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Martin Weiss and his family were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Explore Marty’s biography and his description of arrival in Auschwitz.
Explore Estelle Laughlin’s biography and learn about her experiences during the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
Explore Erika Eckstut's biography and learn about the difficulties and dangers she faced in the Czernowitz ghetto.
Explore Gideon Frieder’s biography and learn about his experiences as a child during the Holocaust in Slovakia.
Explore Manya Friedmann’s biography and listen to her describe her experiences following the liberation of Auschwitz.
What were the Nuremberg Race Laws? On September 15, 1935, the Nazi regime announced two new laws: The Reich Citizenship Law The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor These laws informally became known as the Nuremberg Laws or Nuremberg Race Laws. This is because they were first announced at a Nazi Party rally held in the German city of Nuremberg. Why did the Nazis enact the Nuremberg Race Laws? The Nuremberg Race LawsThe Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, because they…
The Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD) was a Nazi intelligence agency. Ideologically radical and part of the SS, it was a key perpetrator of the Holocaust.
Learn more about the July 20 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, including some of the motivations of the participants.
An underground courier for the Polish government-in-exile, Jan Karski was one of the first to deliver eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to Allied leaders.
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin under Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship were more than just a worldwide sporting event, they were also a show of Nazi propaganda.
The city of Łódź (Lodz) is located about 85 miles southwest of Warsaw, Poland. The Jews of Lodz formed the second largest Jewish community in prewar Poland, after Warsaw. German troops occupied Lodz on September 8, 1939. This was one week after Germany invaded Poland on September 1. Lodz was annexed to Germany as part of the Warthegau. The Germans renamed the city Litzmannstadt, after a German World War I general, Karl Litzmann. The Lodz Ghetto In early February 1940, the Germans established a ghetto…
The Germans established an internment camp at Drancy in August 1941. The following summer, Drancy became the main transit camp for deportations of Jews from France.
The German-Soviet Pact paved the way for the joint invasion and occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939.
The Burmese military has targeted the Rohingya people because of their ethnic and religious identity. The military’s actions constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. Learn more
Almost one third of the six million Holocaust victims were murdered in mass shootings.
"We Will Never Die" was a 1943 musical stage performance that raised awareness among Americans about the murder of European Jews. Learn more.
At Babyn Yar in late September 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries perpetrated one of the largest massacres of World War II.
The Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo) was a new German police organization created by SS leader and Chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler in 1936. The Security Police united the criminal police (Kripo) and the political police (Gestapo). It was closely aligned with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the intelligence agency of the SS. The institution and individuals of the Security Police were major perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Jozef Tiso was a Slovak politician and a Roman Catholic priest. From 1939 to 1945, he was the president of the Slovak Republic, one of Nazi Germany’s allies.
Léon Degrelle was an extreme right-wing Belgian politician and Nazi collaborator. Learn more.
Learn about the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
A leading researcher of sex, sexuality, and gender, German Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld was forced to live in exile after the Nazi rise to power.
Young people's diaries capture some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of David Sierakowiak.
The Grafeneck T4 Center was the first centralized killing center to be established by German authorities within the context of the Nazi “euthanasia,” or T4, program.
Read about the Nazi persecution of Afro-Germans, as well as the experiences of African Americans in Nazi Germany.
Hitler rose to power during a time of economic and political instability in Germany. Learn more about how and when Hitler came to power.
The Anschluss, Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938, was the Nazi German regime’s first act of territorial aggression and expansion. Learn more.
The Einsatzgruppen Case was Case #9 of 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings against leading German industrialists, military figures, SS perpetrators, and others.
Each of Germany’s six European Axis allies participated in the “Final Solution” by murdering Jews or by transferring them to German custody. Learn more.
Background On December 16, 1944, the German military launched the “Battle of the Bulge.” It was a last-ditch German military counter-offensive against the Allied armies in the West. Hitler hoped that the German counter-attack would split the British and American armies, allow his forces to capture the port city of Antwerp, and ultimately stall the Allied offensive against Germany. On the day after the German offensive began, Waffen SS units captured and murdered more than 80 US soldiers and Belgian…
Between 1938 and 1941, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, bringing millions of Jews under its control. The United States remained neutral during this period. Though many Americans were sympathetic to the plight of Europe’s Jews, the majority did not want to increase immigration, nor see the United States become involved in World War II.
In 1946-48, the British government intercepted tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors seeking to reach Palestine and held them in detention camps on Cyprus.
Judaism is a monotheistic religion, believing in one god. It is not a racial group. Individual...
After the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked US forces at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, bringing th
American journalist, foreign correspondent, author, and pioneer radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was one of the key observers and chroniclers of the Nazi regime.
Many German businesses were involved in the policies of the Third Reich. Learn about Topf and Sons, which sold ovens to the SS for major concentration camps in Germany.
Learn about the history of discrimination against Roma in Europe and how the Nazi regime committed genocide against European Roma during WWII.
Learn about some key dates in the life of Adolf Hitler, one of Europe's most ruthless dictators, who led the Nazis from 1921 and Germany from 1933-45.
Blood libels were false allegations that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children in rituals. Nazi propagandists used this false charge in their antisemitic propaganda.
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.
The Oneg Shabbat underground archive was the secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto. The term One...
During WWII, the Children’s Aid Society (OSE) operated 14 children's homes throughout France to save Jewish children from internment and deportation to killing centers.
After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Read about Kloster Indersdorf DP camp.
Before the Nazi rise to power, the countries of Europe had varied and vibrant Jewish communities. By 1945, two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
At the Berga-Elster subcamp of Buchenwald, prisoners were forced to do dangerous and brutal work in tunnels to support fuel production for the German war effort.
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