1933 - Adolf Hitler became dictator in Germany and set about his goal of imposing his will on the rest of the world - and taking back into the Reich the lands, like Alsace, that had been lost after the first World War. In Germany, Dachau concentration camp was established in March. The Germans boycotted Jewish-owned businesses, banned 'non-Aryans' from government employment, and passed the 'Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.' Ultimately more than 300,000 Germans were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from having defective children.

1934 - Jehovah's Witnesses (then known as Bible Students) in 50 countries sent a telegram to Hitler protesting the persecution of Witnesses in Germany.

1935 - Jehovah's Witnesses were banned from government jobs, arrested, and had their pensions confiscated.

1936 - German troops invaded the Rhineland, and gypsies were deported to Dachau concentration camp. Anti-Jewish signs were removed while the Olympic Games were held in Berlin, then re-erected. Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses sent thousands to concentration camps, where the survivors stayed until 1945.

1937 - A Gestapo order directed that all of Jehovah's Witnesses released from prison be taken directly to concentration camps.

1938 - Germany annexed Austria. In November Kristallnacht (the 'Night of Broken Glass') saw Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues attacked and 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish men deported to concentration camps. All Jewish children were expelled from state schools.

1939 - Germany invaded Poland, forcing three million Polish Jews into 400 newly established ghettos, where tens of thousands were killed by cold, starvation, disease and overcrowding. Six thousand Jehovah's Witnesses were in the camps, where 2,000 died and 250 were executed. August Dickmann, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, became the first conscientious objector to be executed for refusing to join the German army. Some 500 children of Jehovah's Witnesses were taken from their parents in an attempt to make them abandon their faith and join the Nazis. Simone's mother became one of Jehovah's Witnesses. After the German invasion of Poland, World War II began.

1940 - Hitler's armies invaded Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, and Alsace, where Hitler's personal friend Gauleiter Wagner was ordered to 'Germanise' the country. About 37 percent of Alsatians joined Nazi organisations. In September the French language and Alsatian dialect were banned again; French family names had to be changed, detention camps were established, and synagogues were burned. Hitler orders all the physically or mentally disabled to be killed; 275,000 of them were murdered.

1941 - German army invades the Soviet Union, taking with it highly efficient Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units. By the spring of 1943, more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of others had been killed. Mobile gassing vans were used to murder 5,000 Austrian gypsies; between 200,000 and 500,000 of them were murdered in total. On September 4, Simone's father, Adolphe, was arrested in Mulhouse and transferred to Schirmeck, then to Nuremberg and on to Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps.

1942 - By August, 140,000 Alsatian men joined the German army for duty on the Russian front, where 30,000 of them died. During the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials discussed formal plans for the Final Solution - the Nazi plan to kill all Jews.

1943 - On July 8, Simone Arnold was taken from her family to a Nazi 're-education' centre for delinquent girls in Germany. On August 24, her mother, Emma, was also arrested, sent to Mulhouse prison, then to Schirmeck and Gaggenau. The Nazis organized Erntefest, a 'harvest festival' to shoot all the remaining Jews in central and southern Poland on November 3 and 4. As a result, some 40,000 Jews were murdered. On November 5, Simone's childhood friend and role model, Marcel Sutter, was executed for refusing to perform military service for Germany.

1944 - Germany occupied Hungary. Over 437,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz to be murdered by gassing. In November, General Leclerc led French troops over the Vosges mountains into Alsace and into bitter two-month battle with the German army around Mulhouse.

1945 - On March 19, Alsace was liberated. On April 24, Simone was released to the custody of her mother. On May 6, Adolphe Arnold was released from Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen. On May 7, the war in Europe ended. In November the war trials began in Nuremberg. Speaking German was banned in Alsace, and remained banned until 1972. The Alsatian dialect was not to be used in schools.

1946 - Verdicts of war crimes trial were announced. In Nuremberg, Jehovah's Witnesses held a public convention attended by more than 100,000.