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Abraham and his family fled from Berlin to Amsterdam in October 1938. They found refuge in the Netherlands until January 28, 1943, when all the members of the Muhlbaum family, except Abraham, were deported to Westerbork. Abraham escaped over the rooftops during the round-up. He gradually established a new life as a member of a Dutch resistance group that included Joop Westerweel. In 1944, Abraham was arrested as a member of the resistance (his Jewish identity remained hidden). He was held…
German personnel on Grzybowska Street arrest and search Jewish men who supposedly hid weapons prior to the German occupation of Warsaw. Warsaw, Poland, October-December 1939. This is one of a series of photos taken by Arthur Grimm, an SS propaganda company photographer, documenting the investigative work of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in occupied Warsaw for the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. Although only some of the photos were published, it is likely that the incidents depicted in the BIZ were staged…
After WWII and the fall of the Nazi regime, Holocaust survivors faced the daunting task of rebuilding their lives. Listen to six survivors tell their stories.
Excerpts from Elie Wiesel's addresses during US Holocaust Memorial Museum Days of Remembrance commemorations in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.
Children's diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking events of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of Jutta Szmirgeld.
The SS was the elite guard of the Nazi regime and became a virtual state within a state in Nazi Germany. Learn about its role in carrying out Nazi policies.
As Allied forces approached Nazi camps in the last months of WWII, the SS organized brutal “death marches” (forced evacuations) of concentration camp inmates.
Learn about the Stutthof camp from its establishment until liberation in May 1945, including conditions, forced labor, subcamps, and death marches.
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg led an extensive rescue effort during the Nazi era. His work with the War Refugee Board saved thousands of Hungarian Jews.
The Theresienstadt camp/ghetto served multiple purposes during its existence from 1941-45 and had an important propaganda function for the Germans. Learn more.
A Black expatriate artist living in Belgium upon the outbreak of WWII, Josef Nassy was held in German internment camps during the war. Learn about his experiences.
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.
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.
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.
January 27, anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD).
The D-Day invasion was the largest amphibious attack in history. Read articles and browse photos and videos of Allied forces invading Normandy on June 6, 1944.
In this portrait, Helena Husserlova, wearing a Jewish badge, poses with her daughter Zdenka who is holding a teddy bear. The photograph was taken shortly before they were deported to Theresienstadt. Zdenka was born in Prague on February 6, 1939. On October 10, 1941, when Zdenka was just two and a half years old, her father was deported to the Lodz ghetto. He died there almost a year later, on September 23, 1942. Following his deportation, Helena and Zdenka returned to Helena's hometown to live with…
Zsofi Brunn and members of her family were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944. Her husband and mother were killed upon arrival. Zsofi and her daughter Anna were transferred to a labor camp in Czechosovakia. They were eventually liberated by Soviet forces in May 1945. Zsofi and Anna returned to Hungary. They moved to Rakosszentmihaly, near Budapest. There, Anna finished high school, and Zsofi directed a Jewish orphanage. This photo shows Zsofi (back row, center) posing with the…
“For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully… I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me.” Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, used this disguise to hide from Nazi authorities. In a later interview she said, “I really looked pretty good.” Her involvement in the resistance movement included planning the destruction of the Amsterdam Population Registry in March 1943, falsifying identity cards, and arranging hiding places for those who were sought by…
French policeman Théophile Larue, who warned his Jewish neighbors of an upcoming roundup.
Rare photograph showing Sobibor killing center personnel relaxing and posing, all while implementing the mass murder of at least 167,000 innocent Jews.
Rare image of the Sobibor killing center, taken from an album of photos belonging to Sobibor deputy camp commandant Johann Niemann.
July 9, 1944. On this date, Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest and began his wartime rescue efforts.
May 10, 1933. On this date, books deemed "un-German" are publicly burned throughout Germany.
September 19, 1941. On this date, German forces entered Kyiv in Soviet Ukraine.
April 17, 1945. On this date, Felicitas Wolf wrote her first entry in her brother Otto's diary after his disappearance.
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 Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD) was a Nazi intelligence agency. Ideologically radical and part of the SS, it was a key perpetrator of the Holocaust.
Often referred to as the “eastern front,” the German-Soviet theater of war was the largest and deadliest of World War II. Learn more about the background and key events.
Flory was born into a Sephardic Jewish family. When Flory was a young girl, her mother moved to Zagreb with Flory's stepfather; Flory joined them after living with her grandmother for two years. In Zagreb, Flory took music lessons and learned how to play the accordion. Germany and its allies invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, partitioning the country and establishing a fascist regime under the Ustase (pro-German Croatian nationalists) in Croatia. The Ustasa regime soon imposed anti-Jewish regulations in…
Doriane's Jewish family fled to Amsterdam in 1940, a year that also saw the German occupation of the Netherlands. Her father perished after deportation to Auschwitz. After their mother was seized, Doriane and her brother hid with gentiles. The three were reunited at Bergen-Belsen, where they were deported via Westerbork. They were liberated during the camp's 1945 evacuation. Doriane's mother died of cancer soon after Doriane helped her recover from typhus. Doriane and her brother immigrated to the United…
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. The Germans established a ghetto in Slonim in late 1941, following the massacre of thousands of Jews—especially those who could not prove that they worked. Lisa escaped from Slonim and joined the…
Ludmilla was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Kishinev, Romania. She and her mother, a physician, were living in Poland when the Germans invaded on September 1, 1939. They were taken to Krakow. Ludmilla was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto; her mother was sent to the Warsaw ghetto. Ludmilla worked in a factory at the Plaszow labor camp for a businessman who was a friend of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. In October 1944, Schindler attempted to save some Jewish workers by relocating them…
Ludmilla was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Kishinev, Romania. She and her mother, a physician, were living in Poland when the Germans invaded on September 1, 1939. They were taken to Krakow. Ludmilla was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto; her mother was sent to the Warsaw ghetto. Ludmilla worked in a factory at the Plaszow labor camp for a businessman who was a friend of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. In October 1944, Schindler attempted to save some Jewish workers by relocating them…
David was born to a middle class Jewish family and attended a Jewish school. In August 1941, after the Germans occupied Kovno, he was forced into the Kovno ghetto, where he shared two rooms with his immediate and extended family. Many members of his extended family were killed during the Great Aktion in Kovno in October 1941. David worked in a forced-labor brigade in the ghetto. In March 1944, he witnessed the Kinder Aktion and was able to save his nephew. During the destruction of the Kovno ghetto, David…
The Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. After a year or so, Hetty and other Jewish children could no longer attend regular schools. The Germans took over her father's business in 1942. Hetty's father tried to prove that the family was Sephardic, and they were thus exempted from a roundup in 1943. Hetty's father decided that the family should leave Amsterdam, and Hetty was hidden with a family in the southern Netherlands. She and both her parents survived.
Selma was the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents. When she was 7, Selma and her family moved to the town of Zwolle where her parents ran a small hotel. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, they confiscated the hotel. The family had to live in a poor Jewish section of the town. Selma went into hiding but was betrayed and then sent to the Westerbork camp. In April 1943 she was deported to Sobibor, where she worked in the clothes sorting area. There, the prisoners tried to pocket…
Ludmilla was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Kishinev, Romania. She and her mother, a physician, were living in Poland when the Germans invaded on September 1, 1939. They were taken to Krakow. Ludmilla was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto; her mother was sent to the Warsaw ghetto. Ludmilla worked in a factory at the Plaszow labor camp for a businessman who was a friend of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. In October 1944, Schindler attempted to save some Jewish workers by relocating them…
Joseph Leo Diamantstein was born in Heidelberg, Germany, on December 1, 1924, to Jewish parents. He was the youngest of four children. His family experienced antisemitism in Frankfurt, and ultimately decided to leave Germany. Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an important role to play in the new Nazi regime. Through these organizations, the Nazi regime planned to indoctrinate young people with Nazi ideology. This was part of the process of Nazifying German…
Edward was born to a Jewish family in Hamburg. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited marriage or sexual relations between German non-Jews and Jews. Edward was then in his mid-twenties. Edward was arrested for dating a non-Jewish woman. Classified as a habitual offender, he was later deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin. He was forced to perform hard labor in construction projects. Edward had married shortly before his imprisonment, and his wife made arrangements for their…
Börgermoor was part of the Nazi regime’s early system of concentration camps. It was located in the Emsland region of Prussia.
When WWII began, most Americans wanted the US to stay isolated from the war. From December 1941, the majority rallied in support of intervention to defeat the Axis powers.
Danuta was born to Roman Catholic parents in the small industrial town of Piotrkow Trybunalski in central Poland. Her father and mother were school teachers. She and her younger sister, Maria, became friends with two Jewish girls, Sabina and Helena Szwarc. Although their houses were more than a mile apart, the girls often played together. 1933-39: Danuta was planning on attending college in September 1939, but on September 1 Germany invaded Poland. Four days later, German soldiers streamed into Danuta's…
Maria was born to Roman Catholic parents in the industrial town of Piotrkow Trybunalski in central Poland. Her father and mother were school teachers. Maria attended grade school and secondary school in Piotrkow. She and her older sister, Danuta, became friends with two Jewish girls, Sabina and Helena Szwarc. Although their houses were more than a mile apart, the girls often played together. 1933-39: The Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and occupied Piotrkow four days later. Most schooling for…
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…
Pete grew up in Essen, a major industrial city on Germany's Ruhr River. His father worked as a cattle hide dealer for an international trading company in nearby Muehlheim. His mother was a designer for a fashionable women's dress shop. Pete, his younger twin brothers, and parents lived together in an apartment. 1933–39: Pete had barely passed his first birthday when the Nazis came to power. His father realized the danger that now faced Jews in Germany, and the family left for Prague, Czechoslovakia, in…
One of 12 children, Moniek grew up in Dabrowa Gornicza, an industrial town in western Poland. His father, Jacob, owned a general store, which he was forced to close in 1938 as the result of a boycott by local antisemites. Moniek attended both public and Jewish schools, and his father hoped that one day he would become a rabbi. 1933–39: On September 1, 1939, Moniek was awakened by the sounds of airplanes flying overhead as German forces invaded Poland. As the war drew closer, Moniek fled eastward, but…
Martin was one of nine children born to orthodox Jewish parents in Veľká Poľana, a rural village in the Carpathian Mountains. His father owned a farm and a meat business, and his mother attended to the children and the home. Everyone in the family helped take care of the horses and cows. 1933–39: Martin attended the village's Czechoslovak schools, which were quite progressive. Like many of the other children, he looked forward to leaving the provincial life in Veľká Poľana. In 1938–1939, his…
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