July is utilized globally for specific Holocaust remembrance and education. France and Latvia even hold National Days of remembrance in July to commemorate the tragedies directly inflicted on their communities during this month.
The month of July is deeply tied to several critical milestones in Holocaust history, marking both tragic turning points during World War II and key remembrance events in the present day.
The Porto Holocaust Museum will mark six critical milestones this coming July 2026.
1) In July 1940, with the rapid fall of France, the Nazi regime briefly centered its Jewish policy on the "Madagascar Plan". This was a scheme spearheaded by the Foreign Office's expert on Jewish affairs, Franz Rademacher, to forcibly deport millions of European Jews to the French-controlled island of Madagascar.
2) In July 1941, mass shootings began. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) expanded their systematic mass shootings. Einsatzkommando 9 murdered 5,000 Jews in Vilna, Lithuania.
3) In July 1942, Nazis began the mass deportation of over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. The first transports of Jews from the Netherlands arrived at Auschwitz, which Heinrich Himmler personally inspected. At the same time, French police and German authorities orchestrated the Vél' d'Hiv Roundup in Paris, arresting over 13,000 Jews.
4) In July 1943, mass murder operations were intensified at the Treblinka II killing center, which became a primary site for the murder of Jews from occupied Poland and other parts of Europe. In addition, SS authorities ordered the final deportations of Jews from the Vilna Ghetto in German-occupied Lithuania. Approximately 4,000 Jews were deported to the Sobibor killing center and labor camps in Estonia and Latvia.
5) In July 1944, German and Hungarian authorities had successfully deported over 400,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rapid Soviet advance forced the SS to begin destroying the evidence of their mass murder operations at other sites. The SS liquidated the "family camp" at Auschwitz-Birkenau, murdering approximately 7,000 Jewish prisoners in the gas chambers.
6) In July 1946, a violent pogrom erupted in Kielce, Poland, against returning Jewish Holocaust survivors. This horrific violence proved that the threat of antisemitism persisted long after the war ended.
These significant milestones will not only be remembered by the Porto Holocaust Museum, but also by sister institutions spread across Europe, namely the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Oświęcim, Poland), the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris, France), the Dutch National Holocaust Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands), the Holocaust Memorial Center (Budapest, Hungary), the Kazerne Dossin (Mechelen, Belgium), and The Wiener Holocaust Library (London, United Kingdom).
