Calendar of remembrance · July
Anniversaries in July: 22 events connected with Nazism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, occupation, resistance, liberation and the accountability of perpetrators. Each entry leads to an institutional source and, where the connection is documented, also to profiles in the Nazi Report archive.
On 2 July 1947, an act of the Polish parliament established the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
The decision transformed the site of the crimes into a museum and permanent place of remembrance.
Establishing the institution began the organised protection of Auschwitz as a site of testimony and education.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 4 July 1946, Jews who had survived the Holocaust were murdered in a pogrom in Kielce.
The crime was an expression of postwar anti-Jewish violence in Poland and influenced survivors' decisions to migrate.
The pogrom reminds us that the end of the occupation did not end the danger faced by Poland's Jewish residents.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryThe Battle of Kursk began in the USSR on 5 July 1943.
The battle provides context for the later retreat of German forces in the East.
Kursk helps situate the history of occupation and crime within the changing situation at the front.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 6 July 1938, a conference on the refugee crisis caused by the Third Reich began in Évian.
The meeting brought together states that declared an interest in the problem faced by persecuted refugees.
Évian reveals the difference between public declarations and an actual willingness to admit people seeking protection.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 6 July 1940, Tadeusz Wiejowski made the first prisoner escape from Auschwitz.
The attempt involved assistance from local residents and provoked reprisals.
The story of the escape reveals both the courage of the prisoner and those who helped him, and the mechanism used to punish solidarity.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 6 July 1941, Einsatzgruppen murdered nearly three thousand Jews at the Seventh Fort near Kaunas.
The crime in occupied Lithuania was part of the early phase of mass shootings after the start of Operation Barbarossa.
The Seventh Fort shows how rapidly the German invasion of the East became linked with the mass murder of Jews.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 9 July 1944, Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest and began efforts to protect persecuted Jews.
The aid employed diplomatic tools, including protective passports, whose effectiveness remained limited.
Wallenberg's activity shows both the potential and the limits of diplomatic intervention amid mass persecution.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryThe Battle of Britain began on 10 July 1940.
The air campaign concerned Germany's attempt to gain control of British airspace.
The battle showed that Germany failed to gain control of British airspace.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 10–12 July 1944, the SS liquidated the family camp for Jews from Theresienstadt at Birkenau, murdering approximately seven thousand people.
Documents, letters and the individual fates of deportees make it possible to reconstruct the history of the group imprisoned in this camp.
Recalling names and surviving records counters the anonymous portrayal of the victims of this crime.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 12–13 July 1943, German police formations pacified Michniów, murdering at least 204 residents.
12 July is observed as the Day of Struggle and Martyrdom of Polish Villages.
The history of Michniów opens a broader perspective on terror directed against the Polish countryside.
Institutional source: Institute of National Remembrance
Permanent link to this entryOn 14 July 1933, Germany enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which became the basis for compulsory sterilization.
The legislation introduced eugenics into state practice and preceded the T4 programme.
The law shows the continuity between legal control of reproduction and the later T4 programme.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 15 July 1937, the first prisoners arrived at the new Buchenwald concentration camp.
The camp's establishment was part of the expansion of the concentration camp system before the outbreak of war.
Buchenwald documents how the camp apparatus developed in Germany during the years preceding wartime expansion.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 15 July 1942, systematic deportations of Jews from the occupied Netherlands began, mainly to Auschwitz.
The Westerbork camp served as a hub on the route of these transports.
The history of the deportations shows how the occupation system linked a local concentration site with a distant camp.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 16 July 1936, German authorities confined Berlin's Roma and Sinti in the Marzahn camp before the Olympic Games.
The operation served to remove the persecuted community from the sight of foreign visitors arriving in Berlin.
Marzahn reveals the divide between Germany's public image during the Games and the repression of Roma and Sinti.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 19 July 1943, the SS carried out the largest public execution at Auschwitz, hanging 12 Polish prisoners.
The execution was a reprisal for contact with civilians and escape attempts.
The execution shows the extent of reprisals for contact with the world outside the camp and for attempting to escape.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 20 July 1944, German officers made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
The conspiracy involved people with differing motives, whose actions and limitations require separate assessment.
Remembering the assassination attempt should not lead to idealizing the conspirators as a whole.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryFrom 22 July to 21 September 1942, more than 300,000 Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka during the Grossaktion.
The operation connected Warsaw with the extermination camp and became one of the central events in the ghetto's history.
Alongside 19 April, the date on which the Grossaktion began is one of Warsaw's most important points of remembrance for the Holocaust.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryMass gassing operations begin at Treblinka II.
Operations at the extermination camp were linked to transports from Warsaw and later became the setting for a prisoner revolt.
This date connects the history of deportation, mass murder and resistance at Treblinka.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entrySoviet forces liberate Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp.
Soviet troops found the large concentration camp in Lublin almost entirely intact.
The camp's state of preservation made its liberation a particularly important moment in exposing German crimes.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryAnglo-American forces break through the front in Normandy.
The success of Anglo-American forces opened the way to the liberation of further areas of France.
The breakthrough opened the way to the liberation of further areas of France.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryThe German occupation authorities establish the Białystok ghetto.
The history of the ghetto also includes the burning of the Great Synagogue and the later development of the Jewish resistance movement.
Establishing the ghetto began another stage in the isolation and persecution of Białystok's Jews.
Institutional source: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Permanent link to this entryGerman industrialist Edward Schulte conveys detailed information to the Allies about the murder of Jews with gas at Auschwitz.
Information about the murder of Jews with gas traveled from a German industrialist through Switzerland to the Allies.
This event shows how knowledge of the Holocaust reached beyond the territory controlled by Germany, and how complex the question of the Allied response remained.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entry