million libel suit; however, the case failed when Justice Michael Dontzin of the New York Supreme Court ruled that it was fair comment, and that the facts "reasonably give rise" to that description.

1980’s

1980
In Poland the Gdańsk Agreement is formed by striking workers as a social contract with the government and led to the formation of the independent trade union Solidarity.

1980
Swedish Ambassador Per Anger is honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

1980
US State Department and CIA provide records and information to Sweden regarding the Wallenberg case.

1980
In 1980, the Institute for Historical Review promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the LA Times and others including The Jerusalem Post. The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards taking his mother and two sisters and others towards gas chamber number five.

August 17-21, 1980
In Poland a list of demands is issued by the Interfactory Strike Committee, including the right to create independent trade unions is made.

October 1980
US Congress passes a law creating the United States Holocaust Memorial Council for the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

October 3, 1980
Paris synagogue bombing.

1981
US Congress and President Ronald Reagan award Raoul Wallenberg honorary citizenship. Wallenberg is only the third person to receive this honor, after Winston Churchill and the Marquis de Lafayette.

1981
A national registry of Holocaust survivors is established by US Holocaust survivors.

1981
The Southern Baptist Convention passed a "Resolution On Anti-Semitism" stating in part,

"Be it therefore RESOLVED, That the messengers at the 1981 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Los Angeles, June 9–11, 1981, commend our Southern Baptist Convention leaders as they seek sincere friendship and meaningful dialogue with our Jewish neighbors."

August 29, 1981
Vienna synagogue attack.

October 20, 1981
Antwerp synagogue bombing.

December 13, 1981
In Poland martial law is declared following a wave of strikes and a rise in political opposition.

1981-3
From 1981 to 1982, Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel had his mailing privileges suspended by the Canadian government on the grounds that he had been using the mail to send hate propaganda, a criminal offence in Canada. Zündel then began shipping from a post office box in Niagara Falls, New York, until the ban on his mailing in Canada was lifted in January 1983.

1982
A bomb placed by neo-Nazis exploded outside the Jewish hunter of Nazis Simon Wiesenthal's house in Vienna on 11 June 1982, after which police guards were stationed outside his home 24 hours a day.

1982
The thesis of the 1982 doctoral dissertation of Mahmoud Abbas, a co-founder of Fatah and president of the Palestinian National Authority, was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement". In his 1983 book The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism based on the dissertation, Abbas denied that six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust; dismissing it as a "myth" and a "fantastic lie". At most, he wrote, 890,000 Jews were killed by the Germans. Abbas claimed that the number of deaths has been exaggerated for political purposes.

1982
Swedish Minister Carl Ivan Danielsson is designated Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

1982
Swedish diplomat Lars Berg is honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

1982
Swiss diplomat Ernst Prodolliet is declared Righteous Among the Nations.

1982
Brazilian diplomat Aracy de Carvalho-Guimaraes Rosa is honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

March 28, 1982
Italian Ambassador Gastone Guidotti, who helped Jews in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the war, passes away.

September 18, 1982
Great Synagogue of Europe attacked by a man with a submachine gun, seriously wounding four people. The attack has been attributed to the Abu Nidal Organization.

October 9, 1982
Great Synagogue of Rome attack takes place.

1983
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod officially disassociates itself from "intemperate remarks about Jews" in Luther's works. Since then, many Lutheran church bodies and organizations have issued similar statements.

July 22, 1983
Martial law ends in Poland

1984
Swiss Consul in Bregenz, Austria, Ernst Prodolliet dies at his home in Amriswil, Switzerland.

1984
Carmelite nuns open a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. After some Jewish groups called for the removal of the convent, representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987. The Catholic Church told the nuns to move by 1989, but they stay until 1993.

1984
In 1984, James Keegstra, a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian Criminal Code for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews.

1985
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara receives the Righteous Among the Nations award.

1985
Canada awards honorary citizenship to Raoul Wallenberg.

1985
Claude Lanzmans’ 9-hour documentary Shoah is broadcast worldwide.

1985
The landmark book The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Sir Martin Gilbert, is published.

January 14, 1985
Yad Vashem recognized Irena Adamowicz as Righteous Among the Nations. “During the German occupation, she maintained contact with the Jewish youth movements and strengthened the relationship. Adamowicz placed herself at the disposal of the Jewish underground and served as a liaison among the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, Bialystok, Kaunas, and Siauliai. Meeting surreptitiously with the underground leaders, Adamowicz passed on information about the situation in the ghettos and for many months she supplied arms to the Warsaw ghetto. In June 1942, Adamowicz set out for Vilna in the service of the Hashomer Hatzair, to inform the leaders of the Jewish underground about the onset of the mass destruction of the Jews in the Generalgovernment and to apprise them of the youth movements’ plans”.

May 5-7, 1985
Ronald Reagan visited a German military cemetery in Bitburg to lay a wreath with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It was determined that the cemetery held the graves of forty-nine members of the Waffen-SS. Reagan issued a statement that called the Nazi soldiers buried in that cemetery as themselves "victims," a designation which ignited a stir over whether Reagan had equated the SS men to victims of the Holocaust; Pat Buchanan, Reagan's Director of Communications, argued that the president did not equate the SS members with the actual Holocaust. Now strongly urged to cancel the visit, the president responded that it would be wrong to back down on a promise he had made to Chancellor Kohl. He ultimately attended the ceremony where two military generals laid a wreath.

July 22, 1985
Copenhagen bombings.

November 1985
Vatican publishes paper on Jewish-Christian relations. It is called “The Common Bond: Christians and Jews: Notes for Preaching and Teaching.” It is the first time that the Holocaust and Israel are mentioned in a Vatican document.

1986
Kurt Waldheim is elected Secretary General of the United Nations despite his wartime service as an officer serving with the German Army in the Balkans. Waldheim served as an intelligence officer in an area that had numerous genocidal actions against Jews and other minorities in Yugoslavia.

1986
Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor, and the author of the 1958 semi-autobiographical book Night, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism. [Wikipedia]

1986
Poland initiated contacts with Israel, and both countries soon open interest offices in the other country,

1986
Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

July 8, 1986
In Israel, a law to criminalize Holocaust denial is passed by the Knesset.

July 31, 1986
Chiune Sugihara dies in Kamakura, Japan at age 86.

September 6, 1986
Gunmen opened fire during a Shabbat service in Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey which resulted in the death of 22 people. This attack is attributed to the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal.

September 13, 1987
September 1987 Jean-Marie Le Pen said, "I ask myself several questions. I'm not saying the gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't seen them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe it's just a detail in the history of World War II." He was condemned under the Gayssot Act and ordered to pay 1.2 million francs (183,200 euros).

1987
In Poland Prosecutor Wacław Bielawski from the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes – names 872 people who had been murdered by the Nazi occupation forces for aiding Jews, and nearly 1,400 anonymous victims.

1987
Pat Buchanan called for ending prosecution of SS Nazi camp guards, saying it was "running down 70-year-old camp guards."

1987
The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, Survival, by Susan Zuccotti, is published.

1987-88
Aristides de Sousa Mendes posthumously reinstated to the diplomatic corps in Portugal.

April 1987
Raoul Wallenberg monument is dedicated in Budapest, Hungary.

May 1987
Raoul Wallenberg receives honorary citizenship from the State of Israel.

June 1987
Friedrich Born receives the Righteous Among the Nations award.

August 17, 1987
Rudolf Hess, the last prisoner held by the UN under the Nuremberg protocols, is found hanged in his cell at Spandau Prison in Germany.

January 12, 1988
US diplomat in Marseilles, France, Hiram “Harry” Bingham dies in Salem, Connecticut.

March 9, 1988
Stefan Jan Ryniewicz a Polish diplomat and counselor of the Legation of Poland in Bern between 1940 and 1945 dies in Buenos Argentina.

November 1988
Diplomatic rescuer Candido Porta dies in Switzerland at the age of 96.

1988
In 1988, the American historian Arno J. Mayer published a book entitled Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, which did not explicitly deny the Holocaust, but lent support to Holocaust denial by stating that most people who died at Auschwitz were the victims of "natural causes" such as disease, not gassing. Mayer also cited the works of Holocaust deniers Arthur Butz and Paul Rassinier in his book's bibliography. Critics such as Lucy Dawidowicz criticized Mayer's citation of deniers, and argued that his statements about Auschwitz were factually incorrect. Holocaust expert Robert Jan van Pelt has noted that Mayer's book is as close as a mainstream historian has ever come to supporting Holocaust denial.

1988
International event called March of the Living (MOT) takes place in April at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex on Holocaust Remembrance Day, with total attendance more than 150,000 young Jews from all over the world. It becomes an annual event.

1988
Israel-Poland Chamber of Commerce is established.

1988
Samuel and Pearl Oliner publish The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, their landmark study of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

1988
Brazilian diplomats in France Dr. Jose and Carmen Santaella are designated as Righteous among the Nations.

1989
After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews becomes normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship. The contemporary Polish Jewish community is estimated to have between 10,000 and 20,000 members. The number of people with Jewish heritage may be several times larger.

1989
Finland has no specific legislation aimed at controlling ownership, display, purchase, import or export of Nazi flags, however the Criminal Code (39/1889) (especially Chapter 11 'War crimes and offences against humanity' Section 8) may be applied where an offence has been directed at a person belonging to a national, racial, ethnic, or other population group due to his/her membership in such a group.

1989
The Association of European Jewish Museums (AEJM) is founded for the preservation of Jewish heritage in Europe. It represents more than sixty Jewish museums from all over Europe.

1989
Italian Giorgio Perlasca honored with the Righteous Among the Nations award.

January 7, 1989
Emperor Shōwa, known as Hirohito, dies; and is the last Axis leader to die. He is succeeded by his son Akihito.

April 4, 1989
In Poland there is the signing of the Round Table Agreement, legalizing trade unions, introducing a Presidential office, and forming a senate.

June 4, 1989
Parliamentary election is held in Poland, the first free elections in Poland since 1928.

August 24, 1989
In Poland Tadeusz Mazowiecki is elected. He is first non-communist prime minister in the Eastern Bloc.

1990’s

1990s
Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected to the United States Supreme Court bar inscribing its certificates "in the year of our Lord", at the request of some Orthodox Jews who opposed it, and due to her objection, Supreme Court bar members have since been given other choices of how to inscribe the year on their certificates.

1990
Lake Forest, Illinois kept anti-Jewish and anti-African-American housing covenants until 1990.

1990
Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, by Konstanty R. Piekarski, is published.

July 13, 1990
In France, the Gayssot Act, makes it illegal to question the existence of crimes that fall in the category of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945, on the basis of which Nazi leaders were convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945–46. When the act was challenged by Robert Faurisson, the Human Rights Committee upheld it as a necessary means to counter possible antisemitism. Faurisson was convicted and punished for Holocaust denial under the Gayssot Act in 1990.

September 12, 1990
The U.S., USSR, United Kingdom, and France, with the governments of East and West Germany, sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the final treaty ending the war, paving the way for German reunification.

October 1989
Soviet Union presents Wallenberg family his diplomatic passport and other personal belongings.

November 1989
Polish-born Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres visits Poland, promoting the resumption of diplomatic relations. During his visit, Peres meets with Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

December 31, 1989
The People's Republic of Poland becomes the Democratic Republic of Poland.

Return to Chronology of Jewish History - Parts 1-9

Updated November 23, 2021