Series: Flight and Rescue

Explore the story of more than 2,000 Polish Jewish refugees who fled eastward searching for havens in an attempt to escape wartime Europe. Enduring the hardships of travel and restrictive immigration laws, they escaped eastward from wartime Europe to safety just months before the start of the Nazi genocide that claimed the lives of three million Polish Jews. Their experiences were portrayed in an exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2000.

Flight and Rescue

German Invasion of Poland: Jewish Refugees, 1939

Polish Jewish Refugees in Lithuania, 1939–40

Polish Jewish Refugees in Lithuania: Unexpected Rescue, 1940–41

Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara

Jan Zwartendijk

Polish Jews in Lithuania: Escape to Japan

German and Austrian Jewish Refugees in Shanghai

Polish Jewish Refugees in the Shanghai Ghetto, 1941–1945

Mir Yeshiva

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