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Corpses lie in one of the open railcars of the Dachau death train. The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty cars containing the bodies of between two and three thousand prisoners transported to Dachau in the last days of the war. Dachau, Germany, April 29, 1945. This image is among the commonly reproduced and distributed, and often extremely graphic, images of liberation. These photographs provided powerful documentation of the crimes of the Nazi era.
Corpses lie in one of the open railcars of the Dachau death train. The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty cars containing the bodies of between two and three thousand prisoners transported to Dachau in the last days of the war. Dachau, Germany, April 29, 1945. This image is among the commonly reproduced and distributed, and often extremely graphic, images of liberation. These photographs provided powerful documentation of the crimes of the Nazi era.
As Allied forces approached Nazi camps in the last months of WWII, the SS organized brutal “death marches” (forced evacuations) of concentration camp inmates.
Near the end of WWII, the Germans began marching prisoners out of camps and away from the front. Read more about the brutal conditions of these death marches.
SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners during the death marches. They shot prisoners who...
As Nazi anti-Jewish policy intensified, Kurt's family decided to leave Germany. Kurt left for the United States in 1937, but his parents were unable to leave before the outbreak of World War II. Kurt's parents were eventually deported to Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland. In 1942, Kurt joined the United States Army and was trained in military intelligence. In Europe, he interrogated prisoners of war. In May 1945, he took part in the surrender of a village in Czechoslovakia and returned the next day to…
Ben was born in a small village in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania in Romania. When he was an infant, his family moved to the United States. Ben attended Harvard University, where he studied criminal law. Ben graduated from Harvard University Law School in 1943. He joined a US anti-aircraft artillery battalion that was training in preparation for an Allied invasion of western Europe. At the end of World War II in Europe, Ben was transferred to the war crimes investigation branch of the US Army. He…
Barbara was born in the province of Arad in northern Transylvania, Romania. She went to school until the Hungarian army occupied the area in 1940 and she was no longer allowed to attend. After the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, discrimination against Jews intensified. Barbara and her family were forced into the Oradea ghetto. She worked in the ghetto hospital until she was deported to the Auschwitz camp. At Auschwitz, she worked in the kitchens to receive extra food. She was deported to another camp,…
After studying medicine at Wayne State University in Michigan, Harold joined the army in 1942. He was attached to the 107th Evacuation Hospital. The unit trained in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then tracked the US First Army after the June 1944 Normandy invasion. Harold was attached to the US Third Army under George S. Patton in December. He went to Buchenwald shortly after the SS guards fled the camp in April 1945.
The Germans occupied David's town, previously annexed by Hungary, in 1944. David was deported to Auschwitz and, with his father, transported to Plaszow. David was sent to the Gross-Rosen camp and to Reichenbach. He was then among three of 150 in a cattle car who survived transportation to Dachau. He was liberated after a death march from Innsbruck toward the front line of combat between US and German troops.
A US soldier stands among the corpses of prisoners exhumed from a mass grave in a ravine near Nammering. On April 19, 1945, a freight train with nearly 4,500 prisoners from Buchenwald pulled onto the railroad siding at Nammering. Hundreds of prisoners who had died on the train were buried in the mass grave along with the prisoners who were forced to carry the corpses to the ravine and were then shot. Germany, ca. May 6, 1945.
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…
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of David Broudo.
Janusz 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.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Vitka Kempner.
From July 1941-May 1944, the SS camp at Trawniki had several purposes. It is best known as the training site for auxiliary police guards used in Nazi killing centers. Learn more.
At its height, the Warsaw ghetto held over 400,000 people living in horrendous and worsening conditions. Learn about deportations both to and from the ghetto.
Dachau was the first and longest operating Nazi concentration camp. Learn about the camp's early years, prisoners, medical experiments, and liberation.
The 42nd Infantry Division participated in major WWII campaigns and is recognized for liberating the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.
Roma (Gypsies) remove bodies from the Iasi-Calarasi death train during its stop in Tirgu-Frumos. Two trains left Iasi on June 30, 1941, bearing survivors of the pogrom that took place in Iasi on June 28-29. Hundreds of Jews died on the transports aboard crowded, unventilated freight cars in the heat of summer. Romania, July 1, 1941.
John Demjanjuk, initially convicted as “Ivan the Terrible,” was tried for war crimes committed as a collaborator of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Walter Marx.
Carl Clauberg, one of many German doctors involved in Nazi crimes, conducted medical experiments at Auschwitz toward developing a method of mass sterilization. Learn more.
Brief overview of the charges against Julius Streicher, founder of the racist and antisemitic paper Der Stürmer, at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
The 45th Infantry Division participated in major WWII campaigns and is recognized for liberating the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Brenda Senders.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Samuel Levi.
The 6th Armored Division participated in major WWII campaigns and is recognized for liberating the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.
In 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Italian cyclist Gino Bartali as Righteous Among the Nations for his rescue activities. Learn more
The 10th Armored Division participated in major WWII campaigns and is recognized for liberating a subcamp of Dachau in 1945.
With help from allies and collaborators, German authorities deported Jews from across Europe to killing centers. The vast majority were gassed almost immediately after their arrival in the killing centers.
Learn about the Freiburg subcamp of Flossenbürg, including its establishment, prisoner population, and conditions there.
The Law on the Head of State of the German Reich was the last step in destroying democracy in interwar Germany and making Adolf Hitler a dictator. Learn more.
Fritzie's father immigrated to the United States, but by the time he could bring his family over, war had begun and Fritzie's mother feared attacks on transatlantic shipping. Fritzie, her mother, and two brothers were eventually sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and brothers died. Fritzie survived by pretending to be older than her age and thus a stronger worker. On a death march from Auschwitz, Fritzie ran into a forest, where she was later liberated.
Jozef Gabčik was a Slovak member of the Czechoslovak armed forces who trained in Great Britain and parachuted into German-occupied Czech territory to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. As Heydrich traveled on a familiar route to the airport to fly to Hitler's headquarters for a meeting, two agents succeeded in rolling a modified British anti-tank grenade under his car. The blast itself did not cause immediate death. Heydrich died a little over a week later. The official autopsy report determined that the…
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Charles Bedzow.
The Moringen camp was one of the so-called youth protection camps that the Nazi regime established for young people who were alleged to have strayed from Nazi norms and ideals.
The Nazis established killing centers in German-occupied Europe during WWII. They built these killing centers for the mass murder of human beings.
The Order Police (Ordnungspolizei, Orpo) were Nazi Germany’s uniformed police forces. They became perpetrators of horrific crimes and played a significant role in the Holocaust.
Varian Fry was an American journalist who helped anti-Nazi refugees escape from France between 1940 and 1941. Learn about his rescue efforts.
Based on their ideas about race, the Nazis mass murdered people with disabilities; people perceived as threats in occupied Poland; and Jewish people. Learn more.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Norman Salsitz.
Martin Weiss and his family were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Explore Marty’s biography and his description of arrival in Auschwitz.
György Beifeld, a Jewish conscript in the Hungarian army, created a visual memoir of his experiences on the eastern front in 1942–1943 as a member of a forced-labor battalion .
Learn how the "First Letter to all Judges" increased the pressure on German judges to give verdicts and sentences according to Nazi principles and ideology.
SS officer Kurt Gerstein was horrified by what he witnessed at the Belzec killing center. Learn about how he recorded what he witnessed and about his postwar fate.
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