Calendar of remembrance · April
Anniversaries in April: 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 1 April 1933, Nazi organisations carried out a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses throughout Germany.
The campaign combined pressure and violence in the streets with growing exclusion backed by the state.
The boycott was a visible stage in the shift from antisemitic mobilisation to systemic discrimination.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 1 April 1935, the German state banned the organisation of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The decision was part of Nazi persecution that also targeted non-Jewish groups.
Including this history broadens the picture of the victims persecuted by the regime.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 4 April 1945, the US Army liberated Ohrdruf, the first concentration camp liberated by American soldiers.
At the site, the Allies encountered material evidence of crimes committed within the camp system.
Ohrdruf became an important moment in the liberators' direct confrontation with the reality of a concentration camp.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 6 April 1941, Germany and its allies attacked Yugoslavia and Greece.
The occupation of the Balkans created the conditions for the later Holocaust in the region.
The event connects military expansion with the apparatus of persecution and crime that followed.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 7 April 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removed Jews and political opponents from Germany's public administration.
The law made exclusion appear to be an ordinary act of government and incorporated discrimination into the operation of public offices.
The law shows how legal norms can normalize the persecution of entire groups.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 7 April 1944, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz, and the report they prepared alerted the world to the mass extermination.
The story encompasses both the content of their testimony and how it was disseminated beyond the camp.
The report shows the importance of information carried out of Auschwitz to knowledge of the ongoing crime.
Institutional source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.
The occupation of the two countries later led to different outcomes for their Jewish residents.
Comparing Denmark and Norway helps reveal the different consequences of German occupation in neighbouring countries.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 11 April 1945, prisoners took control of Buchenwald, which American troops then entered.
The event highlights the role of the camp resistance movement in the final hours before the US Army arrived.
Describing this sequence precisely makes it possible to discuss liberation without overlooking the actions of the prisoners themselves.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 11 April 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.
The proceedings marked a turning point in the public hearing of survivors' testimony.
The trial connected Eichmann's prosecution with a broader public discussion of the experience of the Holocaust.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 12 April 1945, Canadian forces liberated the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands.
Westerbork was connected with the transports of Anne Frank and other victims.
The camp's history shows the role of a transit site in the path of people subjected to deportation.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 15 April 1945, British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen, where they found approximately 55,000 severely emaciated prisoners.
Liberation was accompanied by epidemics, the deaths of some survivors after the camp was opened, and an urgent need for medical aid.
Bergen-Belsen reminds us that liberation did not immediately end the effects of prisoners' physical devastation.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 16 April 1945, the Red Army began its final offensive on Berlin from the Oder River.
At the same time, death marches of prisoners evacuated from camps were still under way.
Placing the front and the marches side by side shows that the regime's military collapse did not stop the violence against prisoners.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryFrom 19 April to 16 May 1943, an uprising took place in the Warsaw ghetto, becoming a symbol of armed Jewish resistance to the ghetto's liquidation.
The history of the fighting encompasses the biographies of its participants, sites of resistance and the contemporary Daffodils campaign.
The uprising is one of the central dates in the remembrance of Jewish resistance and the Holocaust in Warsaw.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 20 April 1945, the SS began evacuating Sachsenhausen prisoners on foot.
The columns left Brandenburg as the war was nearing its end.
The event shows that prisoners continued to be murdered and exposed to death despite the collapse of the Third Reich.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 23 April 1945, American troops liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp.
The camp's history includes its extensive network of subcamps and the fate of prisoners from Poland.
The date of liberation leads to remembrance of people imprisoned not only in the main camp but also across its dispersed system.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 25 April 1933, a German law restricted Jewish pupils' and students' access to public schools.
Discrimination against children and young people began long before the later deportations.
Exclusion from education shows how persecution entered everyday life and denied young people a place in public life.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 25 April 1945, American and Soviet forces met on the Elbe at Torgau.
The meeting of the two armies became a symbol of the division of the Third Reich's territory.
Torgau made the extent of Germany's military encirclement in the final phase of the war clearly visible.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 26 April 1933, British ambassador Horace Rumbold warned London about Hitler's ideology and plans.
The warning from Berlin was among the early signals sent to the authorities of another state.
The warning makes it possible to examine not only the knowledge available about the regime, but also how states responded to the first alarms.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn the night of 26–27 April 1943, Witold Pilecki, Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski escaped from Auschwitz concentration camp through the camp bakery.
The escape was connected with underground activity in the camp, preparation of an escape route and the transmission of information about the crimes.
The story of the three prisoners shows how resistance in the camp combined the struggle for freedom with an attempt to inform the world.
Institutional source: Institute of National Remembrance
Permanent link to this entryOn 29 April 1945, American troops liberated Dachau concentration camp.
Dachau was the first camp in the concentration camp system, and its liberation ended the final stage of its operation.
Juxtaposing the camp's beginning and end reveals the continuity in the development of the Nazi system of repression.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler died by suicide in the bunker in Berlin.
The event occurred during the final collapse of the Third Reich.
The date matters because of the collapse of the regime Hitler created, not because of sensational details of his death.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entryOn 30 April 1945, advance units of the Red Army reached Ravensbrück concentration camp.
The history of the camp's final days is inseparable from the fate of its female prisoners, the experiments performed on them and subsequent remembrance.
Ravensbrück restores women's experiences to a central place in the account of the camp system.
Institutional source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Permanent link to this entry