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Jozef Wilk: Maps
Media EssayBorn to Roman Catholic parents in Poland, Jozef Wilk was a teenager when Germany invaded in 1939. Jozef left for Warsaw and joined a special unit of the Polish resistance. During the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Joz...
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Abraham Blum
PhotoAbraham Blum, leader of the Bund (Jewish Socialist party) and member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). Blum participated in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
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Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman
PhotoYitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, Zionist youth leader and a founder of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). He fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Place and date uncertain.
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Janusz Korczak
ArticleJanusz Korczak ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. He and his staff stayed with the children even as German authorities deported them to their deaths at Treblinka in 1942.
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Gisha Galina Bursztyn: Maps
Media EssayBorn 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...
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Playbill
ArtifactProgram 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…
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Portrait of Żegota member Andrzej Klimowicz
PhotoWartime 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…
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Szlamach Radoszynski: Maps
Media EssaySzlamach Radoszynski was 27 years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. The following year, Szlamach and the rest of the Jews of Warsaw were forced into a ghetto. After the ghetto uprising in 1943, Szlamach was deported to Auschwitz a...
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Death Penalty for Aiding Jews
Timeline EventSeptember 5, 1942. On this date, Germans issued this poster announcing the death penalty for anyone found aiding Jews who fled the Warsaw ghetto.
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Emanuel Ringelblum and the Creation of the Oneg Shabbat Archive
ArticleEmanuel Ringelblum was a Warsaw-based historian and social welfare worker before WWII. Learn about the secret archive he would establish in the Warsaw ghetto.
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Benjamin Meed
ArticleBenjamin Meed, member of the resistance in Warsaw and later a leader of the survivor community, was a founder of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Photograph from the Stroop Report
PhotoPhotograph 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.
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Edith Goldman Bielawski
ID CardEdith'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…
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Moshe Galek
ID CardMoshe was one of eight children born to Jewish parents in Sochocin, a predominantly Catholic village near Warsaw. Moshe was a self-made man, having founded a successful pearl-button factory in the village. While in his thirties, he married Fela Perznianko, the daughter of a prominent attorney from nearby Zakroczym. He brought his new wife to Sochocin, where they raised four daughters. 1933-39: In 1936 the Galeks moved to Warsaw, attracted by the city's cultural life. When Germany invaded Poland on…
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Janina Prot
ID CardJanina's parents had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the 1920s. When Janina was 4 years old, her parents divorced; Janina left Warsaw and went to live with her father near the Polish town of Radom, while her brother Tomas remained in Warsaw with his mother. Janina, or Jana as she was affectionately known, loved to read. 1933-39: When Jana was 12 she moved back to Warsaw to attend secondary school, and stayed with her mother. A year later, on September 8, 1939, the Germans were bombing Warsaw.…
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Lodz
ArticleNazi authorities established the Lodz ghetto in 1940. Learn about living conditions and forced labor in the ghetto, as well as deportations to and from there.
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Welwel Rzondzinski
ID CardOne of six children, Welwel was born to Jewish parents living in the predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn, 35 miles east of Warsaw. His parents were religious, and they spoke Yiddish at home. Welwel's father was a bookkeeper for a large landowner. After Welwel's father died, his mother ran a newspaper kiosk in Kaluszyn. Welwel married when he was in his twenties and moved with his wife Henia to Warsaw. 1933-39: When war broke out three months ago, many Jews left Warsaw in a mass exodus towards the east.…
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Dawid Szpiro
ID CardDawid was the older of two sons born to Jewish parents in Warsaw. His mother supported the family by selling women's clothing. Dawid's father wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Haynt and the journal Literarishe Bleter. The Szpiros lived in the heart of Warsaw's Jewish district, where Dawid and his brother, Shlomo, attended Jewish schools. 1933-39: Dawid graduated from a trade school at the age of 17 and began working as a mechanic. When his father took a job in Argentina in 1937, Dawid and his brother sent…
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Jewish Councils (Judenraete)
ArticleThe Germans established Jewish councils (Judenraete) in the ghettos. Forced to implement Nazi policy, council leaders and members faced impossible moral dilemmas.
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Jewish Resistance
ArticleResistance comes in many forms, both violent and non-violent, collective and individual. Learn more about Jewish resistance to Nazi oppression.
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Itzik Rosenblat
ID CardItzik, also known as Izak, was one of three sons born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents. When Itzik was a young child his family moved to the city of Radom. Itzik left school when he was 11 to apprentice as a women's tailor. After he apprenticed with several tailors in Radom and Warsaw, he went back to school and earned a tailor's license. 1933-39: In 1938 Itzik married Taube Fishman, the daughter of his first employer, after a 13-year courtship much opposed by her family. They lived in Radom, where…
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Sylvia Winawer
ID CardSylvia's Jewish-born parents had converted to Christianity as young adults, and Sylvia was raised in the Christian tradition. Mr. Winawer was a successful lawyer and the family lived in an apartment in the center of Warsaw. Sylvia's mother collected art. 1933-39: Sylvia attended a private school run by the Lutheran Church, and she loved her school and classmates. When she was 9, her parents brought her the most wonderful "present"--a new sister! Two years later life changed when the Germans invaded Poland…
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Close-up portrait of Miriam Wattenberg (Mary Berg)
PhotoClose-up portrait of Miriam Wattenberg (Mary Berg). Because Mary's mother was American, she and her family were sent from the Warsaw ghetto to Vittel in to be held for possible prisoner exchange. Her diary became the first wartime published eyewitness account in English of life in the Warsaw ghetto and the deportation of its inhabitants to be murdered at Treblinka.
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Sevek Fishman
ID CardSevek's religious Jewish family owned a haberdashery business in Kaluszyn, a suburb of Warsaw. The oldest of six children (three boys and three girls), Sevek completed high school and was then apprenticed to a tailor. 1933-39: Each Friday, before the Sabbath began, Sevek's mother asked the neighbors if they had enough food for the Sabbath. If they didn't, she brought them a meal. Although Sevek belonged to a non-religious Zionist group, Ha Shomer ha-Tsa'ir, and didn't wear a skullcap like religious Jews,…
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Portrait of Josef Kaplan
PhotoPortrait of Josef Kaplan. Kaplan was a youth movement leader. He was also a leader of the Warsaw ghetto underground and Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). He was caught preparing forged documents and was killed. Poland, before September 1942.
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Zdziecioł (Zhetel)
ArticleThe Nazis occupied Zdziecioł (Zhetel), Poland in 1941. Learn more about the city and ghetto during World War II.
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Mir
ArticleThe Mir ghetto was established in Mir, Poland in 1941. Learn more about life and resistance in the ghetto.
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Shaul Himmelfarb
ID CardOne of nine children, Shaul was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish family in Koprzewnica, a small town in southern Poland. He married his teenage sweetheart, Alta Koppff, and opened a grocery store in the front of his mother-in-law's house. The couple had three children. The store's busiest day was Thursday, when farmers and villagers would come to town for market day. 1933-39: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Soon after, German troops entered Koprzewnica. While fighting between…
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Gisha Galina Bursztyn
ID CardGisha was raised by Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish parents in the town of Pultusk in central Poland. She married in the late 1890s and moved with her husband, Shmuel David Bursztyn, to the city of Warsaw, where Shmuel owned and operated a bakery on Zamenhofa Street in the city's Jewish section. In 1920 the Bursztyns and their eight children moved to a two-bedroom apartment at 47 Mila Street. 1933-39: By 1939 six of Gisha's children were grown and had left home: her eldest daughters had married, and…
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Chil Meyer Rajchman
ID CardChil was one of six children born to a Jewish family in the industrial city of Lodz. His mother died before World War II, leaving his father to raise the family. Chil's father could not sustain the family financially, so Chil, as the eldest male child, went to work to help support his brothers and sisters. 1933-39: On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland. Chil fled Lodz with his younger sister to Pruszkow, a small town 10 miles southwest of Warsaw, where there were fewer restrictions on Jews.…
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Henia Rzondzinski
ID CardHenia was born to parents living in the small predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn, 35 miles east of Warsaw. By the early 1930s, hundreds of Jewish workers were employed in the town, some in small craft shops, as tailors and carpenters, and others in larger enterprises, as prayer-shawl weavers and fur coat makers. When Henia was in her twenties, she and her husband, Welwel, moved to Warsaw. 1933-39: When war broke out three months ago, many Jews left Warsaw in a mass exodus towards the east. They were…
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Majlech Kisielnicki
ID CardThe second of three children, Majlech was born to Jewish parents living 35 miles east of Warsaw in the small, predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn. Majlech's father owned a wholesale grocery store, a restaurant and a gas station, all of which were located on the heavily traveled main road. Majlech attended public elementary school and also received religious instruction. 1933-39: Majlech and his pals, Mindele, Sara and Adam loved to discuss politics. They'd heard the Polish propaganda claiming that…
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Rachela Rottenberg
ID CardThe younger of two children born to Jewish parents, Rachela grew up in Radom, an industrial town located some 60 miles south of Warsaw. One-quarter of the city's 100,000 prewar population was Jewish. Rachela's father was a Zionist and was active in municipal affairs. Her mother did volunteer work. l933-39: Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 5, with the Germans rapidly advancing, Rachela's family sought temporary safety with relatives in Warsaw. They got separated along the way.…
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Ben Stern
ID CardBen was born to Jewish parents in Warsaw. When Ben was 7, his family moved to Mogielnica, about 40 miles from Warsaw. Ben's father spent much of his time studying religious texts. His wife managed the family liquor store. Ben attended public school during the day and was tutored in religious studies in the evening. 1933-39: After attending school in Warsaw, Ben returned home to help in the family's liquor store. One day, there was a mass demonstration in town. People chanted, "Don't buy from the Jews!"…
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Frimit Bursztyn
ID CardFrimit was one of eight children born to Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish parents. The Bursztyns lived in the heart of the same Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw where Frimit's father owned and operated a bakery located on Zamenhofa Street. In 1920 the Bursztyns moved to a comfortable, two-bedroom apartment in the same neighborhood at 47 Mila Street. Frimit attended Warsaw public schools. 1933-39: By 1939 six of Frimit's brothers and sisters had already moved out. Only Frimit and her younger brother were…
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Zofia Yamaika
ID CardZofia was raised in a well-to-do, prominent Hasidic Jewish family in Warsaw. Uneasy with the constant tension between the Polish people and the Jewish minority, Zofia joined the communist student club Spartacus when she was a teenager. Spartacus actively campaigned against the growing fascist movement in Europe. 1933-39: When Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 28, 1939, Zofia was 14 years old. She stopped going to school. Though the Nazis banned Spartacus, she secretly helped to revive the…
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Theresienstadt: Concentration/Transit Camp for German and Austrian Jews
ArticleLearn about the role of Theresienstadt in the deportation of German and Austrian Jews to killing sites and killing centers in the east.
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Jozef Rapaport
ID CardJozef was raised in a religious Jewish family. When he was a baby, his father died and his mother was left to care for him and his three older sisters. The family was poor, but Jozef was determined to have a good education. He put himself through university in Prague, and then went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics in Vienna. In 1931 he married Leah Kohl, and the couple settled in Warsaw. 1933-39: The Rapaports lived in the suburbs, and Jozef worked as a banker. His daughter, Zofia, was born in 1933. Jozef…
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Lila Lam
ID CardLila was born to a Jewish family in the largely Jewish city of Stanislawow. The Lam family owned an oil field and refinery, and Lila's father, who was trained as a lawyer, helped to manage the business. When it came time for Lila to begin first grade, her parents decided to have her tutored privately at home rather than have her attend an elementary school. 1933-39: The Jewish holidays were always special times. Although Lila's family wasn't religious, the holidays were wonderful opportunities for her…
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Theresienstadt
ArticleThe Theresienstadt camp/ghetto served multiple purposes during its existence from 1941-45 and had an important propaganda function for the Germans. Learn more.
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Stroop Report cover
ArtifactSS Major General Juergen Stroop, commander of German forces that suppressed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, compiled an album of photographs and other materials. This album, later known as "The Stroop Report," was introduced as evidence at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Here, its cover is marked with an IMT evidence stamp.
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Welwel Wainkranc
ID CardThe third of five brothers, Welwel was born to Jewish parents who lived 35 miles east of Warsaw in the small predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn. His father was a cattle merchant who purchased cows and sold the meat to butchers in the Warsaw region. Welwel spent most of his free time with a group of Jewish friends who lived in his neighborhood and who attended the same public school. 1933-39: Every summer evening Welwel, Abram Kisielnicki, and some other pals, like to stroll along Kaluszyn's main…
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Genya Rotenberg
ID CardGenya and her brother, Nahum, were raised by Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland's second-largest city and an industrial center. Before the war, one-third of Lodz's inhabitants were Jewish. Genya's parents placed emphasis on their children's education. 1933-39: In 1939, when Genya was 9, the Germans occupied Lodz. After that, it was forbidden for "Jews, Gypsies and dogs" to be in public places. Since Jews weren't allowed to go to school, her parents arranged to tutor her secretly at home, but she couldn't keep…
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Rojske Kisielnicki Sadowsky
ID CardThe second of three children, Rojske was born to Jewish parents living 35 miles east of Warsaw in the small predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn. Rojske's mother was a housewife and her father was a merchant who often traveled, by horse and wagon, to Warsaw on business. When Rojske was in her twenties, she married Welwel Sadowsky, a fruit dealer. 1933-39: After war broke out last week, German forces fought Polish troops in a battle right here in Kaluszyn. Half the town has been flattened by shelling, and…
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Liliana Guzenfiter
ID CardAn only child of middle-class Jewish parents, Liliana was raised in a mixed neighborhood of Christians and Jews in Poland's capital. Her father ran a jewelry business and was a reserve officer in the Polish army; her mother was a housewife. Liliana dreamed of going to the Sorbonne and becoming Poland's second female district attorney. 1933-39: The worst part of going to school was being harassed and called a "filthy Jew." Liliana petitioned to enter a prestigious Catholic high school where she was…
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Benjamin Frydmacher
ID CardBenjamin was born in the industrial city of Lublin to a large, Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. He attended public school, and after he graduated at the age of 14, he apprenticed at the same tannery where his father was the tannery master. 1933-39: After completing his apprenticeship, Benjamin became the assistant tannery master. After his father's death in 1938, he became the production tannery master. He and his wife, Gucia, lived with his mother at 50 Lubartowska Street. In 1938 the Frydmachers had a…
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Cover of an underground Yiddish newspaper
PhotoCover of an underground Yiddish newspaper, Jugend Shtimme (Voice of Youth). Writing on the bottom of the cover reads: "Fascism must be smashed." Warsaw ghetto, Poland, January–February 1941.
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Moishe Menyuk
ID CardMoishe was born to a Jewish family in the village of Komarovo, which until 1918 was part of the Russian Empire. At 18, he was drafted into the Russian army and fought in World War I. He was captured by the Germans, and while a POW, learned German. After the war he returned to Komarovo, which by then was part of Poland. He supported his family by farming and managing an estate for a Pole from Warsaw. 1933-39: The few Jews of Komarovo got along well with the Ukrainians. Moishe even played the fiddle at…
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Postcard sent to Ruth Segal (front)
DocumentA postcard sent to Ruth Segal (Rys Berkowicz) care of the Jewish Community (JewCom) in Kobe, Japan. Family and friends in German-occupied Warsaw, Poland, sent the postcard on June 20, 1941. It bears stamps both from the Jewish council (Judenrat) in the Warsaw ghetto and from German censors. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]
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Pawel Wos
ID CardPawel, a Roman Catholic, fled to Danzig, Germany, in 1914 to avoid conscription in the Russian army. Since Germany and Russia were at war, Pawel was arrested by the Germans as an enemy alien and sent to work on a farm in northern Germany. He met Anna Szachowska there, and they married in 1918. The couple moved to Warsaw where they raised 4 children. In 1930 Pawel opened a textile business. 1933-39: Despite the Depression, Pawel's business prospered and they expanded their operations. In 1938 some friends…
