Key Dates:
JUNE 22, 1941
KILLING SQUADS ACCOMPANY GERMAN INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION German mobile killing squads, called special duty units (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go, they shoot all Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. By the spring of 1943, the mobile killing squads will have killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political officials. |
DECEMBER 8, 1941
FIRST KILLING CENTER BEGINS OPERATION The Chelmno killing center begins operation. The Nazis later establish five other such camps: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau (part of the Auschwitz complex), and Majdanek. Victims at Chelmno are killed in gas vans (hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartments). The Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka camps use carbon monoxide gas generated by stationary engines attached to gas chambers. Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the killing centers, has four large gas chambers using Zyklon B (crystalline hydrogen cyanide) as the killing agent. The gas chambers at Majdanek use both carbon monoxide and Zyklon B. Millions of Jews are killed in the gas chambers in the killing centers as part of the "Final Solution." |
JANUARY 20, 1942
WANNSEE CONFERENCE AND THE "FINAL SOLUTION" The Wannsee Conference, a meeting between the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and German government agencies, opens in Berlin. They discuss and coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution," which is already under way. At Wannsee, the SS estimates that the "Final Solution" will involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Between the fall of 1941 and the fall of 1944, the German railways transport millions of people to their deaths in killing centers in occupied Poland. |
The Final Solution-"Extermination"
“In completion of the task which was entrusted to you… …[on] January 24, 1939, of solving the Jewish question… …in the most convenient way possible… …I [now] charge you with making all necessary preparations… …for an overall solution of the Jewish question…
I further charge you with submitting to me promptly an overall plan… …for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.”
On 31 July 1941, Hermann Goering orders Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a plan for the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question'.
On 20 January 1942, 15 leading officials of the Nazi state met at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to discuss the ’Final solution of the Jewish Question’.
The ’Final solution’ was a code name for the murder of all the Jews of Europe. The people present at the conference were to discuss how to make mass murder happen in an organised and methodical way.
During the summer of 1941, the Nazis broke their agreement and invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler believed that Jews had created communism. The war in the East was aimed not merely at conquest but at the destruction of millions of Jews and Slavs.
I further charge you with submitting to me promptly an overall plan… …for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.”
On 31 July 1941, Hermann Goering orders Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a plan for the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question'.
On 20 January 1942, 15 leading officials of the Nazi state met at a villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to discuss the ’Final solution of the Jewish Question’.
The ’Final solution’ was a code name for the murder of all the Jews of Europe. The people present at the conference were to discuss how to make mass murder happen in an organised and methodical way.
During the summer of 1941, the Nazis broke their agreement and invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler believed that Jews had created communism. The war in the East was aimed not merely at conquest but at the destruction of millions of Jews and Slavs.
Death Camps
By the end of the summer of 1941, the Nazi leadership had made plans to build six extermination camps on Polish soil. Their sole purpose was murder.
These six extermination camps were:
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The Outcome of "The Final Solution"There were millions killed but here are the estimates:
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