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One of six children, Chinka was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish family in the town of Ostrow Mazowiecka, where her father was a wine maker. In 1910 she married Ephraim Isaac Felman, and a few years later the couple moved to Sokolow Podlaski, where Chinka helped her husband run a grain business. The Felmans had seven children, two of whom died in infancy. 1933-39: Chinka's husband died in 1935, and she took over the grain business with the help of her children. That same year, her oldest…
Herschel was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in the Polish town of Ulanow. His father was a landowner and cattle merchant who transported calves from the Ulanow area for sale in other towns. Herschel attended a religious school from the age of 3, and started public school at age 7. 1933-39: Since Herschel was skilled with his hands, his father got him a job weaving reed baskets after he graduated from high school. Herschel was also a member of a Jewish youth organization, Benei Akiva,…
Taube, also known as Tola, was born to a Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. Her father worked as a tailor, and a wealthy uncle in Germany helped to support the large family. After finishing public school, Taube trained to be an embroiderer. She fell in love with Itzik Rosenblat, a young man who had first apprenticed with her father in 1925 when Taube was 8 years old. 1933-39: In 1938, after a 13-year courtship much opposed by her family, Taube married Itzik without getting her dowry. The couple lived in an…
Elya, also known as Eli, was the eldest of three sons born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents. When Elya was a child his family moved to the industrial city of Radom, located about 60 miles south of Warsaw. After completing school in Radom, Elya apprenticed to become a women's tailor. Eventually, he became licensed as a master tailor. 1933-39: Elya married in 1936 and had a daughter one year later. He and his wife lived on Zeromskiego Street across from Elya's younger brother, Itzik, who was also a…
Meri and her family lived in Warsaw at the time of the German invasion of Poland. After the invasion, Meri's father fled to Vilna. She joined him there in December 1939. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940, Meri's father obtained transit visas through Japan for himself and Meri. He left for Japan first, using a false identity, and arrived there in February 1941. Meri soon followed him. In Japan, Meri and her father obtained visas to enter the United States. American relief organizations…
Bella was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in Sosnowiec. Her father owned a knitting factory. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, they took over the factory. The family's furniture was given to a German woman. Bella was forced to work in a factory in the Sosnowiec ghetto in 1941. At the end of 1942 the family was deported to the Bedzin ghetto. Bella was deported to the Graeben subcamp of Gross-Rosen in 1943 and to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. She was liberated in April 1945, and…
Mieczyslaw and his family were not Jewish. When Germany invaded Poland, Mieczyslaw was working for an organization formed for self-defense against German bombings. Later, he worked for the Polish underground group ZWZ (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej; Union for Armed Struggle), which became the AK (Armia Krajowa; Home Army). In 1943, he was conscripted for forced labor at a BMW plant in Warsaw. He escaped, and participated in the Warsaw Polish uprising in August 1944. After the uprising, he left Warsaw and went…
[This video is silent] German forces entered Warsaw in September 1939. The next month, they ordered the establishment of a Jewish council (Judenrat) in the city. They chose Adam Czerniakow, a member of Warsaw's old Jewish Community Council, to lead it. Here, for German newsreels, a German propaganda company stages a meeting between Czerniakow and petitioners from the ghetto. The Germans expected Czerniakow to implement German orders, including demands for forced labor and confiscations of Jewish-owned…
A large family group celebrates the Passover seder. Lodz, Poland, ca. 1938-1939.
Forced labor in a workshop in the Monowitz camp, part of the Auschwitz camp complex. Poland, between 1941 and January 1945.
Members of the Saleschutz family do laundry in the yard of their home. Kolbuszowa, Poland, 1934.
View of barracks in the women's camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland, 1944.
Deportation from the Krakow ghetto at the time of the ghetto's liquidation. Krakow, Poland, March 1943.
View of the entrance to the "Gypsy camp" on Brzezinska Street in the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland. Photograph taken in 1942.
"Gypsy camp" area in the Lodz ghetto. Roma (Gypsies) were confined in a segregated block of buildings. Poland, 1941–44.
Deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto. Poland, August 1944.
Cremation of corpses at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This photograph was taken clandestinely by prisoners in the Sonderkommando. Poland, summer 1944.
Eugeniusz Rozenblum was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland. The Germans invaded Poland in September 1939 and in 1940 they forced the Jews of Lodz into a ghetto. In 1944, Eugeniusz was taken to Auschwitz and later to the Dachau camp. Out of the 7...
A German soldier stands on a toppled Polish monument. Krakow, Poland, 1940. This statue commemorated the Polish victory at Grunwald over the Teutonic knights in 1410. In accordance with the plans of German occupation authorities in Poland, all physical symbols of Polish national culture were to be obliterated to make way for the "Germanization" of the country.
Norbert was 3 years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. He and his mother were in Warsaw; his father had been drafted into the Polish army and later ended up in Vilna. Norbert and his mother set out to join him and the family was reunited after a few months. After the family had been in Vilna for about a year, Norbert's father was able to obtain visas for Curacao in the Dutch West Indies and visas for transit through Japan. Norbert and his parents left Vilna in January 1941, and arrived in…
Lucine was born to a Jewish family in Lublin. Her father was a court interpreter and her mother was a dentist. War began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Lucine's home was raided by German forces shortly thereafter. Soon after the German occupation of Lublin, Jews there were forced to wear a compulsory badge identifying them as Jews. A ghetto in Lublin was closed off in January 1942. Lucine survived a series of killing campaigns and deportations from the ghetto during March and…
Mieczyslaw and his family were not Jewish. When Germany invaded Poland, Mieczyslaw was working for an organization formed for self-defense against German bombings. Later, he worked for the Polish underground group ZWZ (Zwiazek Walki Zbrojnej; Union for Armed Struggle), which became the AK (Armia Krajowa; Home Army). In 1943, he was conscripted for forced labor at a BMW plant in Warsaw. He escaped, and participated in the Warsaw Polish uprising in August 1944. After the uprising, he left Warsaw and went…
Group portrait of students at the Beis Yaakov religious school for girls dressed in costumes to celebrate the holiday of Purim. Kolbuszowa, Poland, March 1938.
Yitzhak Gitterman (left), Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) director in Warsaw, meets with the representative of an Orthodox Jewish organization. Warsaw, Poland, date uncertain.
Chart indicating the workforce of the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp by category and nationality of inmates. Poland, January 16, 1945.
Postwar photograph of a building in Dabie where the possessions of Jews killed at the nearby Chelmno killing center were stored. Dabie, Poland, June 1945.
Mourners crowd around a narrow trench as coffins of pogrom victims are placed in a common grave, following a mass burial service. Kielce, Poland, after July 4, 1946.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler (right) during a visit to the Auschwitz camp. Poland, July 18, 1942.
A Warsaw ghetto resident gives money to two children on a Warsaw ghetto street. Warsaw, Poland, between October 1940 and April 1943.
Mordecai Gebirtig, Yiddish folk poet and songwriter, was born in 1877 in Krakow, Poland. Gebirtig was confined in the Krakow ghetto in March 1942. He wrote "Our Springtime" in April 1942. The lyrics describe the bleakness and despair of ghetto life.
SS troops lead a group of Poles into the forest near Witaniow for execution. Witaniow, Poland, October–November 1939.
The execution of Poles in the Barbarka Forest by members of the Selbstschutz (ethnic German self-defense organization). An SS officer can be seen standing in the background. Torun, Bydgoszcz, Poland, October 1939.
Lisa was born to a Jewish family in the small city of Ostrog in southeastern Poland. Her parents operated a grocery out of their residence; the front half of the house was a store and the rear half was their home. Ostrog was an important center of Jewish religious learning in Poland, and by 1933 Jews made up almost two-thirds of the city's total population. 1933-39: Lisa's family was religious and they regularly attended services. Lisa studied at a Polish school until the Soviets arrived in September…
Polish women from the Pawiak and Mokotow prisons in nearby Warsaw are led into the Palmiry forest for execution by SS personnel.The original caption reads: "Their Nazi executioners leading a group of Polish women, according to the information attached to this picture which was just received through Polish sources. Hundreds of cvilians, men, women and even young children are said to be systematically 'eliminated' under the Nazi scheme of things in war-torn Poland". Palmiry Forest, Poland,…
This large, lidded wooden chest was used by the Council for Aid to Jews (codenamed “Żegota”) to hide false identity documents from Nazi authorities. Żegota was an underground rescue organization of Poles and Jews in German-occupied Poland and operated from December 1942 to January 1945. Supported by the Polish government-in-exile, it coordinated efforts to save Jews in German-occupied Poland from Nazi persecution and murder. One of Żegota’s most impactful clandestine activities was producing and…
Beginning in 1941, the Germans deported Jews in Germany to the occupied eastern territories. At first, they deported thousands of Jews to ghettos in Poland and the Baltic states. Those deported would share the fate of local Jews. Later, many deportation transports from Germany went directly to the killing centers in occupied Poland. In this footage, a German propaganda unit films recent arrivals from Magdeburg, Germany, in a collection center run by the Jewish council in the Warsaw ghetto. In July 1942,…
View of a section of the barbed-wire fence and barracks at Auschwitz at the time of the liberation of the camp. Auschwitz, Poland, January 1945. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz and liberated more than six thousand prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying.
A German postcard showing the entrance to the Lodz ghetto. The sign reads "Jewish residential area—entry forbidden." Signs forbidding entrance to Poles and Germans were posted at all entrances to the ghetto. Lodz, Poland, 1940–1941.
Photo taken a few weeks before World War II began. Regina is at the right of the front row. Kunow, Poland, July 28, 1939.
Family portrait of the Gartenberg family in Drohobycz, Poland. None of those pictured would survive the Holocaust. Photograph taken in 1930. Top row: Julius Gartenberg, Anna Fern, Bernard Klinger, Ona Fern and Izador Gartenberg. Lower row: Marcus Gartenberg, Hinda Gartenberg with her grandaughter Tony Schwartz on her lap, Sol Schwartz, and Ida Fern.
Polish civilians under SS and Selbstschutz (ethnic German self-defense organization) guard are forced to dig a mass grave prior to their execution in the forest near Tuchola. Tuchola Forest, Bydgoszcz, Poland, October 27, 1939.
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