Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust

Chronology

CHRONOLOGY The editors are grateful to Carol Rittner and John K. Roth whose chronology is included here. It originally appeared in their book, Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, published by Paragon House in 1993, who has kindly granted permission for its use. In addition to noting major events during the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust, this chronology pays attention to incidents and episodes that are particularly relevant to the subject of women and the Holocaust. 1933 January 30 Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. German Jews soon feel the effects of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies of segregation and forced emigration. March 20 Dachau, one of the first concentration camps in Germany , is established about ten miles northwest of Munich . May 10 The Nazis instigate public burnings of books by Jewish authors and authors opposed to Nazism. May 26 Nazi legislation restricts abortion and prohibits voluntary sterilization but also legalizes race-hygiene sterilization. July 14 The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring is passed in Germany. Taking effect on January 1, 1934, it orders sterilization to prevent the propagation of lebensunwertes Leben (lives unworthy of life). Some 200,000 to 350,000 persons were sterilized by 1939. July 20 The Vatican signs a concordat with Germany. October The first centralized concentration camp for women opens at Moringen. xxxv xxxvi Chronology 1934 January 26 Germany and Poland sign a ten-year nonaggression pact. February 24 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink becomes the leader (Reichsf ührerin) of the National Socialist Women’s Union and the German Women’s Agency. In November 1934 she receives the title Reich Women’s Führerin (Reichsfrauenf ührerin). July 3 Nazi Germany creates a centralized system of State Health Offices with departments for gene and race care. Laws prohibiting marriage with “alien races” and with the “defective” among the “German-blooded ” are also passed. August 2 The German president, Paul von Hindenburg, dies. Subsequently Hitler combines the offices of chancellor and president and declares himself Führer of the Third Reich. 1935 September 15 The Nuremberg Laws are decreed at a Nazi party rally. They contain two especially important provisions : (1) The Reich Citizenship Law states that German citizenship belongs only to those of “German or related blood.” (2) The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibits marriage and extramarital intercourse between Jews and persons of “German or related blood.” November 14 The First Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law specifies that “a Jew cannot be a Reich citizen.” It also enacts a classification system to define various degrees of Jewishness. One is defined as a full Jew if “descended from at least three grandparents who are fully Jewish by race,” or if “descended from two fully Jewish grandparents” and subject to other conditions specified by the ordinance. A grandparent is defined as fully Jewish if he or she “belonged to the Jewish religious community.” Chronology xxxvii 1936 July 12 The concentration camp at Sachsenhausen is established . October 25 The Rome-Berlin Axis agreement is signed. 1937 July 16 The concentration camp at Buchenwald is established . 1938 March 13 Anschluss: The Third Reich annexes Austria. March 21 The women’s concentration camp at Moringen closes. The last women imprisoned there are sent to a newly formed women’s concentration camp at Lichtenburg , which becomes available when its male inmates and SS guard units are transferred to Buchenwald. June 15 Fifteen hundred German Jews are sent to concentration camps. July 6–15 Representatives from thirty-two nations attend the Evian Conference to discuss the German refugee problem, but no significant action toward solving it is taken. August 17 Jewish women in Nazi Germany are required to add “Sarah” to their names, and all Jewish men “Israel.” September 29–30 Munich Conference parties agree to the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia. October 5 The passports of German Jews are marked with a large red J, for Jude. October 28 Some 17,000 Polish Jews are expelled from Germany to Zbaszyn on the Polish border. xxxviii Chronology November 9–10 Following the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a minor German diplomat in Paris, by a Jewish youth named Herschel Grynszpan, the Kristallnacht pogrom —instigated by Josef Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda—erupts in Germany and Austria. Synagogues are burned, Jewish businesses looted, and Jews are beaten by Nazi thugs...