February 15

February 19

February 21

February 22

February 23

February 24

February 29

Heinrich Himmler orders Chelmno to be reopened as an extermination camp; it once again serves as a killing center from May to August 1944 during the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto.

Fifteen hundred prisoners arrive at Mauthausen concentration camp in
Austria after transfer from Auschwitz.

One hundred forty-one Libyan Jews held at the Fossoli transit camp are deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. (See January 10 and February 8.)

Two hundred sixty Jewish prisoners are transferred from Plaszow concentration camp near Cracow to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The camp commandant of Auschwitz III (Monowitz), SS Hauptsturmführer (SS Captain) Schwarz, orders in Commandant's Order no. 4/1944: (1) that subcamps not burden those prisoners assigned to night shifts with day work, mandating that the prisoners require rest pauses of seven to eight hours; and (2) that roll call in all subcamps be shortened to five to ten minutes. These concessions in prisoner conditions are made to maintain the productivity of forced labor in German armaments firms attached to Auschwitz subcamps. Similar orders are issued to other concentration camp commandants at a meeting in Berlin of the SS Central Office for Economy and Administration (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt, WVHA).

The total number of prisoners at Auschwitz I, II, and III is 73,669, of whom 13,477 are in the subcamps of Auschwitz III.

Six hundred fifty Italian Jews are deported from Fossoli transit camp, arriving, together with an additional group of eighty-four Soviet prisoners of war deported from the camp at Lambinowice (in German, Lamsdorf), at Auschwitz-Birkenau on February 26. After selection 526 prisoners are killed in the gas chambers; ninety-five men and twenty-nine women are selected for labor details.

Twenty-four men and twenty-three women survive selection on the ramp at
Birkenau. They were from a transport of several hundred Jews deported
from Narva concentration camp in Estonia who arrived in Auschwitz-
Birkenau the previous day.

Two hundred prisoners, half of those assigned to the Sonderkommando in
the Birkenau crematoria, are transferred to Majdanek concentration camp
in Lublin, arriving there on February 26. All are shot in retaliation for the
attempted escape of five members of the Sonderkommando.

One hundred nineteen Soviet prisoners of war are transferred from
Lambinowice to Auschwitz.

SS Obersturmbannführer (SS Lieutenant Colonel) Adolf Eichmann inspects the "Theresienstadt family camp," BIIb, at Auschwitz-Birkenau and hears reports from Dr. Leo Janowitz (former director of the Central Secretariat of the Theresienstadt ghetto) and Fredy Hirsch (an educator and youth leader in Theresienstadt).

A tribunal of the Kattowitz Gestapo sentences 163 Polish prisoners to death; they are executed at barrack (Block) 11 in Auschwitz I.

Also in February

The Milice, the Vichy Fascist paramilitary organization, cooperates with the Germans in a successful attack against the Maquis on the Glières Plateau in Haute-Savoie. Initially, about 700 maquisards successfully resist the assault; then German troops arrive with dive bombers, mountain artillery, and 7,000 soldiers. The maquisards are able to hold out for two weeks before surrendering. Approximately 200 escape, 150 are killed, and 160 are captured. On the German side, 350 men are killed, 350 are wounded, and 150 Miliciens are killed or wounded. . . . Soviet partisan and Red Army units liberate the town of Rovno in the Ukraine.... In Sasów, in occupied central Poland, the Germans burn alive and shoot the entire village population, consisting of several hundred Catholics, for assisting one hundred Jews hiding in a local forest.... The first food parcels for Danish deportees, sent by the Danish organization Fund of 1944, are received at Theresienstadt. With the arrival of the packages, the mortality rate of Danish prisoners at Theresienstadt drops by more than half.... The "beautification" of the Theresienstadt ghetto for inspection by the Red Cross and foreign visitors begins, as ordered by SS Lieutenant Colonel Karl Rahm, the ghetto's third and last commandant. . . . The Germans assume the administration of the Fossoli internment and transit camp; the Security Service (SD) of Verona under SS Brigadeführer (SS Brigadier General) Wilhelm Harster (previously in charge of deportations in the occupied Netherlands) takes control.... Eight hundred children are deported from concentration camps in Estonia to killing centers in occupied Poland.

March 5

March 7

March 8

a few days before the Red Army enters Czestochowa. At that time those prisoners still able to work are deported to Buchenwald, Gross Rosen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps.

Seven hundred thirty-two Jews from Westerbork transit camp arrive at
Auschwitz-Birkenau; 477 prisoners are killed on arrival.

The decision is made to kill Jewish prisoners in the "Theresienstadt family
camp," BIIb, in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The deportees are given postcards
postdated March 25–27 with the preprinted message "We are healthy and
fine," which are mailed after March 25 to mislead the deportees' families
and the International Red Cross. To continue the deception, the prisoners
are moved into the quarantine compound BIIa in Auschwitz-Birkenau,
where men and women are separated in different barracks and told that they
are to be transferred to labor camps in the Reich.

In Turin (Italy) Jewish hospices with sick and aged patients are raided by the Germans. After a one-month imprisonment, the patients are deported via Fossoli to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Italian (RSI) minister of the interior issues another decree reaffirming the exemption from deportation of Jews above age seventy and of those with mixed heritage. German roundups of such individuals continue in violation of the Italian decree.

The sixty-ninth deportation convoy departs from Drancy for Auschwitz
with 1,501 prisoners. It arrives in Auschwitz on March 10; 110 men and
eighty women are selected for labor on arrival, while the remaining 1,311
Jews are gassed. (See February 10.)

In Aryan Warsaw thirty-eight Jews hiding in a bunker at 84 Grójecka Street
are arrested, together with six Poles who had built the shelter under the floor
of a greenhouse and supplied the Jews with food. The noted historian
Emmanuel Ringelblum, his wife, and his son are among those arrested. The
Ringelblums are sent to Pawiak prison and executed several days later.
Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler informs the Security Police, the Secu-
rity Service, and the SS Central Office for Economy and Administration
that no prisoners may be released from Mauthausen concentration camp for
the duration of the war.

The United Nations War Crimes Commission sets up a subcommittee to
study the probable future defense argument of accused war criminals that
they were following a superior's orders.

With the Red Army about one hundred miles from the Hungarian border,
Hitler secretly orders the German military occupation of Hungary.

Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, governor of the Wartheland, reports to Himmler
that the Jewish population of Warthegau, formerly part of western Poland,
has almost completely disappeared. (See February 14.)

As a result of the decision of March 5 to kill Czech-Jewish deportees housed in the Theresienstadt family camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 3,791 Jewish men, women, and children are gassed; the women and children are killed in Crematorium II and the men in Crematorium III. Aware of what awaits them, many sing the Jewish anthem "Hatikvah", and the Czech

March 9

March 10

March 11

March 12

March 13

March 15

national anthem. Just before they go to their deaths, Josef Mengele selects twins for medical experiments. Unable to protect the women and children, the educator Fredy Hirsch commits suicide. (See February 29 and March 5.) Miners in Wales go on strike, threatening to paralyze British war industries.

John Pehle, head of the War Refugee Board, raises the idea of "free ports
for refugees" with Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

Gusen II, a satellite of Mauthausen concentration camp, opens at St.
Georgen in annexed Austria. The camp is charged with building fourteen
tunnel factories for the production of airplanes, engines, and weapons by
Messerschmitt and Steyr-Daimler-Puch.

A circular letter from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler orders that publication of restrictive decrees against Jews and Gypsies be discontinued, as their "evacuation and isolation" have already been completed.

About three hundred Jewish women and children in the city of Split
(Yugoslavia) are rounded up and sent to Jasenovac concentration camp; all
are killed.

The British ambassador in Washington, in response to American demands for broadcasts to Germany about atrocities, is instructed to state the British view that repeated statements against the persecution of the Jews would be ineffective.

Hitler orders implementation of Operation Margarethe, the code name for the occupation of Hungary.

German troops and Ukrainian nationalists burn the village of Palikorov near Lvov, killing 385 people. The inhabitants were accused of helping the partisans.

Pope Pius XII calls on all belligerents to spare the city of Rome.

Hannah Szenes, who trained with a group of Palestine underground fighters in Egypt, arrives in Bari, Italy, together with Reuben Dafni. She subsequently reaches Yugoslavia, where she works with Tito's partisans for three months.

DEGESH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH), a subsidiary of the I.G. Farben chemical conglomerate, bills the Auschwitz concentration camp and killing center for the sum of 1,050 reichsmark for delivery on March 8 of 210 kilograms (462 pounds) of Zyklon B. (Zyklon B was used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.)

The Soviet army begins the liberation of Transnistria, reaching the Dniester
River by March 20.

Twenty men escape from Ponary extermination camp (near Vilna), where
they had been assigned to destroy evidence of earlier mass killings.

Six Soviet officers, including some women, are shot in Stutthof concentration camp.

March 16

March 17

March 18

March 19

March 20

March 21

March 22

March 23

March 24

Herbert Pell, U.S. representative to the United Nations War Crimes Commission, presents a resolution asking that crimes against stateless persons or any individuals because of their race or religion be included as a war crime, since such acts are against the "laws of humanity."

Ninety-nine prisoners break out of Koldichevo camp, located about eleven miles from Baranovichi in Byelorussia; the camp holds about two thousand Soviet and Polish resistance and Jewish prisoners. Twenty-four prisoners are recaptured, but seventy-five reach partisan units.

Hitler meets the Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy at Klessheim Castle, outside Salzburg, Austria, in response to Horthy's letter of February 12. That same day, German troops occupy Hungary. (See February 12.)

Miklós Horthy returns to occupied Hungary. The train bringing him back also carries SS Brigadeführer (SS Brigadier General) Edmund Veesenmayer, the new Reich Minister Plenipotentiary. Other arrivals in subsequent days include Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf Eichmann.

Hitler orders that a Higher SS and Police Leader, SS Obergruppenführer
(SS Lieutenant General) Otto Winkelmann be assigned to Veesenmayer's
staff in Hungary in order to address the “Jewish problem" under the latter's
direction.

SS Lieutenant Colonel Hermann A. Krumey and SS Captain Dieter Wisli-
ceny, two of Eichmann's senior staff, appear at the Jewish community of-
fices in Budapest. They order that a Jewish Council (Judenrat) be formed.

The Associated Press in London reports that according to the Polish Information Ministry more than one-half million persons have been killed at Auschwitz. Most were killed within ten to fifteen minutes of arrival. The ministry also states that there are three crematoria at Auschwitz, capable of disposing of ten thousand corpses daily.

A new Hungarian government is formed under Prime Minister Döme Sztójay, formerly the Hungarian minister in Berlin.

The Central Council of Hungarian Jews announces that it is the only Jewish authority in Hungary and will maintain all contacts with the Germans.

At the Ardeatine caves near Rome, 335 hostages, seventy of them Jews, are massacred in reprisal for an attack on March 23 on a German police unit as they marched through the Via Rasella in Rome; thirty-three German policemen were killed. One of the massacred victims, Aldo Finzi, a convert to Christianity, was a high-ranking official in the Interior Ministry during the early days of the Fascist regime.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt warns Hungarian authorities not to persecute Jews and condemns the Nazis and their allies for heinous crimes. According to the New York Times of March 25, 1944, Roosevelt states: "In one of the blackest crimes of all history... the wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour. As a result of the events of the last few days, hundreds of thousands of Jews, who while living under persecution