NEW ZEALAND AND THE HOLOCAUST - TIMELINE

This timeline provides - at a glance - a chronology of the Holocaust’s main events and New Zealand’s response to them.

1933 - 1938

• 1933: Hitler appointed Chancellor; burning of the Reichstag; first anti-Jewish measures; first concentration camp opened at Dachau;  indefinite imprisonment becomes law

• 1934: President Hindenburg dies in office; Hitler combines the roles of  Chancellor and President, becoming Commander-in-Chief of Germany
• November/35: Nuremberg laws enacted, defining Jews biologically,  and sanctioning the final social and legal separation of Jews and non-Jews
• 1937: concentration camp at Buchenwald opens; major anti-Semitic exhibition in Berlin
• 1938: Anschluss (Germany annexes Austria); Italy joins Germany in passing sweeping anti-Jewish measures known as ‘Racial Laws’
• September 1938: Munich agreement (England and France accept Germany’s annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia, and British PM Neville Chamberlain famously declares ‘peace in our time’)
• October 1938: German Jews’ passports declared invalid
• November 1938: Kristallnacht (ie. named after ‘shattered windows’ of Jewish shops); in a nationwide pogrom, 1,400 synagogues are attacked, Jewish shops looted, and 100 Jewish people killed and 30,000 more arrested
• December 1938: First kindertransport (rescue of Jewish children prior to WWII); between 9-10,000 Jewish children would eventually be rescued.

Key New Zealand Events

1931: New Zealand Immigration Restriction Amendment Act passes, allowing free entry to British immigrants (either by birth or descent); those of other origins have to obtain entry permits. The Act aims to restrict the entry of 'race aliens' (particularly Jews and Chinese people). Until 1939, Jewish refugees are discouraged from even applying to enter because of perceived difficulties of 'absorbing' them in New Zealand's cultural life without arousing 'antipathy'.

1936-1938: New Zealand rejects 1,731 applications from Jewish refugees. It is estimated that 1,731 applications are declined (and 727 granted), with thousands more  discouraged from applying.

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1939 - 1941

• October/39: Hitler declares the war will be the end of Europe’s Jews
• September/39: German invades Poland
• January/40: Jewish property in Poland registered
• April-May/40: Germany invades and quickly defeats Denmark, Norway,  the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Winston Churchill replaces  Chamberlain as British PM and, on 26 May, the British Navy rescues over 300,000 British, French and Belgian troops at Dunkirk
• October/40: Vichy France enacts the “Jewish Statute”, adopting the Nuremberg Laws’ biological definition of Judaism
• Late 40/Mid-41: Ghettos at Warsaw, Krakow and Lodz are sealed
• March/41: Construction of a death camp at Auschwitz begins
• June/41: invasion of the Soviet Union; einsatzgruppen (SS death death squads) murder Jews and Communists en masse. By 1943, 1.25  million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Soviet nationals are killed)

• June-July/41: Germans occupy Vilna - and with their Lithuanian allies -   Germans  deport Vilna’s Jews to the Ponary forest, where they are shot and buried in mass graves
  
• July/41: Goering orders Heydrich to prepare a plan for the “FinalSolution of the Jewish Problem"
• September/41: First experimental gassings at Auschwitz
• October/41: Mass deportations of German, Czech and Austrian Jews to the Lodz ghetto, en route to Chelmno extermination camp.
  
• November/41: A "Model Camp" is established at Theresienstadt (between 1941-45, of the 140,000 Jews expelled here, over 32,000 die due to intolerable conditions, and nearly 87,000 are deported to Auschwitz. By the end of 1944, only about 11,000 inmates remain at the camp)
  
• December/41: Chelmno camp becomes operational - the first static site where gas is used for extermination (some 320,000 people from nearby areas, Lodz ghetto, Germany, Austria, Czech lands and Luxembourg are murdered here).
  

June 1940: All ‘alien’ immigration to New Zealand stops. With the outbreak of war, New Zealand entry for Jewish refugees is stopped, and the naturalisation of foreign nationals residing in New Zealand is also halted for the war’s duration. Under New Zealand Aliens Emergency Regulations, the police and dedicated ‘alien’ authorities can deport, intern and investigate ‘aliens’ (including Jewish refugees), in order to assess their loyalty.

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1942 - 1945

• January/42: Wannsseekonferenz (conference in Wansee, Berlin, involving senior Nazi Government and SS officials to implement the ‘Final Solution’ – the murder of 11 million Jews)
  

• March/42: Auschwitz-Birkenau established (the Nazis most populous camp and main extermination centre; at least 1.1 million are murdered at Auschwitz, 90% of them Jews)
• March/42: Belzec Extermination Camp inaugurated. The first of the Reinhard concentration camps opens on the Belzec railway line. Approximately 600,000 Jews are murdered by December 1942.
• May/42: first mass killing in Sobibor Extermination Camp. 250,000 Jews would be murdered at Sobibor - nearly 100,000 in the first two months alone.
• July/42: Killing by gas begins at Treblinka extermination camp - one of three such camps along with Sobibor & Belzec – established under “Operation Reinhard”
• July-December/42: mass deportations from Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka (70,000 of the 380,000 Jews in the ghetto, starting with the elderly and homeless)

• February/43: German defeat at Stalingrad
• April-May/43: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• August/43: Treblinka Uprising
• October/43: Sobibor Uprising. Prisoners kill 11 SS men and several Ukrainians, some 300 Jews escape. After the uprising, the Germans abandon Sobibor
• May-July/44: 437,000 Hungarian Jews are deported
  
• November/44: Himmler orders the destruction of Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria
• December/44: last gassing of inmates - 30,000 killed at Hartheim
• January/45: Death March of 60,000 Auschwitz prisoners begins – 15,000 perish along the 60 km march
• January/45: Soviet forces liberate Auschwitz
• April/45: Allies liberate Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen
• 30 April: Adolf Hitler commits suicide
  
• 7 May: Germany surrenders.
  

1942: New Zealand restricts property purchases by ‘aliens’. Regulations are imposed controlling and restricting land and property purchases by ‘aliens’, including Jewish refugees.
7/8/1942: News of Nazi atrocities reach New Zealand. The Evening Post publishes an article ‘Mass persecution – Jews in occupied countries’, reporting ‘1,000,000 out of 7,000,000 Jews in the occupied territories have been murdered.’ From 1942 onwards, NZ newspapers publish photographs and eyewitness accounts of concentration camps and other atrocities. 
16/8/1944: News of the gas chambers reaches New Zealand. In an article entitled ‘Camp of Annihilation’ (referring to Maidanek, near Lublin), The Press states that ‘...prisoners from all over the world were gassed and thrown into furnaces which could incinerate 1400 bodies daily’
1945: New Zealand Jewish community requests the Government lift war time restrictions on immigration, naturalisation, and land and property purchases by refugees. The Aliens Emergency and Aliens Land Purchase Regulations are revoked, though non-British subjects are still required to register with the Police.
1945: New Zealand Government receives reliable official information regarding the existence of gas chambers and other atrocities.
1945: Naturalisation resumes, but New Zealand continues its pre-war policy of limiting Jewish immigration, in spite of efforts by academics and groups such as The Quakers and League of Nations Union.
1945: A Government Select Committee is set up to consider increasing New Zealand's population – mainly through British settlers.
April/45: NZ merchant ship TSS Monowai sails from England for Odessa on the Black Sea carrying 1,600 Soviet citizens. The ship returns with Jewish Holocaust survivors from Western Europe - including Otto Frank, Anne’s father.
May/45: NZ troops capture Trieste. Prior to the liberation, German troops abandon the death camp at San Sabba, destroying the gas chamber.

1947-1949: New Zealand admits over 4,000 displaced people from camps in Europe. NZ selectors discriminate against Jewish refugees in the camps, selecting as many 'Balts' as possible (unlike Jews, Baltic people are seen to share some similar characteristics to desirable British settlers). New Zealand's discriminatory selection takes place despite International Refugee Organisation rules against discrimination on ethnic grounds and specific groups. After 1948, the discrimination is justified by Government officials on the basis that displaced Jewish people can go to Israel.