Holocaust timeline 1944

3 January 1944	Russian troops reach former Polish border.
24 January 1944	In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi control, President Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board.
25 January 1944	Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews."
February 1944	Eichmann visits Auschwitz.
19 March 1944	Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000). Eichmann arrives with Gestapo "Special Section Commandos."
24 March 1944	President Roosevelt issues a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity."
5 April 1944	A Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and makes it safely to Czechoslovakia. He then warns the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about Auschwitz.
6 April 1944	Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children.
7 April 1944	Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which is forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June.
14 April 1944	First transports of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, totaling 5,200 persons.
1 - 7 May 1944	Himmler's agents secretly propose to the Western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.
8 May 1944	Rudolf Höss returns to Auschwitz, ordered by Himmler to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews.
15 May 1944	Beginning of the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.
16 May 1944	Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.
1 - 5 June 1944	A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report.
6 June 1944	D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy on the coast of northern France.
12 June 1944	Rosenberg orders Hay Action, the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich.
13 - 30 June 1944	Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.
1 - 23 July 1944	Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.'
24 July 1944	Russian troops liberate the first concentration camp, at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.
4 August 1944	Anne Frank and family are arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.
6 August 1944	Lodz, the last Jewish ghetto in Poland, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.
7 October 1944	A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV.
15 October 1944	Nazis seize control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resume deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.
17 October 1944	Eichmann arrives in Hungary.
28 October 1944	The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz.
30 October 1944	Last use of the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
8 November 1944	Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.
25 November 1944	Himmler orders destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.
December 1944	Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.

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