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February 13: Death of Henrietta Szold.

May 7: David Ben Gurion meets in London with Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley who informs him that the British will not continue with the Mandate much longer

May 8: Victory Day in Europe. Thousands gather at the Jewish national buildings.

May: David Ben Gurion meets with French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault who asks him if the Arabs will permit the creation of a Jewish state. Ben Gurion replies that "we have always been outnumbered and yet survived - we will survive again."

May: The war in Europe ends and the full horror of the Holocaust is now revealed: six million Jews perished in Europe. Envoys from Palestine and representatives of American Jewish Organizations and first and foremost soldiers of Jewish units in the British army, immediately begin organizing a wide campaign to save those who have remained. The "Bericha" organization goes into action and illegal immigration to Palestine is once more under way.

May: Dr. Chaim Weizmann writes to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill emphasizing the desperate position of the Jews of Europe. "This is the time to eliminate the White Paper, to open the doors of Palestine and to proclaim the Jewish state."

June: Churchill rejects Weizmann's plea for the creation of a Jewish state. "There can, I fear, be no possibility of the question being effectively considered until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace Table. Zionist leaders believe that Churchill has ceased his support for their cause in the aftermath of the assassination of Lord Moyne.

June 7: "Zim", the national shipping company is founded by the Jewish Agency, the Histadrut and the Israeli Maritime League.

July 1: David Ben Gurion, Eliezer Kaplan, and other Jewish Agency representatives on fund raising tour in the U. S. They meet with representatives of the American Jewry in New York.

August 13: The first international Zionist conference to meet since the Zionist Congress of 1939 holds his final session in London. The conference calls on the British government to immediately issue 100.000 certificates to enable the survivors of the Holocaust to enter Palestine. It is decided to co-opt the following members on to the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency Executive: Aharon Bart, Eliahu Dobkin, Stephen Wise, Dov Yosef, Berl Locker, Abba Hillel Silver, Moshe Sneh and Moshe Shapira.

August 28: 35 illegal immigrants who have arrived on the vessel "The Aliyah Mossad - Dalin", land on the Caesarea shore The "Dalin" returns to Europe with several dozen emissaries who will handle the clandestine immigration, arms acquisition, and aid to Holocaust survivors.
The illegal immigration operation at this stage is of modest dimensions and does not attract attention during the following years. By the end of 1945, six vessels will bring about 1.000 immigrants to Palestine. During this year, immigration figures totaled about 15.000.

September: The Zionist leadership realizes that the new British government intends to continue the White Paper policy.

November 13: David Ben Gurion and Moshe Shertok meet Colonial Secretary George Hall who presents them with a statement by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. "There is no room for compromise between the conflicting viewpoints of Jews and Arabs. It is therefore necessary to place Palestine under the control of an international authority."

November 23: The illegal immigration ship "Berl Katznelson" arrives at the Sharon beach and is seized by the British before the last of the immigrants can disembark.
Two days later the Haganah blows up the radar stations at Givat Olga and Sidna Ali, which serve to detect the approach of ships. The British respond with searches in settlements being suspected of being bases for Palmach actions.

According to Jewish Agency estimates, 592,000 Jews reside in Palestine in 1945, constituting 32% of the population.

Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive: David Ben Gurion.

Chairman of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization - Jewish Agency, American Section: Dr. Abba Hillel Silver.

Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: Eliezer Kaplan.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department: Henrietta Szold and Hans Beit and Georg Landauer.

Chairman Settlement Department: Eliezer Kaplan.

Chairman of the Immigration Department: Eliahu Dobkin and Moshe Shapira.

March: The Jewish Brigade participate in the war against Germany on the Italian front, first in the Ravenna region and then on the river Cenno. The Brigade remains active at the front until 14 April 1945.

March 23: Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyhau Bet-Zuri, the two Lehi members who assassinated Lord Moyne are executed in Cairo. Their remains will be transfered to Israel for burial only in 1975.

Etzel renews attacks against British targets.

June 8: Four hundred Jewish prisoners of war from Palestine return home.

June 11: Death of Eliyahu Golomb.

June 26: After Labor wins the British elections and Clement Atlee forms the government, many suppose that there will be a positive change in the British policy towards the Jewish National Home. This hope is quickly dashed. The man responsible for this is Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary. In November, he will announce the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry regarding the problems of European Jewry and Palestine, and a decision to permit a limited number of Jews - 1.500 - to enter the country monthly.

August 31: American president Harry S. Truman demands that the British permit the entry of 100.000 Holocaust refugees into Palestine.

September: Etzel and Lehi heighten their efforts at funding their operations by means of bank robberies.

September 20-27: Jewish and Arab civilian workers at British army camps hold a general strike for higher salaries.

September: The members of the Sixth Airborne arrive in Palestine. The paratroopers wear red berets, leading the Jews to call them "Kalaniyot" ("Anemones").

October 6: A convoy of illegal immigrants who have crossed the Syrian border are brought to Kfar Giladi. The British border police encircles the kibbutz and demands that they hand over the immigrants. When this is not done the police opens fire and wounds Palmach soldiers and members of Galilee settlements who have been summoned to prevent the surrender of the immigrants.

October 10: A Palmach force breaks into the Atlit detention camp and frees 208 illegal immigrants kept prisoner there by the British.

October 16: The joint Hebrew Resistance Movement is organized by Haganah, Lehi, Etzel to coordinate anti-British activity.

November 1: The "Night of the Railways" is the first joint operation carried out by Haganah, Lehi and Etzel. The Palmach sabotages railway lines throughout the country, while Etzel and Lehi attack the main railway station at Lod.

November 11: Death of Joshua Hankin.

November 14: Demonstrations in Tel Aviv against Bevin's announcements are brutally suppressed by the British.

November 21: The new high commissioner Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham arrives in Palestine.

December 1: The Dan bus cooperative is founded.

December 10: The British and American governments set up an Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry to look into the problems of European and Palestinian Jewry and to suggest recommendations for their solution.

Marc Lavry (1903-1967) composes the first opera in Palestine featuring contemporary problems, "Dan the Guard", based on a play by Sim Shalom and adapted as a libretto by Max Brod. Born on Latvia, Lavry was active as a composer and conductor between 1929 and 1934 in Berlin. He emigrated to Palestine in 1935, where he became one of the founders of the national school of Israeli music.

Nazi Germany and World War II in 1945.

January: The last transport of Jews arrives in Auschwitz.

Soviet military forces enter Budapest. 120.000 Jews are saved from further persecution. Raoul Wallenberg is summoned to the Soviets. He disappears and his fate is to date unknown.

Heinrich Himmler orders the evacuation of concentration camps in eastern Europe. The inmates are forced to march westward. 50.000 slave laborers are evacuated from Auschwitz.

The Soviet army liberates Auschwitz.

February 10: Giovanni Palatucci, Italian police official who resuces thousands of Jews, is murdered in Dachau.

February: After the bombing of Dresden, linguist Victor Klemperer manages to escape to Bavaria. He is the author of a book on the language of the Third Reich, "Lingua Tertii Imperii" and in his diaries provided detailed observation of everyday life during the Nazi regime.

March: Almost all Jews at the Buchenwald concentration camp are marched out to Flossenbürg. The non-Jewish inmates await the arrival of the U. S. troops.

Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948) negotiates the release of 423 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt and their return to Denmark.

A train with 109 Jews from Vienna arrives in Theresienstadt. This is the last deportation arranged by Adolf Eichmann.

Heinrich Himmler allows 7.000 women from Ravensbrück, half of them Jewish, to be taken to Sweden.

July: Representatives of liberated Jews housed in displaced persons camps in the American, British and French zones of Germany, hold a conference at the St. Ottilien camp near München. The delegates call for the immediate creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

August: During World War II, over 1, 397.000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied forces, including the U. S., 550.000; the Soviet Union, 500.000; Poland, 140.000; Great Britain, 62.000; France, 46.000; Palestinian units in the British army, 35.000.

At the time of the Japan surrender, there are 14.874 European Jewish refugees in Shanghai, China.

October: Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk provides trains to the Brichah (escape) branch of the Haganah to transport Jews from the Polish to the Austrian border and the U. S. zone of Germany.

Anti-Jewish riots take place in Poland.

The International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg begins a 10-month trial of major Nazi figures for war crimes. (See: Nazi Germany and World War II in 1945: October.)

November: Anti-Jewish riots in Lublin.

December: Polish antisemites kill 11 Jews in a village near Treblinka.

By the end of the year, more than seven months after the end of the war, Polish antisemites have murdered 350 Jews.

In 1945, 100.000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

Richard Tucker (1913-1975), a noted cantor, makes his New York Metropolitan Opera debut as Enzo in Ponchielli's "La Gioconda".

Ernst Boris Chain (1906-1979), British biochemist, is awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, sharing the prize with Sir Alexander Fleming and Lord Florey for their work in developing penicillin.

Wolfgang Pauli is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.