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Aron and Lisa in Poland, ca. 1994, while accompanying high school students as part of a "Shoreshim" group.
Susan was 19 years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Her boyfriend, Nathan, was in Lvov when the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland. Nathan sent a guide to Warsaw to bring Susan to the Soviet zone of occupied Poland. Her parents reluctantly agreed after Susan promised to return to Warsaw within two weeks. Upon her arrival in Lvov, Susan married Nathan. The couple then fled across the Lithuanian border to Vilna, where they stayed for a year. They received a visa for transit through Japan…
Killing centers (also referred to as "extermination camps" or "death camps") were designed to carry out genocide. Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis established five killing centers in German-occupied Poland—Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau (part of the Auschwitz camp complex). Chelmno and Auschwitz were established in areas annexed to Germany in 1939. The other camps (Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka) were established in the General Government (an administrative unit of occupied…
Naftali Saleschutz (Norman Salsitz) prepares cement for the foundation of a sukkah (a hut-like structure used to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot). Kolbuszowa, Poland, 1937.
A post marked with Soviet symbols along the demarcation line between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland.
Germany occupied western Poland in fall 1939. Much of this territory was annexed to the German Reich. Eastern Poland was not occupied by German forces until June 1941. In south-central Poland the Germans set up the Generalgouvernement (General Government), where most of the early ghettos were established. Ghettos were enclosed districts of a city in which the Germans forced the Jewish population to live under miserable conditions. Ghettos isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities both from the…
During World War II, members of Zionist youth movements embraced leadership positions in ghett...
After World War I, Yonia's family moved to Vilna. Yonia studied painting and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilna. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Yonia was living with his wife in Warsaw. They fled to Brest-Litovsk in eastern Poland, occupied by Soviet forces in mid-September 1939. Then Yonia and his wife escaped to Vilna. After the Soviets occupied Vilna in June 1940, Yonia and his wife forged Japanese transit visas and left for Japan. In Japan, they were unable to obtain valid…
Wallace and his family were Polish Catholics. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother a teacher. The Germans occupied Kielce in 1939. Wallace witnessed pogroms against Jews in 1942. Wallace was active in the anti-Nazi resistance, acting as a courier between partisan groups. In 1946, in liberated Poland, Wallace witnessed the Kielce pogrom. He was reunited with his father in the United States in 1949; other family members followed. The Communist regime in Poland, however, denied his only sister…
Morris grew up in a very religious Jewish household and was active in a Zionist sports league. When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Morris's town was severely damaged. Morris's family was forced to live in a ghetto, and Morris was assigned to forced labor. After a period of imprisonment in Konskie, a town about 30 miles from Przedborz, Morris was deported to the Auschwitz camp. He was assigned to the Jawischowitz subcamp of Auschwitz. In January 1945, Morris was forced on a death march and…
Two German sentries stand guard at Augustow on the demarcation line between Soviet- and German-occupied Poland. September 1939.
A transport of 200 Jewish children, fleeing postwar antisemitic violence in Poland, arrives at the Prague railroad station. The children are on their way to displaced persons camps in the American-occupied zone of Germany. Prague, Czechoslovakia, July 15, 1946.
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…
An antisemitic poster published in German-occupied Poland in March 1941. The caption reads, "Jews are lice; They cause typhus." This German-published propaganda poster was intended to instill fear of Jews among Christian Poles.
When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in September 1939, Martin fled from the Soviet zone of occupied Poland to Vilna. He stayed there for about nine months and then moved to a small town about two hours from Vilna. The Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940. Using forged identity documents, Martin obtained a visa for transit through Japan. He left Lithuania, traveling east along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. There he boarded a ship for Japan. Martin remained in Japan until the fall of…
Susan was 19 years old when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Her boyfriend, Nathan, was in Lvov when the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland. Nathan sent a guide to Warsaw to bring Susan to the Soviet zone of occupied Poland. Her parents reluctantly agreed after Susan promised to return to Warsaw within two weeks. Upon her arrival in Lvov, Susan married Nathan. The couple then fled across the Lithuanian border to Vilna, where they stayed for a year. They received a visa for transit through Japan…
Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940. There, Blanka worked in a bakery. She and her mother later worked in a hospital in the Lodz ghetto, where they remained until late 1944 when they were deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany. From Ravensbrueck,…
Sophie was born Selma Schwarzwald to parents Daniel and Laura in the industrial city of Lvov, two years before Germany invaded Poland. Daniel was a successful businessman who exported timber and Laura had studied economics. The Germans occupied Lvov in 1941. After her father's disappearance on her fifth birthday in 1941, Sophie and her mother procured false names and papers and moved to a small town called Busko-Zdroj. They became practicing Catholics to hide their identities. Sophie gradually forgot that…
Frank was one of seven children born to a religious Jewish family in Kamionka, in the Lublin district of Poland. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. When deportations of Jews from the Lublin area began in 1942, Frank joined a group of Jewish partisans who roamed the forests in search of weapons and food. After obtaining weapons by posing as Soviet paratroopers, they were able to defend themselves against German raids and take revenge against collaborators. They gradually made connections with Polish…
Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940. There, Blanka worked in a bakery. She and her mother later worked in a hospital in the Lodz ghetto, where they remained until late 1944 when they were deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany. From Ravensbrueck,…
Aron was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Slonim, a part of Poland between the two world wars. His parents owned a clothing store. After studying in a technical school, Aron worked as a motion-picture projectionist in a small town near Slonim. The Soviet army took over Slonim in September 1939. War broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941. Aron returned to Slonim. The Germans soon occupied Slonim, and later forced the Jews into a ghetto. Aron was forced to work in an armaments…
When German forces invaded Poland in September 1939, Ruth's father fled to eastern Poland. Upon the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, he fled to Lithuania. Ruth left Warsaw with two friends to find her father and later joined him in Vilna. After Soviet forces occupied Lithuania, Ruth and her father obtained transit visas for Japan, but only Ruth obtained a Soviet exit visa. Her father insisted she leave and not wait for him. Ruth traveled by the Trans-Siberian Railroad across the Soviet Union to…
Sophie was born Selma Schwarzwald to parents Daniel and Laura in the industrial city of Lvov, two years before Germany invaded Poland. Daniel was a successful businessman who exported timber and Laura had studied economics. The Germans occupied Lvov in 1941. After her father's disappearance on her fifth birthday in 1941, Sophie and her mother procured false names and papers and moved to a small town called Busko-Zdroj. They became practicing Catholics to hide their identities. Sophie gradually forgot that…
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…
Shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, William's family was ordered into a ghetto and his brother went to a work camp. William bribed officials to discharge his brother from a hospital destined for evacuation to Auschwitz. Later, after escaping from a prison camp to tend to his brother, William was jailed. He was sent to Blechhammer, Gleiwitz (where he met his future wife), and other camps. William collapsed during a death march near the Austrian border, but was then liberated. His…
Children eating in a Warsaw ghetto street. Warsaw, Poland, between 1940 and 1943.
David Bayer lived in Kozienice, Poland. Explore his biography and learn about his experiences during World War II and the Holocaust.
Mordecai, known in Yiddish as Motl, was born to a religious Jewish family with six children. His hometown of Kozienice, located near a birch forest, had an important lumber industry. After graduating from secondary school, Mordecai entered the lumber business. His small, successful company bought and sold lumber. 1933-39: A few months after the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Mordecai's father was warned to leave because, as a prominent member of the community, it was likely that the Germans…
Yitzhak Gitterman was a director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland and a member of the underground Jewish Fighting Organization.
One of seven children, Mendel was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish home in Sokolow Podlaski, a manufacturing town in central Poland with a large Jewish population of about 5,000. Mendel's parents ran a grain business. As a teenager, Mendel liked to play chess, and he completed his public schooling in Sokolow Podlaski in 1931. 1933-39: After finishing middle school, Mendel went to work in his parents' business. When he was 18, he fell in love with Frieda Altman who was in the same Zionist…
Pants worn by Marjan Glass as he dug anti-tank ditches for the defense of Warsaw, Poland, and then as he hastily fled the city ahead of the German advance on September 7, 1939. Glass, a lawyer, escaped with his wife and three-year-old son, and his wife's mother and brother. He left without taking the time to change from his soiled work clothing. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]
Learn about areas of research related to the number of deaths at the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp system.
Armed Jewish resistance began in Poland in 1942. Learn more about partisan activity in the Parczew forests during World War II.
Hela was raised in Dukla, a Polish village near the Czech border. In 1928 she married Elimelech Riemer and the couple settled in Berlin. Two years later, their only child, Edith, was born. The Riemers lived in an apartment building that housed offices of the Communist Party of Germany. 1933-39: Six years ago, in 1933, the Nazis accused Hela's family of breaking into the Communist Party's offices, so they escaped to a Polish town near the German border. A few days ago, just before the German invasion [of…
Max was born to a Jewish family in the Austrian capital of Vienna. When he was a small child his family moved to Przemysl, an urban center in southeastern Poland with a largely Jewish population. Max spent the remainder of his childhood there; his parents ran a small grocery and cafeteria to support their five children. 1933-39: The Germans reached Przemysl on September 14, 1939. It was a brilliant sunny day when planes suddenly appeared; Max's family thought the planes were their own until they began…
Frederick was the oldest of two sons born to Polish immigrants in Syracuse, New York. In 1922 Frederick's father, who was a musician, moved the family back to Poland where they settled in Poznan. There Frederick started public school and was accepted to the boys section of the prestigious Poznan Cathedral Choir. 1933-39: In 1933, at age 17, Frederick graduated from secondary school and enrolled in medical school at the university at Poznan. He sang with the choir for the last time the day he graduated…
The Germans established the Althammer camp in September 1944. It was a subcamp of Auschwitz. Read more about the camp's history and conditions there.
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