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Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Shalom Yoran.
Moringen, Uckermark, and Litzmannstadt were reform camps established to confine young people who were deemed to have strayed from Nazi norms and ideals. Learn more
The Nazis pursued the imperialist concept of Lebensraum (living space) as they conquered eastern Europe. Read more about the deadly consequences of Nazi imperialism.
Between 1933-1945, Latin American governments officially permitted approx. 84,000 Jewish refugees. Learn more about Latin America refugee policy.
Learn about the role of the legal profession as the Nazi leadership gradually moved Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship.
German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an early critic of the Nazi regime. He was arrested in 1943 and executed in the Flossenbürg camp in 1945.
Italy was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. It was also a member of the Axis alliance with Nazi Germany. Learn about Italy during WWII and the Holocaust.
Shortly after taking power in January 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took control of German newspapers, detailing how the news was to be reported.
Karl was born in the small town of Bad Zwishenahn in northern Germany. When he was 2, his family moved to the port of Bremerhaven. His father was a sailor and his mother became a nurse in a local hospital. After his father died, Karl continued to live with his mother. Karl was 20 when he began training as a deacon at his parish church. 1933-39: Karl was 26 when his jealous lover denounced him and he was arrested at his house under paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which defined homosexuality as an…
Learn more about the SS and the organization’s involvement in perpetrating the Holocaust.
Key dates illustrating the relationship between Germany’s professional military elite and the Nazi state, and the German military’s role in the Holocaust.
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.
During World War II, Slovene general Leon Rupnik collaborated with the forces of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Rupnik was appointed president of the Provincial Government of the German-occupied Province of Ljubljana in 1943. He was convicted of treason and executed in 1946. In 2020, his sentence was annulled on a technicality.
The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were developed as Nazi Party youth groups to indoctrinate children and youth in Nazi ideology and policy.
Reidar was the third of four sons born to religious Lutheran parents in a small seafaring and whaling town along the Norwegian coast. Reidar's father was a civil servant. Reidar attended public school and dreamed of becoming a musician. 1933-39: Although Reidar was not interested in politics, he sympathized with his Jewish neighbors who had come as refugees from Germany. In fall 1939 he was saddened when Germany attacked Poland and the USSR attacked Finland. Several days later, his oldest brother passed…
Jewish groups worldwide helped rescue thousands during the Holocaust. Read more about efforts to save Jews from Nazi persecution and death.
Friedrich-Paul was born in the old trading city of Lübeck in northern Germany. He was 11 when his father was killed in World War I. After his mother died, he and his sister Ina were raised by two elderly aunts. After graduating from school, Friedrich-Paul trained to be a merchant. 1933-39: In January 1937 the SS arrested 230 men in Lübeck under the Nazi-revised criminal code's Paragraph 175, which banned sexual relations between men. Friedrich-Paul was imprisoned for 10 months. In 1938 he was…
Separated from her family, Irene was deported from the Sosnowiec ghetto to the Gleiwitz camp in March 1943. After a death march and an attempted escape from a transport out of Gleiwitz, Irene was imprisoned in Prague, then Theresienstadt, where as a political prisoner she was sentenced to death by starvation. For the five months before liberation, she shared a cell with 59 ailing women. Irene was the sole member of her Jewish family to survive the war.
Nazi propaganda had a key role in the persecution of Jews. Learn more about how Hitler and the Nazi Party used propaganda to facilitate war and genocide.
The Decree against Public Enemies was a key step in the process by which the Nazi leadership moved Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship.
Learn more about Nazi mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) killing activities in the Soviet Union during World War II.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was commander of all German armed forces during World War II. Learn about his military career and postwar trial.
In Nazi Germany, German military personnel swore an oath directly to Adolf Hitler. Learn about the oath and its impact.
October 1, 1946. On this date, the International Military Tribunal sentenced 12 Nazi officials to death.
Former Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni was an exiled political leader who sought an alliance with the Axis Powers. Learn about his wartime propaganda efforts.
View an animated map showing key events in the history of World War II and the Holocaust.
After WWII, prosecutors faced the challenge of assessing the guilt of propagandists whose words, images, and writings had supported Nazi brutality and mass murder.
The "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe, was a core goal of Adolf Hitler and the culmination of German policy under Nazi rule.
Thousands of Nazi criminals were never arrested. Learn more about the postwar efforts to bring Nazi perpetrators to justice.
Explore Jacob Wiener’s biography and learn about his experiences during Kristallnacht in Würzburg, Germany.
Learn more about the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, collectively known as the Nuremberg Race Laws.
Learn about the Jewish population of Denmark, the German occupation, and resistance and rescue in Denmark during WWII and the Holocaust.
The Nazis frequently used propaganda to disguise their political aims and deceive the German and international public. Learn more.
Read about the Nazi persecution of Black people, as well as Black people's experiences in Germany before the Nazi rise to power.
Learn about France during the Holocaust and WWII, the liberation of France, postwar trials, and the legacy of Vichy France’s collaboration with Nazi Germany.
The Nazi Kripo, or Criminal Police, was the detective force of Nazi Germany. During the Nazi regime and WWII, it became a key enforcer of policies based in Nazi ideology.
The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Learn more about the Axis powers in WW2.
The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Learn about the Axis invasion and partition, collaboration, and the fate of Jewish people living in Yugoslavia.
Learn about the history of discrimination against Roma in Europe and how the Nazi regime committed genocide against European Roma during WWII.
The Nazis carried out genocide against Europe’s Jews and persecuted and murdered other groups based on racial theories. Learn about the history of these murderous ideas.
Learn more about the forcible relocation of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent living in the US to “relocation centers.”
The Justice Case, or Jurists’ Trial, of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings tried members of the German justice administration. Browse excerpts from the verdict.
Janusz was the eldest of four children born to Catholic parents in Plock, a town located in a rural area north of Warsaw. His father was an accountant. Janusz attended local schools, and became active in scouting. 1933-39: Janusz went to Warsaw to study civil engineering. On September 1, 1939, the Germans began bombing Warsaw. One week later, all able-bodied men who had not been mobilized were directed to retreat east. On September 17, Janusz was 90 miles from the Romanian border. That night, the Soviets…
Pawel was the oldest of four children born to Roman Catholic parents in Poland's capital of Warsaw. Pawel's father had worked for the Polish merchant marine before starting his own textile business in 1930. The family moved to a comfortable apartment near the Royal Castle and the Vistula River. Pawel excelled in sports, including basketball and tennis. His favorite sport was rowing. 1933-39: In May 1939 Pawel became an army reserve officer and went to training camp near Augustow. On the morning of…
Gabrielle was the second of four children born to Dutch parents. Her father was a minister in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. She grew up in Collonges, France, near the Swiss border, where her father served as a pastor. Gabrielle was baptized in the Seventh-Day Adventist faith at the age of 16. She attended secondary school in London, England. 1933-39: Gabrielle became increasingly active in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, eventually becoming the secretary at the French-Belgian Union of Seventh-Day…
Frieda was the fourth of five children born to strict Catholic parents. She had one brother and three sisters. Frieda grew up on a large farm near the village of Michaelnbach in northern Austria. The farm had cattle, horses, pigs and poultry, and the children worked long hours helping their parents on the farm. At age 12, Frieda left school to work full time on the farm. 1933-39: Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. When war broke out in September 1939, Frieda's brother was drafted into the German army.…
Pawel, 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…
John, who was born to a non-Jewish Polish family, graduated from an art academy. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, John was in Krakow. Food became scarce in Krakow, with long lines of people waiting for whatever food was available. John decided to join the resistance against the Germans. By early 1940, he and two of his friends felt that they were in danger and decided to try to escape to France. John was caught and arrested during this escape attempt. He survived imprisonment…
John, who was born to a non-Jewish Polish family, graduated from an art academy. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, John was in Krakow. Food became scarce in Krakow, with long lines of people waiting for whatever food was available. John decided to join the resistance against the Germans. By early 1940, he and two of his friends felt that they were in danger and decided to try to escape to France. John was caught and arrested during this escape attempt. He survived imprisonment…
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