July 3-6

July 4

July 5

July 6

July 7

July 8

July 9

July 10

July 11

A meeting of euthanasia experts is held in Vienna under the auspices of
Hitler's chancery. The participants visit the facilities at the Steinhof and
Gugging hospitals, the euthanasia centers in Vienna.

Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy informs J. W. Pehle, head of the
War Refugee Board, that the proposal to bomb rail lines at Auschwitz-
Birkenau is rejected as "impractical."

Rudolf Schleier, an official in the German Foreign Office, reports that since the term antisemitism might be understood to include Arabic semitic peoples of the Near East, the Grand Mufti requests that the term anti-Judaism be used instead. The memorandum instructs recipients to use the latter term in the future.

Four British women who had been parachuted into France on special missions and were captured, are sent from Karlsruhe prison to Natzweiler concentration camp, where they are executed at the crematorium. This action forms the basis of the British Natzweiler indictment and trial in 1946.

The Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy orders an end to deportations of Hungarian Jews; the last "official" deportation occurs on July 8.

The Kovno ghetto is liquidated; two thousand Jews are killed, and four thou-
sand Jews are deported to the Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps.

American bombers hit Melk concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen.
Two hundred prisoners are killed and another two hundred seriously injured.
Twenty-two guards are also killed.

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes a radio address to Hungarian Christians,
asking them to save Jews if possible.

Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, posted as a secretary of the Swedish embassy there.

The rescue activities of diverse Jewish groups in Istanbul, including the Rescue
Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, are centralized through the cre-
ation of a Rescue Council. This council will work with the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee and the War Refugee Board in an attempt to co-
ordinate rescue efforts before approaches are made to the Turkish government.
A German offensive begins against the partisans in Yugoslavia. Five German
divisions move into southern Bosnia and Montenegro. Experiencing only
partial success, the Twenty-first SS Division is badly mauled.
German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop informs SS Brigadier General
Veesenmayer of Hitler's decision regarding the Hungarian government's
collaboration with the Swedes, Swiss, and Americans: With respect to the
humanitarian initiatives, the Hungarian government may release small
groups of Jews provided that the Hungarian regent Horthy agrees to the
large-scale resumption of deportations of Hungarian Jews.

The German Foreign Ministry reports that 437,402 Jewish men, women, and children have been deported from Zones I-V in occupied Hungary. President Roosevelt agrees to run for a fourth term as President.

July 12

July 13

July 14

July 16

July 17

July 18

Sixty-eight political prisoners from Fossoli are shot by the Germans at the
Cibeno rifle range, where executions of partisans also took place.

Spain offers to admit five hundred Hungarian-Jewish children to Tangier.
The Swiss police issue new directives, rescinding earlier guidelines that
stipulated "refugees on the ground of race alone are not political refugees."
The new orders declare that "for the present, admission is to be granted . . .
only to foreigners whose lives and persons are actually in danger for politi-
cal or other reasons and who have no alternative but flight into Switzerland
in order to escape this danger."

Despite Horthy's orders, Eichmann and the SS arrange the deportation of fifteen hundred prisoners held at Kistarcsa. When Horthy is informed, he orders his Minister of Interior to have the train halted and returned with its human cargo. Eichmann succeeds in deporting these prisoners to Auschwitz on July 19. (See July 7.)

The Vilna ghetto is liberated by Soviet forces. After the Germans liquidated
the ghetto in September 1943, most of the inhabitants were deported to
camps in Estonia. About 2,400 were left in the labor camps outside the
ghetto, while some two thousand hid in the ghetto. Most of those in hiding
were captured prior to liberation in 1944. On July 2 and 3, 1944, the
Germans liquidated the labor camps in the face of advancing Soviet
troops. About two thousand of the Jews in the camps were murdered; less
than two hundred escaped.

Between forty and fifty Jews are deported from Monaco.

U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull denounces the extermination of the Hungarian Jews, adding: "This government will not slacken its efforts to rescue as many of these unfortunate people as can be saved from persecution and death."

Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop tells Veesenmayer in Budapest to convey verbally to Horthy a strongly worded ultimatum from Hitler regarding Horthy's decision to suspend the deportation of Hungarian Jews. The message protests vehemently against the planned arrest of some of the most rabid anti-Jewish officials in the Hungarian government, threatens both Horthy and his government, and reiterates Hitler's desire that "measures against" Budapest Jews begin immediately. (See July 7, 10, and 12.)

Several Jewish artists in the Theresienstadt ghetto are arrested for distributing "horror propaganda" and are transferred to the Small Fortress at Theresienstadt. After brutal interrogations and beatings, they are deported to Auschwitz.

Ancona on Italy's Adriatic coast is liberated.

The Germans issue an ultimatum to Pierre Laval to transfer the members of the French (Vichy) government to Belfort. Laval refuses and thereupon ceases to exercise the functions of vice premier and chief of the government. Raoul Wallenberg sends his first report from Budapest to the Swedish government.

July 18-19

July 19

July 20

July 21-22

July 21-25

July 23

July 24

About two thousand Jews from Rhodes and Kos are deported to Auschwitz. On July 23-24, the deportees are placed aboard three barges for a ten-day voyage to Piraeus and then transferred to the Chaidari (Haider) concentration camp. On August 3, they are taken to the Athens train station, where ninety Jews from Athens are added to the transport. The deportees travel for an additional two weeks by train via Budapest to Auschwitz-Birkenau, arriving there in mid-August.

Four transports containing 7,880 Jewish prisoners from Kovno arrive at the
Stutthof concentration camp between July 13 and July 19.

An unknown number of Norwegian prisoners are taken from Grini concen-
tration camp and executed.

A group of German officers and dissident politicians, represented by
Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, attempt to assassinate Hitler
by exploding a bomb in the conference room of his headquarters. The at-
tempt fails, and Hitler is only slightly injured. A number of those involved
are summarily executed within the next days, and others are executed after
being sentenced to death before a People's Court. The Nazis then implement
Aktion Gitter (Operation Fence), arresting the families of the plot's partici-
pants. (See August 1 and 7.)

The commander of the Security Police and Security Service in Radom in the
General Government issues an order that Jews "still employed in armament
enterprises" and persons held in Security Police prisons be sent to concentra-
tion camps as soon as possible. If the situation at the front prevents the trans-
fer, the prisoners are to be liquidated and their bodies disposed of by crema-
tion, since under no circumstances should they be allowed to fall alive into
enemy hands.

As the Red Army reaches Lublin and its environs, about eight hundred pris-
oners are killed at the Majdanek concentration camp and killing center. Si-
multaneously, a final group of more than a thousand prisoners are evacuated
from Majdanek toward Auschwitz, the prisoners marching toward Krasnik.
During the death march, the weak and sick are shot and killed. Those still
alive are later loaded on a freight train for the remainder of the trip and ar-
rive in Auschwitz on July 28. About forty prisoners escape during the
march through Krasnik, five hundred die en route, and only about 450 pris-
oners reach Auschwitz.

Jewish children's homes in France are raided by the Germans, and three hundred Jewish children, along with the adult staffs, are deported via Drancy to Auschwitz. (See July 31.)

The Jewish partisan Zenia Eichenbaum is killed in action in Byelorussia. After the war she is posthumously recommended for the designation Hero of the Soviet Union.

Majdanek concentration camp and killing center is liberated by the Red
Army. There were some prisoners left in the camp. American journalists
(including Bill Lawrence, the Moscow correspondent of the New York
Times; Edgar Snow of the Saturday Evening Post; Daniel De Luce of the

July 25

July 26

July 27

July 28

July 30

July 31

Associated Press; Richard Lauterbach representing Time and Life; and Maurice Hindus of the St. Louis Post Dispatch) are allowed to visit the liberated killing center in late August.

Despite Horthy's ban on deportations, fifteen hundred Hungarian Jews are deported from Sarva concentration camp. (See July 7.)

The city of Lublin (Poland) adjacent to Majdanek is liberated by the Soviet army.

The remaining three thousand Jews of Radom (Poland) are deported to
Auschwitz, following a three-day death march to a train depot in Tomaszow.

Dvinsk in Latvia is liberated by Soviet forces; twenty Jews remain in the city.
The Shavli ghetto in Lithuania is liberated by Soviet troops.

The first major death march occurs with the evacuation of thirty-six hundred prisoners from the Gesia Street concentration camp in Warsaw to Kutno. Nearly one thousand prisoners are killed during the eighty-one-mile trip on foot.

On this day the last entry in the Lodz ghetto chronicle registers 68,561 Jews
still in Lodz.

At least 360 Jews are deported from Toulouse, Noé, and St. Suplice in
France to Buchenwald concentration camp.

Forty Bulgarian-Jewish refugee children arrive in Ankara, Turkey, by train
after waiting two years; they are immediately transferred to Palestine.

The crematorium at Ebensee concentration camp, a Mauthausen subcamp, begins operation.

The seventy-seventh convoy leaves Drancy for Auschwitz with approximately thirteen hundred Jewish deportees; it is the last transport from Drancy to Auschwitz. On arrival on August 3, 574 are registered for labor, and 726 are gassed. Among those killed are more than three hundred children under age eighteen from group homes in France. (See June 30.)

The twenty-sixth transport leaves the transit camp of Malines in Belgium for Auschwitz with 563 deportees.

Fossoli transit camp in Italy is closed.

Soviet troops reach the suburbs of Warsaw, the capital of Poland.

Monsignor Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) and Ira Hirschmann (from the War Refuge Board) develop a plan to use baptismal certificates to save some Hungarian Jews, since the Hungarian decree of July 18 stipulated that converted Jews would not be deported.

The largest open battle between Italian partisans and the Germans begins at Montefiorino near Modena, as the partisans move into an area vital to German communications. Three German divisions are needed to drive out the partisans. The fighting ends by August 3 with more than 250 partisans killed and the remainder escaping to Allied lines.

Also in July

In the Vercors district, the central stronghold of the French resistance, sev-
eral thousand maquisards have been concentrated to keep German troops
from the front at Normandy. Insufficiently armed, they are taken by surprise
when, at the end of July, SS troops in gliders land in the midst of their posi-
tions. The French resistance sustains heavy casualties... Gypsy men in the
western Hungarian town of Sopron, together with their families, are regis-
tered by the police.... Prisoners from concentration camps in Riga and
Kovno are evacuated to Stutthof concentration camp, near Danzig. . . . In
mid-July the Sajmiste concentration camp, located in the former fairgrounds
in Belgrade, is evacuated by the fascist Croatian Ustashi. Some prisoners
are released; others are deported or killed.

AUGUST 1944

August 1

August 2

August 2-3

August 2-8

August 3

The Polish uprising begins in Warsaw and lasts until October 2; 350 prisoners of the Warsaw concentration camp are liberated by the Polish underground, including 326 men and twenty-four women from Poland, Romania, Greece, the Netherlands, and France.

Kovno (Lithuania) is liberated by Soviet forces.

Family members of anti-Nazi officers involved in the plot of July 20 to
assassinate Hitler are sent to concentration camps; and a special camp,
"Fichtenhain," is erected for their imprisonment at Buchenwald concentra-
tion camp. (See July 20.)

The SS Central Office for Economy and Administration (WVHA) informs
all concentration camp commandants that they are authorized to confiscate
Red Cross packages designated for prisoners.

At least 425 Jewish prisoners, previously evacuated from Fossoli, are deported from Verona to Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz concentration camps.

Turkey breaks diplomatic relations with Germany.

During this night, the Gypsy family camp BIIe at Auschwitz-Birkenau is liquidated, and 2,879 Roma and Sinti are gassed. Those alive on August 3 are remanded as forced labor to concentration camps in Germany.

The internment and transit camp at Bolzano-Gries opens. The camp consists of two large compounds, subdivided into barracks, originally intended to hold fifteen hundred prisoners. The population eventually increases to more than four thousand with the arrival of prisoners from Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Venice, Fruili, and Emilia Romagna provinces in Italy. The prisoners, 10 percent of whom are women and some children, include Jews in mixed marriages, political hostages, and Gypsies.

Nine hundred eighteen Gypsies, survivors of the liquidation of the Gypsy family camp BIIe at Auschwitz-Birkenau, are deported to Buchenwald concentration camp; two hundred prisoners are later returned to Auschwitz because they are under the age of fourteen or unfit for hard labor.