2 April 1939An internment camp is set up in Gurs, France, where various groups of people and persecuted individuals are interned until the end of World War II. Under the Vichy regime, 18,000 Jewish men, women and children are deported from Gurs to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. From the summer of 1940 onwards, up to 300 Sinti (Manouches) and Roma are also interned in the camp and mainly transferred from there to detention camps.
1940
10 May 1940Germany extends the war to Western Europe; the Wehrmacht invades Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
