Dates to Remember

31/07/1941: Nazis launch their ‘Final Solution’

Following the outbreak of WW2 the Nazis stepped up their persecution of the Jewish population by imprisoning men, women and children in ghettos and other actions designed to reduce and restrict the rights of Jews. On 31 July 1941, a Nazi leader Hermann Goering authorised SS General Reinhard Heydrich to make preparations for the implementation of a ‘complete solution of the Jewish question’.

By September of that year thousands of Jews had been murdered in mass shootings or gassings by mobile killing units and 6 killing centres – Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau were established over the following months.

The ‘Final Solution’ called for the complete extermination of Europe’s Jewish population. Approximately 6 million Jewish men, women and children were murdered between 1933 and 1945.

You can use HMD resources to find out more about the Jewish Experience under the Nazi regime or read a survivor testimony