Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR)
In 1986, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis established The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR) to fulfill the traditional Jewish commitment to hakarat hatov, the searching out and recognition of goodness. To this end, the JFR is committed to assisting those Righteous Gentiles who are in need. Currently, the JFR supports more than 1,000 aged and needy rescuers in 23 countries.
The Alabama Holocaust Commission (AHC) is recognized as a "Center of Excellence" by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR). The Holocaust Centers of Excellence program is a partnership between the JFR and the participating Holocaust Center. In agreeing to participate in the program, each center commits to nominating two educators each year to attend the JFR Summer Institute for Teachers. Additionally, each center agrees to sponsor Holocaust teacher education programs that draw on JFR materials and training models. The centers make a commitment to teach the Holocaust in as comprehensive a manner as possible and to include the subject of rescue. Teachers who attend JFR programs - known as Alfred Lerner Fellows - form a cadre of educators for each local center as well as for the JFR.
JANUARY |
Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany. Hitler issues the Eight Executive Order on the Reich Citizenship Law, prohibiting Jews from working as nurses, veterinarians, dentists, and homeopaths. Death Marches from Auschwitz commence. Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz. |
FEBRUARY |
The initial liquidation of the Bialystok Ghetto in Poland. Lublin POW Camp is re-designated as Majdanek Concentration Camp. The first of the "Tehran Children" reached safety in Palestine after traveling from Poland through the Soviet Union to Iran. |
MARCH |
The German Wehrmacht (Army) crossed into Austria without firing a single shot.
Belzec, the first of three Operation Reinhard camps, began operation as a mass killing center. Deportation of Jews from Salonika, Greece to Auschwitz. |
APRIL |
I.G. Farben began construction of the Buna factory in Monowice, a Polish city located a few miles from Auschwitz. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem. |
MAY |
The S.S. St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany with 938 passengers to Havana, Cuba. British White Paper rescinded the Balfour Declaration in Palestine, restricting immigration. Josef Mengele became one of the Chief Medical Officers at Auschwitz- Birkenau. Hungarian gendarmerie officials began to deport the Jews of Hungary, predominantly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. |
JUNE |
Germany invades the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa. One of the most violent programs against Jews was carried out in the Iasi Romania. At least 8,000 Jews were killed in their homes and in the streets. Jews in the occupied zone of France were required to wear the yellow Star of David. Hannah Szenes, a Palestinian Jew who served in the British military, was captured in Hungary by the Germans. |
JULY |
Buchenwald concentration camp was established five miles northwest of Weimar, Germany. SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered construction of the concentration camp Majdanek on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland. Roundups began at the Vélodrome d'Hiver (winter cycling stadium) in Paris, France. SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS and police authorities to "resettle" all Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement by December 31, 1942. |
AUGUST |
The XI Olympiad opened in Berlin. Following the Anschluss, Adolf Eichmann established the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, Austria. An internment and transit camp for foreign-born Jews in France was established in Drancy, a northeastern suburb six miles outside of Paris. Jews from the Galicia District of the Generalgouvernement, the German- occupied part of Poland, were deported to the Belzec death camp. |
SEPTEMBER |
Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the SS and German Police, established the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) to deal with the Reich's political and ideological enemies. Over 33,000 Jews were killed outside the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in a ravine known as Babi Yar. Two years after its creation, the Vilna Ghetto in German occupied Lithuania was destroyed. |
OCTOBER |
The Nazis expelled Polish Jews living in Germany. Nazi Germany forbade Jews from emigrating from the Greater German Reich. The aktion against the Danish Jews was slated to begin on the Jewish New Year. |
NOVEMBER |
Nazis launched a massive anti-Jewish pogrom throughout Germany and Austria which came to be known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass." Vidkun Quiesling's Norwegian Fascist Party deported 532 Jews to Poland. |
DECEMBER |
Between December 1940 and September 1944, the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, and the surrounding villages sheltered several thousand people, including more then 3,000 Jews. The U.S. and other allied governments formally confirm the Nazis' mass murder of European Jews. The Doctors Trial in Nuremberg, Germany. The second of three Oneg Shabbat Archives was found in the Warsaw Ghetto. |
Page last updated: March 9, 2012