June 3, 1943: Warsaw Ghetto; One of the last bunkers are destroyed. It contained 150 resistance fighters. By September, all that were remaining would be flushed out and destroyed.
June 7, 1943: Auschwitz; Dr. Clauberg reports that 1,000 women a day are sterilized.
June 8, 1943: Auschwitz; Jewish Dr. Albert Menasche arrives from Greece. He joins the camp orchestra. He is the only one of a family of more than thirty to survive. He joins the camp orchestra. They would play as new arrivals entered the camp.
June 15, 1943: Jaworzno concentration camp opens in the Auschwitz region. It contained two crematoriums.
June 15, 1943: Janowska Death Pits; For months, as the Red Army advanced, mass graves were dug up and thousands of Jewish bodies were burned to hide their fates. The German's begin to cover up their horrific deeds. The units responsible were under Commander Blobel and known as ‘Blobel Actions.' In Janowska, hundreds of Jews were forced to dig up the dead, extracting gold teeth and wedding rings for the Germans in the process (8 kilograms in total).
June 16, 1943: Berlin; 200 patients are sent to Theresienstadt along with the remaining Jews of the Berlin community. The capital was declared "judenrein" - Free of Jews. 10 years earlier the Berlin Jewish population was estimated around 186,000.
June 20, 1943: Himmler sends 100 Jews to a concentration camp in Alsace called Natzweiler. They were killed there and their skeletons were sent to the Anatomical Museum in Strasbourg. Same day; 5,500 Jews were rounded up in Amsterdam and deported.
June 21, 1943: Lvov; The Germans kill most of the remaining ghetto population.
June 23, 1943: Czortkow; Ukranian police begin an action that would destroy the remaining Jewish population of about 600 people.
June 23, 1943: By this date 50,000 Jews would be deported from France. A slow pace, not to the satisfaction of the Germans.
June 25, 1943: Crematorium III at Auschwitz begins operation. Also, Otto Ben, Foreign Ministry representative reports that the 100,000th Jew had been removed from Dutch Society.
June 25, 1943: Czestochowa ghetto: The Germans begin the final destruction of the people of the ghetto. Jews put up armed resistance in a series of bunkers.
July 8, 1943: Vilna Ghetto; Minor resistance continues. Vitka Kempner blows up a German military train five miles outside of the city.
July 10, 1943: THE ALLIES LAND IN SICILY
July 11, 1943: Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party secretariat, issues a circular on the instructions of Hitler. "Whenever the Jewish question was brought up in public, there may be no discussion of a future overall solution. It may however be mentioned that the Jews are taken in groups for appropriate labor purposes."
July 16, 1943: Vilna; Lithuanian police raid a meeting of the United Partisan Organization with the head of the Jewish Council. Jewish partisans rescue the head of the resistance, Wittenberg. Wittenberg gives himself up upon Gestapo threat to destroy the ghetto. 5,000 Jews were then transported to the working camp, Vayvari, in Estonia.
July 19, 1943: 3,500 Jews were taken from the Birkenau camp to the destructed Warsaw Ghetto. Their task is to comb the ruins for valuables left by the Jews.
July 23, 1943: Tououse; Mandel Langer, a Jewish French partisan, is executed.
July 24, 1943: Spain; Spanish government save 367 Sephardic Jews by diverting them in transport from the death camp of Birkenau to the camp at Bergen-Belsen. Six months later they were released back to Spain.
July 25, 1943: MUSSOLINI IS DEPOSED AS RULER OF ITALY.
July 27, 1943: Warsaw; While combing the ruins for loot, Germans uncover hidden jews. 16 are shot.
August 2, 1943: TEBLINKA REVOLT; The Treblinka revolt takes place after months of thwarted planning. Limited arms and hand grenades were smuggled out of the arsenal. The revolt starts when a Jew shoots an SS officer as he was whipping two prisoners. Buildings were set on fire. The arsenal was exploded. 150 of the 700 Jewish workers involved in the revolt managed to escape. The rest were killed.
August 3, 1943: Bedzin; Baruch tries to challenge Nazi deportation orders. He is shot.
August 6, 1943: Vilna; Over a dozen Jews are shot as they attempt to resist deportation orders.
August 10, 1943: Warsaw; 27 more Jews were found in the ‘Aryan' portion of the ghetto and were shot.
August 15, 1943: Alderney Island, France; 1,000 Jews are taken to the Alderney Camp. Through ill treatment and exhaustion, hundreds of Jews die.
August 16, 1943: Bialystok Ghetto; Deportations begin again. (Final liquidation of the Ghetto.) At Himmler's orders, families are separated. The usual procedures of selection commence. Many Jews were shot and beaten throughout the process. There would be no repeat of the resistance experienced in the Warsaw Ghetto. Bialystock would be emptied of Jews from this time on.
August 17, 1943: Bialystok; The latest deportation continues. 1,200 children are selected for transport first to Theresienstadt. Four weeks later, those children still alive were sent to Birkenau where all of them met the fate of death. 53 Adults volunteered to join them.
August 18, 1943: Bialystok; Thousands of more Jews are deported to Treblinka. The last train to ever be sent there again. All the Jews were sent to the gas chambers. Afterwards, the camp closed down for good. The last transport from Salonika arrives in Auschwitz consisting of 1,800 laborers, the last of 48,533 people to be deported from that town. 37,386 of them would be exterminated on arrival.
August 18, 1943: Babi Yar, suburb of Kiev; The process of destroying the evidence of mass murder commences. ‘Blobel Commando' action, unearthing thousands of bodies and burning them in huge pyres, began. Jewish prisoners attended to the horrible task. Knowing that they too would be shot and burned at the end they tried an escape. 311 out of 325 Jewish and Soviet prisoners would be killed in their break-out attempt.
August 25, 1943: Janowska camp; Germans select 24 of the prettiest Jewish girls, have a night of entertainment with them, and then send all but one to their death the next day. The one was shot while trying to escape from the transport.
August 27, 1943: Drohobycz; All the Jews employed in the cement factory are killed.
August 28, 1943: Denmark; Germany declare martial law. Just prior to deportation, Denmark ferries over 6,000 Jews to safety in Sweden.
September 2, 1943: Treblinka; Jews remaining to clean out the recently closed camp revolt against their guards. Wearing a guard's uniform, Seweryn Klajnman leads his fellow 12 inmates out of the camp to their freedom. The remaining Jews would be sent to Sobribor after the final dismantling of Treblinka. Treblinka was plowed over and turned into a farm.
September 8, 1943: Italy capitulates to Germany. Germany therefore takes over Italian occupied areas.
September 9, 1943: Rome; Germans enter the city. Elsewhere, Artur Syess-Inquart reports to Goring that between March, 1942 and August, 1943 - 25,000 apartments were emptied in Holland, the belongings were transported away in 666 barges and in more than 100 boxcars.
September 13, 1943: Lodz Ghetto; Icek Bekerman, 34, is hung for stealing a few pieces of leather for making himself shoelaces. The Lodz carpentry shop was ordered to build the gallows.
September 14, 1943: Vilna Ghetto; Jacob Gens, head of the Jewish Council is summoned to Gestapo headquarters. He never returns.
September 16, 1943: With Mussolini gone, Germany controlled 95% of Italy. The first Italian Jews were deported from the town of Merano.
September 18, 1943: Minsk; 2,000 Jews are deported to Sobribor. All but 12 die.
September 20, 1943: Szebnie Camp, Poland; 1,00 prisoners are driven in trucks to the woods, stripped naked and are all shot to death. Those ordered to pile the dead bodies onto a pyre were then shot to death as well.
September 21, 1943: Greece; Rabbi Barzilai is commanded to take the necessary steps to carry out the deportation of all the Greek Jews and the establish a Jewish Council.
September 23, 1943: Vilna Ghetto; The ghetto is ‘liquidated.' 8,000 of the remaining 10,000 Jews are beaten, robbed and gathered in Rossa square. 1,600 are selected to go to the labor camps in Estonia. 5,000 were sent to Majdanek and its new gas chambers. Hundreds of the old and sick are sent to Ponar and are shot dead.
September 25, 1943: Vilna Ghetto; After two days of selections, only 2,000 out of 10,000 Jews remain. They are placed in local labor camps.
September 26, 1943: Rome; One day after official instructions arrive ordering the deportation of the Jews of Rome it is demanded of Ugo Foa, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, that the Jews hand over 110 pounds of gold within 36 hours or 200 Jews would be deported.
September 28, 1943: Amsterdam; Last Action taken. 2,000 Jews are deported bringing the number close to 107,000 in total. 95% of Holland's former Jewish population would not survive the war.
October 3, 1943: Birkenau; 139 Jews deemed too sick to work were taken away and gassed.
October 4, 1943: Poznan; Himmler address his senior SS staff. "I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race." However, his goal was to never let the Holocaust be known.
October 5, 1943: 1,260 children deported from Bialystock and 53 doctors and nurses are transported from Theresienstadt to Birkenau. They were told their destination would be Palestine. They would all perish.
October 7, 1943: Lithuania; Jewish partisans destroy fifty telegraph poles.
October 8, 1943: Yom Kippur, Birkenau; Over 1,000 men and women, deemed too sick to work, were gassed to death. Plaszow, 50 Jews are murdered. 600 Jews permitted to pray in Sobribor.
October 11, 1943: Sobribor; The trains keep rolling. Alexander Pechersky - "that day the crematorium burned longer than usual. Helpless and distressed, we looked at the bodies of our brothers and sisters."
October 13, 1943: Sobribor; A revolt takes place in Camp No. I. Alexander Pechersky distributes knives and hatchets to other prisoners. Nine SS and two Ukrainians are killed in the fighting. 300 of Camp No. I's prisoners escape. The other 300 would be killed. However, as a result of this revolt, Sobribor ends its operation.
October 16, 1943: Rome; Germans search through streets and homes for Jews. 477 Jews would be given sanctuary in Vatican City. 4,000 Jews would find sanctuary in other Rome monasteries. Only 1,015 of Rome's 6,730 Jews would be taken that morning by the Germans. Of those, only 16 would survive the war. Within two months, another 7,345 Jews would be found and deported from Northern Italy.
October 21, 1943: Minsk Labor Camp; The last surviving 2,000 people of the ghetto were rounded up and killed in pits outside the city.
October 23, 1943: Bergen-Belsen/ Birkenau; 1,750 Polish Jews, believing they were awaiting transport to South America, were sent to Birkenau. The women partake in a minor revolt in response to SS Sergeant Josef Schillinger's request for them to strip. He is shot and other SS men are injured. Rudolf Hoess orders the removal of each of the women into the camp grounds, and has each one shot. According to Jerzy Tabau, who later escaped, "the extermination of the Jews continued relentlessly. . ."
October 25, 1943: Birkenau; 2,500 girls from Solonica , Greece, held in Block 25 were all gassed. They sang the Hatikvah as they were marched to the death chambers.
c October 26, 1943: Janowska camp, Lvov; Jews continue to be shot and then burned in the pyres. Mothers and children would undress. One German would swing small children, smashing their heads into trees until they died. All this in front of the mothers who themselves would be beaten, hung or shot.
October 27, 1943: Germany recommends to Poland that any Pole helping Jews to escape should be dealt with ‘without the necessary delay of court hearings.' The penalty as it were, was death for assisting a Jew.
November 2, 1943: Riga Ghetto; 1,000 Jews are sent to Burkinau.
November 2, 1943: The Germans commence operation "Harvest Festival" - the destruction of the survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising who were held captive since April. Within a few days 50,000 Jews would be shot in ditches at Majdanek. At Trawniki, all the Jews were machine-gunned down. Of the 500,000 Warsaw Jews driven away from the ghetto and placed in camps between July 1942 and May 1943, ‘ONLY ABOUT THREE HUNDRED SURVIVED.'
November 3, 1943: Majdanek; 17,000 Jewish prisoners are mowed down from machine-gun fire.
November 3, 1943: Genoa: 300 Jews are deported to Birkenau, including Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici. This community traces its roots to 511AD.
November 4, 1943: Szebnie labor camp; 3,898 Jews were deported to Birkenau.
November 5, 1943: Poniatowa; "Harvest Festival" continues - 13,000 Jews are killed. The children of the Siaulia Ghetto were deported to Birkenau and perished. At Majdanek, 17,000 prisoners are killed.
November 6, 1943: Kiev; 14 survivors of Babi Yar make it to the victorious Red Army in Kiev, and join its troops.
November 9, 1943: Florence and Bologna; 400 Jews were deported to Birkenau.
November 11, 1943: Anniversary of the German defeat in 1948. German revenge was administered on 47,000 Jews not yet deported from Theresienstadt ghetto to Birkenau. At 4:00 AM the torture began by rousing them all and making them stand in the cold in the city square. Drizzle came, the dark of night, and the temperatures lowered. Not until 10:00 at night were they allowed to return to the ghetto.
December 12, 1943: Jewish Council Chairman, Wlodzimierz Wolynski, assures the community of remaining Polish Jews that they all will be safe if they continue to work. A vain proclamation as eventually the would all be relocated.
November 13, 1943: Birkenau; Frizt Lustig tries to escape from camp, but is caught and shot ten days later.
November 16, 1943: Skarzysko-Kamienna; Ammunition factory and oppressive labor camp. Ukrainians kill all those they think are too week to continue.
November 17, 1943: 995 Jews from Holland are sent to Birkenau. 531 are gassed, including 166 children.
November 17, 1943: Rumania; General Antonescu, Rumanian dictator warns the cabinet against giving into Hitler's demands for the Jews. Hundreds of thousands still survived in camps and ghettos. "We will take them away from here." 4,400 orphans were the first to be repatriated, followed by 15,000 others.
November 18, 1943: Borki; A ‘Bobel Commando' Unit tells 300 Jews that they are to dig up the trenches of 30,000 dead humans in Borki and then burn them all. 1,000 bodies on each pyre. The bones were ground to dust and taken away. The graves were emptied, disinfected, filled with earth and grass was planted over them.
November 19, 1943: Janowska Revolt; Battle takes place between the prisoners and the guards. 1,000 Jews are taken at Sandomierz and are shot in the Jewish cemetery.
December 24, 1943: Ninth Fort, Kvno: ‘Bobel Commando' unit of 64 Jews have dug up and assisted in the burring of 12,000 bodies out of the 70,000 that have been murdered since winter of 1941. This Christmas eve they attempt their escape while the guards celebrated. 19 would survive and tell the horror story of ‘Bobel Commando' Unit mass body burnings and the German attempt to hide all traits of their killings. In Borki, a similar attempt to escape was undertaken by its ‘Bobel Commando' Unit. Of 60 who tried, only 3 escaped to live through the war. One, Josef Sterdyner, testified at the trial of the Borki guards in 1962. Another, Josef Reznik, was a witness at the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem in 1961.