Assembly point in the Warsaw ghetto

An assembly point (the Umschlagplatz) in the Warsaw ghetto for Jews rounded up for deportation. Warsaw, Poland, 1942–43.

Chart of Prisoner Markings

A chart of prisoner markings used in German concentration camps. Dachau, Germany, ca. 1938–1942. Beginning in 1937–1938, the SS created a system of marking prisoners in concentration camps. Sewn onto uniforms, the color-coded badges identified the reason for an individual’s incarceration, with some variation among camps. The Nazis used this chart illustrating prisoner markings in the Dachau concentration camp.  

Prisoners of the Camps

Prisoners of the Camps - Photograph

Lesbians under the Nazi Regime

Beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime harassed and destroyed lesbian communities and networks that had developed during the Weimar Republic.

Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign against Homosexuality

Paragraph 175 was a German statute that criminalized sexual relations between men. The Nazis revised Paragraph 175 in 1935 to make it broader and harsher.

Postwar Refugee Crisis and the Establishment of the State of Israel

During World War II, the Nazis deported between seven and nine million Europeans, mostly to Germany. Within months of Germany's surrender in May 1945, the Allies repatriated to their home countries more than six million displaced persons (DPs; wartime refugees). Between 1.5 million and two million DPs refused repatriation. Most Jewish survivors, who had survived concentration camps or had been in hiding, were unable or unwilling to return to eastern Europe because of postwar antisemitism and the…

Erika Eckstut

Explore Erika Eckstut's biography and learn about the difficulties and dangers she faced in the Czernowitz ghetto.

Deportations to and from the Warsaw Ghetto

At its height, the Warsaw ghetto held over 400,000 people living in horrendous and worsening conditions. Learn about deportations both to and from the ghetto.

Frima L. describes escape from mobile killing unit massacre

While Frima's family was confined to a ghetto, Nazis used her father as an interpreter. He later perished. By pretending not to be Jews, Frima, her mother, and sister escaped a German mobile killing unit massacre. They were later discovered and jailed. Again, her mother devised an escape. Frima's mother and sister were smuggled to Romania, while Frima wandered in search of safekeeping until her mother could arrange to smuggle her out. In Romania, they were reunited and liberated.