Chronology of the Holocaust and Rescue in Poland - Part 4

Part 1: 1025-1938

Part 2: 1939-1941

Part 3: 1942-1943

Part 4: 1944-2021 - See Below

Part 4: 1944-2021

Note: Some of the the content on the history of Poland in this chronology is based on a Wikipedia entry, with editing.


1944
In 1944, more than 600,000 European Jews will be murdered.

Early in 1944, US Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt manages to have the Turkish government intercede on behalf of ten thousand Turkish Jews living in France. Steinhardt uses his good relationship with Turkish foreign minister Noman Menenencioglu in helping to untangle bureaucratic rules that prevented Jews from passing through Turkey as an escape route. Hirschmann and Steinhardt are able to get Turkish official in charge of visas, Kemel Aziz Payman, to liberalize some of the Turkish immigration laws. The World Jewish Congress estimates that by the end of the 1944, 14,164 Jews escaped through Turkey. Many more, however, entered Turkey illegally through Romania.

The Representative Council of French Jewry (Conseil Représentatif des Juifs de France; CRIF) is founded to coordinate rescue activities among Jewish groups. They work with the Armée Juive to arrange rescue of Jews through Spain. They also participate with the French underground, both in the north and the south.

Dr. Hans Georg Calmeyer, a lawyer serving in the German embassy in Holland, saves many Jews by having them classified as Aryan.

A national underground organization in the Netherlands is set up to support Jews in hiding in Holland.

José Rojas, Spanish Minister in Ankara, is directly responsible for the evacuation of 65 Jews to Spain.

Consul General Rives Childs, head of the US legation in Tangier, Morocco, makes connections with the Spanish authorities in Madrid and Morocco and helps save more than 1,200 Jews. He persuades Spanish authorities to issue visas to Jewish refugees and to provide access to Spanish safe houses until they can emigrate.

The Mexican and Brazilian diplomatic delegations, held in Bad Godesberg, Germany, are released and repatriated in a prisoner exchange with Germany.

When Gilberto Bosques returns to Mexico City, he is greeted by thousands of cheering refugees who had received his life-saving visas. Bosques then serves on the commission of the Secretary of Foreign Relations.

January 14, 1944
Soviet Army launches a major offensive against the German siege of Leningrad.

January 16, 1944
US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Treasury Department officials meet with President Roosevelt and present to him a report on the State Department’s suppression of information on the murder of the Jews of Europe. In his report, renamed Personal Report to the President, Morgenthau states that the State Department: Utterly failed to prevent the extermination of Jews in German-controlled Europe…Hid their gross procrastination behind such window dressing as “intergovernmental organizations to survey the whole refugee problem…”
“The matter of rescuing the Jews from extermination is a trust too great to remain in the hands of men who are indifferent, callous, perhaps even hostile.”

January 22, 1944
British and US Allied forces land at Anzio, Italy, southeast of Rome. The invasion beachhead is sealed off by German forces.

President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board (WRB) in response to the report by Morgenthau and the Treasury Department regarding the failure of the US State Department to take significant action to protect Jews from mass murder. The WRB is put under the administration of Henry Morgenthau and the Treasury Department. It is charged with “taking all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.” John Pehle, of the Treasury Department, is appointed Director of the WRB. He has 30 employees. The US government appropriates one million dollars for the operation of this new agency. The vast majority of funds for operating the WRB will come from Jewish rescue and relief agencies, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Hebrew Immigration Aid and Sheltering Society (HIAS).

Raoul Wallenberg is later selected for a mission representing the War Refugee Board to protect Hungarian Jews from deportation.

Notable employees of the War Refugee Board include Josiah E. DuBois and Randolph Paul (headquarters), Ira Hirschmann (Turkey), Roswell McClelland (Switzerland), Iver Olson (Sweden), Leonard Ackermann (North Africa and Italy).

In joint operations between the World Jewish Congress, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the War Refugee Board, between October 1943 and October 1944, 1,350 children and adolescents escaped to Switzerland, 770 children reached Spain with 200 parents, 700 children were hidden in Vichy France along with 4,000-5,000 adults. During this period, Lisbon was a center of false papers, including baptismal certificates, birth certificates and legitimate and illegitimate passports, visas and affidavits. By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews and other refugees escaped through Lisbon.

Statistics will later indicate that the War Refugee Board was successful in saving as many as 200,000 Jews in Eastern Europe.

January 27, 1944
The siege of Leningrad is broken, after more than 900 days and one million civilian deaths.

January 31, 1944
The National Committee Against Nazi Persecution and Extermination of Jews is organized. It is headed by Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy and includes Wendell Wilkie, Vice President Henry A. Wallis, and other prominent members of the Roosevelt administration.

February 1944
Jean Marie Musy, Former President of the Swiss Council, arranges with SS officials for the rescue and transportation of 1,200 Jews in Theresienstadt concentration camp to safety in Switzerland.

February 2, 1944
The War Refugee Board (WRB) proposes that the US State Department urge Spain to remove restrictions on refugees entering its territory. The US ambassador to Spain refuses to implement the plan.

February 10, 1944
Greek Jews from Salonika in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who hold Spanish citizenship are repatriated to Spain. This is largely due to the work of Spanish diplomat Radigales.

February 12, 1944
Ira Hirschmann, appointed a War Refugee Board representative, is assigned to Ankara, Turkey. He works closely with Ambassador Steinhardt in the rescue of thousands of Jews. Hirschmann effectively streamlines the procedure by which refugees escape through Turkey. Hirschmann actively publicizes the Turkish rescue operation and Steinhardt’s role in it. In addition, Hirschmann negotiates with the Romanian ambassador in Turkey, Alexander Cretzianu, for the rescue and rehabilitation of 48,000 Jewish survivors of concentration camps in Transnistria.

February 14, 1944
Josef Winniger, an officer in the German intelligence, tells Jewish leaders in Budapest of a plan for German occupation of Hungary.

Under pressure from the Allies, Romanian leader Ion Antonescu agrees to return Jewish deportees to Romania from Transnistria.

February 19-26, 1944
German Luftwaffe carries out heavy raids against London. It is known as the “Little Blitz.”

February 28, 1944
Massacre of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine. Estimates of the number of victims killed ranges from 500, to 1,200.

March 1944
War Refugee Board representative in Turkey, Ira Hirschmann, persuades the Romanian ambassador to Turkey, Alexander Cretzianu, to persuade the Romanian government to transfer 48,000 Jews to the interior of the country, thus saving their lives.

March 4, 1944
In Huta Stara near Buczacz, Polish Christians and the Jewish countrymen they protected are herded into a church by the Nazis and burned alive

March 6, 1944
US Army Air Force (AAF) begins major daylight bombing of Berlin.

March 15, 1944
Soviet Army begins liberation of Transnistria.

March 19, 1944
Germany occupies Hungary and immediately implements anti-Jewish decrees; places the Hungarian government at the disposal of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Final Solution.

Hundreds of desperate Budapest Jews besiege the American legation, where Carl Lutz has his headquarters. Jewish Council of Palestine office seized by pro-Nazi Hungarian officials. Hungarian borders are closed against immigration. Consul Lutz begins to issue thousands of additional Schutzpässe (protective letters). These Swiss documents are in fact honored by German SS authorities. Consul Lutz has 8,000 persons register for immigration to Palestine. Lutz is not immediately aware of deportation plans. After receiving secret information about planned deportations, Lutz appeals to the other neutral legations in Budapest, including Sweden, Spain, Portugal and the Vatican, for a united front against the deportations of the Hungarian Jews.

March 20, 1944
Eichmann orders the establishment of Judenrat (Jewish councils) representing Hungarian Jews. This is a preliminary step to ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

March 24, 1944
President Roosevelt sends a stern warning to Hungarian officials against harming the Jews.

March 1944
Miguel Angel de Muguiro, Spain’s diplomatic attaché in Budapest, is openly critical and protests Hungarian and German antisemitic policies. Muguiro is recalled to Spain for his outspoken denunciation of the murder of Hungarian Jews.

Spring 1944
Swedish government accepts 160 Jewish refugees from Finland.

April 1944
Gallup poll shows 70% of Americans approve setting up emergency refugees camps in the United States.

Ira Hirschmann’s activities with Steinhardt to rescue Eastern European Jews appear in major news articles throughout the world. This publicity helps the War Refugee Board promote its future rescue activities.

The SS in France conduct arrests without the help of French police. As a result, the arrests are way below German anticipated quotas.

The Polish government in exile in London appoints a Council for the Rescue of the Jewish Population. It operates until the summer of 1945.

International Red Cross representative in Romania Charles Kolb attempts to organize the relief and rescue of Jews from Romania to the Black Sea, to Turkey and then to Palestine. He is aided by the Swiss Minister in Romania, Rene de Weck and Swiss consular officer Hans Keller, the Romanian Red Cross and representatives of the War Refugee Board.

April 2, 1944
Soviet Army in Ukraine crosses into Romania.

April 5, 1944
Jews of Hungary forced to wear the star; Jewish businesses and bank accounts confiscated; Jews placed in ghettoes.

Joel Brand and Rudolph Kasztner, of the Rescue and Relief Committee in Budapest, meet with SS with a plan to ransom Jews from deportation. This plan ultimately fails.

April 7, 1944
Two Jewish prisoners, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, escape Auschwitz and reach Slovakia with detailed information about the mass murder of Jews in the camp. In Slovakia, along with Alfred Wetzler, Vrba reports the murder of the Jews in Auschwitz to the Working Group (Pracovná Skupina). Vrba worked in the administration office in Birkenau and memorized many of the documents he saw. He even was able to report on the number of Jews murdered in various transports. Their report became known as the Auschwitz Protocols, which were widely disseminated by the Working Group. Their report, called the Auschwitz Protocols, (supplemented by information brought by two more escapees) reaches the free world in June. [Wikipedia]

April 11-18, 1944
The Allied forces in Italy break through the major German defensive line at Monte Cassino. This enables Allied troops to break out of the Anzio beachhead.

April 15, 1944
Thousands of Hungarian Jews move into newly established ghettoes.

April 28, 1944
Deportations of Hungarian Jews from the ghettoes in the countryside to Auschwitz begin.

May 1944
Only one transport leaves France for Auschwitz.

Friedrich Born, representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, arrives in Budapest and begins to issue thousands of Swiss Red Cross documents to protect Jewish refugees.

George Mandel Mantello issues thousands of El Salvador visas to Jewish refugees in Budapest through Consul Lutz’s office. He is later arrested by Swiss police for violating Swiss neutrality.

The War Refugee Board (WRB) establishes its first refugee camp at Fedala in North Africa.

May 2, 1944
First Jews deported from rural Hungary arrive in Auschwitz.

May 15-July 9, 1944
More than 438,000 Hungarian Jews from the countryside are deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them are murdered on arrival. It takes 148 trains to carry them there.

May 15, 1944
Dean of the diplomatic corps in Budapest and Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta condemns the deportation of Jews.

Carl Lutz places the staff of the Jewish Council from Palestine under his diplomatic protection, and renames it “Department of Emigration of the Swiss Legation.” Lutz starts to issue tens of thousands of Schutzbriefe (protective letters), indicating applicants for immigration under formal Swiss protection. Lutz receives support by the newly appointed Swiss representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Friedrich Born.

May 17, 1944
Assembly of Reform Churches in Hungary protest the treatment and deportations of Hungarian Jews.

May 27, 1944
Two additional Jewish prisoners escape from Auschwitz. They are Czeslan Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin. They report on the murder in the death camp to members of the Working Group in Slovakia.

June 1945
Appeals from the Jewish underground in Slovakia to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz reach Switzerland. In a letter the U.S. War Department turn downs appeals to bomb rail lines between Hungary and Auschwitz.

June 1, 1945
President Franklin Roosevelt approves plan to allow 1,000 refugees in Italy to come to a camp in the United States.

June 2, 1944
Chairman of the Jewish Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency requests bombing of the rail lines to the Auschwitz death camp.

June 3, 1944
German troops withdraw from Rome, declaring it an open city.

June 4, 1944
The 5th US Army, commanded by General Mark Clark, liberates Rome.

June 6, 1944
D-Day: Operation Overlord is launched. Allied invasion at Normandy, in northwestern France, opens second front. Seven Allied divisions attack in the largest amphibious operation in history. The invasion involves more than 4,000 ships and 1,000 transport planes.

Deportations from France are halted. Himmler and Eichmann consider the deportation from France to be a failure. Nearly 80% of French Jews survive.

June 7, 1944
The first part of the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews is complete. 290,000 Jews have been killed in 23 days.

June 11, 1944
Dr. Waldemar Langlet, Swedish Red Cross delegate in Budapest, Hungary, and his wife Nina Langlet along with his assistant, Alexander Kasser, launch a humanitarian campaign to issue Swedish Red Cross protective passes to Hungarian Jews.

June 13, 1944
Germany launches secret weapon called the V-1 (Vergeltungswaffen [vengeance weapon]). This is an unmanned flying bomb that uses jet technology. It is launched from mainland France to bomb English cities.

June 24, 1944
Jews in Budapest ordered to wear the yellow Star of David.

June 25, 1944
Pope Pius XII sends telegram to Hungarian Regent Horthy to stop persecution of “a large segment of the Hungarian people because of their race.” The Pope does not specifically mention Jews.

June 25-28, 1944
Negotiations with SS officials result in 21,000 Jews from southern and southeastern Hungary, including the areas of Baja Debrecen and Szeged, being transferred to Strasshoff, Austria, where they survive the war.

June 27, 1944
US government issues warning to Hungarian government and people regarding treatment of Hungarian Jews.

June 29, 1944
US War Department refuses request to bomb Auschwitz. The request is denied on the grounds that it would ostensibly divert resources needed in order to win the war. It is later discovered that US Air Force bombing raids routinely flew over the Auschwitz death camp.

July 1944
The War Refugee Board organizes the establishment of a temporary safe haven for more than 1,000 Jewish refugees. It is established in an old Army base in Oswego, New York.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in England appeals to Hungarian government to stop deportation of Jews.

Turkish Consul General Selahattin Ülkümen intercedes on behalf of Jewish Turkish nationals who are being deported from the island of Rhodes. More than 40 Jewish families were spared deportation to Auschwitz. In retaliation, the Nazis bombed the Turkish embassy, fatally wounding Ülkümen’s wife.

July 3, 1944
Soviet Army retakes Minsk from the German Army.

July 4, 1944
The Soviet Army reaches the 1939 Polish-USSR border.

July 7, 1944
Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy reassumes power and temporarily halts deportation of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp. Almost all Hungarian Jews from the countryside have already been murdered. There are 300,000 Jews left in Hungary, 170,000 in and around Budapest. They are concentrated into two ghettoes. Lutz and other neutral diplomats place Jews under their diplomatic protection in over 100 safe houses. Nazi and Arrow Cross gangs continue to raid and murder in these areas.

July 8, 1944
The Kovno ghetto is liquidated. 2,000 Jews are killed and 4,000 deported to Germany.

July 9, 1944
The Allied Armies capture the city of Caen in Normandy, France.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest. He is employed by the War Refugee Board of the US Treasury Department. His mission is to save as many Jews as possible. Consul Lutz gives Raoul Wallenberg invaluable instructions on how to issue protective letters, which he often calls safe conduct passes, to save Jews in Budapest. Lutz’s activities also serve as a model for the Spanish, Portuguese, and Vatican embassies.

July 12, 1944
Don Angel Sans Briz, Minister (Ambassador) of Spain stationed in Budapest, issues 500 visas to Budapest Jews providing them protection from deportation and death marches. Also rents buildings that become protected by the Spanish legation.

July 13, 1944
Vilna is liberated by the Red Army.

July 18, 1944
Horthy announces deportation of Jews will be halted in Hungary.

Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo resigns after the defeat of the Japanese army by US forces on the Island of Saipan.

July 19, 1944
Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, Vatican Nuncio in Turkey (future Pope John XXIII) appeals to Hungarian Regent Horthy on behalf of 5,000 Hungarian Jews with Palestine visas. Roncalli provides Vatican certificates for Jews in hiding. Roncalli works closely with members of the Yishuv rescue committee in Turkey, including Ira Hirschmann and Joel Brand.

July 20, 1944
Attempted assassination of Hitler by opposition military officers at his headquarters in Rastenberg fails. In reprisal, thousands of Germans are murdered.

July 22, 1944
The Soviet Army captures Lublin, Poland. They liberate the German death camp of Majdanek, near Lublin.

Proclamation of the PKWN Manifesto by Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation, operating in opposition of exiled-Polish government in London.

July 24, 1944
Carl Lutz establishes the “Glass House” at Vadász Street in Budapest.

July 28, 1944
The Soviet Army recaptures the city of Brest-Litovsk on the Polish-Soviet border. This Soviet offensive has virtually annihilated the army of German Field Marshal Ernst Busch.

July 31, 1944
The American Jewish Conference sponsors a major rally in Madison Square Park in New York to draw attention to the mass murder of Hungarian Jews.

August 1944
Based on a tentative understanding with the Hungarian authorities, Swiss Consul Lutz attempts to obtain a safe haven in Switzerland for at first 40,000 and later even for 200,000 Hungarian Jews. The Swiss Foreign Minister, Marcel Pilet-Golaz, accepts. The agreement is torpedoed twofold: a) Veesenmayer refuses to give German transit permits and Eichmann hints that he would murder the Jews en route, and b) the British refuse absolutely to have these people transferred from Switzerland to Palestine after the war.

Consul Lutz persuades authorities to let Jews protected by Switzerland be placed in 76 geschützte Häuser (protective houses) in the Szent-Istvan area of Budapest. There are over 30,000 persons carrying Lutz’s Schutzbriefe in these buildings. Later, 32 more Safe houses are added at the request of Raoul Wallenberg. Consul Lutz, with meager funds from the consulate, helps feed the inhabitants of this ghetto.

Lutz works with 500 Jewish Chalutzim (pioneers) who provide him with rapid communication with the entire community of Budapest and the Hungarian underground. This organization alerts Lutz to the transfer of Jews, deportations, death marches and actions by the Nazis and Arrow Cross. One hundred Chalutzim die in the fulfillment of their duty.

August 1-October 2, 1944
Polish resistance army in Warsaw begins actions against the German occupiers. It is by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Polish resistance Home Army (Polish: Armia Krajowa). The Soviet Army outside the city refuses to come to their aid. Some 166,000 people lose their lives in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.

Warsaw is razed to the ground by the Germans, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945. More than 150,000 Poles were sent to labor or concentration camps. On 17 January 1945, the Soviet Army entered a destroyed and nearly uninhabited Warsaw. Some 300 Jews were found hiding in the ruins in the Polish part of the city.

Perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who have either fought with the AK or had been in hiding. It is estimated that over 2,000 Polish Jews, some as well-known as Marek Edelman, and several dozen Greek, Hungarian and even German Jews freed by Armia Krajowa from Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw, take part in fighting against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. [Wikipedia]

August 5-12, 1944
The Wola massacre the systematic killing of between 70,000 and 90,000 Poles in the Wola neighborhood of the Polish capital city, Warsaw, by the German Army and their Axis collaborators in the Azerbaijani Legion, as well as the mostly Russian RONA forces. The massacre was ordered by Adolf Hitler, who directed to kill "anything that moves" to stop the Warsaw Uprising soon after it began. [Wikipedia]

August 14, 1944
Operation Anvil. Allied forces land on the south coast of France. They quickly advance 20 miles on the first day.

August 17, 1944
US forces break out of the German defenses in western Normandy.

August 20, 1944
One hundred twenty-seven U.S. Army Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses drop high-explosives on the Buna factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles east of the gas chambers.

August 21, 1944
The diplomatic legations in Budapest of Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, the Vatican, and the Red Cross protest the resumption of deportations of Jews to Auschwitz. The diplomats from these legations were active in saving Jews from deportation to Auschwitz and the death marches. They all issued protective papers, documents, and other forms of identification. They housed, fed and provided medical care for more than 100,000 Jews in Budapest. They set up apartments and homes as protected houses that were under the protection of the various legations. The following diplomats were active in saving Jews. Sweden: Carl Ivan Danielsson, Per Anger, Lars Berg, Raoul Wallenberg, Göte Carlsson, Dénes von Mezey. Swedish Red Cross: Sandor Kasze-Kasser, Dr. Valdemar Langlet and Nina Langlet, Asta Nilsson. Switzerland: Dr. Harald Feller, Maximillian Jaeger, Charles Lutz and Gertrud Lutz, Peter Zürcher, Ernst Vonrufs, Franz Bischof, Ladislaus Kluger. Swiss Red Cross: Jean de Bavier, Friedrich Born, Dr. Robert Schirmer, Hans Weyermann, Dr. Gyorgy Gergely. Vatican: Monsignor Angelo Rotta, Father Gennaro Verolino, Father Köhler (volunteer). Portugal: Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho, Dr. Carlos Almeida Afonseca de Sampayo Garrido, Gyula Gulden, Count Ferenc Pongrácz. Spain: Miguel Angel de Muguiro, Don Angel Sanz-Briz, Giorgio Perlasca. Poland: Henryk Slawik, Zimmerman. Romania: Florian Manoliu. Turkey: Abdülhalat Birden, Pertev Sevki Kantimir. Argentina: Alberto Bafico. Slovakia: Dr. Spisiak. International Red Cross: Sándor Újváry. Hungarian Red Cross: Sarolta Lukács. Germany: Gerhart Feine.

August 23, 1944
Horthy informs Eichmann that he will not cooperate with the deportation of Hungarian Jews.

August 24-25, 1944
Paris is liberated by Allied forces. The French forces, led by de Gaulle, lead the victory procession.

August 25, 1944
Himmler orders the halt of deportations from Budapest.

August 28-29, 1944
The Slovak National Uprising breaks out. 2,000 Jews take part; 269 are killed.

August 31, 1944
Soviet Army enters Bucharest, Romania.

Fall 1944
The Working Group in Slovakia comes up with a major proposal to rescue Jews. It is called the Europa Plan. The Plan calls for bribing SS officials to stop the deportations in Central and Eastern Europe. They negotiate with Alois Brunner and Kurt Becher. Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Dov Weissmandel are credited with devising this plan. It ultimately fails.

September 3, 1944
Brussels is liberated by British forces. More than 20,000 Jews remain alive; many had been in hiding.

Last deportation from the Westerbork transit camp.

As a result of a suggestion by Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, evacuation begins by air of 650 German, Austrian and Czech Jews from areas of Yugoslavia to Bari in Allied occupied Italy.

September 4, 1944
Finland surrenders to the Soviet Union.

British capture Antwerp, Belgium, and secure the port.

September 5, 1944
A new Slovak government is formed under Dr. Stefan Tiso (nephew of former president).

Soviet Union declares war on Bulgaria.

September 8, 1944
Bulgaria changes sides and declares war on Germany.

The first V-2, German-built rocket, is launched against London. V-2s are built by Jewish slave laborers in the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp.

September 11-16, 1944
The Octagon Conference is held in Quebec, Canada, between Roosevelt and Churchill. They plan the postwar occupation and demilitarization of Germany.

September 12, 1944
Soviet Army begins offensive on Budapest, Hungary.

September 16, 1944
Bulgaria surrenders to the Soviet Army.

September 17-18, 1944
Military operation called Market Garden is launched in the Netherlands and Germany by British and US divisions.

September 19, 1944
Germany disbands Danish political parties and ends Danish general strike.

September 20, 1944
Monsignor Angelo Roncalli sends protest about deportations to Dr. Stefan Tiso.

September 25, 1944
Hitler calls up remaining men between 16 and 60 in Germany for military service in the Volkssturm [people’s home army]. This is a last desperate attempt to defend the German homeland.

September 28, 1944
Members of the Working Group in Slovakia, including Gisi Fleischmann, are arrested by the SS.

September 29, 1944
Soviet Army invades German occupied Yugoslavia.

September 1944
Slovak National Uprising is suppressed by the German army.

October 1944
Gisi Fleischmann is deported to and murdered in the Auschwitz death camp.

International Red Cross representative Georges Dunand arrives in Slovakia and intervenes on behalf of Jews. He works closely with Jurag Revesz, a Jewish youth leader.

October 2, 1944
International Committee of the Red Cross, under pressure, finally makes official inquiry to Germany on the status of all foreign prisoners in Germany and German-occupied territories.

The Polish resistance forces in Warsaw end the uprising against the German occupiers. The nearby Soviet forces refuse to aid the Poles in their uprising. 250,000 Poles are killed.

October 4, 1944
The British Army lands in German occupied Greece.

October 5, 1944
The British Colonial Office allows only 10,300 Jews to immigrate to Palestine. This will be at the rate of only 1,500 per month. This order rescinds an original offer made to the Jewish Agency of Palestine, which would originally allow all Jews reaching Turkey to enter Palestine.

October 6, 1944
Soviet Army enters Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

October 6-7, 1944
Jewish Sonderkommando [those working in the gas chambers and crematoria] managed to smuggle in gunpowder and blow up one of the gas chambers at Birkenau.

October 9, 1945
Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of France in Vichy, is convicted in a French court of treason. He is sentenced to death.

October 9-19, 1944
Churchill, Stalin, and Averell Harriman of the US, meet at the Moscow Conference in the Soviet Union. They discuss the war.

October 13, 1944
Soviet army liberates Riga, Latvia.

October 14, 1944
British Army liberates Athens.

German armored division enters and occupies Budapest. Hungarian Prime Minister Lakatos is removed. Ferenc Szálazi, head of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross party, is appointed Prime Minister.

War Refugee Board hears rumors of Jews being concentrated outside of Budapest for deportation. The WRB warns the Arrow Cross, “None who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished…All who share the guilt shall share the punishment.”

October 15, 1944
Admiral Horthy tries to sue for peace with Soviet Union. Horthy is soon arrested by Nazi puppet government. Hungarian Arrow Cross, under Ferenc Szálasi, and Nazis introduce new reign of terror and murder thousands of Budapest Jews. Death marches to Austria are instituted.

Swiss Consul in Budapest Carl Lutz persuades pro-Nazi Arrow Cross to validate his letters of protection. Four thousand Jews seek protection within the American legation, shielded by Consul Lutz. Because of Lutz’s activities, the Szent-Istvan area escapes attack during this period. German minister Veesenmayer requests permission from Berlin to murder Consul Lutz. (Berlin never answers.) Consul Lutz evades Arrow Cross, who seem to be out to assasinate him.
Hungarian officials compel Lutz, Wallenberg and Born to transfer several thousand of their protected Jews to a fenced in ghetto in Pest. 70,000 people fill this ghetto, who suffer from starvation and cold.

Lutz, Wallenberg, Sanz-Briz, Perlasca, Born, Rotta and many other neutral diplomats and their helpers succeed in stopping death marches and protecting their safe houses. Acting under the protective umbrella of the neutral legations legation, the Chalutzim Jewish youth distribute thousands of forged protective letters to Jews in the death marches, saving them.

By the end of the war, the courageous diplomats are able to save the lives of more than 100,000 Jews in Budapest.

Dr. Sampayo Garrido, Portuguese Chargé d’Affaires in Budapest, and later his replacement, Carlos Branquinho, issue more than 800 protective passes and establish safe houses to shelter Jews.

The Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest (Va’ada), headed by Otto Komoly, helps in the relieve efforts of Jews in the Budapest ghettoes. 5,000 Jewish children are housed in specially designated buildings.

October 20, 1944
SS troops under Eichmann round up 27,000 Jews in Hungary who were marched to the Austrian border, bound for deportation. Raoul Wallenberg and other neutral diplomats in Budapest follow behind these death marches and manage to rescue thousands of people. Occasionally, an entire death march column is rescued and returned to Budapest. The SS and Arrow Cross are greatly chagrined. Szálasi lodges a protest with the neutral legations for “sabotaging the Hungarian-German war effort.”

Tito’s partisans liberate Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

October 23, 1944
Adolf Eichmann leaves Budapest along with his SS troops.

October 27, 1944
Hungarian Regent Horthy resigns.

October 31, 1944
Himmler orders the murder of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau to cease. The SS begin dismantling the camp.

October 1944
Henryk Slawik, the Polish Chargé d’Affaires in Budapest, issued thousands of documents certifying that Polish Jewish refugees were Christian. Slawik was caught and deported to Mauthausen, where he was murdered.

An Italian refugee living in Budapest, Giorgio Perlasca, becomes a Spanish citizen and volunteers with Minister Sans-Briz in mission to protect Jews in Budapest. By November, 3,000 Jews received Spanish protection in eight safe houses.

Georges Dunand, delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, arrives in Slovakia with money from the Joint Distribution Committee (JCD) to save Jews. Dunand distributes these much-needed funds to refugees and helps a number of Jews escape deportation.

November 1944
Roosevelt elected President of the US for a fourth term.

November 4, 1944
Jewish, Nazi, and other allied leaders meet in Switzerland in a proposed rescue effort of Hungarian Jews.

November 8, 1944
Beginning of a new round of death marches of approximately 40,000 Jews from Budapest to Austria. Raids are conducted in the Swiss-and Swedish protected buildings, looking for Jews in possession of forged protective letters. Some are forced to go to Óbuda brickyards and on the death marches. Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg, Swiss consul Lutz and his wife, Gertrud, frequently intervene and save Jews.

Himmler orders the end of the death marches in mid-November. Eichmann is summoned to Berlin and is confronted by Himmler, who orders him to stop all murder actions. Himmler orders all killing in the extermination camps to cease.

German Consul Gerhard Feine, Director of the Jewish Department of the German Plenipotentiary of Budapest, secretly informs Swiss Consul Lutz of Veesenmayer’s and Eichmann’s plans to deport and murder the Jews of Budapest.

November 10, 1944
Refusing to recognize the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross regime, the Swiss government recalls head of legation Maximilian Jaeger from Budapest. As Lutz’s supervisor, Jaeger has been active until then in protesting the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.

November 11, 1944
British and Greek Armies complete the liberation of Greece.

November 13, 1944
In Budapest, a ghetto is set up for Jews without protection of neutral nations.

November 23-27, 1944
Swiss diplomats Leopold Breszlauer and Ladislaus Kluger issue 300 protective papers to Hungarian Jews at the Austro-Hungarian border.

November 26-29, 1944
Pest ghetto, with 63,000 Jews, is established. The ghetto contains 293 houses and apartments, with up to 14 persons per room.

December 1944
All foreign representatives are ordered to leave Budapest. Consul Carl Lutz and Wallenberg stay on with the intention of protecting thousands of Jews in the international ghetto. This area is under the protection of various neutral governments. They stay on as “a matter of conscience.” Arrow Cross bands attack and destroy the Swedish Legation. Swedish Minister Carl Ingvar Danielsson barely escapes death.

Spanish Minister Don Angel Sans-Briz leaves Budapest and is recalled to Spain. Perlasca appoints himself Spanish “Ambassador” and continues to issue Spanish protective passes through the end of the war. The Nazis honor his protective papers.

Dr. Harald Feller assumes post as Swiss Interim Chargé d’Affaires to Budapest, replacing Maximilian Jaeger. Feller works closely in support of Consul Lutz’s rescue activities. He personally hides 32 Jews in his own home.

Under pressure from the Allies and the Red Cross, SS General Kurt Becher allows the Allies and relief agencies to supply medical and food supplies to inmates in concentration camps.

December 6, 1944
Saly Mayer, the Swiss representative of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, arranges for the transport of 1,355 Orthodox Jewish refugees from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Basel, Switzerland.

December 16, 1944
German Army launches major offensive against the Allied Armies in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. It is called the Battle of the Bulge.

December 26, 1944
The US Third Army, under General Patton, liberates trapped US forces in the Belgian town of Bastogne.

The Soviet Army completes the encirclement of Budapest. Consul Lutz and refugees are besieged in the residence of the British Legation in Buda. Lutz is cut off from his office at the American legation in Pest. Lutz appoints Swiss lawyer Peter Zürcher to be his temporary representative. Zürcher persuades SS commanders, on threat of war crimes prosecution, to protect the Jews of the Pest ghetto. As a result, most of the 70,000 Jews of the Pest ghetto survive. Both Carl Lutz and Peter Zürcher contribute substantially to preserving the lives of the Jews of Budapest, of whom 124,000 survived. This is one of the largest rescues of Jews in the entire Holocaust.

1945
The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects is created by the Supreme Allied Headquarters. Its purpose is to catch and prosecute Nazi war criminals.

At the end of 1944, the number of Polish Jews in the Soviet and the Soviet-controlled territories is estimated at 250,000–300,000 people. Jews who escaped to eastern Poland from areas occupied by Germany in 1939 are numbering at around 198,000. Over 150,000 are repatriated or expelled back to new communist Poland along with the Jewish men conscripted to the Red Army from Kresy in 1940–1941. Their families died in the Holocaust. Those Jews who survive the Holocaust in Poland include those who are saved by the Poles (most families with children), and those who joined the Polish or Soviet resistance movement. Some 20,000–40,000 Jews are repatriated from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, up to 240,000 returning Jews might have resided in Poland mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Dzierżoniów (where there is a significant Jewish community initially consisting of local concentration camp survivors), Legnica, and Bielawa. [Wikipedia]

January 1, 1945
Carl Burkhardt becomes head of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

January 1-16, 1945
By the beginning of 1945, the German Ardennes offensive, called the “Battle of the Bulge,” for which the Nazi leadership had risked so much, fails.

January 5, 1945
Five thousand Jews are taken from Swedish protective houses and moved to the central Pest ghetto.

January 7, 1945
Arrow Cross attacks Swedish protected houses on Jokai Street, Pest ghetto.

January 9, 1945
US Army, under General MacArthur, lands in Luzon, Philippine Islands.

January 1945
Peter Zürcher and Ernst Vonrufs, acting representatives of Swiss interests in Budapest, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, thwart Nazi plans to blow up the Pest ghetto with 70,000 Jewish inhabitants.

Lutz and his wife, along with Jewish refugees, hide in the air shelter of the abandoned British Legation on the right bank of the Danube.

January 16, 1945
Soviets liberate and occupy Budapest.

January 17, 1945
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp is closed and evacuated, 66,000 prisoners are taken away on a series of death marches.

The Soviet Army enters and liberates Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw is completely destroyed.

Wallenberg was last seen in the company of Soviet soldiers; he said: “I do not know whether I am a guest of the Soviets or their prisoner;” he has not been seen as a free man since.

January 18, 1945
Soviet Army liberates and occupies Pest.

January 19, 1945
Soviet Army liberates Lodz, Poland.

January 27, 1945
Soviet troops enter and liberate Auschwitz concentration camp. Seven thousand remaining prisoners are free.

February 1945
The German troops in Budapest surrender to Marshall Malinovsky of the Soviet Army.

February 1, 1945
On Himmler’s orders, 2,700 Jews are taken from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and sent to Switzerland.

February 3, 1945
US Army begins the liberation of Manila in the Philippines.

February 4-11, 1945
An Allied conference is held at Yalta in the Russian Ukraine between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. It defines the postwar spheres of influence in Europe and Germany.

As a result of the conference Poland's borders are redrawn by the Allies according to the demands made by Josef Stalin during the Tehran Conference, confirmed as not negotiable at the Yalta Conference of 1945. The Polish government-in-exile is excluded from the negotiations. [Wikipedia]

February 5, 1945
International Committee of the Red Cross arranges for small transport of Jews from Terezin KZ to Switzerland.

February 11, 1945
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee representative Saly Mayer meets with SS officer Kurt Becker to arrange for the release of Jews from concentration camps. 1,691 Jews are rescued from Hungary and brought to Switzerland. 17,000 other Jews are later rescued under these negotiations.

February 13, 1945
German Army surrenders in Budapest.

February 13-15, 1945
The German city of Dresden is firebombed by the British and US air forces. 60,000 are killed.

February 19, 1945
Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross operating in Germany and nephew of King Carl Gustav V of Sweden, negotiates with SS commander Heinrich Himmler and General Walter Schellenberg, Chief of Himmler’s Office of Information, for the release of thousands of Scandinavians held in Nazi concentration camps. An agreement is made to release thousands of prisoners and Jewish inmates. The Swedish and Danish Red Cross are allowed to supply food and medicine to the inmates of the camps. Iver Olson of the War Refugee Board in Stockholm is also involved in these negotiations.

February 23, 1945
Turkey declares war on Germany.

February 1945
Soviets arrest Swiss Minister Dr. Harald Feller and send him to Moscow, where he is imprisoned for more than a year in the Lubianca prison.

March 4, 1945
Finland declares war on Germany.

March 5, 1945
The Ninth US Army reaches the Rhine River near Düsseldorf.

March 12, 1945
Head of the International Committee for the Red Cross Carl Burckhardt meets with SS RSHA head Ernst Kaltenbrunner at Swiss border to plan have the Red Cross take over the administration and supervision of the concentration camps.

March 17, 1945
New Hungarian provisional government rescinds anti-Jewish laws.

March 19, 1945
Hitler issues the Nero Order (Nero-Befehl). This orders German troops to leave German cities ruined for advancing troops.

March 22, 1945
US Army crosses the Rhine River into Germany at Oppenheim.

April 1945
Himmler orders the evacuation of thousands of Jews in deadly death marches away from the concentration camps.

Bernadotte’s negotiations with Himmler are successful. He secures the release of over 400 Danish Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt. Later, he arranges for the release of thousands of women from the Ravensbrück and Bergen Belsen concentration camps. He arranges for busses, converted to ambulances, known as the “white busses,” to take them from the camps. The refugees are transported safely to Sweden.

US and British troops liberate the concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, Nordhausen, Bergen-Belsen and other camps.

April 1, 1945
US Army lands on the island of Okinawa, in the Pacific.

April 2, 1945
Soviets launch Vienna Offensive against the German army in the Austrian capital city.

German armies are encircled in the Ruhr Pocket.

Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, is overrun by Soviet forces.

April 4, 1945
German Army withdraws from Hungary.

Ohrdruf concentration camp is liberated by the US Army.

April 7, 1945
The Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk in the waters off of Okinawa, this the Japanese last major naval operation.

April 9, 1945
New Allied offensive in Italy begins. It is called the Gothic Line campaign.

SS begins evacuating prisoners from Mauthausen.

April 10, 1945
US Army captures Hanover, Germany.

April 11, 1945
US troops reach the Elbe River, near Wittenberg.

Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated by the US Army.

April 12, 1945
US President Franklin Roosevelt dies. Harry Truman becomes the new President.

Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton visit the liberated Ohrdruf camp. Eisenhower orders troops and local Germans to witness the atrocities. Eisenhower also encourages the press to cover the liberation of the camps.

April 13, 1945
Soviet Army enters and liberates Vienna, Austria.

Gardelegen Massacre takes place. More than 1000 slave laborers are closed in a barn which is was set on fire. It was one of the last massacres on civil population perpetrated by Germans.

April 14, 1945
Massive firebombing of Tokyo by U.S. Army Air Force.

April 15, 1945
British soldiers liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Red Cross transfers 413 Danish Jews from Czechoslovakia to Sweden.

April 16, 1945
The Soviet Army launches its last assault on Berlin.

April 19, 1945
The Soviet Army advances towards Berlin and soon reaches the suburbs.

In Italy Allied Armies continue their advance toward the Po Valley.

Danish Red Cross volunteers help with the release of surviving inmates at the Neuengamme concentration camp, who are brought safely to Denmark.

April 20, 1945
Himmler meets with Swedish diplomat Norbert Masur to arrange to free 7,000 women from Ravensbrück. More than half of them is Jewish.

April 21, 1946
Soviet forces under General Georgie Zhukov's launch assaults on the German forces in and around Berlin in the opening stages of the Battle of Berlin.

April 23, 1945
US Army liberates Flossenberg concentration camp.

April 25, 1945
US and Soviet troops link up at Torgau, Germany, on the Elbe River.

The United Nations meeting in San Francisco, California, drafts charter of the United Nations.

April 27, 1945
Sachsenhausen concentration camp is liberated by the Soviet Army.

The Landsberg-Kaufering concentration camps are liberated by the 36th Division of the US Army.

April 28, 1945
Italian partisans kill Mussolini as he tries to escape to Switzerland.

April 29, 1945
The German Army unconditionally surrenders to the Allies in Italy.

The Soviet Army occupies Slovakia.

In the day before he commits suicide, Hitler dictates his last will and testament. In it, he exhorts “the government and the people to uphold the race laws to limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoners of all nations, international Jewry.”

Hitler appoints Admiral Karl Donitz to be his successor.

Dachau concentration camp is liberated by the 42nd and 45th US Divisions of the 7th US Army.

April 30, 1945
Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.

US Army captures Munich, Germany.

The Soviet Army captures the old German Reichstag building in Berlin.

The Soviet Army liberates Ravensbrück concentration camp. They find 3,500 women there.

May 1, 1945
The Soviet Army liberates the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.

May 2, 1945
Berlin falls to the Soviet Army. The German troops defending Berlin surrender.

May 4, 1945
German forces Denmark, Northern Germany and The Netherlands surrender to British Commander Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

The German occupying forces in the Netherlands and Denmark surrender.

Soviet Army liberates concentration camp in Oranienberg.

The Red Cross takes over concentration camp at Theresienstadt.

May 5, 1945
Mauthausen concentration camp is liberated by the US Eleventh Armored Division.

The German Army in Norway surrenders.

The 71st Division of the US Army liberates the Gunskirchen concentration camp in Austria.

May 6, 1945
The Eleventh Armored Division of the US Army liberates the Ebensee concentration camp in Austria.

May 8, 1945
Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day): German General Alfred Jodl surrenders at Eisenhower’s headquarters, the end of the Third Reich.

The German army in northeast Germany surrenders to Field Marshal Montgomery.

55 million people are dead. Nearly half are civilians.

More than six million Jews and five million others have been murdered. Two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe is murdered.

90% of the Jewish Polish population has been murdered. One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, made up half of all Poles killed during the war. The number of Polish Jews who survive the Holocaust is difficult to ascertain. The majority of Polish Jewish survivors were individuals who were able to find refuge in the territories of Soviet Union that were not occupied by Germans and thus safe from the Holocaust. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 800,000 Polish Jews survive the war, out of which between 50,000 and 100,000 were survivors from occupied Poland, and the remainder, survivors who made it abroad (mostly to the Soviet Union). [Wikipedia]

However, in more than half of the countries in Europe, 50% or more of the population of Jews survives. These include the countries of Denmark, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany and Austria.

The Soviet Army liberates Grossrosen concentration camp.

The US Army captures Hermann Göring.

Jewish returnees to Denmark have their property, including houses, businesses and money, returned to them. All Jews are granted the sum of $4,505 Kroner to help rebuild their lives.

May 9, 1945
Prague, Czechoslovakia, is liberated by the Soviet Army.

May 10, 1945
The German Army in Czechoslovakia surrenders to the Soviet Army.

May 23, 1945
SS chief Himmler is arrested by a British Army unit. Later that day, he commits suicide by taking a cyanide capsule.

May 1945
Pio Perucchi dies at the age of 75 in Lugano, Switzerland.

June 18-21, 1945
The Trial of the Sixteen is a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet authorities in Moscow in 1945. All captives were kidnapped by the NKVD secret service and falsely accused of various forms of 'illegal activity' against the Red Army. The verdict was issued on 21 June, with most of the defendants coerced into pleading guilty by the NKVD.

July 6, 1945
The United Kingdom and the USA withdrew support for the legitimate Polish government in exile, and all its agendas in Poland. Soviet and Polish Communist repressions aimed at former members of the Polish Secret State and the Armia Krajowa lasted well into the 1960s. [Wikipedia]

July 16, 1945
First detonation of an atomic bomb in New Mexico. The bomb in code-named “Trinity.”

July 17-August 2, 1945
A conference is convened in Potsdam, Germany, between Stalin, Churchill (Attlee), and President Truman.

August 6, 1945
Americans detonate atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. It destroys two-thirds of the city.

August 8, 1945
The victorious Allied powers meet and develop an outline for an International Military Tribunal to try German war criminals.

The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Japanese occupied Manchuria.

August 9, 1945
Americans detonate atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. It destroys half of the city.

August 11, 1945
Anti-Jewish riots in Crackow, Poland.

August 12, 1945
The Soviet Army occupies Japanese-held North Korea.

August 13, 1945
The World Zionist Congress demands the admission of one million Jewish refugees to Palestine.

August 14, 1945
Japanese Emperor Hirohito accepts Allied surrender terms. He tells his people to accept the terms and not to resist the occupation.

August 15, 1945
V-J Day: Victory over Japan proclaimed.

Marshal Philippe Pétain, former head of the Vichy government, is convicted in a French court of treason and is sentenced to death. His sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment.

August 26, 1945
British Labor Party wins in a landslide.

August 28, 1945
First US troops land in Japan to prepare for surrender and occupation.

September 2, 1945
Victory in Japan (V-J Day). Japanese diplomats and soldiers surrender at MacArthur’s headquarters aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. End of World War II.

More than 55 million people have been killed in the deadliest war in history. For the first time in history, more civilians are killed than soldiers.

Europe and Japan are in ruins.

September 20, 1945
The Jewish Agency for Palestine submits a claim against Germany for war crimes committed against the Jewish people.

October 9, 1945
Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of France in Vichy, is convicted in a French court of treason. He is sentenced to death.

October 24, 1945
The United Nations comes into formal existence after its charter is ratified in New York City.

November 1945
Former Secretary of State Cordell Hull is awarded Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in creating the United Nations.

November 13, 1945
Charles de Gaulle is elected President of France.

November 15 – December 14, 1945
Dachau trials are conducted at the site of the former concentration camp. Forty former guards and administrators are tried. Many are sentenced to death.

November 22, 1945 – August 31, 1946
Nazi war leaders are put on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for crimes against humanity. They are tried by the International Military Tribunal (IMT). The IMT rules that obedience to superiors’ orders is insufficient defense for crimes against humanity. The defendants include Hermann Göring, Rudolph Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Julius Streicher, Joachim von Ribbentrop, General Wilhelm Keitel, General Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. They are charged with: 1) crimes against the peace, 2) war crimes, 3) crimes against humanity, and 4) conspiracy to commit any of these crimes. The military tribunal finds 12 of the defendants guilty and sentences them to death. Seven others receive prison terms and three are acquitted.

Late 1945
US diplomat Hiram Bingham resigns from US Foreign Service in protest for the US government failing to thwart Nazis’ activities in South America during and after the war.

1945-1950
It is estimated that 250,000-350,000 Jews are liberated from the concentration camps. 1.6 million come out of hiding.

Following World War II Poland becomes a satellite state of the Soviet Union, with its eastern regions annexed to the Union, and its western borders expanded to include formerly German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. This forced millions to relocate. Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland discover that it practically impossible to reconstruct their pre-war lives. Due to the border shifts, some Polish Jews realize that their homes are now in the Soviet Union. In other cases, the returning survivors are German Jews whose homes are now under Polish jurisdiction. Jewish communities and Jewish life as it had existed was gone, and Jews who somehow survived the Holocaust often discover that their homes have been looted or destroyed. [Wikipedia]

The first wave of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust emigrate to Palestine (142,000), the United States (72,000), Canada (16,000), Belgium (8,000), and other places (10,000), including Central and South America and Australia. A very few stay in Europe.

In post-war Poland, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at Central Committee of Polish Jews or CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union) left the Polish People’s Republic for the new State of Israel, North America or South America. Their departure is hastened by the destruction of Jewish institutions, post-war violence and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise. [Wikipedia]

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]

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

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

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

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

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
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]

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

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

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.

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.

The first exhibition in the barracks at Auschwitz is opened.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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
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.

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

June 1950
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.

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]

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 1958
British diplomat in Berlin Frank Foley dies.

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

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

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.”

1960
Pope John XXIII calls for a change 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.

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.

Simon Wiesenthal reopens his Documentation Center in Vienna.

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.

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.

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.

Raoul Wallenberg awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

Red Cross representative in Budapest Friedrich Born dies in Switzerland.

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]

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

Carl Lutz is honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

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

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

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]

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt Receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz and Paul Grüninger awarded Righteous Among the Nations medals.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Auschwitz-Birkenau is designated as a World Heritage Site.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Swiss diplomat Ernst Prodolliet is declared Righteous Among the Nations.

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.

July 22, 1983
Martial law ends in Poland

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

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.

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

Canada awards honorary citizenship to Raoul Wallenberg.

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

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
President Ronald Reagan visits cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, which has Waffen SS graves. This visit is highly controversial.

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.

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]

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

1990
The Soviet Union collapses.

East and West Germany are reunited.

Selahattin Ülkümen awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

Dr. Feng Shan Ho’s memoirs, “Forty Years of My Diplomatic Life” is published. His rescue work is barely mentioned in just 70 characters.

November 14, 1990
Signing of German–Polish Border Treaty, which had been unsettled since 1945.

November 25, 1990
Presidential election is held in Poland; Lech Wałęsa becomes President on December 22.

1991
First parliamentary elections held in Poland since fall of communism. Soviet troops start to leave Poland.

March 5, 1991
The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany goes into force. The military occupation of Germany by the Four Powers—the last vestige of the World War II Allies—ends.

May 1991
Polish President Lech Walesa apologizes for antisemitism throughout Polish history.

July 1991
Monument to Carl Lutz is dedicated in the former ghetto of Budapest.

July 1, 1991
Warsaw Pact is dissolved.

1992
Several antisemitic incidents take place in Germany.

Giorgio Perlasca dies in Milan, Italy at age 82.

Hill of Humanity monument dedicated in honor of Sugihara in his hometown of Yaotsu, Japan.

Samuel and Pearl Oliner publish The Altruistic Personality. This book outlines the psychological and social characteristics of Holocaust rescuers.

Sweden asks the US government to tone down its efforts on behalf of the Raoul Wallenberg case.

April 1993
George Mandel Mantello dies in Rome at the age of 90.

April 27, 1993
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is formally dedicated by President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel. Many European heads of state are present.

1993
In Poland Reformed Communists enter coalition government. They pledge to continue market reforms.

The Vatican recognizes the State of Israel. It exchanges ambassadors with Israel.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center opens its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, California. A major component of this museum is on the Holocaust.

French President Francois Mitterand publicly denounces the actions of the French Vichy government during World War II.

Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List is released. This popular motion picture tells the story of a German rescuer during the Holocaust. This film increases public awareness of rescue during the Holocaust.

Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey’s Role in Rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945, by Stanford J. Shaw, is published.

October 14, 1993
The Włodawa Museum, which commissioned the Sobibor monument, establishes a separate Sobibór Museum on the 50th anniversary of the armed uprising of Jewish prisoners there.

November 1993
A bronze bust of Gilberto Bosques, donated by the exiled Germans and Austrians, was unveiled at the Instituto del Derecho de Asilo y las Libertades Públicas, Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky. “A Gilberto Bosques Dank an Mexiko, Los Exilados Alemanes y Austriacos.” [Institute of Asylum Rights and Public Liberties. Leon Trotsky House Museum.]

December 30, 1993
At Jerusalem, signing of an agreement on some basic principles regulating relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel. The Vatican recognizes the State of Israel.

1994
Poland joins NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

Stephen Spielberg finances and founds the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. In ten years, the project interviews 52,000 Holocaust survivors. The project raises 120 million dollars.

Street in Bern named after Carl Lutz.

Visas for Life project to honor Chiune Sugihara is launched in Japan.

Former Jewish immigrants return to Mexico City to present Ambassador Bosques, who is 102 years old, with a document of gratitude. It states: “To Gilberto Bosques, whose human greatness will be present in our hearts forever.”

A documentary film entitled “Flucht nach Mexiko: Deutsche im Exil” [Fleeing to Mexico: Germans in Exile] is produced on Gilberto Bosques, documenting his rescue of Jews and other refugees. It is broadcast in Mexico.

April 7, 1994
The Vatican organizes its first memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. More than 200 Jewish Holocaust survivors are asked to participate in the commemoration.

July 16, 1994
France for the first time commemorates wartime deportation and murder of 76,000 French Jews.

1995
In Poland a former Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski, narrowly defeats Lech Walesa to become president.

International Committee for the Red Cross in Geneva apologizes for its passivity and inaction in helping Jews during World War II.

In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the President of Switzerland, Kaspar Villiger, officially apologizes to the Jewish people for its disastrous refugee policy.

The World Jewish Congress, under the leadership of Dr. Israel Singer and Edgar Bronfman, demands that Swiss banks account for Jewish money and assets in World War II accounts.

Visas for Life: The Story of Sugihara exhibit and program is launched in the United States. It is shown in the California State Capitol and at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance.

Ambassador Gilberto Bosques dies in his home in Mexico City. He is 103 years old.

A street in Bern, Switzerland, is named after Swiss Consul Carl Lutz.

January 1995
The 50th anniversary of the liberation ceremony is held in Auschwitz I in 1995. About a thousand ex-prisoners attended it.

June 1995
Carl Lutz und die Juden von Budapest, by Dr. Theo Tschuy, is published (NZZ Buchverlag, Zurich). This well-researched biography stimulates interest in Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz.

October 1995
Aristides de Sousa Mendes presented with the Gran Cross of the Order of Christ, the highest medal awarded to civilians in Portugal.

November 30, 1995
Paul Grüninger acquitted of all charges related to allowing more than 3,600 Jews to enter Switzerland.

1996
Germany designates January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, the official day for the commemoration of the victims of National Socialism. Countries that also adopt similar memorial days include Denmark (Auschwitz Day), Italy (Memorial Day), and Poland (Memorial Day for the Victims of Nazism).

Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats Project premieres exhibit depicting multiple diplomatic rescuers of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.

The Visas for Life Project edits and publishes Mrs. Sugihara's manuscript, Visas for Life, in English.

May 1996
World Jewish Congress and Swiss bankers establish an investigative body to look into confiscation and misappropriation of Jewish funds during and after World War II.

1997
Polish parliament votes to adopts a new constitution. General election is won by the Solidarity grouping AWS. Jerzy Buzek forms a coalition government.

Jan Zwartendijk awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

Angelo Rotta, the Vatican Nuncio in Budapest, is awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and at the Holocaust Museum Houston.

Book on Ambassador Per Anger, A Quiet Courage: Per Anger, Wallenberg's Co-Liberator of Hungarian Jews, by Elizabeth R. Skoglund, is published.

February 20, 1997
The Polish parliament votes to return nationalized Jewish property from the end of World War II. These include synagogues, schools, and cemeteries.

February 1997
Monument for Raoul Wallenberg is dedicated in London, England.

March 1997
93 million dollars is allocated for the preservation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site.

April 2, 1997
A new constitution of the Republic of Poland is adopted.

September 28, 1997
Dr. Feng Shan Ho dies in San Francisco at the age of 96.

October 8, 1997
In France Maurice Papon goes to trial, after 14 years of delay. The trial was the longest in French history and went on until April 2, 1998. Papon is accused of ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,560 Jews, some children or elderly, between 1942 and 1944. Papon is convicted in 1998 as having been complicit with the Nazis in crimes against humanity. He is given a ten-year sentence but served less than three years. [Wikipedia]

1998
The European Union (EU) begins talks on Polish membership.

The term Righteous Gentile is changed to Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem’s publications.

Visas and Virtue, a short theatrical film on Sugihara, is released and wins an Academy Award.

Alexander Kasser, Swedish Representative for the Red Cross in Budapest, Hungary, 1944-45, receives the Righteous Among the Nations award. Kasser passes away shortly thereafter.

Peter Zürcher is designated Righteous Among the Nations.

Book on Aristides de Sousa Mendes, A Good Man in Evil Times: The Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes--The Man Who Saved the Lives of Countless Refugees in World War II, by José-Alain Fralon, is published.

A major monument honoring Raoul Wallenberg is dedicated in New York City, in front of the United Nations world headquarters.

Swiss banks agree to pay Holocaust survivors who lost money in bank accounts. Six hundred million dollars in reparations will be paid by the Swiss government.

March 1998
“We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” is issued by the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. This document acknowledges the Catholic Church’s role in antisemitic actions against Jews.

April 1998
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, with tour of diplomats’ families. Israel issues commemorative stamp in honor of Righteous Diplomats.

June 14, 1998
Wincenty Antonowicz and his wife Jadwiga were posthumously bestowed the titles of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. They are the “Polish family from Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) who sheltered the 20-year-old Jewish woman Bronisława Malberg (b. 1917) in their house after the liquidation of the Wilno Ghetto during the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II, as well as two other Jewish families including Henia and Adi Kulgan”.

August 1998
Swiss banks agree to pay 1.25 billion dollars to Holocaust victims who had assets in Swiss banks during World War II.

October 1998
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit is translated into German and opens at Berlin City Hall.

November 1998
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens in Bern, Switzerland. In attendance is the President of Switzerland.

December 18, 1998
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is established. It is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and archives with investigative and lustration powers. The IPN was established by the Polish parliament by the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance which incorporated the earlier Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation of 1991. [Wikipedia]

1999
Many German industries such as Deutsche Bank, Siemens or BMW face lawsuits for their role in the forced labor during World War II. In order to dismiss these lawsuits, Germany agrees to raise $5 billion of which Jewish forced laborers still alive could apply to receive a lump sum payment of between $2,500 and $7,500. In 2012, Germany agreed to pay a new reparation of €772 million as a result of negotiations with Israel. [Wikipedia]

Museum of Jewish Heritage opens in New York City.

Swiss government issues postage stamp honoring Carl Lutz.

Jean-Edouard Friedrich, the International Red Cross representative in Berlin during World War II, is made Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

January 1, 1999
Sixteen new voivodeships are created in Polish local government reforms.

March 12, 1999
Poland joints the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance NATO.

May 31, 1999
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens in Budapest, Hungary, at the National Library. Attended by the President of Hungary.

October 1999
Diplomat Foley awarded Righteous Among the Nations medal.

Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews, by Michael Smith, is published in England.

The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, under the Vatican’s auspices, announce the creation of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission to review the previously published 11 volumes of material published by the Vatican between 1965 and 1981. Three Jewish and three Catholic scholars serve on the Commission.

November 1999
Dr. Harald Feller, Swiss diplomat in Budapest, receives the Righteous Among the Nations award.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes is honored by the European Parliament.

2000
Visas for Life Project nominates Turkish diplomats who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. They are honored with a medal of heroism by the Turkish government. Honored are Selahattin Ülkümen, Necdet Kent and Namik Kemal Yolga. All three of these heroic diplomats, in their late 80's and 90's, were able to receive these medals personally.

Swiss diplomat Ernst Vonrufs is awarded the Righteous Among the Nations status by Yad Vashem.

Polish diplomat-courier Jan Karski, who warned the western world of the Holocaust, passes away.

Book on Carl Lutz, Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews, by Dr. Theo Tschuy, is published.

The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland’s Finest Hour, by David Kranzler, is published.

Book on Spanish diplomat Don Angel Sanz-Briz, Un Español Frente al Holocausto, by Diego Carcedo, is published.

January 2000
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens at the International Forum on the Holocaust in Stockholm, Sweden. This program is attended by 40 heads of state and the exhibit is visited by the King and Queen of Sweden.

March 12, 2000
The Day of Pardon of the Holy Year 2000 celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica. Document, prepared by the International Theological Commission. (7 March 2000).

Pope John Paul II officiates at a special penitential rite asking God’s forgiveness for the sins, past and present, of the Catholic Church. Among the sins for which he asks pardon are sins against the Jewish people.

March 20-26, 2000
Jubilee Pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Israel. He visits Jordan and Israel, meeting with religious and government leaders. This is the first time that a Pope officially visits Israel and enters through the front door.

March 23, 2000
Pope John Paul II visits Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority at Har Hazikaron in Jerusalem. This is the center of the Jewish people for Holocaust commemoration. In the Hall of Remembrance, the pontiff delivers speech… “the heart feels an extreme need for silence.” He visits with six Holocaust survivors, including one he helped save at the end of the war. The Pope visits the Western Wall and places a note in the wall asking the Jewish people for forgiveness.

April 2000
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Opening program is held in the hall of the General Assembly. Many of the families of the diplomats are in attendance. Polish diplomat Jan Karski and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel are the guests of honor.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel becomes honorary board member of Visas for Life Project.

May 2000
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the national convention of the American Jewish Committee. Dinner attended by U.S. Secretary of State, the Prime Minister of Sweden and the President of Germany.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., dedicates exhibit honoring diplomats Sugihara and Zwartendijk, called Flight and Rescue.

July 2000
Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats exhibit opens at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Exhibit is sponsored by the Secretary General and the Chief of Protocol, Mehmet Ülkümen.

July 1, 2000
In Poland the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) begin its activities. The IPN is a founding member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Since 2020, the IPN headquarters have been located at Postępu 18 Street in Warsaw. The IPN has eleven branches in other cities and seven delegation offices. [Wikipedia]

July 7, 2000
Israel designates Dr. Feng Shan Ho with Righteous Among the Nations status.

August 2000
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the National Museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In attendance is the President of Slovenia.

September 2000
Ambassador Per Anger becomes honorary citizen of the state of Israel.

The Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Institute, publishes Spared Lives: The Actions of Three Portuguese Diplomats in World War II.

Japanese foreign ministry dedicates memorial to Sugihara in its headquarters. Ministry formally apologizes to Mrs. Sugihara for not recognizing Sugihara’s work earlier.

Film Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness wins prestigious Independent Documentary Association award and first place in Hollywood Film Festival.

September 3, 2000
Pope John Paul II beatifies (declares “blessed”) Pope John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli). Roncalli was the Papal Nuncio in Turkey who saved 24,000 Jews. The Visas for Life Project supports the beatification.

September 11, 2000
The Oświęcim Synagogue, also called the Auschwitz Synagogue reopens restored by the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation of New York. It is an active synagogue used for prayers by groups and individuals visiting Auschwitz. The adjoining house was purchased by the foundation and turned into a contemporary museum called the Auschwitz Jewish It depicts the life of Jews in pre-war Oświęcim

October 8, 2000
In Poland incumbent President Aleksander Kwaśniewski is easily re-elected in the first round with more than 50% of the vote.

November 2000
Documentary film on diplomatic rescue, Diplomats for the Damned, premieres at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Theater. Film is distributed along with student guide to schools and airs on the History Channel.

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

December 29, 2000
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, publishes “The Legacy of Abraham, Gift of Christmas.” It is written by Cardinal Ratzinger, who writes about the Holocaust: “…it cannot be denied that a certain measure of insufficient resistance to these atrocities on the part of Christians is explained by the anti-Jewish legacy present in the souls of no small number of Christians.”

2001
Beatification of Pope John XXIII. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was the Papal Nuncio in Turkey who saved 24,000 Jews. The Visas for Life Project supports the beatification.

Elow Kihlgren, Swedish diplomat stationed in Italy, is honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Florian Manoliu, Romanian diplomat stationed in Hungary, is honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Howard Elting, Sr., US Consul in Bern, Switzerland, who passed on the Auschwitz Report to the State Department with an endorsement of credibility, passes away.

Portuguese government obtains the old Aristides de Sousa Mendes estate in Cabanas de Viriato, begins raising money for its restoration as a tribute to his rescue work.

Portuguese President Mario Soares apologizes to the Portuguese Jewish community for the injustices of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1496. He does this in conjunction with honoring de Sousa Mendes.

An official Russian Working Group issues report acknowledging the possibility of Raoul Wallenberg’s death in 1947. It stresses that current evidence does not exclude the possibility of Wallenberg having lived some time beyond 1947.

January 2001
Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson formally apologizes to Raoul Wallenberg’s family for the country’s handling of his case.

January 12, 2001
The Eliasson Report is released. It is a 700-page report released under the auspices of the Swedish Foreign Ministry. It is the result of a ten-year investigation into the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. It outlines the failure of the Swedish government to intervene on behalf of Raoul Wallenberg. It also exposes the complicity of the Swedish government in its failure to recover Raoul Wallenberg from Soviet imprisonment. The report acknowledges significant mistakes were made by Sweden.

August 2001
Monument dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg is unveiled in Stockholm, Sweden.

September 2001
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the Memorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris, France. Exhibit opening ceremony takes place at the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) of Paris. Opening is attended by the Mayor of Paris and members of the Rothschild family.

2002
A census indicates that the total population of Poland is 38,230,080.

Ambassador Per Anger, Raoul Wallenberg's colleague in Budapest, Hungary, 1944-45, passes away.

Consul General Necdet Kent, Turkish Consul in Paris who saved Jews, passes away.

Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, the Brazilian Ambassador to France in 1940-1943, is designation Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel.

Pope John XXIII, written by Thomas Cahill, is published. Extensive references about his rescue of Eastern European Jews are presented in the book.

Becsület és batorsag: Carl Lutz és a budapesti zsidok (Honour and Courage: Carl Lutz and the Budapest Jews), by Dr. Theo Tschuy, is published in Hungary.

The Visas for Life Project sponsors commemorative medals honoring Raoul Wallenberg and Carl Lutz. These medals are issued by the Israeli State Coins and Medals.

February 2002
Consul Carl Lutz becomes honorary citizen of the State of Israel.

April 2002
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. Many European ambassadors are in attendance. Several new European diplomatic rescuers are discovered.

August 4, 2002
Raoul Wallenberg’s 90th birthday is celebrated. Renewed interest in his rescue story is generated.

The Visas for Life exhibit adds the role of Italian diplomats who rescued Jews in Yugoslavia, Greece and Southern France. At least 17 Italian diplomats were active in the rescue of Jews in these areas. These diplomats are officially nominated by the Visas for Life Project to be honored by the State of Israel with the designation of Righteous Person.

Becsület és batorsag: Carl Lutz és a budapesti zsidok (Honour and Courage: Carl Lutz and the Budapest Jews), by Dr. Theo Tschuy, is published in Hungary.

December 2002
European Union summit held in Copenhagen formally invites Poland to join the EU in 2004.

Sugihara memorial statue is dedicated in Los Angeles.

March 2003
The first independent, non-governmental commission on the Raoul Wallenberg case presents its findings in Stockholm, Sweden. Headed by Ingemar Eliasson, the commission examined the Swedish political leadership’s action in regard to Raoul Wallenberg, 1945-2001. The commission concludes that the Swedish government mishandled the Wallenberg case through its lack of initiative during the early years, 1945-1947.

Raoul Wallenberg is made an honorary citizen of Budapest.

June 2003
Poles vote in a referendum in favor of joining the European Union.

June 4, 2003
A street in Vienna is named for Gilberto Bosques.

June 7, 2003
Turkish diplomat Selahattin Ülkümen passes away in Istanbul, Turkey.

2003
The Visas for Life Project sponsors a commemorative medal, issued by the Israeli State Mint, honoring Chiune Sugihara.

The Visas for Life Project nominates 50 Italian diplomats, soldiers and policemen, representing the occupied zones of Yugoslavia, Athens and southern France, for the Righteous Among the Nations Award of Yad Vashem.

US Postal Service announces it will issue a commemorative stamp honoring Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV.

The book The Righteous, by Martin Gilbert, is published.

April 2003
The Visas for Life Project, along with Enrico Mantello, The Wallenberg Society of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, and the Mowszowski family, sponsors commemorative medals honoring Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz and Chiune Sugihara. These medals are issued by the Israeli State Coins and Medals.

April 16, 2003
The Treaty of Accession 2003 is signed. It is the agreement between the member states of the European Union and ten countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, on joining the EU.

June 7, 2003
Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish diplomat who saved Jews on the island of Rhodes, passes away in Istanbul.

June 7-8, 2003
A referendum on joining the European Union was held in Poland. The proposal was approved by 77.6% of voters. Poland subsequently joined the European Union that year following the ratification of the Treaty of Accession 2003. The country's first European Parliament elections were held in 2004.

September 2003
A memorial plaque honoring Jan Zwartendijk was unveiled in Kaunas, Lithuania at the site of his office.

Alison Leslie Gold publishes Fiet’s Vase and Other Stories of Survival, Europe 1939-1945. In this book, there are a number of stories of diplomatic rescue, including the stories of Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Wallenberg survivor Kate Wacz, Bernadotte survivor Gloria Lyon and Sugihara friend Solly Ganor.

September 7, 2003
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the City Hall in Vienna, Austria.

October 2003
Visas for Life exhibit shows in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, sponsored by Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Charles Schumer.

Visas for Life presents commemorative medals and books to US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a special ceremony at the State Department. Letter requesting opening of archives and cooperation of countries to determine the fate of Raoul Wallenberg. Louise von Dardel presents a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell asking for the United States to provide information on Raoul Wallenberg’s disappearance and the failure of the US government to take action on his behalf. The US State Department acknowledges that, in essence, it cannot do anything.

Members of the Visas for Life families attend tribute to Holocaust survivors in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Present diplomatic commemorative medals to the Director of the museum.

Abigail Bingham Endicott composes song Tikkun Olam (Heal the World) in honor of diplomatic rescuers.

December 11, 2003
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the Arts and Cultural Center sponsored by the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in North Miami, Florida. Guests of honor were the Mayor of Hollywood, Florida, and former US Attorney General Janet Reno.

Dr. Harald Feller passes away in Bern, Switzerland.

2004
Gennaro Verolino receives the Per Anger prize. At 99 years old he is the only surviving diplomat.

January 2004
Exhibit entitled Raoul Wallenberg – One Man Can Make a Difference opens in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Jewish Museum. This exhibit is produced by the Jewish Museum in Stockholm.

February 2004
Visas for Life exhibit opens at Binyaneh Ha’oomah, Jerusalem, Israel. This is in conjunction with an international conference of the American Jewish Committee.

May 1, 2004
The largest expansion of the European Union (EU), in terms of territory, number of states, and population.
The following countries (sometimes referred to as the "A10" countries include: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Seven of these were part of the former Eastern Bloc (of which three were from the former Soviet Union and four were and still are members of the Central European alliance). [Wikipedia]

July 26, 2004
Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats exhibition opens at the Hungarian Foreign Ministry building in Budapest. This is for a gathering of Hungarian diplomats in honor of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic rescue in Budapest.

August 30, 2004
Survivors' Park a park in Łódź commemorating Jews who went through the Ghetto Litzmannstadt during World War II, is dedicated on the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto. The park is located in the former Lodz Ghetto.

September 27, 2004
Raoul Wallenberg is honored in Budapest, Hungary, in the presence of the Swedish State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Hans Dahlgren. An international conference of scholars is convened to discuss Raoul Wallenberg and his rescue mission.

The Israeli Knesset agrees to continue investigation regarding the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg in the former Soviet Union. The Knesset also will establish an educational curriculum to honor the rescue activities of Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest.

January 17, 2005
Raoul Wallenberg is commemorated all over the world on the 60th anniversary of his disappearance.

January 25, 2005
The Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland on the initiative of Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polin) was formally established as a public-private partnership of the Association of JHI, the City of Warsaw, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

April 2005
Yad Vashem opens its new museum, making it the largest installation on the Holocaust in the world.

April 2, 2005
Death of Pope John Paul II.

May 2005
Poland is one of 10 new states to join the European Union.

Exhibit is opened honoring Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz in the former Glass House on Vadasz Utca.

WGBH, the Public Broadcasting System affiliate in Boston, broadcasts “Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness” on a national broadcast.

September 19, 2005
Simon Wiesenthal dies at his home in Vienna at the age of 96. He is buried in Israel.

October 17, 2005
Plaque is placed at the Carl Lutz monument, in the old Pest Ghetto, in Budapest. Agnes Hirschi, daughter of Carl Lutz, is in attendance.

November 17, 2005
Cardinal Gennaro Verolino passes away at his home in Rome. He is 99 years old. He is the last living diplomat who rescued Jews during the war.

December 23, 2005
Lech Aleksander Kaczyński 18 June 1949 – 10 April 2010) is elected President of Poland. A Polish lawyer and politician who served as the Mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010.

2006
The new Treblinka Museum opens in 2006. It is later expanded and made into a branch of the Siedlce Regional Museum located in historic Ratusz.

April 2006
The Red Cross Tracing Services archives at Bad Arolson, Germany, are opened for the first time for public viewing.

May 30, 2006
US Postal Service honors American diplomat Hiram “Harry” Bingham with a commemorative postage stamp as part of a “Distinguished American Diplomat” series.

2007
The Polish government also asked UNESCO to officially change the name "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau", to clarify that the camp had been built and operated by Nazi Germany. In 2007, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee changed the camp's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)." Previously some German media, including Der Spiegel, had called the camp "Polish". [Wikipedia]

The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (Czech: Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů, ÚSTR) is founded. It is a Czech government agency and research institute. It was founded by the Czech government. Its purpose is to gather, analyze and make accessible documents from Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes.

Father Gennaro Verolino, the Vatican assistant nuncio in Budapest 1944-1495, is honored by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.

February 3, 2007
Historical seminar on Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is conducted in Budapest sponsored by the Swedish Foreign Ministry. Raoul Wallenberg’s niece, Louise von Dardel, attends.

March 24, 2007
Dedication of Raoul Wallenberg Street in Paris, France.

January 27, 2008
Exhibit on Carl Lutz opens at the United Nations as part of the commemoration of the Holocaust.

Visa Retten Leben: Die “Gerechten Diplomaten” [Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats] exhibit opens in Idar-Oberstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

March 30, 2008
Visas for Life exhibit opens at the Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty museum.

June 3, 2008
The Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism is signed by prominent European politicians, former political prisoners and historians, among them former Czech President Václav Havel and future German President Joachim Gauck. It is a declaration which is initiated by the Czech government and calling for "Europe-wide condemnation of, and education about, the crimes of communism." Much of the content of the declaration reproduced demands formulated by the European People's Party in 2004, and draws heavily on totalitarian theory. [Wikipedia]

October 8, 2008
Mrs. Yukiko Sugihara passes away at the age of 94.

2009
The film Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story is released.

June 16, 2009
The Virtual Shtetl (Polish: Wirtualny Sztetl) a bilingual Polish-English website portal of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, devoted to the Jewish history of Poland is opened. It lists over 1,900 towns with maps, statistics, and pictures. [Wikipedia]

August 23, 2009
The Black Ribbon Day, officially known in the European Union as the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is observed for the first time.

It is an international day of remembrance for victims of totalitarian regimes, specifically Stalinist, communist, Nazi, and fascist regimes. It is formally recognized by the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and some other countries. It is observed on 23 August. It symbolizes the rejection of "extremism, intolerance and oppression" according to the European Union. The purpose of the Day of Remembrance is to preserve the memory of the victims of mass deportations and genocide, while promoting democratic values to reinforce peace and stability in Europe. It is one of the two official remembrance days or observances of the European Union, alongside Europe Day. Under the name Black Ribbon Day, it is also an official remembrance day of Canada, the United States, and other countries. August 23 was chosen to coincide with the date of the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a 1939 non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Putin's Russian government has attacked it for its condemnation of Stalinism.

2010
Sousa Mendes Foundation is founded. It honors Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes. One of its goals is to restore de Sousa Mendes’ family estate and to create a museum at the site.

April 10, 2010
Polish Air Force Flight 101, crashes near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the president of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, and his wife, Maria, the former president of Poland in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre [Wikipedia]

El Salvadoran diplomat rescuer Arturo Castellanos is declared in 2010 by Yad Vashem the Righteous Among the Nations.

July 4, 2010
Bronisław Maria Komorowski a Polish politician and historian is elected president of Poland. He serves as President of Poland from 2010 to 2015.

April 10, 2010
Polish President Lech Kaczyński and many government and military officials are killed in plane crash.

October 14, 2011
The Platform of European Memory and Conscience is established. It is an educational project of the European Union bringing together government institutions and NGOs from EU countries active in research, documentation, awareness raising and education about the crimes of totalitarian regimes. Its membership includes 68 government agencies and NGOs from 15 EU member states and 8 non-EU countries including the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Its members include the Institute of National Remembrance, the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, the Stasi Records Agency, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The platform has offices in Prague and Brussels (formerly). The President of the platform is Łukasz Kamiński, former President of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.

July 4, 2010
Bronisław Komorowski is elected President of Poland.

2011
The Reconciliation of European Histories Group is an informal all-party group in the European Parliament involved in promoting the Prague Process in all of Europe, aimed at coming to terms with the totalitarian past in many countries of Europe. The group comprises members of the European People's Party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, The Greens–European Free Alliance, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Europe of Freedom and Democracy, and the European Conservatives and Reformists. As of 2011, the group had 40 members, The group has co-hosted a number of public hearings and other meetings in the European Parliament on totalitarianism and communist crimes in Eastern and Central Europe. The Reconciliation of European Histories Group also cooperates closely with the Working Group on the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.

November 8, 2012
The film The Consul of Bordeaux, which honors Portuguese diplomatic rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes, is released.

April 19, 2013
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich) is dedicated on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum's English name means either "Poland" or "rest here" The core exhibition opens in October 2014.

2014
The French state-owned railway company, (SNCF) is compelled to allocate $60 million to American Jewish Holocaust survivors for its role in the transport of deportees to Germany. It is approximately $100,000 per survivor. The SNCF was forced by German occupation authorities to cooperate in providing transport for French Jews to the border.

April 27, 2014
Pope John XIII and Pope John Paul II are canonized as saints by the Catholic Church.

July 20, 2014
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is awarded a Congressional Gold Medal given to him by the United States Congress in recognition of his heroic activities in aiding thousands of Jews in Budapest, Hungary. Wallenberg’s sister is in attendance and receives the medal for the family.

2015
Persona Non Grata, a film documenting Japanese diplomatic rescuer Chiune Sugihara, is released. It premieres at the Jewish film festival in Warsaw.

Agnieszka Haska published an article about saving Jews by the Polish diplomats in Bern, Switzerland.

May 25, 2015
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski dies. He was a Polish military officer, politician and de facto dictator of the Polish People's Republic from 1981 until 1989.

August 6, 2015
Andrzej Duda becomes President of Poland.

2016
Following the election of the Law and Justice party, the government formulated in 2016 a new IPN law. The 2016 law stipulated that the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation should oppose publications of false information that dishonors or harms the Polish nation. It also called for popularizing history as part of "an element of patriotic education". [Wikipedia]

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polin) in Warsaw wins the title of European Museum of the Year Award

2017
The Pilecki Institute is founded in Warsaw, Poland. Its purpose is to preserve, document, and research the history of Poland in the 20th Century. Among its missions is to document aid to Polish Jews by Polish citizens during the German occupation. It is named after Holocaust rescuer Witold Pilecki.

The Wallenberg family declares that Raoul Wallenberg is dead. They still intend to determine his fate.

27,680 individuals are recognized by Yad Vashem and the State of Israel for rescuing Jews in the Holocaust.

The Committee of Jews Who Rescued Jews, the Jewish Rescuers Project, sponsors the book Saving One’s Own, written by Dr. Mordecai Paldiel.

March 8, 2017
The Zookeeper’s Wife, a film about a family who rescued Jews in the Warsaw Zoo, has its world premier in Warsaw. The film highlights the Polish rescuers Jan and Antonina Zabinski.

August 2017
Markus Buechner, the Honorary Consul of Poland in Zürich, together with journalists Zbigniew Parafianowicz and Michał Potocki describe the rescue operation, recognizing the contribution of all group members and survival of Jewish passport holders. [Wikipedia]

September 17, 2018
A study conducted in Germany by the Körber Foundation found that 40 percent of 14-year-olds surveyed in Germany did not know what Auschwitz was."

2018
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation amends its mission statement by the controversial Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance to include "protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation". The IPN investigates Nazi and Communist crimes committed between 1917 and 1990, documents its findings, and disseminates them to the public. Article 55a attempts to defend the "good name" of Poland. Initially conceived as a criminal offense (3 years of jail) with an exemption for arts and research, following an international outcry, the article was modified to a civil offense that may be tried in civil courts and the exemption was deleted. Defamation charges under the act may be made by the IPN as well as by accredited NGOs such as the Polish League Against Defamation.

Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding publishes landmark book on the War Refugee Board. The book’s title is Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe.

April 2018
A survey released on Holocaust Remembrance Day found that 41% of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66% of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was. 41% of millennials incorrectly claimed that 2 million Jews or less were killed during the Holocaust, while 22% said they had never heard of the Holocaust. Over 95% of all Americans surveyed were unaware that the Holocaust occurred in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. 45% of adults and 49% of millennials weren't able to name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto in German-occupied Europe during the Holocaust. [Wikipedia]

2019
In 2019, 2,320,000 people visit the Auschwitz site, including visitors from Poland (at least 396,000), United Kingdom (200,000), United States (120,000), Italy (104,000), Germany (73,000), Spain (70,000), France (67,000), Israel (59,000), Ireland (42,000), and Sweden (40,000).

Visas for Life and the Institute for the Study of Rescue and Altruism submit proposal for Congressional Gold Medal for American rescuers and rescue organizations. The proposal is presented to several members of the US Senate and House of Representatives. The American Jewish Committee endorses the Congressional Gold Medal proposal.

Holocaust historian Richard Breitman publishes The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany from Within. It is about American diplomatic rescuer Raymond Hermann Geist.

Svajci Védelem Alatt (the book Under Swiss Protection in Hungarian) by Agnes Hirschi and Charlotte Schallié is published.

January 2019
A number of documents related to the Ładoś Group are acquired by the Polish Ministry of Culture, with the assistance of Honorary Consul Markus Blechner, from a private collector in Israel in 2018. Named the Eiss Archive, they are displayed in the Polish embassy in Switzerland in January 2019, and later are transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland.

April 2019
Yad Vashem's Righteous Among The Nations grant the title to Konstanty Rokicki and offered "appreciation" to Aleksander Ładoś and Stefan Ryniewicz arguing that Rokicki headed the Ładoś Group. The document erroneously called Ładoś and Ryniewicz "consuls".

December 2019
In December 2019 list of names of 3262 holders of passports issued by Ładoś Group is presented at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. It is estimated though that from 5000 to 7000 names of the passports' bearers remain unknown. The research has been carried out by team led by Jakub Kumoch in Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Persecution, Yad Vashem, and Archives of New Proceedings in Warsaw. Diplomats from the Ładoś Group – Ładoś, Rokicki, Kühl and Ryniewicz – were named in the letter of thanks from Agudat Israel from January 1945. [Wikipedia]

2020
According to survey by researchers at the Jagiellonian University, only 10% of respondents were able to give the correct figure of the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in Poland. Half believed that non-Jewish Poles suffered equally during the war, and 20% thought that non-Jewish Poles suffered the most.

January 1, 2020
The citizens of Poland have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem of Jerusalem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are 7,112 (as of 1 January 2020) Polish men and women recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, over a quarter of the 27,712 recognized by Yad Vashem in total. The list of Righteous is not comprehensive and it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided hundreds of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors. Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews – most notably, the Żegota organization.

October 29, 2020
New Museum and Memorial in Sobibór is inaugurated. More than 700 personal items belonging to the victims of the camp, from among 11,000 artifacts held by the museum, as well as documents and photographs, form the centerpiece of the exhibition.

2021
There are more than 370 Holocaust Museums and centers worldwide.

Yad Vashem officially recognizes 50 international diplomats who were involved in the aid and rescue of Jews in the Shoah.

As of January 2021, Yad Vashem has recognized 27,921 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations. This includes 7,177 Polish individuals. (https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/statistics.html) At a 1979 international historical conference dedicated to Holocaust rescuers, J. Friedman said in reference to Poland: "If we knew the names of all the noble people who risked their lives to save the Jews, the area around Yad Vashem would be full of trees and would turn into a forest,

Visas for Life and the Institute for the Study of Rescue and Altruism in the Holocaust request from the German government and archives a list of individuals who were punished for aiding Jews.

Updated October 10, 2021