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Learn more about the Auschwitz camp complex in German-occupied Poland. More than 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz, including nearly one million Jews.
The Auschwitz camp complex had more than 40 subcamps that brutally exploited prisoner labor. Learn more about these subcamps, including Althammer, Blechhammer, Budy, and Fürstengrube.
A column of prisoners arrives at the Belzec killing center. Belzec, Poland, ca. 1942. In early 1940 the Germans set up a forced-labor camp for Jewish prisoners in Belzec. The inmates were forced to build fortifications and dig anti-tank ditches along the demarcation line between Germany and Soviet-occupied Poland. The camp was closed down at the end of 1940. The following year, in November 1941, construction began on the Belzec killing center.
Children's diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking events of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of Chaim Benzion Cale.
Learn about the Holocaust in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, including deportations to and from the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Frank Blaichman.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Jeff Gradow.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Sam Gruber.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Vitka Kempner.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Miles Lerman.
Wartime portrait of Andrzej Klimowicz, Poland. Andrzej Klimowicz (1918–1996) aided and rescued Jews in Warsaw throughout the duration of the German occupation of Poland. He eventually became a member of the Council for Aid to Jews (codenamed “Żegota”), a clandestine organization that coordinated efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and murder. Under the auspices of Żegota, Andrzej played a role in providing Jews in Warsaw with forged identity papers and hiding places outside the walls of the…
Theo Markus Verderber's mother, Gelle, was among the Jews of Polish nationality expelled from Germany in October 1938. Theo and his younger brother were born in Germany, but went with their mother to a refugee camp in the border town of Zbaszyn. Hungry and cold, the refugees were stranded on the border, unwelcome in either Germany or Poland. Theo was ultimately chosen to join a Kindertransport to England, arriving there in February 1939. His mother, sister and youngest brother remained in…
Learn more about Nazi Germany’s response to the “Jewish question,” an antisemitic idea that the Jewish minority was a problem that needed a solution.
Deportation of Jewish women from the Warsaw ghetto. Poland, 1942-1943.
Interior of a gas chamber at the Majdanek camp. Majdanek, Poland, after July 24, 1944.
Jews are forced into boxcars for deportation to the Belzec killing center. Lublin, Poland, 1942.
View of the industrial section of the Plaszow camp. Plaszow, Poland, 1944.
View of a section of the Plaszow concentration camp. Plaszow, Poland, 1943–1944.
A group of women prisoners in the Plaszow camp. Plaszow, Poland, 1943-1944.
A hospital ward in Kielce after a postwar pogrom. Kielce, Poland, July 6, 1946.
Zivia Lubetkin, a founder of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) and participant in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, date uncertain.
Zyklon B pellets found at the liberation of the Majdanek camp. Poland, after July 1944.
An emaciated child eats in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
Photograph of Regina (Renia) taken on June 2, 1945, in Lodz, Poland.
The Nazis established killing centers in German-occupied Europe during WWII. They built these killing centers for the mass murder of human beings.
Young people's diaries capture some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of David Sierakowiak.
Learn more about the Holocaust Encyclopedia’s key terms and selected youth movements related to resistance in the smaller ghettos of eastern Europe.
Key dates in the history of the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons), charged with the leadership of the “Final Solution,” the murder of European Jews.
Learn about the establishment and administration of displaced persons camps after WWII and the experiences of Jewish DPs.
Berlin was home to Germany’s largest Jewish community. It was also the capital of the Third Reich and the center for the planning of the "Final Solution."
At the Wannsee conference of January 1942, Nazi Party and German government officials gathered to coordinate implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
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.
Often referred to as the “eastern front,” the German-Soviet theater of war was the largest and deadliest of World War II. Learn more about the background and key events.
Born to Catholic parents, Wladyslaw attended schools in Warsaw and earned a degree in survey engineering in Moscow in 1914. After fighting in World War I, he commanded a horse artillery division in Warsaw, worked for Poland's Military Geographic Institute, and taught topography courses. He started a family in 1925, and after he retired from the army in 1929 he founded a surveying company. 1933-39: When war with Germany became imminent in the summer of 1939, Wladyslaw volunteered to fight but was rejected…
Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier…
Moses was 16 years old when the Nazis came to power in January 1933. He attended the Mir Yeshiva, a Jewish religious school based in Mir, Poland. German forces invaded Poland in September 1939. The Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland less than three weeks later. Mir was in Soviet-occupied Poland. Moses and the entire Mir Yeshiva moved to Vilna, Lithuania, so they could continue their studies without Soviet interference. When the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940, leaders of the yeshiva decided they…
In 1933-1934, the SS seized control of the Nazi camp system. Learn more about the persecution, forced labor, and murder that occurred under SS camp rule.
Germany started World War II in Europe on September 1, 1939, by invading Poland. War would continue until 1945. Learn more about WWII and genocide in Europe.
A relief organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC or Joint) was established in 1914. Learn about its activities before, during, and after WWII.
Efforts to bring the perpetrators of Nazi-era crimes to justice continue into the 21st century. Learn more about postwar trials and their legacies.
Key dates in the use of the term genocide as part of the political, legal, and ethical vocabulary of responding to widespread threats of violence against groups.
Is the “Final Solution” the same as the Holocaust? Did the Nazis always plan to murder the Jews? Learn the answer to these and other questions about the Nazi “Final Solution.”
With help from allies and collaborators, German authorities deported Jews from across Europe to killing centers. The vast majority were gassed almost immediately after their arrival in the killing centers.
Susan was 19 years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Her boyfriend, Nathan, was in Lvov when the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland. Nathan sent a guide to Warsaw to bring Susan to the Soviet zone of occupied Poland. Her parents reluctantly agreed after Susan promised to return to Warsaw within two weeks. Upon her arrival in Lvov, Susan married Nathan. The couple then fled across the Lithuanian border to Vilna, where they stayed for a year. They received a visa for transit through Japan…
Zbaszyn was the site of a refugee camp near the town of in the border region between Poland an...
Janowska was a forced labor camp for Jews in German-occupied Poland. It also served as a transit camp during the mass deportations of Polish Jews to the killing centers in 1942.
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