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Martin Niemöller: Biography

Martin Niemöller Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, despite his ardent nationalism. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...” The son of Lutheran pastor Heinrich Niemöller, Martin Niemöller was born in the Westphalian town of Lippstadt, Germany, on January 14, 1892.…

Postwar Trials

Efforts to bring the perpetrators of Nazi-era crimes to justice continue into the 21st century. Learn more.

The Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic was a liberal democratic republic founded in Germany in the aftermath of WWI. Learn about the era’s political and economic crises and social trends.

Jakob Wassermann

Jakob Wassermann was a popular German Jewish author. After the Nazi rise to power, he was forced to leave Germany. His works were burned in May 1933. Learn more.

Liberation: An Overview

As Allied and Soviet troops moved across Europe against Nazi Germany, they encountered concent...

Axis Powers in World War II

The three principal partners in the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Learn more about the Axis powers in WW2.

The United States and the Nazi Threat: 1933-37

Nazi Germany’s persecution of Europe’s Jews was not a secret in the United States. Though some Ameri

Benjamin (Beryl) Ferencz describes early war crimes investigations

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…

Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939

The German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939 triggered WWII. Learn more about key dates and events, causes, and related Holocaust history.

The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, 1807-1924

Founded by ethnic Turks in 1299, the Ottoman Empire took its name from Osman I, the leader of what was initially a small principality in northwestern Anatolia (Asia Minor). Over the course of the next six centuries, Ottoman rule expanded across much of the Mediterranean Basin. At the height of its power under Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), the Ottoman Empire represented a vast multilingual and multiethnic realm encompassing southeastern Europe, North and East Africa, Western Asia, and the Caucasus.…

World War I - Photograph

Alfred Dreyfus and the "Dreyfus Affair"

Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason against France in 1894. The trial and ensuing events are known as the “Dreyfus Affair.” Learn more.

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John Reed

John Reed was a journalist who helped found the Communist US Labor Party. During the 1933 Nazi book burnings, his work was burned for its Communist sympathies.

Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini’s Fascist takeover of Italy was an inspiration and example for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. Learn more.

Yugoslavia

The Yugoslav Union Formed in 1918, the Yugoslav Union encompassed Slovenia (the former Austrian provinces of Karniola and Krain) in the northwest, the former Hungarian crown land of Croatia, Serbia—including the former Hungarian Voivodina (which in turn consisted of the Backa, Baranja, and the Serbian Banat), the former Turkish provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, the former independent mountain kingdom of Montenegro, and the former Turkish provinces of Kosovo and Metohija on the Albanian…

Featured Artifact: Model of the Lodz Ghetto

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.

Genocide Timeline

Key dates in the use of the term genocide as part of the political, legal, and ethical vocabulary of responding to widespread threats of violence against groups.

Leopold Page describes the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto and escaping from the ghetto

Leopold was a teacher in Krakow, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. While serving in the Polish army, he was captured by Germans. Leopold escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport. Soon after, he met the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The two became friends. Leopold was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto. He later worked in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz. He and the other Jews who worked there were treated relatively well and protected from the Nazis. After the war, Leopold moved to the…

Russian Revolution, 1917

The Russian Revolution consisted of two separate revolutions in 1917: the February Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Learn more.

Latvia

Baltic Countries: Maps Latvia is one of the Baltic states. It is situated between Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. Latvia was an independent republic between the end of World War I and 1940. In 1935, 94,000 Jews lived in Latvia, making up about 5 percent of the total population. Approximately half of Latvian Jewry lived in Riga, the capital. Latvian Jews were represented in all social and economic classes. There was a well-developed network of Jewish schools, with over 100…

Yitzhak Gitterman

Yitzhak Gitterman (1889-1943) was a director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Poland, and a member of the underground Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB). Gitterman was born in Horonstopol, Ukraine, and began a career of supporting refugees and other victims of persecution during World War I. In 1921, he was appointed director of the JDC in Poland. He took part in the rehabilitation of the Jewish population and the establishment of welfare…

Rut Berlinska

Children's diaries bear witness to some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of Rut Berlinska.

Is It Ever Too Late to Seek Justice?

Efforts to hold some of the remaining perpetrators of crimes of the Holocaust accountable continue today, raising the question: is it ever too late to seek justice?

Erich Kästner

Erich Kästner was a popular political satirist and left-liberal author whose works were burned under the Nazi regime in 1933. Learn more.

Karl Kautsky

Karl Kautsky was a leading Marxist and Socialist theoretician in the Austrian Social Democratic movement. His books were burned in Nazi Germany in 1933. Learn more.

Jewish Population of Europe in 1933: Population Data by Country

Before the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, Europe had a richly diverse set of Jewish cultures. Learn more about the Jewish population of Europe.

Lithuania

Lithuania is the southernmost of the Baltic states. During the Holocaust, the Germans murdered about 90% of Lithuanian Jews, one of the highest victim rates in Europe.

Antisemitism in History: Racial Antisemitism, 1875–1945

Racial antisemitism is the discriminatory idea that Jews are a separate and inferior race. This type of antisemitism dates back to the late 1800s.

German American Bund

The German American Bund was an organization of ethnic Germans living in the US. It held a pro-Nazi, antisemitic, and US isolationist agenda.

The "Jewish Question"

Background Beginning in the 19th century—long before the Nazis took power in 1933—some German and other European writers, philosophers, and theologians claimed that the presence of a Jewish minority in society was a problem that needed to be solved. Known as the “Jewish Question,” the status of European Jews became the subject of heated debate in an era when they were gradually being granted civil rights and equality. Many who supported this belief often expected Jews to adapt or abandon their…

Iran during World War II

Background During and immediately following World War I, British and Russian (later Soviet) troops occupied large pieces of once independent Persia, now known as Iran, despite the country’s declared neutrality. A military officer serving in the Persian Cossack Brigade and an ardent Persian nationalist, Reza Khan led a military conspiracy aimed at the reestablishment of Iran’s sovereignty under a strong central government. Backed by the British, Reza Khan led a coup d’etat in February 1921, seizing…

Collections Highlight: Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS

Karl Höcker created a personal album of photographs chronicling SS officers’ activities at Auschwitz. Learn about this chilling collection.

Third Reich: An Overview

The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy established in Germany after World War I. Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which Germans enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights. After a suspicious fire in the Reichstag (the German Parliament), on February 28, 1933, the government issued a decree which suspended constitutional civil rights and created…

British soldiers in a trench during World War I

British troops in a trench cover the bodies of two fellow soldiers killed during the Battle of the Somme, November 1916. © IWM (Q 4393)

Jewish Life in Europe Before the Holocaust

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Jews were living in every country of Europe. A total of roughly nine million Jews lived in the countries that would be occupied by Germany during World War II. By the end of the war, two out of ever...

German Armed Forces High Command

Established in 1938, the German Armed Forces High Command was theoretically a unified mil...

Belle Mayer Zeck reflects upon the sentences given to leaders of the economy

Belle Mayer trained as a lawyer and worked for the General Counsel of the US Treasury, Foreign Funds Control Bureau. This bureau worked to enforce the Trading With the Enemy Act passed by Congress. In this capacity, Mayer became familiar with the German I. G. Farben chemical company, a large conglomerate that used slave labor during World War II. In 1945, Mayer was sent as a Department of Treasury representative to the postwar London Conference. She was present as representatives from the Allied nations…

Zeilsheim Displaced Persons Camp

After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Read about Zeilsheim DP camp.

German Invasion of Western Europe, May 1940

German troops overran Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France in six weeks starting in May 1940. Anti-Jewish measures soon followed in occupied western Europe.

Holocaust Denial: Key Dates

Browse a timeline listing some key events in the evolution of Holocaust denial and the distortion of the facts of the Holocaust.

Nazi Racism

Nazi Racism Nazi Germany was a society built on specific beliefs and ideas about race. This set of ideas is referred to as “Nazi racism” or “Nazi racial ideology.” Nazi racial ideology has no basis in reality. Like other forms of racism, Nazi racism was rooted in prejudice. Nazi racial ideology was based on Adolf Hitler’s antisemitic, racist ideas. In his book Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler explained his racist worldview. He idealized racial purity and racial struggle. After the Nazis came to power…

Gideon Frieder

Explore Gideon Frieder’s biography and learn about his experiences as a child during the Holocaust in Slovakia.

Franz Wohlfahrt describes imprisonment in Graz

Franz and his family were Jehovah's Witnesses. Germany annexed Austria in 1938. After World War II began, Franz's father was executed because, as a Witness, he opposed war. In 1940, Franz refused to participate in military training and would not salute the Nazi flag. He was imprisoned, interrogated by the Gestapo (German Secret State Police) in Graz, and sentenced to five years of hard labor in a camp in Germany. Franz was liberated by US forces in 1945.

Kurt Gerstein

German SS officer Kurt Gerstein was assigned to the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS. He was called upon to assist in the implementation of the "Final Solution." After witnessing atrocities at the Belzec and Treblinka killing centers, he tried to inform foreign diplomats, Vatican officials, and members of the political resistance within Germany about Nazi German atrocities. While in Allied custody after the war, Gerstein wrote a report documenting the atrocities he had witnessed. 

Ohrdruf

The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the first Nazi camp liberated by US troops.

SS and Police

Combining the SS and the police into one institution was an important step in the Nazi regime’s transformation into a powerful dictatorship. This SS and police system had the ideological radicalism of the SS and the executive authority of the police. During World War II, SS and police leaders were responsible for perpetrating the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.

Dawid Sierakowiak

Young people's diaries capture some of the most heartbreaking experiences of the Holocaust. Learn about the diary and experiences of David Sierakowiak.

Cinecittà Displaced Persons Camp

After WWII, many Holocaust survivors, unable to return to their homes, lived in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Read about Cinecittà DP camp.

Leopold Page describes an act of sabotage and clandestinely listening to radio broadcasts while in Bruennlitz

Leopold was a teacher in Krakow, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. While serving in the Polish army, he was captured by Germans. Leopold escaped from a prisoner-of-war transport. Soon after, he met the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The two became friends. Leopold was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto. He later worked in Schindler's factory in Bruennlitz. He and the other Jews who worked there were treated relatively well and protected from the Nazis. After the war, Leopold moved to the…