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Gregor was born in a village in the part of Austria known as Carinthia. During World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army and was wounded. Raised a Catholic, Gregor and his wife became Jehovah's Witnesses during the late 1920s. Gregor supported his wife and six children by working as a farmer and quarryman. 1933-39: The Austrian government banned Jehovah's Witness missionary work in 1936. Gregor was accused of peddling without a license and briefly jailed. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938,…
Magdalena Kusserow, incarcerated in a special barracks for Jehovah's Witnesses in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, used stationery provided to prisoners to write a letter to her sister Annemarie in April 1942. The handwritten numbers in the block in the upper right identify Magdalena as prisoner 9591, assigned to block 17a. Magdalena wrote to her sister in part (translated from German): "Dear Annemarie. Received your letter of March 15, did you get mine? I'm fine. How did it go with Wolfgang's 2nd…
Authorities in Berlin, Germany, sent this notice to Barbara Wohlfahrt, informing her of her husband Gregor's execution on the morning of December 7, 1939. Although he was physically unfit to serve in the armed forces, the Nazis tried Wohlfahrt for his religious opposition to military service. As a Jehovah's Witness, Wohlfahrt believed that military service violated the biblical commandment not to kill. On November 8, 1939, a military court condemned Wohlfahrt to beheading, a sentence carried out one month…
In Nazi Germany, German military personnel swore an oath directly to Adolf Hitler. Learn about the oath and its impact.
The Nazis used color-coded badges sewn onto uniforms to classify prisoners in the camp system and to easily identify the alleged reason for an individual’s incarceration.
Jews were the main targets of Nazi genocide. Learn about other individuals from a broad range of backgrounds who were imprisoned in the Nazi camp system.
In 1933-1934, the SS seized control of the Nazi camp system. Learn more about the persecution, forced labor, and murder that occurred under SS camp rule.
Learn about conditions and the treatment of prisoners in Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich.
Moringen, Uckermark, and Litzmannstadt were reform camps established to confine young people who were deemed to have strayed from Nazi norms and ideals. Learn more
Behind the number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution are people whose hopes and dreams were destroyed. Learn about the toll of Nazi policies.
Explore a timeline of the history of the Flossenbürg camp in the Nazi camp system from its establishment in 1938 until liberation in 1945.
July 15, 1937. On this date, SS authorities opened the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
The Mauthausen concentration camp was established following the Nazi incorporation of Austria in 1938. Learn about the harsh conditions in the camp.
The Nazi regime's extensive camp system included concentration camps, forced-labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, transit camps, and killing centers.
Dachau was the first and longest operating Nazi concentration camp. Learn about the camp's early years, prisoners, medical experiments, and liberation.
Learn about the origins and legacy of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”
A variety of non-Jewish groups and individuals resisted the Nazi regime, both in Germany and in German-occupied territory. Learn more.
Hitler's political opponents were the first victims of systematic Nazi persecution. They were incarcerated without trial and under conditions of great cruelty.
Nazi ideology aimed to promote the myth of an ideal national community and label those who were to be excluded from it as enemies. Propaganda was essential in promoting such myths.
Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.
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