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Amid intensifying anti-Jewish measures and the 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom, Johanna's family decided to leave Germany. They obtained visas for Albania, crossed into Italy, and sailed in 1939. They remained in Albania under the Italian occupation and, after Italy surrendered in 1943, under German occupation. The family was liberated after a battle between the Germans and Albanian partisans in December 1944.
Hanne's family owned a photographic studio. In October 1940, she and other family members were deported to the Gurs camp in southern France. In September 1941, the Children's Aid Society (OSE) rescued Hanne and she hid in a children's home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Her mother perished in Auschwitz. In 1943, Hanne obtained false papers and crossed into Switzerland. She married in Geneva in 1945 and had a daughter in 1946. In 1948, she arrived in the United States.
Helen was the oldest of three sisters. Her father owned a soap factory. After the Germans attacked Poland in 1939, they took over all Jewish businesses. Helen and her family fled from Lodz to a town between Lodz and Warsaw. After two years, in 1942, Helen's father heard that the Jews in the town to which they had fled were to be deported to labor camps. He bought false papers for Helen and her youngest sister. All three sisters survived the war.
The Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941. In October, Rochelle and her family were confined to the Vilna ghetto, where her mother died. Her father, a Jewish council member, was killed in a camp in Estonia. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, Rochelle and her sister were deported--first to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof, near Danzig. In 1945, on the sixth week of a death march that forced the sisters to protect their bare feet with rags, the Soviet army liberated them.
A Polish soldier, Samuel was wounded in action and taken by Germany as a prisoner of war. As the war continued, he and other Jewish prisoners received increasingly harsh treatment. Among the camps in which he was interned was Lublin-Lipowa, where he was among those forced to build the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1942, he escaped from the Germans, spending the rest of the war as the leader of an armed partisan group.
Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.
In 1939, as Chaim's tour in the Polish army was nearing its scheduled end, Germany invaded Poland. The Germans captured Chaim and sent him to Germany for forced labor. As a Jewish prisoner of war, Chaim later was returned to Poland. Ultimately, he was deported to the Sobibor camp, where the rest of his family died. In the 1943 Sobibor uprising, Chaim killed a guard. He escaped with his girlfriend, Selma, whom he later married. A farmer hid them until liberation by Soviet forces in June 1944.
Charles Torluccio is a veteran of the 11th Armored Division. During the invasion of German-held Austria, in May 1945 the 11th Armored (the "Thunderbolt" division) overran two of the largest Nazi concentration camps in the country: Mauthausen and Gusen.
Darrell Romjue is a veteran of the 11th Armored Division. During the invasion of German-held Austria, in May 1945 the 11th Armored (the "Thunderbolt" division) overran two of the largest Nazi concentration camps in the country: Mauthausen and Gusen.
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…
Benno Müller-Hill, professor of Genetics, University of Cologne, and author of Murderous Science, discusses genetics and eugenics. [Photo credits: Getty Images, New York City; Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie), Historisches Archiv, Bildersammlung GDA, Munich; Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Germany; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna; Kriemhild Synder: Die Landesheilanstalt Uchtspringe und ihre Verstrickung in…
Before joining the US Army, Zeck—a lawyer—worked for the Board of Economic Warfare. In 1946, he was hired to work on preparations for the Nuremberg trials. In his search for documents pertaining to the I. G. Farben company's involvement in the war, Zeck also met attorney Belle Mayer, his future wife. Both Zeck and Mayer were involved in preparing the indictment in the I. G. Farben trial held at Nuremberg.
In 1945, Robert Mills Donihi was practicing law in Nashville, Tennessee. He accepted a government assignment to Tokyo where he worked on the trial of 28 high-ranking Japanese officers. After a year, he left for Germany, and arrived in Nuremberg in January 1947. Donihi was a member of the legal team at the postwar US trials in Germany, serving as both an interrogator and a prosecutor.
In 1945, Robert Mills Donihi was practicing law in Nashville, Tennessee. He accepted a government assignment to Tokyo where he worked on the trial of 28 high-ranking Japanese officers. After a year, he left for Germany, and arrived in Nuremberg in January 1947. Donihi was a member of the legal team at the postwar US trials in Germany, serving as both an interrogator and a prosecutor.
John Dolibois immigrated to the United States in 1931 at the age of 13. After graduating from college, Dolibois joined the 16th Armored Division of the US Army. Due to his German language skills, he became involved in military intelligence. He returned to Europe in this capacity toward the end of World War II. Dolibois interrogated German prisoners of war, including leading Nazis, in preparation for the postwar trials of war criminals. He was later appointed US ambassador to Luxembourg, his birthplace.
Shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, William's family was ordered into a ghetto and his brother went to a work camp. William bribed officials to discharge his brother from a hospital destined for evacuation to Auschwitz. Later, after escaping from a prison camp to tend to his brother, William was jailed. He was sent to Blechhammer, Gleiwitz (where he met his future wife), and other camps. William collapsed during a death march near the Austrian border, but was then liberated. His…
Gary (Gerhard) was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1924. His father owned a men’s clothing store. As a child, Gary faced antisemitism from his peers. His family’s store was boycotted several times, and ultimately destroyed in 1938 during Kristallnacht. As the city prepared for tourists to arrive in Berlin for the 1936 Olympics, Gary noticed anti-Jewish signs vanish from storefronts. In 1939, Gary and his parents escaped Germany after securing passage to Shanghai, China. His father died of illness in…
Elizabeth and her family were in Paris when war began. As the Germans advanced in 1940, she and her mother fled southward. Elizabeth eventually reached Le Chambon, where she helped care for children sheltered by the town's pastor, Andre Trocme, and his wife. In late 1941 her father was among 1,000 intellectuals who received special US visas from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The family escaped from France in 1942 on one of the last passenger ships to cross the Atlantic during the war.
Learn more about Jewish resistance efforts in the smaller ghettos of eastern Europe and the obstacles and limitations Jews faced.
Explore a timeline of key events related to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times.
In 1942, German authorities began to deport German and Austrian Jews to Theresienstadt. Learn about the administration of the camp-ghetto and Jews’ experiences.
Between 1933-1945, Latin American governments officially permitted approx. 84,000 Jewish refugees. Learn more about Latin America refugee policy.
Learn more about the 1936 German Supreme Court decision on the Nuremberg Race Laws.
World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945, when the Allies defeated the Axis powers. Learn about key invasions and events during WWII, also known as the Second World War.
While living under an assumed identity after escaping from the Lvov ghetto, Selma Schwarzwald received a toy bear that she kept with her for many years. Read about Refugee the bear.
The "Jewish boycott" ("Judenboykott") of April 1, 1933, was the first coordinated action undertaken by the Nazi regime against Germany’s Jews. Learn more.
The Nazis used public humiliation tactics to degrade their victims and to reinforce Nazi racial ideology for German citizens and populations under Nazi occupation.
Learn more about Rudolf (Rezső) Kasztner (1906-1957) during World War II and his controversial efforts to help refugees escape Hungary in 1944.
Article 48 allowed the German president to declare a state of emergency in times of national danger and effectively to rule as a dictator for short periods. Learn about its far-reaching effects.
The trauma of WWI would profoundly shape the attitudes and actions of leaders and ordinary people during the Holocaust. Learn more about the aftermath of the conflict.
In the 1930s, famous Tennessee jazz musician Valaida Snow was known as “Little Louis” because her talent with a trumpet rivaled the legendary Louis Armstrong. She performed around the world, but it was a tour of Europe that would haunt her for the rest of her life. While in German-occupied Denmark, Snow is said to have been arrested and imprisoned in Copenhagen. It is still unclear why she was arrested or what was done to her while she was held, but after her release in a May 1942 prisoner exchange,…
US prosecutor Thomas Dodd introduces the film compilation "Nazi Concentration Camps." At the end of the courtroom scene shown here, the lights are dimmed for the screening. The footage, filmed as Allied troops liberated the concentration camps, was presented in the courtroom on November 29, 1945, and entered as evidence in the trial.
Drexel Sprecher was educated at the University of Wisconsin, the London School of Economics, and at the Harvard School of Law before receiving a position at the US Government's Labor Board in 1938. He enlisted in the American military after the United States declared war on Germany, and was posted to London. After the war, Sprecher served as a prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
Photograph of the water tower of the Old Town Mills in Prague. After her deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, Helene Reik yearned to record what was happening to her. This photograph was sent to Helene, who used it as paper for her diary in Theresienstadt. Helene’s makeshift diary offers wistful memories of her husband and parents who died before the war, loving thoughts of her family who had left Europe in 1939, and a firsthand account of the illness and hospitalization that…
Chart with the title "Die Nürnberger Gesetze" [Nuremberg Race Laws]. In the fall of 1935, German Jews lost their citizenship according to the definitions posed in these new regulations. Only "full" Germans were entitled to the full protection of the law. This chart was used to aid Germans in understanding the laws. White circles represent "Aryan" Germans, black circles represent Jews, and partially shaded circles represent “mixed raced” individuals. The chart has columns explaining the…
Illustrated page of a child's diary written in a Swiss refugee camp. The diary entry describes how they crossed the border into Switzerland. The text reads, "We came out of the woods and into a clearing: we had to be as quiet as possible because we were so close to the border. Oh! I almost forgot! Before we came out of the woods, they made us stand still for a quarter of an hour while they went to explore the area and to cut through the fence. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, we began to walk again. We saw…
Illustrated page of a child's diary written in a Swiss refugee camp. The diary entry describes how they crossed the border into Switzerland. The text reads, "We came out of the woods and into a clearing: we had to be as quiet as possible because we were so close to the border. Oh! I almost forgot! Before we came out of the woods, they made us stand still for a quarter of an hour while they went to explore the area and to cut through the fence. Fortunately, shortly thereafter, we began to walk again. We saw…
Photograph taken in May 1915 of Helene Reik's children. After her deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, Helene yearned to record what was happening to her. This photograph was sent to Helene, who used it as paper for her diary in Theresienstadt. Helene’s makeshift diary offers wistful memories of her husband and parents who died before the war, loving thoughts of her family who had left Europe in 1939, and a firsthand account of the illness and hospitalization that ultimately…
Photograph showing Margarida, Helene Reik's granddaughter, playing on a field in Teresopolis, Brazil, in April 1940. After her deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, Helene yearned to record what was happening to her. This photograph was sent to Helene, who used it as paper for her diary in Theresienstadt. Helene’s makeshift diary offers wistful memories of her husband and parents who died before the war, loving thoughts of her family who had left Europe in 1939, and a firsthand…
Founded by ethnic Turks in 1299, the Ottoman Empire took its name from Osman I, the leader of what was initially a small principality in northwestern Anatolia (Asia Minor). Over the course of the next six centuries, Ottoman rule expanded across much of the Mediterranean Basin. At the height of its power under Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), the Ottoman Empire represented a vast multilingual and multiethnic realm encompassing southeastern Europe, North and East Africa, Western Asia, and the Caucasus.…
The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. Sometimes called "the longest hatred," it has persisted in many forms for over 2,000 years. Learn more.
Learn more about the Western Desert campaign during World War II in Egypt and Libya between 1940-1943.
Learn more about the unique SS and police structure of the Theresienstadt “camp-ghetto” during World War II.
Learn more about Nazi racism and racial antisemitism. These prejudices were at the core of Nazi ideology, policies, and practices. They led to murder on a mass scale.
Under the most adverse conditions, Jewish prisoners initiated resistance and uprisings in some of the ghettos and camps, including Bialystok, Warsaw, Treblinka, and Sobibor.
Learn more about pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and about the annexation of Czechoslovak territory by Nazi Germany in 1938.
During the Holocaust, some children went into hiding to escape Nazi persecution. They faced constant fear, dilemmas, and danger.
At the beginning of WWII, people with mental or physical disabilities were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the T-4, or "euthanasia," program.
The voyage of the St. Louis, a German ocean liner, dramatically highlights the difficulties faced by many people trying to escape Nazi terror. Learn more.
Learn more about the end of Nazi tyranny in Europe and the liberation of camps and other sites of Nazi crimes. This article includes dates of liberation of some of the camps.
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