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Germany started World War II in Europe on September 1, 1939, by invading Poland. War would continue until 1945. Learn more about WWII and genocide in Europe.
Kovno had a rich and varied Jewish culture. Learn about the Soviet and German occupations of Kovno, ghettoization, secret archives, and resistance in Kovno during WWII and the Holocaust.
Paul von Hindenburg was President of the Weimar Republic from 1925 until his death in 1934. Learn more about his life and role in the Nazi rise to power.
June 6, 1944. On this date, US, British, and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy, France.
David Bayer lived in Kozienice, Poland. Explore his biography and learn about his experiences during World War II and the Holocaust.
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…
Zofia Burowska (Chorowicz) donated this doll, which dates from the 1930s, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Zofia's parents gave her the doll before the war and she kept it with her in the Wolbrum and Krakow ghettos, Poland. The doll and some of her family's other belongings were left with non-Jewish friends for safekeeping. Zofia was deported to a forced-labor camp for Jews near Krakow, to the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp (also in Poland), and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany,…
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…
US prosecutor Thomas Dodd introduces the film compilation "Nazi Concentration Camps." At the end of the courtroom scene shown here, the lights are dimmed for the screening. The footage, filmed as Allied troops liberated the concentration camps, was presented in the courtroom on November 29, 1945, and entered as evidence in the trial.
German Einsatzgruppen operated in German-occupied territories in eastern Europe during World War II. This rare footage shows a unit during a massacre in Liepaja, Latvia. The film was taken, contrary to orders, by a German soldier. Before the war, the Jewish population of Liepaja stood at more than 7,000 residents. Einsatzgruppen shot almost the entire Jewish population of the town. When the Soviet army liberated the city in 1945, just 20 to 30 Jews remained. Einsatzgruppen carried out various security…
Japanese forces took the Philippine islands between December 1941 and May 1942. After US naval victory in the Battle of Midway (June 1942), Allied forces slowly gained naval and air supremacy in the Pacific war. In October 1944, US forces began the liberation of the Philippines. The campaign on Luzon, largest and most northern of the islands, began in December 1944. This battle footage shows many Japanese soldiers being taken as prisoners of war.
Allied air superiority over Germany was a decisive factor in the success of the D-Day (June 6, 1944) landings in France. This footage shows the Allied bombing of suspected German positions during the battle. Allied air attacks both supported Allied ground operations in Normandy and prevented German reinforcements from reaching the area. The Allies would liberate most of France by the end of August 1944.
The Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany following its defeat in World War I, declared Danzig to be a free city jointly administered by Poland and the League of Nations. Germany bitterly resented the loss of this largely German city, which was also an important port on the Baltic Sea. The return of Danzig to Germany became a central focus of Adolf Hitler's foreign policy. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. After the invasion of Poland, Germany unilaterally annexed Danzig. This German newsreel…
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman assigned as a diplomat to Sweden's embassy in Budapest, led one of the most extensive and successful rescue efforts during the Holocaust. Supported by the American War Refugee Board (WRB) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Wallenberg protected tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, issuing documents testifying that the Jews were under the protection of neutral Sweden. Diplomats from other neutral countries also participated in the rescue effort. Carl…
Thomas (left), 6 months after liberation, with a soldier who realized that Thomas was Jewish and took him to an orphanage, ca. 1945. Thomas was eventually reunited with his mother. With the end of World War II and collapse of the Nazi regime, survivors of the Holocaust faced the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. With little in the way of financial resources and few, if any, surviving family members, most eventually emigrated from Europe to start their lives again. Between 1945 and 1952, more than…
Learn how the rise of nationalism in Europe (1800–1918) resulted in new forms of prejudice against Jews based on political, social, and economic considerations.
Learn more about the Nazi forced labor and mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) during World War II.
Benjamin Meed, member of the resistance in Warsaw and later a leader of the survivor community, was a founder of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Children's diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of Karolina Dresler.
Young people's diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of Jakub Lapides.
Learn more about how and why Nazi German SS and police units, including the Einsatzgruppen, perpetrated mass killings of Jews in the occupied-Soviet Union.
The American Jewish Congress led anti-Nazi protest rallies in the 1930s and 1940s. Learn about the AJC's creation, leadership, activities, and rescue efforts.
The US Army Signal Corps had a crucial role in documenting—in both film and photographs—the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust.
Explore a timeline of the history of the Ravensbrück camp in the Nazi camp system from its establishment in 1938 until the last of the Ravensbrück trials in 1966.
Leon Jakubowicz began constructing a model of the Lodz ghetto in the spring of 1940, after the ghetto was sealed. Explore the artifact and Leon's story.
During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), eugenics gained popularity in Germany. Learn more about the pseudoscience of “racial hygiene.”
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Faye Schulman.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Allen Small.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Shalom Yoran.
After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Read about Landsberg DP camp.
After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Read about Cinecittà DP camp.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Leah Johnson.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Rae Kushner.
US radio and TV journalist Edward R. Murrow reported live from London during the Blitz; he also broadcast the first eyewitness account of the liberation of Buchenwald.
Three couples pose with their babies in the Gabersee displaced persons (DP) camp in Germany, 1947. In the center are David and Bella Perl (later spelled Pearl), who met and married after the war, with their daughter, Rachel. During the Holocaust, Bella Scheiner and her family were deported to Auschwitz. From there, she was sent to forced labor at Reichenbach, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen. Bella met David—who had lost his wife and child during the war—while working at a photography studio after…
Karl Höcker’s album shows SS officers at events ranging from ceremonies to social gatherings, in stark contrast to other photographs from Auschwitz. Learn more.
Zimbabwe has experienced multiple episodes of mass atrocities since 1980. One of the most severe was the Gukurahundi massacres (1983-1987). Learn more.
Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier…
In 1940, the Nazis established Gusen concentration camp. Learn more about camp conditions, forced labor, and liberation.
After WWII and the fall of the Nazi regime, Holocaust survivors faced the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. Listen to Thomas Buergenthal's story.
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.
In 1939, Gerda's brother was deported for forced labor. In June 1942, Gerda's family was deported from the Bielsko ghetto. While her parents were transported to Auschwitz, Gerda was sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system, where for the remainder of the war she performed forced labor in textile factories. Gerda was liberated after a death march, wearing the ski boots her father insisted would help her to survive. She married her American liberator.
Naftali was the youngest of nine children born to devout Hasidic Jewish parents living in Kolbuszowa. The Germans invaded his town in September 1939 and began to round up Jews. Later, the Gestapo (German secret state police) shot Naftali's father. Naftali eventually made his way to the forest and lived there as a partisan before liberation by Soviet troops in mid-1944. He joined the Polish army, helping to liberate Krakow. He immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Wilek was the son of Jewish parents living in the southeastern Polish town of Lvov. His family owned and operated a winery that had been in family hands since 1870. Wilek's father died of a heart attack in 1929. Wilek entered secondary school in 1939. Soon after he began school, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. Lvov was in the part of eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets took over Wilek's home and the family business, Wilek was able to continue his…
In 1940, the Nazis established Lublin (Majdanek) concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. Learn more about camp conditions.
In 1933, Nazi students at more than 30 German universities pillaged libraries in search of boo...
Learn more about the forcible relocation of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent living in the US to “relocation centers.”
Elie Wiesel was a human rights activist, author, and teacher who reflected on his experience during the Holocaust in more than 40 books. Learn more.
Edith's parents owned a cotton factory in the town of Wegrow [in Poland]. The Goldmans were a religious family, and raised Edith, her brother and three sisters to strictly observe the Sabbath, Jewish holidays and the dietary laws. 1933-39: Edith attended public school, and also studied at the Beis Yakov religious school for girls where she learned Hebrew, the Bible and Jewish history. Her favorite hobby was knitting, and after finishing secondary school she learned the quilt-making trade. In the…
Tonie's parents came to the Netherlands from Germany in the 1880s, and their six children were born in Amsterdam. As a child, Tonie studied the piano, and she excelled in French. When she married Abraham Soep, a diamond manufacturer, Tonie adopted her husband's observant Jewish practices. Their three children were born in 1919, 1923, and 1924. 1933-39: Tonie's husband served for many years as the president of the Amsterdam Jewish community. The Soeps had a large and comfortable home. Tonie and Abraham…
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