page_title: 1944
section_title: May
hierarchical_section_title: 1944 / Events / May
caption_attribution_description: English: Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, London, UK. (L-R): Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King (Canada) General the Rt. Hon. Jan Smuts (South Africa) Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill (United Kingdom) Rt. Hon. Peter Fraser (New Zealand) Rt. Hon. John Curtin (Australia)
context_page_description: 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1944th year of the Common Era and Anno Domini designations, the 944th year of the 2nd millennium, the 44th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1940s decade.
context_section_description: May – Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist drama No Exit (Huis Clos) premières in Nazi-occupied Paris.
  May 1 – WWII: Two hundred Communist prisoners are shot by the Germans at Kaisariani, Athens, Greece, in reprisal for the killing of General Franz Krech by Partisans at Molaoi.
  May 5 – WWII: Mohandas Gandhi is released from jail in India, on health grounds.
  May 9 – WWII: In the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, Soviet troops completely drive out German forces, who had been ordered by Hitler to “fight to the last man.”
  May 12 – WWII: Soviet troops finalize the liberation of the Crimea.
  May 14 – The Holocaust: Predominantly Muslim Albanian troops of the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) round up 281 Jews in Pristina, and hand them over to the Germans for transportation to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
  May 15–July 8 – The Holocaust: Hungarian Jews are deported to Auschwitz, and other Nazi concentration camps.
  May 18 – WWII:
  Battle of Monte Cassino: The Germans evacuate Monte Cassino, and Allied forces, led by Władysław Anders from Polish II Corps, take the stronghold after a struggle that has claimed 20,000 lives.
  Crimean Tatars are deported by the Soviet Union.
  May 24 – WWII: West Loch disaster: Six LSTs are accidentally destroyed and 163 men killed, in Pearl Harbor.
  May 30 – Princess Charlotte Louise Juliette Louvet Grimaldi of Monaco, heir to the throne, resigns in favor of her son Prince Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi, who later reigns as Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
  May 31 – WWII: Destroyer escort USS England sinks the sixth Japanese submarine in two weeks. This anti-submarine warfare performance remains unmatched through the 20th-century.
caption: The prime ministers of Britain and the four major dominions at the 1944 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, May 1, 1944.
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