<p>A transport of Jewish prisoners forced to march through the snow from the Bauschovitz train station to <a href="/narrative/5386">Theresienstadt</a>. Czechoslovakia, 1942.</p>

Artifact

Browse an alphabetical list of artifacts from the Holocaust and World War II. Each object tells a story about the history and demonstrates human experiences during the time period.

Filter by title:

| Displaying results 51-100 of 231 for "Artifact" |

  • Children's art: Lingfield House diary

    Artifact

    Alice Goldberger (1897-1986) was born in Berlin, Germany. Trained as a youth-work instructor, she ran a shelter for disadvantaged children and their families. When Hitler came to power, Alice, who was Jewish, had to give up her post. She immigrated to England in 1939. When war broke out, Alice was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien. While there, she organized a children's facility. Hearing of Alice's work in the camp, psychoanalyst Anna Freud (daughter of Sigmund Freud) intervened to secure…

    Children's art: Lingfield House diary
  • Child's Sweater Worn in Hiding

    Artifact

    During the 1943 liquidation of the Lvov ghetto, dozens of Jews fled into the city sewers to escape death. Eight-year-old Krystyna Chiger (later Kristine Keren) hid with her family and 16 others beneath the city's streets for 14 months, during which she wore this sweater.

    Child's Sweater Worn in Hiding
  • Comb made by Yona Wygocka Dickmann

    Artifact

    Yona Wygocka Dickmann fashioned this aluminum comb from airplane parts after the SS transferred her from Auschwitz to forced labor in an airplane factory in Freiburg, Germany, in November 1944. She used the comb as her hair, shaven in Auschwitz, began to grow back.

    Comb made by Yona Wygocka Dickmann
  • Contact print booklets

    Artifact

    Two of Julien Bryan's Nazi Germany 1937 contact print booklets of still photographs organized by camera roll. Bryan used these prints to select and crop images for publication or distribution and annotated the covers.

    Contact print booklets
  • Courtroom Sketch of Elie Wiesel at the Trial of Klaus Barbie

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch by artist David Rose of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel on the witness stand at the trial of Klaus Barbie. During his testimony, Wiesel stated that "The killer kills twice. First, by killing, and then by trying to wipe out the traces." June 2, 1987.

    Courtroom Sketch of Elie Wiesel at the Trial of Klaus Barbie
  • Cover, International Military Tribunal program

    Artifact

    Cover of a mimeographed program booklet distributed at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

    Cover, International Military Tribunal program
  • Cover of a Japanese-German phrase book

    Artifact

    German Jewish refugees purchased this Japanese-German phrase book shortly after their arrival in Japan. Japan, 1940-1941. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]

    Cover of a Japanese-German phrase book
  • Cover of Stanislava Roztropowicz's diary

    Artifact

    Stanislava Roztropowicz kept a diary from 1943-1944. In it, she describes her family's decision to hide an abandoned Jewish girl, Sabina Heller (Kagan).  Sabina Kagan was an infant when SS mobile killing squads began rounding up Jews in her Polish village of Radziwillow in 1942. Her parents persuaded a local policeman to hide the family. The policeman, however, soon asked the Kagans to leave but agreed to hide baby Sabina. Her parents were captured and killed. Sabina was concealed in a dark basement,…

    Cover of Stanislava Roztropowicz's diary
  • Dachau trial mess card

    Artifact

    Entry pass to a US military dining hall at Dachau, Germany. This card was issued to Anton Litwin, a member of the War Crimes Branch.

    Dachau trial mess card
  • Danish rescue boat

    Artifact

    Danish rescue boat used during World War II

    Danish rescue boat
  • Dedication to a set of scrapbooks documenting the German occupation of Denmark

    Artifact

    Dedication to a set of scrapbooks compiled by Bjorn Sibbern, a Danish policeman and resistance member, documenting the German occupation of Denmark. Bjorn's wife Tove was also active in the Danish resistance. After World War II, Bjorn and Tove moved to Canada and later settled in California, where Bjorn compiled five scrapbooks dedicated to the Sibbern's daughter, Lisa. The books are fully annotated in English and contain photographs, documents and three-dimensional artifacts documenting all aspects of the…

    Dedication to a set of scrapbooks documenting the German occupation of Denmark
  • Der Stuermer, number 29, July 1934

    Artifact

    Nazi Germany’s semi-official and fiercely antisemitic newspaper Der Stuermer warned of a Jewish program for world domination in this 1934 issue. The article, titled “Who is the Enemy?” blamed Jews for destroying social order and claimed that Jews wanted war, while the rest of the world wanted peace. Der Stuermer, July 1934.

    Der Stuermer, number 29, July 1934
  • Desecrated Torah scrolls

    Artifact

    These Torah scrolls, one from a synagogue in Vienna and the other from Marburg, were desecrated during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. The pogrom occurred throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The scrolls pictured here were retrieved by German individuals and safeguarded until after the war.

    Desecrated Torah scrolls
  • Doll from the Krakow ghetto

    Artifact

    Zofia Burowska (Chorowicz) donated this doll, which dates from the 1930s, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Zofia's parents gave her the doll before the war and she kept it with her in the Wolbrum and Krakow ghettos, Poland. The doll and some of her family's other belongings were left with non-Jewish friends for safekeeping. Zofia was deported to a forced-labor camp for Jews near Krakow, to the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp (also in Poland), and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany,…

    Doll from the Krakow ghetto
  • Drawing of shoes by a Jewish teenager in hiding

    Artifact

    Jewish teenager Ava Hegedish drew this poignant picture of her mother's well-worn shoes while in hiding.  It was drawn while Ava was in hiding at a farm near Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), between 1941 and 1944. Once Nazi Germany and its Axis partners partitioned Yugoslavia and Belgrade fell under German control, Ava’s father thought the family’s best chance of survival was to separate and go into hiding. Ava ended up at a farm with some extended-family Serbian relatives. Because she…

    Drawing of shoes by a Jewish teenager in hiding
  • Drawing of the SS Patria

    Artifact

    Drawing of the SS Patria, part of the illustrated diary of Egon Weiss which he compiled during and immediately after his detention in the Atlit internment camp.

    Drawing of the SS Patria
  • Dress Worn by a Child in Hiding

    Artifact

    A child's dress embroidered with red and blue flowers with small green leaves. This dress was hand embroidered by Lola Kaufman's mother in the Czortkow ghetto. Lola (born Lea Rein) wore this dress when she went into hiding. Lola was hidden first under a bed in the house of the woman who used to deliver milk to the family, then in a dugout under a cellar of a barn where she joined three other Jews in hiding. In March 1944, the Soviets liberated the area. The hidden Jews left their hideout in the middle of…

    Dress Worn by a Child in Hiding
  • Dress Worn by a Hidden Child

    Artifact

    A blue and white child's dress worn by Sabina Kagan while living in hiding with the Roztropowicz family in Radziwillow, Poland, during World War II. Her rescuers used doll's clothing to make this dress. Sabina was just an infant when SS mobile killing squads began rounding up Jews in the Polish village of Radziwillow in 1942. Her parents persuaded a local policeman to hide the family. The policeman, however, soon asked the Kagans to leave but agreed to hide baby Sabina. Her parents were captured and…

    Dress Worn by a Hidden Child
  • Edward Vebell courtroom sketch

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch drawn during the International Military Tribunal by American artist Edward Vebell. The drawing's title is "Spectators at War Criminals Trial, Nuremberg, Germany." 1945.

    Edward Vebell courtroom sketch
  • Edward Vebell courtroom sketch

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch drawn during the International Military Tribunal by American artist Edward Vebell. The drawing's title is "British Courier for the Correspondents." 1945.

    Edward Vebell courtroom sketch
  • Edward Vebell courtroom sketch

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch drawn during the International Military Tribunal by American artist Edward Vebell. The drawing's title is "German defense counsel -- they are immediately in front of the defendants." 1945.

    Edward Vebell courtroom sketch
  • Edward Vebell courtroom sketch

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch drawn during the International Military Tribunal by American artist Edward Vebell. The drawing depicts defendants Rudolf Hess and Wilhelm Keitel, with this accompanying text: "Hess looked very hollow cheeked and thin necked. He seemed to ignore the proceedings and kept his head down, absorbed in a book. Keitel tried to retain a rigid military bearing and strike haughty poses." Nuremberg, Germany, 1945.

    Edward Vebell courtroom sketch
  • Edward Vebell courtroom sketch

    Artifact

    Courtroom sketch drawn during the International Military Tribunal by American artist Edward Vebell. The drawing's title is "A few studies of the German defense counsel." 1945.

    Edward Vebell courtroom sketch
  • Eichmann trial ticket

    Artifact

    Single-use entry pass for the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Israel. June 8, 1961.

    Eichmann trial ticket
  • Election poster

    Artifact

    Election poster reading "The People Vote Listing One: Nationalsocialism," 1932-1933

    Election poster
  • Election poster

    Artifact

    This election poster calls on Germans to vote in support of Hitler's hand-picked candidates to the Reichstag (the German parliament). The poster details Hitler's actions and reads, in part: 'In 8 months two and a quarter million Germans have work and bread again! Class warfare and its parties are eliminated! The Bolsheviks are smashed. Particularism is overcome! A Reich of order and cleanliness is established. One People. One Reich. One Leader. This is what Hitler has accomplished..."

    Election poster
  • Embroidered matzah cover

    Artifact

    Following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the Lifszyc family began to search for ways to leave the country. David Lifszyc obtained a Curacao visa from the Dutch consulate. He also obtained an American visa because he was included on a list of distinguished rabbis submitted to the State Department by the Agudat Israel of America. After obtaining Soviet exit visas, the Lifszycs purchased tickets for Vladivostok on February 5, 1941. They started for Moscow, where they received Japanese transit visas. This…

    Embroidered matzah cover
  • Evidence Tag

    Artifact

    Evidence tag from the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon, France. This standard police form lists Barbie's infractions as crimes against humanity and complicity, concepts defined at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg decades earlier. The line in which the victims' names would be recorded is left blank. February 25, 1983.

    Evidence Tag
  • Evidence Tag

    Artifact

    Evidence tag from the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon, France. This standard police form lists Barbie's infractions as crimes against humanity and complicity, concepts defined at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg decades earlier. The line in which the victims' names would be recorded is left blank. February 25, 1983.

    Evidence Tag
  • First page of Eva Ostwalt's cookbook

    Artifact

    Eva Ostwalt was born in Cologne, Germany, to Jewish parents. She had two younger sisters, Kate and Trude. In 1927, Eva moved with her daughter, Heidemarie, and non-Jewish husband to Dresden. Eva and Karl later divorced, and Eva received custody of Heidemarie. Mother and daughter moved to Merano, Italy. When Eva’s passport expired in 1938, she had to return to Germany. Believing that Heidemarie would be safer with her father, Eva gave custody back to Karl in Dresden. Eva returned to Cologne, where both…

    First page of Eva Ostwalt's cookbook
  • Gallery pass

    Artifact

    Reproduction of entry pass to the International Military Tribunal visitors' gallery for the sentencing of the defendants. October 1946.

    Gallery pass
  • German propaganda leaflet for African American soldiers

    Artifact

    German propaganda leaflet targeting African American servicemen, November 1944. The leaflets falsely suggested that African Americans would receive better treatment by the German military and encouraged them to surrender to German troops.

    German propaganda leaflet for African American soldiers
  • Granite quarried in Mauthausen

    Artifact

    This photograph shows some of the 190 granite blocks donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by the Mauthausen Public Memorial in Austria. The Nazis established the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1938 near an abandoned stone quarry. Prisoners were forced to carry these granite blocks up more than 180 steps. The small blocks weighed between 30 and 45 pounds each. The larger blocks could each weigh more than 75 pounds. Prisoners assigned to forced labor in the camp quarry were quickly worked…

    Granite quarried in Mauthausen
  • Hana Mueller's concentration camp skirt

    Artifact

    Hana Mueller altered this skirt issued to her in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 by using the hem to make pockets.

    Hana Mueller's concentration camp skirt
  • Handkerchief carried by a young Hungarian Jewish girl on the Kasztner train

    Artifact

    A red and yellow floral handkerchief belonging to Judit Gondos that she took with her when she left Budapest on the Kasztner rescue train.

    Handkerchief carried by a young Hungarian Jewish girl on the Kasztner train
  • Hans Vogel's diary entry about receiving US immigration papers

    Artifact

    Diaries reveal some of the most intimate, heart-wrenching accounts of the Holocaust. They record in real time the feelings of loss, fear, and, sometimes, hope of those facing extraordinary peril. The diary of Hans Vogel, who fled Paris with his family while his father was interned, contains hand-drawn and colored maps of their flight. This page describes receiving papers allowing the family to immigrate to the United States.  Hans was born in Cologne, Germany on December 3, 1926. The family left Germany…

    Hans Vogel's diary entry about receiving US immigration papers
  • Hans Vogel's diary entry describing the voyage to the United States

    Artifact

    Hans Vogel and his family fled Paris following the German invasion. They eventually received papers allowing them to immigrate to the United States. During this time, Hans kept a diary that contains postcards, hand-drawn maps, and other illustrations of their flight. This page describes the voyage on board the Nyassa to the United States.  Hans was born in Cologne, Germany on December 3, 1926. The family left Germany in 1936, settling in Paris. They remained there until the outbreak of World War II.…

    Hans Vogel's diary entry describing the voyage to the United States
  • Hans Vogel's diary entry on arriving in New York

    Artifact

    Hans Vogel and his family fled Paris following the German invasion. They eventually received papers allowing them to immigrate to the United States. During this time, Hans kept a diary that contains postcards, hand-drawn maps, and other illustrations of their flight. This page describes arriving in New York.  Hans was born in Cologne, Germany on December 3, 1926. The family left Germany in 1936, settling in Paris. They remained there until the outbreak of World War II. Hans's father, Simon, was interned…

    Hans Vogel's diary entry on arriving in New York
  • Hans Vogel's diary entry on boarding the refugee ship Nyassa

    Artifact

    Hans Vogel and his family fled Paris following the German invasion. They eventually received papers allowing them to immigrate to the United States. During this time, Hans kept a diary that contains postcards, hand-drawn maps, and other illustrations of their flight. This page describes the lead-up to their departure for the United States, from Lisbon, on the Nyassa. Hans was born in Cologne, Germany on December 3, 1926. The family left Germany in 1936, settling in Paris. They remained there until the…

    Hans Vogel's diary entry on boarding the refugee ship Nyassa
  • Hartheim Register

    Artifact

    One of the primary documents used to calculate the number of deaths in the Nazi "euthanasia" program is this register discovered in a locked filing cabinet by US Army troops in 1945 at a killing site in Hartheim, Austria. The right page details by month the number of patients who were "disinfected" in 1940. The final column indicates that 35,224 persons had been put to death that year.

    Hartheim Register
  • Headphones

    Artifact

    Headphones used by defendant Hans Frank during the International Military Tribunal. Headphones like these enabled trial participants to hear simultaneous translation of the proceedings.

    Headphones
  • Headphones

    Artifact

    Headphones used by defendant Hermann Göring during the International Military Tribunal. Headphones like these enabled trial participants to hear simultaneous translation of the proceedings.

    Headphones
  • Headphones

    Artifact

    Headphones used by defendant Albert Speer during the International Military Tribunal. Headphones like these enabled trial participants to hear simultaneous translation of the proceedings.

    Headphones
  • Hitler Youth knife and case

    Artifact

    Hitler Youth knife and case shaped like a military bayonet, with the emblem of the Hitler Youth, emphasizing the paramilitary nature of the organization.

    Hitler Youth knife and case
  • Hitler Youth poster

    Artifact

    Poster urging young Germans to join the Hitler Youth Landdienst [agricultural service]. It reads "Volunteers to the front! Youth to the land service of the Hitler Youth." 

    Hitler Youth poster
  • Hitler Youth proficiency badge

    Artifact

    This Hitler Youth proficiency badge would have been awarded for the successful completion of a series of tests measuring physical and ideological proficiency. Success in these tests was rated according to criteria in the Hitler Youth identity document and performance book known as the Leistungsbuch. On this badge, the arrow shape (the tyr-rune) represents the warrior god Tyr.  Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an important role to play in the new Nazi regime. Through…

    Hitler Youth proficiency badge
  • Hitler Youth uniform

    Artifact

    Hitler Youth summer uniform jacket with an armband and insignia designating the regiment and district to which the member belonged.   Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and its organization for girls and young women, the League of German Girls, played an important role the new Nazi regime. Through these organizations, the Nazi regime indoctrinated young people with Nazi ideology, including antisemitism and racism. All prospective members of the Hitler Youth had to be "Aryans" and "genetically healthy."…

    Hitler Youth uniform
  • Hitler Youth "Youthfest" badge

    Artifact

    This badge shows the Hitler Youth insignia and Nazi German national symbol superimposed over ring bearing the raised text, "Deutsches/Jugendfest 1936." Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an important role to play in the new Nazi regime. Through these organizations, the Nazi regime planned to indoctrinate young people with Nazi ideology. This was part of the process of Nazifying German society. The aim of this process was to dismantle existing social structures and…

    Hitler Youth "Youthfest" badge
  • Hoess affidavit

    Artifact

    Affidavit signed by Rudolf Hoess attesting to the gassing of Jews while he was the commandant of the Auschwitz killing center. The German text reads: "I declare herewith under oath that in the years 1941 to 1943 during my tenure in office as commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp 2 million Jews were put to death by gassing and a 1/2 million by other means. Rudolf Hoess. May 14, 1946." The confession is also signed by Josef Maier of the US Chief of Counsel's office. A photoreproduction of the original…

    Hoess affidavit
  • Hotel Reichshof flyer

    Artifact

    1939 flyer from the Hotel Reichshof in Hamburg, Germany. The red tag informed Jewish guests of the hotel that they were not permitted in the hotel restaurant, bar, or in the reception rooms. The hotel management required Jewish guests to take their meals in their rooms. Following the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews were systematically excluded from public places in Germany.

    Hotel Reichshof flyer

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.