Photo: Adolf Hitler with Paul von Hindenburg (left) and Werner von Blomberg (middle) at Potsdam, March 21, 1933.

March 28, 1931: In an attempt to reduce political violence, Germany's President Paul von Hindenburg used Article 48 to pass an emergency decree curtailing freedoms of speech and assembly, as well as privacy rights.

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The young orphan carried a note upon arrival bearing Owen Pratt’s name. “The girl, too young to speak, was of course unable to explain the note she had with her,” reported the Dutch paper "Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden", citing the Sunday Express. The pilot was tracked down, and it turned out he was no stranger to the child. Her parents had sheltered Pratt for weeks after he was shot down over the Netherlands the previous year. He reached the ground wounded but alive and, thanks to their help, avoided falling into German hands. “He owed his freedom to the couple who took him into their home, provided him with food and shelter, and hid him from the ever-watchful Gestapo,” the newspaper wrote. “While he waited in this hospitable home, he befriended his hostess’s baby.” The pilot often played with the girl, and a strong bond formed between them. This note has now secured the child’s future. Eventually, with the help of the resistance, Pratt was able to leave his hiding place and safely return to England. The couple who had helped him, however, paid with their lives—they were executed by the Germans. Neighbors then took in the orphaned girl. “They knew of Officer Pratt’s secret refuge and were the ones who gave the little girl the note she carried to England. This note has now secured her future.” Owen Pratt, originally from the British colony of New Zealand, will raise the child together with his wife, who is also of Dutch descent. Preparations are being made to send the girl to Pratt’s wife, who is currently in New Zealand. Photo: The first group of Dutch children arrived in England, 13 February 1945

March 27, 1945: British pilot Owen Pratt has adopted a two-year-old Dutch girl who arrived last month with the first group of evacuated children to England. Pratt owed his freedom to the parents, who were killed, of the child when he was shot down over The Netherlands.

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Photo: photo: #Eichmann (in uniform, fifth from the right) in front of the Jewish Congregation. Vienna, 18 March 1938.

March 26, 1942: Adolf Eichmann (department IV B4) began the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp with the transport of 1000 single women from Slovakia. They were registered in the women's camp and were kept for slave labour.

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March 25, 1934: Italian general elections were held in the form of a referendum on a single list of Fascist Party candidates.
They were the last elections held in Fascist Italy.

The Fascists won 99.84% approval in a foregone conclusion.

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Photo: Adolf Hitler at the opening of the Reichstag, Day of Potsdam, 21 March 1933.

March 24, 1933: Hitler described reports of maltreatment of Jews and Catholics to be "dirty lies" and said that "there has been no discrimination whatsoever between Jews or non-Jews or Christians, or any other creed or race."

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a transport deported from Camp Drancy in France, with 994 men, women and children. Also with destination to Sobibor (non survived). Amongst them was the Dutch artist Max van Dam (March 19, 1910 – c. September 20, 1943). Upon arrival in Sobibor Max van Dam was among the skilled workers selected while the remainder of the deportees were gassed or shot. Van Dam was set up in a studio for craftsmen where he created paintings for the camp staff. Sobibor survivor Kurt Ticho, who had befriended Van Dam in the camp, later recalled that deputy camp commander SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) Gustav Wagner had ordered Van Dam to paint him based on the image on a postcard. Ticho testified during the Sobibor trial in Hagen that van Dam had painted portraits for the SS. Another survivor, Ursula Stern, mentioned in her post-war statements that Heinrich Himmler had posed for a portrait by Van Dam on an inspection tour of the extermination camp and its gassing operations. In the craftsmen's workshop Van Dam worked alongside Li van Staden, Moshe Goldfarb and the surviving gold smith Stanislaw Szmajzner. During much of his time in the camp Van Dam had a privileged position. When approximately 70 Dutch men assigned to slave-labour in the camp were murdered, following a betrayed escape attempt, he was exempt from these reprisal killings. SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel stated in 1983 that he had kept one of the paintings by Van Dam but that his family had destroyed it, and everything else that connected Frenzel with the camps, after his 1962 arrest. He further stated that Van Dam had been killed in the revolt and that the paintings in Sobibor's staff quarters had been destroyed at the same time. Photo: Self-portrait Max van Dam at the age of 25. Collection Joods Historisch Museum Amsterdam.

March 23, 1943: On this Tuesday morning the 4th train to #Sobibor left Camp #Westerbork. Non of the 1250 men, women and children survived this extermination camp. At the same time, a transport deported from Drancy in France, with 994 Jews. Also to Sobibor (non survived).

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Dachau received its first prisoners on March 22, as four police trucks brought in 200 inmates from the Stadelheim Prison and Landsberg Prison. The camp, built around a former munitions factory, was originally intended as a camp for ‘political prisoners’ such as communists, trade unionists and other political opponents of the Nazis. This was soon extended to include Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma and Sinti and gay men. Between the years 1933 and 1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were imprisoned in such concentration camps or prison for political reasons. Approximately 77,000 Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, and the civil justice system. Many of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, which were considered to enable them to engage in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis. Large numbers of Jews were also interned at Dachau. In the days following the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) in November 1938, over 10,000 Jewish people were imprisoned in the camp. Prisoners were forced into slave labour, to contribute to the expansion of the camp. Slave labour, medical experimentation and mass killings all took place at Dachau. The living conditions also lead to many deaths, through starvation and typhus epidemics. Hundreds of prisoners suffered and died, or were executed, in medical experiments conducted at KZ Dachau, of which Sigmund Rascher was in charge. Hypothermia experiments involved exposure to vats of icy water or being strapped down naked outdoors in freezing temperatures. Attempts at reviving the subjects included scalding baths, and forcing naked women to have sexual intercourse with the unconscious victim. Nearly 100 prisoners died during these experiments. The original records of the experiments were destroyed "in an attempt to conceal the atrocities". Photo: The first prisoner transport at the gatehouse of the former factory grounds, March 22 1933

March 22, 1933: less than three months after Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor, the first concentration camp of the Nazi regime was established in the town of #Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich, in Southern Germany.

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Gersdorff, who had expected Hitler to spend at least thirty minutes by his side at the Zeughaus, set a ten-minute fuse on a time bomb and made plans to kill himself and Hitler in a suicide bombing. Instead, Hitler rushed through the viewing and left after two minutes; Gersdorff bid his goodbyes, then rushed into a restroom and defused the explosive just in time. After the attempt, Gersdorff immediately transferred back to the Eastern Front where he managed to evade suspicion. Thanks to the silence of his imprisoned and tortured co-conspirators, Gersdorff was able to escape arrest and certain execution. As a result, he was one of the few German military resistors to survive the war. photo: taken during Marshal Rommel's inspection of the Atlantic Wall defenses at Pas de Calais, France, on 18 April 1944. Oberst im Generalstab Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff is the second from the left.

Gersdorff, who had expected Hitler to spend at least thirty minutes by his side at the Zeughaus, set a ten-minute fuse on a time bomb and made plans to kill himself and Hitler in a suicide bombing. Instead, Hitler rushed through the viewing and left after two minutes; Gersdorff bid his goodbyes, then rushed into a restroom and defused the explosive just in time. After the attempt, Gersdorff immediately transferred back to the Eastern Front where he managed to evade suspicion. Thanks to the silence of his imprisoned and tortured co-conspirators, Gersdorff was able to escape arrest and certain execution. As a result, he was one of the few German military resistors to survive the war. photo: Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorfft.

March 21, 1943: The 2nd attempt on Hitler's life in the space of 8 days was made, this time by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who had been given the opportunity to escort Hitler through an exhibition of captured Soviet war equipment at the Zeughaus in Berlin.

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Despite the still enthusiastic voice-over, even German propaganda films can no longer conceal that the country is fighting a war of exhaustion. At a medal ceremony attended by Hitler in Berlin, it is noticeable that the Führer looks worn down. His Aryan fighting force has been reduced to teenagers. Hitler awarded the Iron Cross to twenty members of the Hitler Youth. All had earned the decoration through brave conduct in battle against the Allies. Upon arriving in Berlin, the boys were given baths and proper meals, and were dressed in new uniforms for the ceremony. At just 12 years old, Alfred Zech was the youngest of the group. During the advance of the Red Army in his hometown in Upper Silesia, he had rescued twelve German soldiers from the line of fire. Using his father’s farm cart, Zech brought eight men wounded by a shell to safety. Although under fire, he returned again to retrieve four who had been left behind. “Weren’t you afraid?” Hitler asked as he pinched his “youngest hero” on the cheek during the ceremony. “No, my Führer,” Zech replied enthusiastically. The German dictator said he was proud of all these child soldiers. It is striking how fragile the Nazi leader appears. With a pale face and hollow eyes, he shuffled past the boys, hunched into his collar, a trembling hand pressed against his back. He was no longer able to pin on the medals himself; that task was left to subordinates. After the brief gathering, the boys were allowed to make a request (Zech chose an accordion) during a meal in the Führerbunker. When Hitler then asked whether they wanted to go home or to the front, they answered with full self-sacrifice that they wanted to fight. They would therefore be instructed in how to use a Panzerfaust and then be deployed. Photo: Adolf Hitler (together with Artur Axmann, national leader of the Hitler Youth) meets a group of Hitlerjugend in the chancellery garden during his last public appearance on camera March 20, 1945.

March 20, 1945: Adolf Hitler (together with Artur Axmann, national leader of the Hitler Youth) awarded the Iron Cross to twenty members of the Hitler Youth in the chancellery garden. It was his last public appearance on camera.

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Acting on his view that Germany's military failures meant it had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands. Minister for Armaments Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth policy, but he disobeyed the order. In 1933 Hitler had 'dismantled' Germany's democracy in 53 days and promised that the new "Third Empire" would last a 1000 years. It lasted 12 years and had cost an estimated total of 70–85 million deaths, representing about 3% of the estimated global population.

March 19, 1945: Hitler issued the Nero Decree, ordering the destruction of German infrastructure to prevent their use by Allied forces.

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March 18, 1944: German soldiers began a two-day massacre of almost 400 prisoners, Soviet citizens and anti-fascists in the Romanian city of Rîbnița.

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Elias (Alex) Cohen, the only known survivor from this transport, estimated in a post war testimony, that the number of deportees was probably at around 1050 people. He recounted their arrival at Sobibor: "The first thing we heard was all the shouting by the Moffen [Dutch derogatory term for Nazi's]… The women and children had to move on and disappeared through a gate. We could hear the carts the sick people were being thrown into, and a lot of crying and screaming. The men were still lined up in front of the fence… a German asked whether there were any doctors or nurses among us. They had to step forward. I considered pretending to be a medic but decided against it…. Then he asked for workers up to 35 years of age. As there too few of these, he increased the age limit to 40. I joined the queue, and as we were standing there, he asked us what our trade was. I told him I was a metalworker and was made to stand apart from the rest, along with a few others. We had to leave our luggage and get back onto the same train on which we had only just arrived. About 35 to 40 of us as well as the doctors and medics were sent to a transport to Lublin Photo: View of the old officers' dining room at Sobibor (known as the "Kasino") after renovations, summer 1943. The building served as a dining room for the Germans and as lodgings for the camp commanders. Everything was made to look inviting and idilic for the arriving deportees so they would be more willing to follow to the "showers" to be murdered.

March 17, 1943: The 3rd of 19 transports to #Sobibor extermination camp left #Westerbork in occupied the Netherlands. On board were 964 deportees. It arrived on March 20th. Elias (Alex) Cohen is the only known survivor.

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Photo: A convoy arrives in Chełmno

March 16, 1942: A transport left the Łódź ghetto for #Chełmno Extermination Camp with 637 Jews. No one survived.

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Photo: photos: 7-year-old Sieg Maandag from Amsterdam at Bergen Belsen Concentration camp. The photo was taken shortly after the liberation of concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. The Briton George Rodger made a photo reportage of the unimaginable suffering he witnessed there — photos of piles of corpses, of prisoners so weak they barely realized they were free, and of that little boy walking past the many bodies. Rodger didn’t know who the boy was. He didn’t speak to him. He was simply struck by the image of a child seemingly indifferent as he passed the corpses.

March 15, 1944: A transport set out from #Westerbork to #Bergen-Belsen, carrying 210 Jews, including 14 sick people and 44 children.

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The Austrian Legion and Austrian Schutzstaffel soldiers with support from Nazi Germany attempted to depose Dollfuss's Austrofascist regime in favor of a pro-Nazi government under Anton Rintelen of the Christian Social Party. The Nazis attacked the Federal Chancellery and assassinated Dollfuss, but the majority of the Austrian population and the Austrian Army remained loyal to the government. The July Putsch ultimately failed when Adolf Hitler withdrew his support for the coup after Fascist Italy guaranteed to diplomatically support Austria against a German invasion. The Austrian government eventually suppressed the coup, with over 200 people being killed in six days of fighting. A number of Austrian Nazis and collaborators were charged with treason and executed or imprisoned. Kurt Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss as Chancellor of Austria and the Fatherland Front remained in power under the Federal State of Austria until the Anschluss in 1938. After the coup failed, Rintelen tried to kill himself via a gunshot to the chest. He was seriously injured, but survived. While Rintelen was in the hospital, an Austrian Jew, Josef Kraus, donated blood to save his life. "The Vienna papers carrying the story commented drily that 'if Dr. Rintelen had become Chancellor he would also have taken Jewish blood, but in a totally different fashion.’" Rintelen was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from prison in February 1938, a month before the Anschluss, but took no further part in politics. He died in 1946. Photo: Police car at Ballhausplatz outside the Chancellery building in Vienna, 25 July 1934.

March 14, 1935: Anton Rintelen was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the July Putsch (a failed coup d'état in Austria by "Austrian" Nazis).

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The Waalsdorpervlakte is a dune area near The Hague. During the Second World War, more than 250 people were executed there by the German occupying forces. 17:30: execution of 18 prisoners by a German firing squad. None of those involved expected that the death sentences would actually be carried out. With this execution, German terror in the Netherlands began. Those executed were: 3 communist participants in the February Strike: Hermanus Coenradi Joseph Eijl Eduard Hellendoorn 15 members of the resistance group De Geuzen: Jan Wernard van den Bergh George den Boon Reijer Bastiaan van der Borden Nicolaas Arie van der Burg Jacob van der Ende Albertus Johannes de Haas Leendert Keesmaat Arij Kop Dirk Kouwenhoven Jan Kijne Leendert Langstraat Frans Rietveld Johannes Jacobus Smit Hendrik Wielenga Bernardus IJzerdraat. Photos: exhumation at the Waalsdorpervlakte in the Meijendel dune area near The Hague 1946.

March 13, 1941: 18 members of the Dutch resistance were executed by Nazi firing squad on the Waalsdorpervlakte, Scheveningen/The Hague.

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Photo: Adolf Hitler crosses his birth town of Braunau am Inn, Austria. March 12, 1938.

March 12, 1938: #Anschluss: The German army crossed the Austrian border at 8:00 a.m.; Hitler's convoy arrived later that day. Arrests of thousands of potential opponents of the Nazis began.

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Rudolf Höss

March 11, 1946: Rudolf Höss, the Nazi Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, was located and arrested by British military police near the northern German town of Flensburg, where he had been working on a farm under the alias "Franz Lang".

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Cate Polk, a nurse at the Jewish hospital in Rotterdam, recalls the events prior to deportation and the journey to the death camp: We arrived in Sobibor after 5 days … We came through some kind of forest, it looked creepy. We did not know what was going to happen. Disembarking at the station wasn’t too bad for us youngsters but the elderly who weren’t fast enough were thrown from the train…. Those who could not walk were immediately taken in lorries. We, the nurses, were the first to be chosen. Then other women were chosen to do laundry and ironing. Mothers with children were told to stay with the children. Man were also selected, boys between 22-42 years of age. Also male nurses and doctors who had been placed in the first compartment of the train with some Germans. They were not allowed contact with the others. The Germans asked us if we had any diamonds. The train in which we sat now was the same one as before. A part had been disconnected in Sobibor. Some 4 cars returned to Lublin. We had to ‘schlepp’ [carry] our luggage and it made us laugh afterwards. Even in Westerbork some of it had already disappeared. We had to leave the rest in Sobibor. We considered it funny. We had no idea that they wanted to murder us. Thus we arrived in Lublin. All the girls stayed together. We never saw the men again. They were mainly from Rotterdam." Photo: A view of the new "Kasino" or officers' dining room in Sobibor, completed in the summer 1943. It was larger than the previous dining room and, thanks to the L-shape, offered a sheltered terrace. The Germans called the building "Zum lustigen Floh" (The Merry Flea). The furniture on the terrace was made by Jewish prisoners. The dishes and cutlery used there came from the belongings of the camp victims.

March 10, 1943: On Wednesday morning the 2nd of 19 transports to #Sobibor left camp #Westerbork with 1105 Jews. This was a special transport for the number of survivors. 13 people from this transport survived the war, all women. Only 18 people survived the 19 transports.

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Photo: Prisoners guarded by SA men line up in the yard of #Oranienburg concentration camp, 1933.

March 9, 1937: Heinrich Himmler ordered the arrest of "professional criminals" who had committed two or more crimes but were free after serving their sentences. Over the next few days some 2,000 people were arrested without charges and sent to concentration camps.

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Photo: Jews were delivered by train to Koło, then to nearby Powiercie, and in overcrowded lorries to the camp. They were forced to abandon their bundles along the way. In this photo, loading of victims sent from the Łódź Ghetto.

March 8, 1942: In the morning the Germans removed 851 Jews from the #Łódź ghetto. The cost of this transport to #Chełmno extermination camp, with a total of 864 passengers (13 Schupo police), was 2,419.20 reichsmarks. There were no survivors.

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March 7, 1943: The Polish government-in-exile reported for the first time about the executions of prisoners in a Nazi German "murder camp" at Oswiecim, known in Germany as Auschwitz.

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on Saturday, a train designated number 901 departed from Le Bourget #Drancy with approximately 1,000 Jews on board. Over 900 of the deportees were men aged sixteen to sixty-five, the majority between thirty-seven and forty-nine years of age. Oberleutnant Kassel of the Order Police (Orpo) was tasked with supervising the train. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on March 8, and all of the deportees were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. Photo: The openings through which Zyklon B was poured into the gas chamber of crematoria II are visible in this February 1943 photo, taken by SS Dietrich Kammann. Poles Ludwik Lawin and Tadeusz Kubik, who worked in the camp photography studio, stole a number of Kammann’s negatives and buried them.

March 6, 1943: At 8:55 A.M. on Saturday, a train designated number 901 departed from Le Bourget #Drancy with approximately 1,000 Jews on board. All of the deportees were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival.

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Photos: Adolf Hitler meets a group of Hitlerjugend in the chancellery garden during his last public appearance on camera. March 20, 1945.

March 5, 1945: The German Wehrmacht (unified armed forces) began calling up 15- and 16-year old boys.

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Bulgarian troops, police and officials rounded up more than 4,000 Greek Jews in Thrace and Eastern Macedonia and detained them in tobacco warehouses. The responsibility for the operation was given to the representative of the Comissariat in Kavalla, Slavcho Yonchev and the local police commander, Asen Trifonov. Unlike places with large numbers of Jews, in Eleftheroupoli and Thasos the Jews were arrested only by the local police. Sixteen Jews resided in Thasos and five in Eleftheroupoli. They were immediately sent to Kavala and detained together with the local Jews in a tobacco warehouse belonging to the Comercial Company of Saloniki. Upon arrival, they were searched for money and valuables. Everything found on them was confiscated by the authorities. The deportees stayed at the assembly site for several days before they were transported by truck to the nearest city with a train connection – Drama. They were then sent to another assembly site in Bulgaria – in the southern city of Gorna Dzhumaya. The journey was long and there were two train transfers on the way – in Sidirokastro and in Simitli – because of changes in the track gauges. The last piece of information we have refers only to the Jews from Eleftheroupoli. On March 10 those arrested during the general operation and seven others who were found later passed through the Simitli train station. There is nothing in the sources regarding the deportees from Thasos who were also sent to Gorna Dzumaya. After almost ten days detention in a local tobacco warehouse and two school buildings in the city, the Jews from Northern Greece were sent to the port of Lom on the Danube River. From there, more than 4,000 Jews were loaded onto 4 ships and sent to their deaths in Treblinka. There is no information about the last stage of their journey to the camp except for the fact that they were transferred from the ships to trains in Vienna. All of the deportees were sent to the gas chambers with no prior selection.

March 4, 1943: In Bulgarian-occupied Greece, almost all Jews were rounded up and taken to #Treblinka extermination camp. All of the deportees were sent to the gas chambers with no prior selection.

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March 3, 1937: New York City's Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia made a speech to a Jewish women's group proposing that the 1939 New York World's Fair include a "Hall of Horrors" with a figure of "that brown-shirted fanatic who is now menacing the peace of the world." The next day, the German newspaper Der Angriff dedicated its entire front page to attacking Mayor La Guardia, calling him a "scoundrel" and an "impudent Jew" who governed New York with "the terror of the revolvers and clubs of his gangster friends." The German government directed its Ambassador to Washington Hans Luther to make a formal protest against La Guardia's remarks. Photo: A view taken from the side of one of the many lagoons at the New York World’s Fair 1939. Light brings out some of the wondrous beauty as erected at the “World of Tomorrow”. The famous statue of George Washington is silhouetted against the lighted Perisphere.

March 3, 1937: New York City's Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia made a speech to a Jewish women's group proposing that the 1939 New York World's Fair include a "Hall of Horrors" with a figure of "that brown-shirted fanatic who is now menacing the peace of the world."

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The majority of deportees on this transport had arrived in Westerbork, just a few days prior to their departure. Most of them were residents of Amsterdam, however, a distinct group was comprised of 268 Jews rounded up from several Jewish institutions in Rotterdam on February 26. Among them were patients and staff members (doctors and nurses) of the Jewish hospital , residents of a nursing home and children from an orphanage. The arrests in Rotterdam were carried out in a brutal manner by W.A men (members of the Dutch National Socialist Party's militia), alongside German security personnel and Dutch policemen. The oldest deportee was a 97 year old widow; the youngest was a two month old infant, born in Westerbork. Charlotte Grünebaum (31) is the only known survivor who boarded the train. She was able to escape from the train early on but was recaptured and later deported to Auschwitz, which she survived. After a 3 day journey, this train arrived at Sobibor. No one survived. Out of a total of nearly 34,000 Jews deported on these nineteen trains from the Netherlands to Sobibor during the spring of 1943, only 15 women and 3 men survived the War. This extremely high death toll was due to the nature of this site which was designed solely as an extermination camp. Following the arrival of a transport, most deportees were rapidly stripped of their clothes, women's hair was cut and then they were forced into gas chambers camouflaged as showers, and murdered. Photo: A view of the Sobibor killing center, taken in spring 1943 from the German personnel living quarters. To the left of the high fire-alarm tower (center) was the camp bakery. The arm of the excavator, which removed the bodies from the mass graves, is visible over the roof. The barrack on the right-hand side of the picture served as lodging for the Trawniki men (collaborationist auxiliary police). From the watchtower on the left, they monitored the deportees on their way to the gas chambers.

March 2, 1943: The first of nineteen train transports left Camp #Westerbork to an unknown camp called #Sobibor. After a 3 day journey, this train arrived at Sobibor. No one survived.

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hoto: Main gate to Sobibor extermination camp (from the Sobibor perpetrator collection). The Sobibor perpetrator collection consists of over 360 black and white photographs, some in two albums and some loose, as well as dozens of paper documents that chronicle Johann Niemann's social background, his family, and his SS career, culminating in his role as deputy commander of the Sobibor killing center. Niemann was killed by prisoners during the October 1943 Sobibor uprising. The photographs and documents trace Niemann’s advancement through the concentration camp system (#Esterwegen and #Sachsenhausen) and the T4 “euthanasia” program (Grafeneck, Brandenburg, and Bernburg) to the Operation Reinhard killing centers (#Belzec and #Sobibor). The collection includes the first photographs to come to light showing SS perpetrators and their auxiliary guards inside the Sobibor killing center.

March 1, 1942: Construction of the #Sobibór extermination camp began.

Sobibor was built and as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland.

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Photo: Children from the ghetto are deported to Chelmno extermination camp.

February 28, 1942: Transport 7 left the #Łódź ghetto for #Chełmno extermination camp. There were 1,006 Jews on the train. No one survived. On arrival 10 people had to write reassuring letters to their relatives but were later shot. All the others were killed in gas vans.

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On 10 December 1942, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to send all Romani (German: Zigeuner, "Gypsies") to concentration camps, including Auschwitz. A separate camp was set up at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, classed as Section B-IIe and known as the Zigeunerfamilienlager ("Gypsy family camp"). The first transport of German Roma arrived on 26 February 1943, and was housed in Section B-IIe. For unknown reasons, they were not subject to selection and families were allowed to stay together. Approximately 23,000 Roma had been brought to Auschwitz by 1944, of whom 20,000 died there. One transport of 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival, as they were suspected to be ill with spotted fever. Josef Mengele, the Holocaust's most infamous physician, worked in the gypsy family camp from 30 May 1943 when he began his work in Auschwitz. Roma and Sinti prisoners were used primarily for construction work. Thousands died of typhus and noma due to overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and malnutrition. Anywhere from 1,400 to 3,000 prisoners were transferred to other concentration camps before the murder of the remaining population. On 2 August 1944, the SS cleared the Gypsy camp. A witness in another part of the camp later told of the inmates unsuccessfully battling the SS with improvised weapons before being loaded into trucks. The surviving population (estimated at 2,897 to 5,600) was then killed en masse in the gas chambers. One of the few survivors was Margarethe Kraus, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1943, aged 13, alongside her family. She was subjected to medical experimentation during her internment and suffered extreme abuse and deprivation, and also contracted typhus. Her parents were murdered in Auschwitz, and she was subsequently moved to #Ravensbrück where she was used for forced labour. Margarethe Kraus passed away on 20 December, 2005 at the age of 77. Photo: Margarethe Kraus in 1966.

February 26, 1943: The Zigeunerfamilienlager, a section of the #Auschwitz concentration camp that was intended to segregate Gypsy families from other minorities marked for extermination, received its first group of deportees.

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