This lesson should enable students to develop a good chronology of the Holocaust so that more complex questions can be asked in future lessons.
The timeline has been constructed with individual boxes to enable teachers to select those events to be included which they feel are appropriate to their own class. Teachers may choose not to include all of the events on the timeline with their class. Similarly, teachers should select from the excerpts of testimony provided if they feel that this is necessary for their class.
Lesson
All: Identify and describe the key events that occurred that evolved in the events of the Holocaust.
Most: Explain the turning points within the chronology of Holocaust.
Some: Judge and justify when the Holocaust began.
Starter: Ask students to write down any key dates or facts they would associate with the Holocaust.
Task: Timeline - this can be completed as a group, pairs or individually. It would be a good idea if students can refer back to the timeline in future lessons.
1. Key dates and events.
2. Testimonies from survivors.
3. Identifying when the Holocaust began.
Discussions: When did the Holocaust begin? Why is this a difficult to decide?
All the testimonies are from Holocaust survivors. Why their stories so different?
Plenary:
Pick one date. Why is this date important during the Holocaust?
Clips from Arek Hersh and Bernard Grunberg can be found using the following link:
http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/VideoProject/
Timeline
Before 1929- Germany goes through a very difficult time after World War 1, it is made to pay high amounts to the countries it lost the war to. It becomes a democracy but there is a lot of political change. Germany starts to seem more stable though before 1929.
October 1929- The Wall Street Crash (when the values of stocks in New York falls dreadfully) leads to a worldwide depression. This leads to millions of people being unemployed in Germany, and people struggling to look after their families.
July 1932- The Nazi party become the largest party in Germany, winning nearly 40% of the votes in the national elections.
November 1932- The Nazi party gain 33% of votes in the national elections in Germany. This is not enough for a majority, and they agree to work with conservatives.
January 1933- Hitler is made chancellor of Germany
March 1933- The Enabling Act transfers powers from the Reichstag to the Cabinet, giving more power to the Nazi party
April 1933- Hitler ordered Germans to boycott Jewish shops, banks and businesses.
April 1933 – Civil Servants who were thought to be ‘non – Aryans’ are forced to resign from their jobs.
April 1933 – Jewish people are no longer allowed to be judges or lawyers.
May 1933- Public book burnings of books important to Jewish people, and others such as Communists
August 1934- President Von Hindenburg dies and Hitler is made the Fuhrer of the Third Reich.
September 1935- The ‘Nuremberg Race Laws’ are passed, defining who is a Jew. Jewish people are no longer to be seen as citizens as Germany but subjects instead
March 1938- Germany takes over the governing of Austria in the Anschluss
July 1938- A conference is held in Evian to address the large number of Jewish refugees wishing to leave Germany and other countries but, for different reasons, most countries are unwilling to help
August 1938 - authorities decree that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin need to add “Israel” and “Sara,”
November 1938- Kristallnacht, two nights of riots in which Jewish businesses are destroyed; synagogues are burned down, Jewish men are arrested and over 90 Jewish people are killed.
November 1938- Jewish children are banned from attending state schools
December 1938-September 1939- Jewish children are brought out of Germany and parts of Austria and Czechoslovakia for their safety. After Kristallnacht, the British government agreed that Jewish children could travel to Britain (without their parents) and stay until it was safe for them to go home. This became known as the Kindertransport and saved the lives of ten thousand Jewish children.
January 1939 – Hitler claims that if there is another World War it will be the fault of the Jews. If so, Hitler says that it will not be the destruction of Germany but the ‘annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
January 1939 - Hermann Göring gives Reinhard Heydrich the job of forcing Jewish people to leave Nazi Germany.
September 1939- Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on Germany.
September 1939 – Order by Reinhard Heydrich which states that Jews are to be grouped together in ghettos in towns to make it easier to control them and to deport them in the years to come.
October 1939- The first ghettoes are set-up in Poland. Ghettoes were small areas in towns or cities, usually the poorest areas, where Jewish people were made to live without their freedom. Conditions were very difficult- there was usually not enough food to eat and high levels of disease.
July 1940 – ‘The Madagascar Plan’ – this plan suggested dumping all the Jewish people in Europe onto the island of Madagascar.
June 1941- Many Jewish people who live in the Soviet Union are killed, because they are Jewish.
July 1941 Reinhard Heydrich is given the powers to plan a ‘total solution of the Jewish question’ this leads to the planning and carrying out of mass murder of the Jewish people by the Einsatzgruppen.
December 1941 - Killing begins at Chelmno, the first built death camp, using gas vans.
January 1942- At the Wannsee Conference, members of the Nazi party talk about how they will carry out their plan for all Jewish people in Europe to be killed.
Summer 1942- Jews living in Holland are deported to camps.
July- September 1943- In Warsaw, a small number of fighters in the Jewish ghetto fight a much larger number of soldiers- refusing to give in to what is happening to them, even though the odds are so impossible.
September 1943- The Danish people rescue most of the Jews living in Denmark by smuggling them to Sweden, which has not been taken over by the Nazis.
May 1944- From Hungary, very many Jewish people are sent to camps, where they are killed.
Through early 1945- As the Germans are losing the war, many camps are liberated.
May 1945- The Germans surrender.
Arek Hersh
Arek Hersh – Part 1
Arek Hersh was born in a town called Sieradz in central Poland in September 1929. He was the fourth of five children, with one brother and three sisters.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Arek Hersh – Part 2
By 1938, German Jews of Polish descent started coming to Sieradz from Germany. They told us about the Nazis inhumanity and how badly they treated Jews. Another sign of growing Nazism was the greater degree of anti-semitism in our town from ethnic Germans. I remember one market day going into a shop and hearing two Christian Poles say, “Don’t go into that shop, it’s owned by Jews.”
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Arek Hersh – Part 3
The war began in September 1939 when I was 11 years old. One night the Germans came for my father, but he managed to escape in the dark. Instead, they took my brother Tovia, who was only four years older than me. He escaped as well, so the German police came for me. I was only 11 and was sent to the railway station to be taken to a place called Otoschno, a forced labour camp. I was there for 18 months before I returned home. Out of 2,500 men who started work there, only 11 were left, including me.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Arek Hersh – Part 4
In August 1944 Arek was taken to Auschwitz Birkenau after spending some time in Lodz Ghetto. By this point he was all alone. The conditions in the camp were horrendous.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Arek Hersh – Part 5
8th of May 1945, Arek was liberated by the Russian Army at the Theresienstadt ghetto. Arek had only arrived there four days before liberation by train.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Bernard Grunberg
Overview: https://www.nationalholocaustcentre.net/bernardgrunberg
Bernard Grunberg – Part 1
Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, life for Jews changed considerably. I lost most of my friends and as time went on, I became more and more isolated because of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda. I was well treated by all the teachers at my school, but in the playground and on the way home, I was often verbally and physically assaulted, so gradually my education suffered.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Bernard Grunberg - Part 2
In July 1938, a group of Nazi SS entered the grounds of the technical school where Bernard was training in Berlin. They held everyone at the entrance while they set fire to the joinery workshop. Everything – including the valuable woodworking machinery was destroyed. Bernard remembers helping to clear the workshop up.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
Bernard Grunberg – Part 3
I came to England on the second Kindertransport from Berlin on the 12th December 1938, at the age of 15. My father was in Buchenwald concentration camp at the time, and this meant that only my mother had to give consent for me to leave.
© The National Holocaust Centre and Museum