Anne Frank at 11 years of age, two years before going into hiding. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1940.
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Jewish women and children who have been selected for death at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center walk toward the gas chambers. 1944
The people in this photo are some of the approximately 430,000 Jews that Nazi German authorities and their Hungarian collaborators deported to Auschwitz from Hungary in 1944. This photograph is one of many taken in late spring/early summer 1944 as SS photographers documented the arrival, selection, and registration of transports of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some of the photographs taken that day were collected in an album. Its original purpose, creator, and owner are unknown. After the war, the album was found by Holocaust survivor, Lili Jacob. It is commonly called the "Lili Jacob Album" or the "Auschwitz Album."
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On July 14, 1933, the Nazi German regime enacted the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. This law mandated the forced sterilization of people identified as having certain conditions assumed to be hereditary. The nine conditions listed in the law were: “congenital feeblemindedness,” schizophrenia, “circular (manic-depressive) insanity” [today, bipolar disorder], hereditary epilepsy, “hereditary St. Vitus’ dance (Huntington’s chorea)” [today, Huntington’s disease], hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe hereditary physical deformity, and “severe alcoholism.”
Gerda D., a shopworker, was one of an estimated 400,000 Germans who were forcibly sterilized under this law. She was sterilized after a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. Later, Nazi authorities forbade Gerda to marry because of the sterilization.
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Emmi G., a 16-year-old housemaid diagnosed as schizophrenic. She was sterilized and sent to the Meseritz-Obrawalde “euthanasia” center where she was killed with an overdose of tranquilizers on December 7, 1942. Place and date uncertain.
Item View![Jewish women at forced labor in a sewing workshop. [LCID: 74528]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/1a833df3-4111-46ed-9564-55a7f358f054.jpeg "Jewish women at forced labor in a sewing workshop. [LCID: 74528]")
Jewish women at forced labor in a sewing workshop in the Lodz ghetto. Lodz, Poland, between 1940 and 1944.
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View of barracks in the women's camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland, 1944.
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Women prisoners pull dumpcars filled with stones in the camp quarry. Plaszow camp, Poland, 1944.
Item View![Hildegard Kusserow, a Jehovah's Witness, was imprisoned for four years in several concentration camps including Ravensbrueck. [LCID: 68381]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/e19525c0-21a9-478e-b63c-6d3093a3d4fa.jpeg "Hildegard Kusserow, a Jehovah's Witness, was imprisoned for four years in several concentration camps including Ravensbrueck. [LCID: 68381]")
Hildegard Kusserow, a Jehovah's Witness, was imprisoned for four years in several concentration camps including Ravensbrück. Germany, date uncertain.
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Jewish women sort confiscated clothing in the Lodz ghetto. Photograph taken by Mendel Grossman between 1941 and 1944.
Mendel Grossman photograph collection
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Prewar photo of Ala Gertner. Bedzin, Poland, 1930s.
After being deported to Auschwitz, Ala Gertner took fate into her own hands. Upon arrival, she was assigned to forced labor at a nearby armaments factory. After learning that they were going to be killed, Gertner, along with fellow female prisoners, began smuggling gunpowder and explosives from the factory with plans to destroy one of the crematoriums.
During the uprising in October 1944, the prisoners killed three guards. They also set fire to Crematorium 4, making it inoperable.
The guards crushed the revolt and killed almost all of the prisoners involved in the rebellion. The Jewish women, including Gertner, who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were publicly hanged in early January 1945.
Haika Grosman, one of the organizers of the Bialystok ghetto underground and participant in the Bialystok ghetto revolt. Poland, 1945.
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A photograph of Jewish women and children who have just arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in 1944. They have been separated from the men and teenaged boys who arrived with them and are lined up in an area of Birkenau known as "the ramp" before undergoing the selection process. The Nazis murdered most of the women and children pictured here in the gas chambers. An Auschwitz prisoner wearing a striped camp uniform is visible on the right side of the image. He was mostly likely part of a work detail responsible for facilitating the arrival of deportation transports at Auschwitz.
The people in this photo are some of the approximately 430,000 Jews that Nazi German authorities and their Hungarian collaborators deported to Auschwitz from Hungary in 1944. This photograph is one of many taken in late spring/summer 1944 as SS photographers documented the arrival, selection, and registration of transports of Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some of the photographs taken that day were collected in an album. Its original purpose, creator, and owner are unknown. After the war, the album was found by Holocaust survivor, Lili Jacob. It is commonly called the "Lili Jacob Album" or the "Auschwitz Album."
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