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Despite the Nazi Party's ideology of keeping women in the home, their roles expanded beyond wives and mothers.
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg led an extensive rescue effort during the Nazi era. His work with the War Refugee Board saved thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Kindertransport refers to a series of rescue efforts between 1938 and 1940 that brought thousands of refugee children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany.
The Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944 to prevent the government from negotiating an armistice with the Allies. Learn more about conditions in occupied Hungary.
Learn about the prewar Jewish community of Tarnow, German occupation, deportations and killings of the Jewish population, ghettoization, and resistance.
After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Learn about the experiences of Jewish DPs.
Learn more about the plight of Jewish refugees who attempted to escape Germany between 1933 and 1939.
In July 1938, 32 nations met in Evian, France, to discuss immigration policies for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Learn how these discussions impacted Jewish lives.
Japanese diplomat Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara was recognized as a "Righteous Among the Nations" for his aid to refugees in Lithuania during World War II.
The Sephardic Jewish community of Monastir was historically the largest Jewish community in Macedonia. Learn about the community before and during WWII and the Holocaust.
The War Refugee Board was formed in 1944 by executive order under President Roosevelt. It was tasked with the rescue and relief of victims of Nazi oppression.
The Germans established the Althammer camp in September 1944. It was a subcamp of Auschwitz. Read more about the camp's history and conditions there.
German General Erich Ludendorff was a key proponent of the fictitious “Stab-in-the-Back” myth which blamed Jews and others for Germany’s defeat in WWI.
Leading German physicians and administrators were put on trial for their role during the Holocaust. The resulting Nuremberg Code was a landmark document on medical ethics. Learn more
The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), created by Heinrich Himmler, brutally coordinated and perpetrated many aspects of the Holocaust.
Explore key events in the history of the Belzec killing center in the Nazi camp system. It was constructed for the sole purpose of murdering Jews.
From April to July 1994, extremist leaders of Rwanda’s Hutu majority directed a genocide against the country’s Tutsi minority. Learn more
Emanuel Ringelblum was a Warsaw-based historian and social welfare worker before WWII. Learn about the secret archive he would establish in the Warsaw ghetto.
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is the best known and most popular Nazi text ever published with over 12 million copies sold from 1925 to 1945.
The concept of Lebensraum, “living space,” was as a critical component in the Nazi worldview that drove both its military conquests and racial policy.
“For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully… I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me.” Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, used this disguise to hide from Nazi authorities. In a later interview she said, “I really looked pretty good.” Her involvement in the resistance movement included planning the destruction of the Amsterdam Population Registry in March 1943, falsifying identity cards, and arranging hiding places for those who were sought by…
May 27, 1942. On this date, Czech agents assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.
November 3, 1943. On this date, SS and police units implemented "Operation Harvest Festival" (also known as Aktion Erntefest).
July 9, 1944. On this date, Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest and began his wartime rescue efforts.
April 2, 1945. On this date, Anthony Acevedo wrote in his diary about his experience as a prisoner of war.
April 1, 1933. On this date, the Nazi Party and its affiliates organized a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.
December 2, 1938. On this date, the first Kindertransport of German Jewish children arrived in Great Britain.
April 13, 1945. On this date, Otto Wolf, a teen diarist who chronicled his family's experience in hiding, wrote his last diary entry before his death.
April 17, 1945. On this date, Felicitas Wolf wrote her first entry in her brother Otto's diary after his disappearance.
The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the first Nazi camp liberated by US troops.
While some European Jews survived the Holocaust by hiding or escaping, others were rescued by non-Jews. Learn more about these acts of resistance.
The D-Day invasion was the largest amphibious attack in history. Read articles and browse photos and videos of Allied forces invading Normandy on June 6, 1944.
Students sit at their desks in a classroom at a Polish-language public elementary school in Lwów around 1930. In interwar Poland, Jewish children could attend public or private schools. The curriculum in these schools was based on a secular education, in contrast to the traditional heder where boys were schooled in Jewish texts and traditions. This particular school was located in the city’s predominantly Jewish neighborhood and almost all of the students were Jewish. Before attending this school,…
“Ritchie Boys” is a term used for American soldiers who trained at Camp Ritchie during World War II. Several thousand were Jewish refugees from Europe. Learn more.
President Barack Obama visited Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany on June 5, 2009. In a speech at the site, he repudiated Holocaust denial. Browse transcript.
The study of the Holocaust raises questions about how the world can recognize and respond to indications that a country is at risk for genocide or mass atrocity. While each genocide is unique, in most places where genocide occurs, there are common...
Key dates illustrating the relationship between Germany’s professional military elite and the Nazi state, and the German military’s role in the Holocaust.
The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Learn more about the Axis powers in WW2.
Judge Thomas Buergenthal was one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 17. Judge Buergenthal devoted his life to international and human rights law. He served as chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience; was named the Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School; and served for a decade as the American judge at…
After WWII, prosecutors faced the challenge of assessing the guilt of propagandists whose words, images, and writings had supported Nazi brutality and mass murder.
The Auschwitz camp system, located in German-occupied Poland, was a complex of 3 camps, including a killing center. Learn about the history of Auschwitz.
David was the second of four children born to religious Jewish parents in Kozienice, a town in southeastern Poland. His father, Manes, owned a shoe factory that supplied stores throughout the country. His mother, Sarah, took care of the home and children, and helped in the factory. Kozienice had a thriving Jewish community that constituted over half of the town's population. 1933–39: For most of the 1930s, David spent his days going to school, playing sports, and working in his father's shoe factory.…
Kurt was born to Jewish parents in the city of Aachen, where his mother's family had resided since the 18th century. His father, though trained as a chef, worked as a butcher and also managed several stores for his father-in-law. The Paulys lived over one of those shops in the nearby suburb of Eilendorf. Kurt enjoyed large family gatherings, where he would play with his cousins, Anne and Margot Frank. 1933–39: When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the situation drastically changed for the Paulys.…
One of 12 children, Moniek grew up in Dabrowa Gornicza, an industrial town in western Poland. His father, Jacob, owned a general store, which he was forced to close in 1938 as the result of a boycott by local antisemites. Moniek attended both public and Jewish schools, and his father hoped that one day he would become a rabbi. 1933–39: On September 1, 1939, Moniek was awakened by the sounds of airplanes flying overhead as German forces invaded Poland. As the war drew closer, Moniek fled eastward, but…
Adela was the youngest of five children born to religious Jewish parents in the industrial city of Lvov. Often known by her nickname, Putzi, she grew up in the same building as her paternal grandparents and learned to speak Polish, German and Yiddish. She attended public and private schools in Lvov before graduating from a Polish secondary school. 1933-39: Adela's dream was to go on to medical school. But the tiny Jewish quota at colleges and universities virtually excluded Jews from enrolling. By…
Ceija was the fifth of six children born to Roma ("Gypsy") parents who were Roman Catholic. The Stojka's family wagon traveled with a caravan that spent winters in the Austrian capital of Vienna and summers in the Austrian countryside. The Stojkas belonged to a tribe called the Lowara Roma, who made their living as itinerant horse traders. 1933-39: Ceija grew up used to freedom, travel and hard work. Once, her father made her a skirt out of some material from a broken sunshade. She was 5 years old and…
Leo's Jewish family lived in Vilna, which in 1913 was part of the Russian Empire. In 1916, fearing revolution, his family left for Harbin in northern China, a city with a well-organized Jewish community. There Leo joined a Zionist group and studied Jewish history, and for two years attended a Jewish primary school and learned Hebrew. He then studied at a Russian secondary school in Harbin. 1933-39: When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931 and conditions in Harbin deteriorated, Leo's parents sent him to…
Leo was the oldest child and only son of Polish immigrants in Vienna. His father, a tailor and amateur Yiddish actor, died of an illness in 1930 when Leo was 9. His mother supported the family by working as an embroiderer; Leo helped out by looking after his two younger sisters. They lived in one of Vienna's large Jewish districts on the east side of the Danube Canal. 1933-39: Anti-Jewish sentiment escalated after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Jewish men, including some of Leo's uncles and neighbors,…
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…
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