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The motto of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Lodz ghetto Jewish council: "Our only path [to survival] is [through] work." Lodz, Poland, wartime.
On September 5, 1942, the SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw District issued this announcement threatening the death penalty for anyone who aided Jews who had left the ghetto without authorization. This poster was put up in the wake of the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center in summer 1942. SS officials were well aware that thousands of Jews had fled the ghetto to go into hiding and urged people to turn them in. The poster reminds the city's non-Jewish…
Born to Jewish parents in Poland, Gisha Galina Bursztyn moved to the city of Warsaw after she married. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Warsaw fell four weeks later, and a ghetto was set up in November 1940. During a massive roundup i...
Program for an evening performance sponsored by the Shanghai Jewish Club. The program included the play "The Day of His Return" and a concert of Jewish songs. On April 27, 1943, the day of this performance featuring Warsaw Jewish actress Raya Zomina, fierce fighting continued in the Warsaw ghetto between German troops and Jews who chose to resist Nazi efforts to liquidate the ghetto. Terrifying rumors about the Holocaust reached the Jewish refugees in Shanghai, but they did not receive reliable news or…
October 29, 1941. On this date, German SS and police and Lithuanian police murdered 9,200 residents of the Kovno ghetto in Fort IX, Lithuania.
Germany occupied Kovno, Lithuania on June 24, 1941. Within six months, German Einsatzgruppe detachments and Lithuanian collaborations had murdered half of the city's Jews. Between July and August 15, 1941, German authorities concentrated some 29,000 of Kovno's Jews into a ghetto. Learn about the experiences of Jews in Kovno after Germany occupied the city.
Gertruda Nowak was born to a Roman Catholic family in Poland. The Germans invaded her country on September 1, 1939. Gertruda's father was later accused of working for the Polish underground and taken away. The Germans then came for the rest of the...
Group portrait of teenage boys in the Lodz ghetto. Dawid Sierakowiak is in the 3rd row, 4th from right. Dawid kept a diary from before the war where he meticulously noted not only events but also his own feelings, moods, and opinions. Dawid was an avid reader and an excellent observer.
An underground bunker, built by Jews in Warsaw in preparation for anti-Nazi resistance. This photograph shows cooking facilities in a bunker. Jews hid in bunkers while the Germans systematically destroyed the ghetto during the uprising. Warsaw, Poland, April 19–May 16, 1943.
The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.
Wartime portrait of Andrzej Klimowicz, Poland. Andrzej Klimowicz (1918–1996) aided and rescued Jews in Warsaw throughout the duration of the German occupation of Poland. He eventually became a member of the Council for Aid to Jews (codenamed “Żegota”), a clandestine organization that coordinated efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and murder. Under the auspices of Żegota, Andrzej played a role in providing Jews in Warsaw with forged identity papers and hiding places outside the walls of the…
Jacob Edelstein, chairman of the Jewish council in Theresienstadt. He was deported, and shot in Auschwitz in 1944. Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, 1942–1943.
Dosia, her older sister and parents lived on her grandfather's estate in the town of Ozorkow, eight miles from Lodz. Dosia's parents were secular Jews. They spoke both Polish and Yiddish to each other, but only Polish to their children. Dosia's father worked as an accountant, and her mother was active in organizing charity events for several of Ozorkow's Jewish organizations. 1933-39: A few days after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Dosia saw the Polish army retreat through Ozorkow, carrying their wounded…
A child's dress embroidered with red and blue flowers with small green leaves. This dress was hand embroidered by Lola Kaufman's mother in the Czortkow ghetto. Lola (born Lea Rein) wore this dress when she went into hiding. Lola was hidden first under a bed in the house of the woman who used to deliver milk to the family, then in a dugout under a cellar of a barn where she joined three other Jews in hiding. In March 1944, the Soviets liberated the area. The hidden Jews left their hideout in the middle of…
The word genocide did not exist prior to 1944. The term was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphel Lemkin, who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic mass murder during the Holocaust, including the destruction of European Jews.
One of nine children, Hela grew up in the Polish capital of Warsaw. Her father was an art and antique furniture dealer and had a store on Marszalkowska Street. Every year, from the beginning of the summer break until the Jewish High Holidays in the fall, the Los family vacationed in the town of Miedzeszyn, located a short train ride's distance from Warsaw. 1933-39: Hela and her family were still at their vacation home when the Germans entered Warsaw on September 28, 1939. As soon as it became possible,…
Mendel was one of six children born to a religious Jewish family. When Mendel was in his early 20s, he married and moved with his wife to her hometown of Wolomin, near Warsaw. One week after the Rozenblits' son, Avraham, was born, Mendel's wife died. Distraught after the death of his young wife and left to care for a baby, Mendel married his sister-in-law Perele. 1933-39: In Wolomin Mendel ran a lumber yard. In 1935 the Rozenblits had a daughter, Tovah. When Avraham and Tovah were school age, they began…
September 5, 1942. On this date, Germans issued this poster announcing the death penalty for anyone found aiding Jews who fled the Warsaw ghetto.
The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust was a German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish…
Photograph from SS General Juergen Stroop's report showing the Warsaw ghetto after the German suppression of the ghetto uprising. Stroop, commander of German forces that suppressed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, compiled an album of photographs and other materials. This album later came to known as "The Stroop Report." The right of this image from the album shows a column of Jews being transported out of the ghetto for deportation. Warsaw, Poland, April–May, 1943.
In response to growing international awareness of Nazi atrocities, the Nazis decided to allow a Red Cross investigation committee to visit the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Elaborate measures were taken to disguise conditions in the ghetto and to portray an atmosphere of normalcy. This footage, showing an orchestral performance, is part of a German propaganda film made following the Red Cross visit to Theresienstadt.
Juergen Stroop (third from left), SS commander who crushed the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, between April 19 and May 16, 1943.
Jews from the Lodz ghetto are forced to transfer to a narrow-gauge railroad at Kolo during deportation to the Chelmno killing center. Kolo, Poland, probably 1942.
Germany occupied the Polish city of Tarnow in 1939. Deportations from Tarnow began in June 1942, first to the Belzec killing center. Following the June deportations, the Germans forced the surviving Jews in Tarnow, as well as Jews from nearby town...
During the 1943 liquidation of the Lvov ghetto, dozens of Jews fled into the city sewers to escape death. Eight-year-old Krystyna Chiger (later Kristine Keren) hid with her family and 16 others beneath the city's streets for 14 months, during which she wore this sweater.
Portrait of Janek Goldstein, in pencil, by Yonia Fain. Goldstein, a friend of the artist in Shanghai, was the son of Bernard Goldstein, who was active in the Bundist underground of the Warsaw ghetto and participated in the 1943 uprising. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]
SS and Police Leader Juergen Stroop interrogates two Jews arrested during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943.
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