1170
Warsaw Jews administered the Polish mint. Many coins had Hebrew inscriptions.
1203
Jews allowed to own land in Galicia.
1333-1370
Casmir the Great issued a series of Charters protecting Jews.
1356
Jews were granted autonomy in their communal affairs.
1388-1390
Grand Duke Vitovt grants privileges to Jews and protects them.
1399
First persecution of Jews in Poland.
1407
Anti-Jewish riots in Cracow.
1494
Jews restricted to a suburb of Cracow in the first Jewish ghetto, Kazimierz.
1772-1815
More than 1,200,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews were incorporated under Russian rule as a result of Russia's westward expansion.
1795 and 1882
Laws passed confining Jews to the Pale Settlement in Russia.
1830
Polish revolt against Russian rule.
1863
Second Polish revolt against Russian rule.
1917-1918
Three partitioning powers of Poland collapse.
1920
Russian Polish War (May to September).
1923
Poland reconstituted as an independent country.
1926
Poland shifts from democratic to authoritarian rule.
1933
Dachau concentration camp opens.
1937
Buchenwald concentration camp opens.
1938
Poland participates with Germany and Hungary in the partition of Czechoslovakia.
October 28
Seventeen thousand Polish Jews in Germany were expelled. Poland refused to admit them; 8,000 are stranded in the frontier village of Zbanzyn.
November 9-10
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria and the Sudentenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen).
November 12
Decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands.
November 15
All Jewish pupils expelled from German schools.
December 12
One billion Mark fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht.
1939
September 1
Germany invades Poland and WW2 begins. The SS and German army cooperate in widespread pogroms and mass executions in Poland.
September 21
Heydrich issues directives to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland.
September 27
Forced labor announced for Polish Jews.
October 12
Nazis begin deporting Jews from Austria and Moravia to Poland.
October 20
First Polish ghetto established in Piotrkow.
November 23
Jews in German-occupied Poland forced to wear an arm band or star.
1940
January
First resistance actions by Jewish youth in Poland.
May 7
Lodz ghetto sealed: 165,000 people in 1.6 square miles.
May 20
Concentration camps established at Auschwitz.
November 15
Warsaw ghetto sealed: ultimately contained 500,000 people.
December
Emmanuel Ringelbaum begins work on secret archives of Jewish life in Warsaw ghetto.
1941
July 31
Heydrich appointed by Goering to implement the Final Solution.
October
Establishment of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians and others were also murdered at the camp.
October 14
German Jews deported to Lodz, Poland (beginning of general deportations from Reich).
December 8
Chelmno death camp begins functioning: 340,000 Jews, 20,000 Poles and Czechs murdered by April 1943. Jewish partisans begin operating in Minsk area.
1942
January 15
Nazis begin transporting Jews from Lodz to Chelmno death camp.
January 20
Wansee Conference in Berlin: Heydrich outlines plan to murder Europe's Jews.
March 17
Extermination begins in Belzec: by the end of 1942, 600,000 Jews murdered.
April
Transports from ghettos to death camps extend over Poland.
May
Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered.
June 1
Treblinka death camp opens.
July 28
Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO) set up in Warsaw ghetto.
Summer
Deportation of Jews to killing centers from Belgium, Croatia, France, Holland, and Poland; armed resistance by Jews in ghettos of Kletzk, Kremenets, Lachwa, Mir, Tuchin, Weisweiz.
October 4
All Jews in German concentration camps ordered deported to Auschwitz
Winter
Deportation of Jews from Germany, Greece and Norway to killing centers: Jewish partisan movement organized in forests near Lublin.
1943
January 18
Warsaw ghetto Jews launch first civilian armed resistance to Nazis: four days of street fighting.
March
Liquidation of Cracow Ghetto.
March 13
New crematoriums open in Auschwitz.
April 19
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins as Germans attempt to liquidate 70,000 inhabitants; Jewish underground fights Nazis until early June.
June 11
Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union Deportation of Jews from Polish and Soviet ghettos to death camps ordered.
Summer
Armed resistance by Jews in Czestochova, Lvov, Bedzin, Bialystok and Treblinka death camp.
Fall
Liquidation of large ghettos in Minsk, Vilna and Riga.
October 14
Inmate uprising in Sobibor death camp.
October 20
UN War Crimes Commission set up.
1944
May 15
Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz.
June 6
Allied invasion at Normandy.
July 24
Russians liberate Majdanek killing center.
October 7
Revolt by inmates at Auschwitz: one crematorium blown up.
October
Last gassing in Auschwitz.
November
Last Jews deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.
1945
January 11
Soviet troops take Warsaw.
January 17
Evacuation of Auschwitz; beginning of death march.
January 25
Beginning of death march for inmates of Stutthof.
April 6-10
Death march of inmates of Buchenwald.
April 30
Hitler commits suicide.
May 8
Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich.
August 15
World War II ends.
Russia annexes Poland