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After WWII and the fall of the Nazi regime, Holocaust survivors faced the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. Listen to Norman Salsitz's story.
This document is one page of a letter from artist Esther Lurie, written after the war, asking for help in following down leads and locating the artwork she had created and hidden while imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania. She wrote, "The matter concerns a collection of 200 pen-and-ink drawings representing scenes of ghetto life which I made during my internment in the Kaunas Ghetto (Lithuania) in 1941-1944. I left the drawings buried in the earth as I felt that I had no hope of survival."
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…
Henny was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania. She and her brother attended private schools. In June 1940 the Soviets occupied Lithuania, but little seemed to change until the German invasion in June 1941. The Germans sealed off a ghetto in Kovno in August 1941. Henny and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Henny married in the ghetto in November 1943; her dowry was a pound of sugar. She survived several roundups during which some of her friends and family were…
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…
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.
View an animated map of key events in the history of the Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland, from establishment by the Germans in 1940 until destruction in 1944.
Nazi Germany’s territorial expansion and the radicalization of Nazi anti-Jewish policies triggered a mass exodus. Learn about the US and the refugee crisis of 1938–41.
Explore this question to learn about the responses of leaders and citizens
After WWII and the fall of the Nazi regime, Holocaust survivors faced the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. Listen to Aron and Lisa Derman's story.
When Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became German chancellor on January 30, 1933, no step-by-step blueprint for the genocide of Jews as a “race” existed. After the outbreak of World War II, millions of Jews came und...
Consideration of American responses to Nazism during the 1930s and 1940s raises questions about the responsibility to intervene in response to persecution or genocide in another country.
US immigration and refugee laws and policies evolved in response to World War I, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and World War II and the Holocaust. Learn more.
Władysław Bartoszewski (1922–2015) was a co-founder and member of the Council for Aid to Jews, codenamed “Żegota.” Żegota was a clandestine rescue organization of Poles and Jews in German-occupied Poland. Supported by the Polish government-in-exile, Żegota coordinated efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and murder. It operated from 1942 to 1945. After World War II broke out in 1939, Władysław worked as a janitor at a Polish Red Cross clinic. In the fall of 1940, Władysław was caught…
Benno Müller-Hill, professor of genetics at the University of Cologne and the author of Murderous Science, describes the Nazi "Euthanasia" Program, with oral history excerpts from Antje Kosemund, Paul Eggert, and Elvira Manthey. Antje Kosemund had a disabled younger sister who was admitted to Alsterdorf Institute, Hamburg, December 1933, at the age of three and was subsequently killed in 1944. Paul Eggert was a resident of the orphanage section of the Dortmund-Applerbeck institution from 1942-43 where he…
Many Europeans witnessed acts of persecution, including violence against Jews and, later, deportations. While few were aware of the full extent of the Nazi "Final Solution," this history poses difficult and fundamental questions about human behavi...
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