-
Vladek Spiegelman was born in Czestochowa, a town in Souther Poland. His wife Anja was born six years later.
-
Adolf Hitler is appointed as the Chancellor of Germany.
-
The Enabling Act is passed and Germany becomes legally a dictatorship.
-
Dachau, the first concentration camp, was built. Tens of thousands of people were murdered there between 1933 and 1945.
-
Hitler murders his opponents within the Nazi movement.
-
On this day Adolf Hitler became the Führer and Reichs Chancellor of Germany. From now on he ruled the country completely on his own.
-
The Treaty of Versailles severely limited the size of the German military forces. After Hitler had rejected it, The Third Reich started re-arming openly.
-
The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. These laws severely discriminated against anyone who was Jewish and established anti-Semitism as the official doctrine of The Third Reich. All German Jews lost their citizenship, and ultimately, their legal rights.
-
Under the terms of Versailles, Germany was not allowed to keep any military personnel along the border with France. The remilitarization of Rhineland was a serious escalation of the crisis in Europe.
-
At the end of 1936, the two became engaged. Vladek moved from Czechostowa to Sosnowiec.
-
Anja and Vladek married in 1937.
-
Richieu, Vladek and Anja's first son was born.
-
When on the train to a Sanitarium in Czechoslovakia, Vladek and Anja see for the first time a Nazi flag flying in the center of a town.
-
Hitler occupied Austria and made it part of the Third Reich.
-
Representatives of Great Britain, France, and Italy met with Adolf Hitler in Munich. They agreed to transfer parts of Czechoslovak territory to the Third Reich. This encouraged Hitler in his war plans.
-
Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. The homes and shops of Jewish families were destroyed throughout the Third Reich. Many Jews were killed or wounded.
-
Three months after Anja and Vladek went to the Sanitarium, they returned to Sosnowiec to find that the Bielsko factory had been destroyed by robbers.
-
The German foriegn minister, Ribbentrop, signed an agreement in Moscow under the terms of which the Nazis and the Soviet Union divided Eastern Europe. They agreed together to invade Poland.
-
Adolf Hitler attacked Poland on the first of September in Danzig. By the end of the month, Germany was victorious.
-
Vladek is called into the army in 1939. He was to fight on the frontier against the Germans. He as a Polish soldier killed a Nazi soldier and was taken a prisoner of war.
-
The Germans bring him to a prisoner of war camp. To escape this camp he volunteers to work in Germany. The conditions there were very cruel. Eventually he is released and sent back to Poland on a Red Cross train. On the train he thought he was going to be taken home to Sosnowiec, but the train took him to Lublin. He was taken to the home of a family friend, Orbach.
-
Great Britain and France declare war on the Third Reich. World War Two officialy begins.
-
On this day, acting on his agreement with Hitler, Joseph Stalin invaded Poland. It made further defense of the country impossible. In the cartoon, the corpse represents Poland.
-
Vladek returned after at least five months to Sosnowiec. He discovers that his textile factory had been taken over by "Aryan managers."
-
On this occassion, Germany swept through the four countries, moving very fast; the so-called Blitzkrieg.
-
This was the beginning of the Battle of Britain.
-
For the first time, Vladek sees Jews being stopped on the streets. If they did not have the proper papers, they were arrested.
-
The German authorities ordered all Jews of Sosnowiec to move to Stara Sosnowiec. Non-Jews took over the abandoned houses.
-
Reinhard Heydrich prosides over a conference at Wannsee (Berlin) where the final decision was made to murder all Jews in Europe.
-
Nahum Cohn and his son as well as two others were hanged by the Nazis. Jews were frightened to go outside.
-
All Jews from Sosnowiec over seventy years of age were sent to Teresienstadt, Czechoslovakia (Terezin).
-
In violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
-
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States.
-
Vladek, Anja, and her parents were arrested. Vladek and Anja were able to escape but the Grandparents were sent to Auschwitz. They were murdered there.
-
Vladek and Anja go into hiding. They first hide in a barn but then move to Ms. Kawka's farmhouse.
-
All the Jews of Sosnowiec were moved to a ghetto in Srodula. These ghettos were overcrowded and dirty. The members of the Judenrat and the wealthy were treated significantly better than the lower class families who lived there. Vladek remained there for about a year.
-
Richieu is sent to Zawierce in the hope he would be safe there. This was not the case. He was poisoned by his caregivers who refused to go to Auschwitz.
-
Every Wednesday more and more Jews were taken by vans from Srodula to Auschwitz. Very few were left behind.
-
Vladek discovers a tunnel that was made by Jews hoping to escape from the ghetto.
-
By the end of 1943, the ghetto in Srodula is completely emptied. Vladek and Anja and a few others are the only surviving Jews from the ghetto in Srodula.
-
Great Britain, the United States, and Poland land in Normandy.
-
Claus Count von Stauffenberg and his collegues attempted to assassinate Hitler, to overthrow the Nazis, and to negotiate with the Allies. The attempt failed.
-
Vladek and his wife Anja leave the Srodula ghetto.
-
Vladek was marched from Auschwitz to Gross Rosen. At this time, Anja was being trasnferred to Ravensbrück.
-
Vladek was taken to Dachau, where he got typhus and nearly died.
-
Vladek and the other prisoners were told they were being sent to Switzerland by train. They never reached Switzerland. Eventually, Vladek and his friends were saved by the US Army. Several prisoners were employed by the Americans and received good food for the first time in many years. Meanwhile, Anja was liberated by the Red Army.
-
On this day, with the Red Army outside his bunker, Hitler and his wife of two days, Eva Braun, took their lives. Their bodies were taken out, doused with gasoline, and cremated.
-
After the war, Vladek was sent to a camp for displaced persons (DP) where he experienced a relapse of typhus. He then discovered that Anja was alive and living in Sosnowiec. Vladek walked there and they reunited. Subsequently, they moved to the United States.
-
Unable to come to terms with the loss of her son, Richieu, and other members of her family during the war, Anja commited suicide.
-
After he had moved to the United States, Vladek met Mala, his old friend from Poland. He passed away in 1982 in his sleep.
