January 30 -- Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

March 22 -- The first Nazi concentration camp is opened at an old factory near Dachau . The camp is to be used to incarcerate thousands of political opponents of the regime. It is followed by the openings of Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany , Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany , and Ravensbruck for women.

April 1 -- A boycott of all Jewish shops in Germany instigated by the S.A.

April 7 -- Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service enacted. All Jews removed from civil service. Jews denied admission to the bar.

May 10 -- Public burning of books by Jewish authors or other writers deemed objectionable to Nazi ideals.

August 2 -- President von Hindenburg dies. Offices of President and Chancellor combined. Hitler becomes sole leader and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

September 15 -- The Nazi government issues the Nuremberg Decrees, making Jews second-class citizens. The Nazi government later applied the laws to the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and to black people residing in Germany .

July 16 -- The concentration camp at Buchenwald is opened.

December 28 - 29 -- The first racial laws against the Jewish population are passed in the Romanian parliament.

April 26 -- The "Decree Regarding Registration of Jewish Property" requires all Jews in Germany to register their assets, domestic and foreign, in excess of 5,000 Reichmarks. A directive is issued for the expropriation of Jewish property in Austria .

July 6 - 15 -- At Evian , France , the U.S. convenes a League of Nations conference with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but no country offers to accept them.

July 28 -- Decree for the cancellation of the medical certification of all Jewish physicians effective September 30.

November 9 - 10 -- In a nationwide pogrom called Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the Nazis and their collaborators burned synagogues, looted Jewish homes and businesses, and killed at least 91 Jews. The Gestapo, supported by local uniformed police, arrested approximately 30,000 Jews and imprisoned them in the Dachau , Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald , and Mauthausen concentration camps. The Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for all damages done by Nazis on Kristallnacht.

May -- The S.S. St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba , the United States and other countries, and returns to Europe .

September 1 -- Germany invades Poland and World War II begins.

October 18 -- First order making it compulsory to wear the Star of David ( Wloclawek , Poland ).

April 27 -- Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as the site of a new concentration camp.

April 30 -- The Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland is sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.

June --  Deportation of 10,000 Jews from the region of Dorohoi in Romania , and between 100 and 200 Jews killed.

October 3 -- Vichy passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

November 15 -- The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.

January 21 - 23 -- Bucharest Kristallnacht: 130 Jews are killed, and 25 synagogues destroyed.

June 22 -- Germans attack Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) follow the German army and commit mass slaughter throughout Eastern Europe . By the spring of 1943, these special killing units kill more than one million Jews.

June - July -- Mass shootings of Jews begin in Ponary Forest , the killing grounds near Vilna , Lithuania . By 1944, 70,000 to 100,000 perish there.

June 28 - July 6 -- Yassi Pogrom: 12,000 Jews are killed in Yassi , Romania .

December 7 - 8 -- The SS introduces special vans to gas Jews on the way to Chelmo near Lodz ; by April 1943, 360,000 Jews had been murdered there.

January 20 -- Senior Nazi officials met at a villa on the outskirts of Berlin at the Wannsee Conference to discuss and coordinate implementation of the "Final Solution" which had already commenced in June 1941.

July 19 -- Himmler orders Operation Reinhard, the liquidation of all ghettos and the extermination of all Jews in the General Government of Poland by the end of the year.

July 22 -- The Treblinka death camp becomes operational. By August 1943 some 870,000 Jews perish there.

April 19 - 30 -- The Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Uprising takes place. German troops destroy the ghetto and most of the 56,000 survivors are sent to their deaths at Treblinka.

June 8 -- A transport of 3,000 children and their mothers leaves Holland for Sobibor. All are gassed on arrival.

October 18 -- In Italy the Jews of Rome are arrested and deported to Auschwitz .

April 27 -- German authorities begin the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz . By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons (half of the Jews in Hungary ) arrive at Auschwitz , where some 85% are gassed on arrival.

Summer -- Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematoria.

January 18 -- The SS begins the hasty evacuation of Auschwitz , with most of the surviving prisoners sent on the infamous death marches to camps in the West.

May 8 -- The war in Europe officially ends.