Resources

On 8 December 1941 the first murders were carried out at Chełmno. The Chełmno ‘killing centre’ was the first Nazi camp to be used specifically for the purpose of systematically murdering inmates, the majority of whom were Jewish.

Following Kristallnacht and the House of Commons debate on the growing refugee crisis in Europe, the first Kindertransport left Berlin on 1 December 1938.

On 23 November 1939 Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of occupied Poland, decreed that all Jews in Poland over the age of 10 were to wear a white badge with a blue Star of David on their right arm.

On the evening of 21 November 1938, shortly after and prompted by Kristallnacht, Philip Noel-Baker, MP for Derby South, introduced a motion in the House of Commons.

On 9 November 1938, the Nazis initiated a campaign of hatred against the Jewish population in all Nazi territories. An estimated 91 Jews were killed, 30,000 arrested and 267 synagogues destroyed. Many shops and other Jewish businesses were destroyed and looted.

Sobibor, an extermination camp in a small village in present-day Poland, operated as a killing centre from 1942-1943 as part of Operation Reinhard – part of the Nazi’s final solution to exterminate all of European Jewry.

On 5 October 1938, after a meeting between Heinrich Rothmund, the Head of the Swiss Police, and Nazi leaders in Berlin, it was agreed that all German Jewish citizens should have their passports stamped with an identifying letter ‘J’.

On 15 September 1935, two distinct laws were announced at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, collectively known as the Nuremberg Laws.

On 2 August 1943 Jewish prisoners revolted at the Treblinka Extermination Camp in the east of occupied Poland, causing some damage and allowing a few hundred prisoners to escape.

On 1 August 1936 the Games of the 11th Olympiad began in Berlin, in a climate of heightening political and racial persecution in Nazi Germany.