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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…
A prewar photograph of Basia and Moshe Golden (Gordon) taken ca. 1922–1925 in Swieciany, Poland (now Lithuania). Basia, along with two of their four children, Boruch and Teyva, were shot at the Ponary killing site by SS men and their Lithuanian collaborators in September 1943. Moshe died in the Klooga concentration camp. Two of their children survived, Niusia and Rwya. This photograph was saved by Niusia (now Anna Nodel) while she was in hiding.
Prewar portrait of Golda Tenin with her daughter Paulina, 1935. The Tenin family was living in the Ukrainian city of Odesa when it was occupied by Romania, an ally of Nazi Germany. In December 1941, Romanian authorities decided to make Odesa free of Jews. Two of Golda's children, Paulina and Rita, were murdered. Paulina was killed in January 1942, likely during deportation. Rita was killed after she was discovered in hiding with non-Jewish neighbors. Golda managed to survive.
Ruth was four years old when the Germans invaded Poland and occupied Ostrowiec. Her family was forced into a ghetto. Germans took over her father's photography business, although he was allowed to continue working outside the ghetto. Before the ghetto was liquidated, Ruth's parents sent her sister into hiding, and managed to get work at a labor camp outside the ghetto. Ruth also went into hiding, either in nearby woods or within the camp itself. When the camp was liquidated, Ruth's parents were split up.…
Following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Bart was forced into a ghetto established in his home town. From May to July 1944, the Germans deported Jews from Hungary to the Auschwitz killing center in occupied Poland. Bart was deported by cattle car to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, he was selected to perform forced labor, drilling and digging in a coal mine. As Soviet forces advanced toward the Auschwitz camp in January 1945, the Germans forced most of the prisoners on a death march out of the…
The Nazis occupied Zdziecioł (Zhetel), Poland in 1941. Learn more about the city and ghetto during World War II.
Learn more about the history of Stanisławów during the Holocaust and World War II.
Stefania was born to a Catholic family in a village near Przemysl. They lived on a large farm and cultivated several different crops. While her father worked with the farmhands in the fields, Stefania's mother, a trained midwife, managed the house and cared for her eight children. 1933-39: Stefania's father died in 1938 after an illness. With her mother's approval, she joined her sister in Przemysl in 1939. At 14 she worked in a grocery store owned by the Diamants, a Jewish family. They treated her like…
Kalman was the oldest of ten children born to poor, devout Jewish parents in a small village in south central Poland. His father supported the family by buying chickens, eggs and vegetables from the peasants and selling them at the Kolbuszowa market a few miles away. Kalman walked to Kolbuszowa each day to attend public school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon. 1933-39: In 1933 Kalman was accepted to study at a renowned rabbinical institute in Lublin. When there was time, he taught…
Isak was one of seven children born to devout Hasidic Jewish parents living in Dubas. By 1900, all of his siblings had immigrated to America; Isak remained in Poland due to his strong religious convictions. Through an arranged marriage, he was wed to Ester Berl when he was 18. They settled in Kolbuszowa, a small town near Dubas, where Isak ran a successful wholesale general store. 1933-39: On September 9, 1939, the German army occupied Dubas. They hanged two Jews to demonstrate the consequences of not…
Maurits was one of four children born to religious Jewish parents living in the town of Leek. When he was 12, the Wijnbergs moved to the town of Zwolle, where they ran a kosher hotel. That same year, Maurits became ill with meningitis. After he recovered, he worked hard to compensate for missed school and became an exceptional student. 1933-39: Along with his younger sister, Maurits was active in the local Zionist organization. One of the group's activities was raising money for Palestine [Yishuv]. Every…
Pola was born to a Jewish family in a small town [in Poland] about three miles from the German border. Her family had lived there for generations. Pola's father exported geese and other goods to Germany; her mother owned a fabric store. They lived with Pola's grandmother in a large, single-level, gray stucco house. Raczki had a small Jewish community with a Hebrew school that Pola attended. 1933-39: In 1937 Pola began secondary school in the town of Suwalki. She excelled in math, and hoped to study…
Chava's mother died when she was 2, and Chava went to live with her grandfather, who was a rabbi in the village of Matsiov. Her grandfather's second wife welcomed Chava. After first studying at a Polish public school, Chava attended a Jewish day school. When Chava was a teenager her adopted grandmother died, and Chava took over managing her grandfather's household until he remarried. 1933-39: Chava's grandfather's third wife was an unsympathetic woman. After she came to their home, Chava wanted to be…
Yves' mother died when he was 7, and he grew up in the home of his grandfather, who was the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Paris. Yves became a successful businessman, owning a chain of department stores. He was an avid mountain climber and liked to play tennis and to race cars and motorcycles. As a young man, Yves did his military service in France's alpine corps. 1933-39: In 1934 Yves married Paulette Weill, and the couple had two daughters, Nadine in 1935 and Francelyn in 1939. He was called up by the French…
Tchiya was the eldest of two daughters born to a Jewish family in the town of Horochow, 50 miles northeast of Lvov. Her father was a philosophy professor who taught at the university in Lvov, and both of her parents were civic leaders in Horochow. 1933-39: In September 1939 Germany invaded western Poland, and three weeks later the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland [as a result of the German-Soviet Pact], where Horochow was located. Hordes of refugees fleeing the Germans streamed through the town.…
Yakov was the youngest of four children born to a poor religious Jewish family in the village of Matsiov in Ukraine. Six years after Yakov was born, Matsiov was ceded to Poland. When Yakov was 14 his mother died and he had to quit school in order to work. Yakov was a Zionist and hoped to settle in Palestine [Yishuv]. 1933-39: In the Young Pioneers, a Zionist group, Yakov directed the dramatic productions the group put on to raise money for the Zionist cause. It was in the Young Pioneers that he met Chava,…
In 1933 Jerry's family moved from Hamburg to Amsterdam. The Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940. In 1941, Jerry's brother perished in Mauthausen. Jerry and his parents went into hiding first in Amsterdam and then in a farmhouse in the south. The Gestapo (German Secret State Police) arrested Jerry's father in 1942, but Jerry and his mother managed to return to their first hiding place. They were liberated in Amsterdam by Canadian and Jewish Brigade troops.
View an animated map describing acts of resistance to Nazi oppression, ranging from armed resistance to acts of spiritual preservation.
The 1944 Warsaw uprising was the single largest military effort undertaken by resistance forces to oppose German occupation during World War II.
Explore definitions, connotations, and evolving considerations when using the term bystanders in the range of behaviors and motivations during the Holocaust.
The Westerbork transit camp, located in the German-occupied Netherlands, served as a temporary collection point for Jews in the Netherlands before deportation.
A childsize violin that belonged to Boruch Golden (Gordon), who was killed along with his mother and brother at the Ponary killing site in September 1943. Boruch was born in 1930, and was one of four children. His parents, Moshe and Basia Golden (Gordon), raised their family in Swieciany (Svencionys), Lithuania. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the family was forced into the Swieciany ghetto. When that ghetto was later liquidated in 1943, the family was sent to the Vilna…
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.
As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived death marches into the interior of Germany. Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching the Majdanek camp near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to demolish the camp in an effort to hide the evidence of mass murder. The Soviets also liberated major Nazi camps…
Throughout most of German-occupied Europe, the Germans sought to round up and deport Jews to killing centers in occupied Poland. Some Jews survived by hiding or escaping from German-controlled Europe. Some escape routes out of occupied Europe led to belligerent states (such as the Soviet Union), neutral states (such as Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey), and even to states allied with Germany (such as Italy and Hungary before they were occupied by Germany). After the German attack on the Soviet Union,…
Family and friends are gathered for a Jewish wedding celebration in Kovno. Among those pictured are Jona and Gita Wisgardisky (standing at the back on the right). In the summer of 1941 soon after the German occupation of Lithuania, the Wisgardisky family was forced into the Kovno ghetto. During a roundup of children in the ghetto in 1942, Henia (Gita and Jona's daughter) was hidden in a secret room that her father built in a pantry in their apartment. Later she was smuggled out of the ghetto and…
The bodies of SS General Reinhard Heydrich's assassins and five other operatives were displayed in front of the Carlo Boromeo Church (now the St. Cyril and Methodius Church). On May 27, 1942, two Czech parachute agents (Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik) succeeded in rolling a hand grenade under Heydrich's vehicle. Heydrich later died from his wounds. Kubis and Gabcik went into hiding, joining with five other operatives in the Carlo Boromeo Church in Prague. On June 18, however, Nazi authorities became aware of…
Learn more about Frank Bleichman, a Polish partisan who resisted and fought against the Nazis during World War II.
Difficult debates took place within ghettos about whether and how to resist under the most adverse conditions. Read a rare account from the Lokacze ghetto.
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.
Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. Learn about the experiences and fate of Jews in Budapest, Hungary's capital, before and after the occupation.
Historical events should be analyzed in their appropriate historical context. Learn how to assess the identify the quality, reliability, and integrity of a source.
Learn about the German annexation of Austria, the establishment of Nazi camps, Kristallnacht, and deportations from Austria during the Holocaust.
During World War II, the Nazis established ghettos, which were areas of a city where Jews were forced to live. Learn more about ghettos in occupied Poland.
The Wannsee Conference was a high-level meeting of Nazi Party and German State officials to coordinate “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Learn more.
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.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Allen Small.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Shalom Yoran.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Leah Johnson.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Benjamin Levin.
April 19, 1943. On this date, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began, the largest uprising by Jews during WWII and the first significant urban revolt against German occupation in Europe.
Both of Charlene's parents were local Jewish community leaders, and the family was active in community life. Charlene's father was a professor of philosophy at the State University of Lvov. World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Charlene's town was in the part of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Under the Soviet occupation, the family remained in its home and Charlene's father continued to teach. The Germans…
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Lucine was born to a Jewish family in Lublin. Her father was a court interpreter and her mother was a dentist. War began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Lucine's home was raided by German forces shortly thereafter. Soon after the German occupation of Lublin, Jews there were forced to wear a compulsory badge identifying them as Jews. A ghetto in Lublin was closed off in January 1942. Lucine survived a series of killing campaigns and deportations from the ghetto during March and…
Ben was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. After the Germans occupied Warsaw, Ben decided to escape to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. However, he soon decided to return to his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto, and helped smuggle people out of the ghetto—including Vladka (Fagele) Peltel, a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), who later became his wife. Later, he went into…
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Explore firsthand testimony about the occupation of Mlynów, the establishment of the ghetto, resistance activities, and the destruction of the ghetto.
Nesse's family had a dairy business. The Germans occupied Lithuania in 1941 and established a ghetto in Siauliai. Nesse lived in the ghetto until 1943 when she was old enough to work. In 1944 Nesse, her mother, and a brother were deported to the Stutthof camp near Danzig. Nesse worked in several Stutthof subcamps until January 1945, when the inmates were put on a death march. She was liberated by the Soviets in March. Nesse, her mother, and two brothers survived, and she arrived in the United States in…
Lisa was one of three children born to a religious Jewish family. Following the German occupation of her hometown in 1939, Lisa and her family moved first to Augustow and then to Slonim (in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland). German troops captured Slonim in June 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union. In Slonim, the Germans established a ghetto which existed from 1941 to 1942. Lisa eventually escaped from Slonim, and went first to Grodno and then to Vilna, where she joined the resistance movement. She…
The Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Leo and his family were confined to a ghetto in Lodz. Leo was forced to work as a tailor in a uniform factory. The Lodz ghetto was liquidated in 1944, and Leo was deported to Auschwitz. He was then sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system for forced labor. As the Soviet army advanced, the prisoners were transferred to the Ebensee camp in Austria. The Ebensee camp was liberated in 1945.
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