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There are numerous holocaust museums all around the world. Some of the most incredible artifacts and memories are in these museums to enlighten people on the terrifying holocaust and it's affects.

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Saving young Jews from the concentration camp and the reward that followed: (By Chloe Gill)

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Saving young Jews from the concentration camp and the reward that followed: (By Chloe Gill)

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Sir Nicholas Winton - BBC Programme "That's Life" aired in 1988

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After the liberation numerous Jews feared returning home because of the hatred of Jews. Many Organizations helped the Jews. The After Math of the Holocaust states,"With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish displaced persons and refugees began streaming into the new sovereign state. Possibly as many as 170,000 Jewish displaced persons and refugees had immigrated to Israel by 1953."

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We've been reworking our Holocaust Encyclopedia, and we would love for you to explore the new experience. Click the button at right to start using the new version. The version you are viewing now will remain online until June 30, 2018.

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By: Emily DiSilverio
Holocaust Remembrance day is January 27th and is a joyous yet sad day. Joyous because people celebrate their freedom and sad because they remember the horrible times the Jewish people lived through. A whole month is dedicated to remembering the hardships the Jewish people once faced.

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Auschwitz Camp                     By: Chloe Gill

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Auschwitz Camp                     By: Chloe Gill

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In order for the younger generation to remember the holocaust and the events of the holocausts and the many people that were innocently killed by one man's decision, concentration camps such as the one in Auschwitz became preserved.

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Walking Through Auschwitz   |   WARNING: Actual footage of entire camp

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By: Emily DiSilverio
Today we remember the holocaust through museums, memorials, photos, and ceremonies.

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Holocaust Survivor's Story of Liberation

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Holocaust Survivor's Story of Liberation

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A Holocaust Survivor Recalls The Day He Was Liberated

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The day prisoners in Auschwitz became liberated.

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By: Emily D.
Displaced persons camps were for Jewish people who were freed from captivity but not able or ready to go home. Some Jews stayed in these camps because they were too far from home, did not want to go back, or were planning a new life somewhere else. People could stay in these camps that were scattered throughout Europe for as long as they needed to. Most Jews would stay for a few months or even years before leaving for home although most made a new life elsewhere in America or Palestine. Other Jews never left the camps although that was rare.

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How is the Holocaust remembered today and why is that so important?                       By: Chloe Gill 

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How is the Holocaust remembered today and why is that so important?                       By: Chloe Gill 

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The Holocaust is known to be a time of great destruction and sacrifice. This period of time is also known to be a time where Nazis blamed and poured their anger on to the Jews, which resulted in murdering a great number of 6 million Jews because of their unemployment issues. The persecution of Jews had a great impact today because through this experience Israel was encouraged to develop specific characteristics to prevent another Holocaust from happening again such as, a fierce independence and a great strong military ability. The holocaust did not just simply effect the Jews and the Nazis but it also impacted the whole world. For example the Civil Rights Movement and the global fight against apartheid in South America were all inspired by Hitler's demonstration on how dangerous and life changing racism can be. Even though the Holocaust was a horrible time of hatred and anger from this experience many countries were able to change their old inappropriate ways for a better future.

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By: Ashley Park
The birth of Israel helped Holocaust survivors because they were welcomed and free in Israel. They were free from concentration camps and Israel became their home. Mr. Aronson, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said, "We won our war. We can make concessions. We can make peace with our neighbors. We control our lives and destiny. We are not trapped anymore." Israel also solved the problem of Jewish homelessness by "...opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in the family of nations," as David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of Jewish Agency for Palestine, announced about the formation of Israel. Zionism connects with Israel and the Holocaust survivors because Zionists demanded an independent state of Israel. A Zionist is a person who believes in the development and protection of a new Jewish nation.

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On the eve of Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, Shlomo Aronson, scholar-in-residence at the Library and professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, discussed Hitler's policy of genocide against European Jews during World War II and its relationship to the subsequent founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The April 22 presentation was the second of three lectures at the Library marking Israel's 50th anniversary.

Born in Israel during the British Mandate, Shlomo Aronson was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate. Besides his work in academia, Aronson served as correspondent and later news and current affairs director of the Israel Broadcast Authority. He has also served as director of Hebrew University's Center of European Studies and has been a visiting scholar with the Brookings Institution and the University of California at Los Angeles.

His published works include Conflict and Bargaining in the Middle East, Beginnings of the Gestapo System and The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East. During his sabbatical at the Library, he is researching a new work, The Quadruple Trap: Hitler, the Allies and the Jews.

"Beginning in the early 20th century," with expanding restrictions on Jewish immigration and the post-World War I Bolshevik Revolution, Mr. Aronson observed, "there was created an ever-growing trap" -- culminating in the Holocaust -- "into which Jews were maneuvered until there was no escape."

Mr. Aronson cited two currently popular lines of thought on the Holocaust. In one, the United States, Britain and the Allies, aware of Hitler's "final solution," abandoned the European Jews to their fate. In another, Hitler was bent on destroying the Jewish people from the beginning, with the entire German nation as his "willing executioners," to use writer Daniel Goldhagen's phrase. "These are simple arguments," he said, "but historical reality is rarely so simple." He added that his job as a historian is not to cast blame, but to understand why.

He has researched recently unsealed wartime records of the Office of Strategic Services -- the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency -- and British Foreign Service documents, particularly those related to British Palestine in the 1920s and '30s. These documents offered up "tragic treasures," in Mr. Aronson's words, including 5, 000 letters to and from Palestinian Jews routed to a joint U.S.-British censorship agency in Bermuda. The British closely monitored the activities of Palestine's Zionist leaders. The documents showed acute Jewish concern, both in Palestine and America, over the worsening fate of European Jewry.

Palestine, a British protectorate after 1917, was gradually closed to Jewish immigration by 1939, due in no small part to native Arab pressure on the British administrators.

"Hitler didn't decide to kill the Jews until 1941," Mr. Aronson said. Up until that time, the Nazi leader was content to simply push the Jews out of German territory, "not only to get rid of them, but to promote anti-Semitism elsewhere," due to the pressures of the resulting crush of refugees.

Prior to 1941, the Nazi policy was to place Jews in concentrated ghettos, and they even had a plan to send all European Jews to the African island of Madagascar. But Hitler needed British cooperation for that plan.

However, when the war erupted, neither the British nor their American allies were eager to accept the potential flood of Jewish refugees or make any deals with Hitler -- not due to any lack of charity, but because of a fear that it might blur their defined war objectives. Reminding the audience of the strong thread of international anti-Semitism at the time, Mr. Aronson said that Allied military and political leaders needed to keep their public consensus that they fought the Nazis in a war against dictatorial evil -- not a war to save the Jews.

"The Allies made a conscious political decision to separate the Jewish issue from war aims," Mr. Aronson said. On the other hand, Hitler's propaganda machine took every opportunity to paint their Allied opponents as fighting a "Jewish war," and some took the bait. Prior to Pearl Harbor, for example, the U.S. Senate launched an investigation of pro-war motion pictures and how a "Jewish-dominated" film industry might be dragging America into the war.

By the time the United States was committed to the war effort, the Nazis increased the persecution of the Jewish population. As the war progressed and the plight of the Jews became more drastic, Germany hoped the Allies would accept refugees. The Nazis even offered deals -- Allied concessions in exchange for the lives of Jews.

But the Allies considered any such rescues or deals as "war damaging" and potentially walking into a trap set by Hitler. They would not fall into that trap -- "and that sealed the fate of the Jews," Mr. Aronson said. "So the 'final solution' wasn't a matter of simple racial hatred, but a complex political decision."

Only at the close of the war did the complete story of the Holocaust begin to reach a mass audience. And since that time, Mr. Aronson contends, the world has begun to perceive the Holocaust as something universal -- a crime against the entire world, rather than one people.

Nevertheless, the political plight of the Jewish people had not diminished. "They were stateless, powerless -- pawns in the struggle between nations," said Mr. Aronson. "Having no country of their own, they were unable to assert their political self-interest or self-defense. Instead, they were forced to rely on others to act on their behalf."

But on May 14, 1948, when the British formally ended their mandate, Zionists in Palestine declared an independent state of Israel, changing everything. After fighting and winning their war of independence, Jews "decided to return to history, victims no more," noted Mr. Aronson.

Fifty years later, the argument has been made that Israel, surrounded by hostile neighbors, still lives in a trap. Mr. Aronson disagrees, asserting that Israel's situation is difficult but workable. "The trap is behind us. We won our war. We can make concessions. We can make peace with our neighbors. We control our lives and destiny. We are not trapped anymore."

Mr. Aronson's lecture was sponsored by the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, the Office of Scholarly Programs and the Embassy of Israel, and made possible by a grant from the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation.

The Library will commemorate the founding of Israel in 1948 through an exhibition of Judaica, slated to open on Sept. 16 in the North Gallery of the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building. The exhibition will include approximately 50 items selected from the Library's acclaimed Judaica exhibition "From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress," as well as a number of items chosen especially for this exhibition.

Back to July 1998 - Vol 57, No. 7

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The Holocaust and the Founding of Israel (July 1998) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin

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On the eve of Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, Shlomo Aronson, scholar-in-residence at the Library and professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, discussed Hitler's policy of genocide against European Jews during World War II and its relationship to the subsequent founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

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By: Alayna Imo
Simon Wiesenthal was born in what is now present day Ukraine. During World War II he survived in labor and concentration camps. However eighty-nine members of his and his wife's families died in the holocaust. Simon Wiesenthal was a Nazi hunter. He devoted most of his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so they could be brought to justice. While others moved on with their lives he didn't forget get the victims. He said,"I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it." Over the years Wiesenthal and his organization, the Jewish Documentation center in Vienna, Austria, have brought the Nazis to justice. They have been responsible for the capture of more than one thousand Nazis.

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

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pursuit-an effort to secure or attain; quest

justice-rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason

The Holocaust survivors wanted justice, but it wasn't just them who Hitler hurt. He caused many unessacary deaths from unprovoked wars.
To get the justice they deserved they did not want to sink as low as the Nazi's did. To prevent this from happening they only executed high up official Nazis. With the others they were imprisoned and sent to trial. Some had already killed themselves, which included Hitler himself.

Many don't believe this was the proper justice, do to the laws that were not in action at the time, but many others wouldn't feel they achieved justice if it wasn't done.

"Permanent  Exhibition :The Holocaust" which covers the postwar quest to render justice to those who carried out the murder of millions of innocent civilians and the efforts of Holocaust survivors to build new lives in Europe, Israel, and the United States.

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I was watching the HBO special, Night Will Fall, which depicts the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. I was deeply affected by these horrific acts and wanted to do something, anything to help us to remember, and to inspire us to do our part to make sure this never happens again. Then I thought about the Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria who have massacred 5,000 people and the estimated 1.5 million people reported to have fled their homes since the violence accelerated in 2009. I also reflected on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, the anti-Semitic sentiment currently spreading across Europe and the plethora of conflicts in our world today. All of these acts of hate and violence have a common theme -- they are all rooted in racism, intolerance and fear. It is very clear to me that the lessons of the Holocaust are very relevant today. Can it happen again? Is it beginning to happen? Will we let 11 million people die and millions more be tortured and displaced? How do we, fellow citizens of the world, respond to these heinous acts? These are tough, complex questions that I certainly don't have answers to, however I feel compelled to ask these questions and to personally struggle with the answers. One small thing I felt I could do today, is to share a little about one man's courageous journey to help the world to never forget the atrocities of the Holocaust -- and to learn from them.

Joe Brodecki was the executive director of the Campaign to Remember, the fundraising initiative for the development of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Under Joe's leadership, the campaign raised nearly $200 million. I interviewed Joe for my first book DreamMakers: Putting Vision & Values To Work. Joe is a phenomenal DreamMaker -- DreamMakers are people who have a compelling vision, a dream of the future they want to create, and they make their dreams come true against tremendous obstacles. Over the years I have become friends with Joe and his wife Shelly. During our conversations he always reminds me that, "First we remember, then we learn". I feel compelled to share a little of his story in hopes that we will remember, learn and do what each of us can do, to create a world that respects our differences and yet values our shared humanity.

The Holocaust Museum is not a Jewish museum. It is the result of a highly diverse international initiative. The museum was commissioned by a unanimous act of the U.S. Congress, started in President Carter's administration. President Carter established a commission chaired by Elie Wiesel, professor, novelist and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Metal of Freedom. Mr. Wiesel proclaimed that the museum had to be more than a memorial -- it must educate.

When Ronald Reagan came into office another unanimous act of Congress set aside the land for the museum with the proviso that all the money to build it had to be raised privately. The first Campaign to Remember honorary campaign committee was highly diverse. It included Father Theodore Hesburgh, the Reverend Bill Graham, the U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jean Kilpatrick, baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger, publisher and diplomat Walter Annenberg and President of the AFL-CIO Lane Kirkland.

The $200 million raised included: eighty gifts of $1 million dollars or more, and nearly 300,000 contributors from people from all walks of life including corporate, labor, military, Holocaust survivors, churches, fraternities, the entertainment industry, and people who responded to direct mail campaigns. Joe recalls:

This was a team effort, it had to be. Nobody could have done this alone. There was Adam StarKopf, from Chicago whose mother told him when he was a boy that a Jewish life was worth less than a penny; he collected six million pennies for the museum. There was a nun who inherited $3,000 and left it all to the museum. Fundraising was tough, it was the 80's and the economy was weak.

My initial feeling was that we needed a shared vision to start the campaign. It is easier to take day-to-day rejection when you have a shared vision. If you can see your desired future, and you can get other people to see and internalize it, not only in terms of today but in terms of what it will mean for this country and the world you can attract others that share your vision. And if you can help them see what it means for them, their families and their future families, they will persist through the roughest times.

Defining Moments of Joe's Journey:
Joe was very generous in this interview. He shared some of the defining moments of his personal journey that led him to dedicate five years of his life to help create the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Eighteen months before my mother gave birth to me, she was a slave in a Nazi concentration camp; so was my father. My father was born in Warsaw in 1921. His mother died when he was eight so he was raised mostly by his aunt. His father was an accountant and did not want to leave Poland. When the Nazi's came, everyone in his family was killed; only he survived. My father was sent to Auschwitz. He has the numbers tattooed on his arms by the Nazis. My mother is from a town in Southern Poland called Sosnowiec. She was from a very wealthy family, she was sent to several different camps. My mother was a dancer, almost like a child star. She danced for the people in the camps. After the war she tried to go back to her hometown, but they were killing the returning Jews, and she barely escaped with her life. My parents met in Landsberg, the displaced person camp where I was born, then in 1949 we immigrated to Richmond, Virginia.

I grew up knowing about the Holocaust, but it wasn't an obsession in our family. The messages my parents taught us were not to hate, be positive and that you can make a difference in the world. I remember being taught in the fourth grade, that prior to the Civil War, the slaves loved their masters. The school was teaching what they called "the War of Northern Aggression." Remember, Richmond, now a great city, was the capital of the Confederacy. When I told my father what I had learned in school, boy was he angry, he hit the ceiling. About the same time, all the parents in the neighborhood got a letter asking them to sign a petition to keep our school segregated; my parents refused to sign it. It was because of the Holocaust and what they had gone through. They told us, "We didn't go through all that and survive to discriminate against somebody else." Other than that, and not having grandparents, the Holocaust didn't come up much in my childhood. There was no effort to avoid the subject, it just wasn't our focus.

The impact of the Holocaust really hit me when I went to the Middle East as a volunteer civilian replacement during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. While I was there I learned to love Israel; I was also disturbed by what I saw. There were all these countries engaged in military efforts to destroy this small country. The Israeli people, many of who were Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren, were trying to raise their families and live normal lives. I remember saying to a friend, "In six months we will be back to our normal lives in the U.S." but that never happened -- everything changed. I decided to get involved.

Inspired by what he had experienced in Israel, when Joe returned to the United States he got involved in a big way. He joined the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland. Seven years later he became the executive director of the Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service. In 1985 Joe went to a Holocaust survivors' conference in Philadelphia. It was at this conference while watching a film from the Holocaust that Joe had an epiphany. That film affected him more than all of the horror he had read about.

There was a scene from this one film that really got to me. It was actual footage filmed by the Nazis, of a little boy who must have been four or five years old. He was trying to get to his mother. A Nazi soldier kept pushing him away from her and kicking her in the behind like she was nothing. That really affected me. Little children think their parents are omnipotent, but that boy's mother was powerless, there was nothing she could do. For weeks I couldn't get that scene out of my mind. I kept thinking; that soldier probably had children of his own. He probably went home that night and was a loving father -- yet he was doing this to someone else's child.

That scene brought to mind a story my mother told me about the last time she saw her mother. She described how it was raining and her mother couldn't do anything to save her except put a shawl on her shoulders to protect her from the rain -- and then she said good-bye. Looking at that film,, I thought about my daughters Ariella and Talia, my wife Shelly, my parents, my grandparents and where I came from.

Joe went to Auschwitz in 1987. What he saw there moved him to made a sacred vow to do something. One year later Joe was Executive Director of the Campaign to Remember, raising money for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum -- the institution that would tell this story.

"I didn't know what I was going to do, but I was going to do whatever it took to make sure the world never forgets. It was at that moment that I knew this story had to be told."

When the search firm interviewing candidates for the executive director job, asked Joe why he thought he was the most qualified he answered -- "It is my destiny. The campaign is the right place, at the right time, right now." Another true sign that synchronicity played a powerful role in Joe getting this position is the meeting he had with Harvey Meyerhoff, Chairman of the Campaign to Remember. Mr. Meyerhoff insisted on meeting Joe on the day that his wife was dying.

I couldn't believe that Mr. Meyerhoff wanted to meet under the circumstances. I offered to talk at another time. He looked me in the eye and said, 'My wife told me that building the Holocaust Museum is the most important thing I will ever do in my life and that I must take this meeting. I promised her, so let's talk now.' It was one of the most memorable encounters I have ever had.

"First Remember, Then Educate"
We can never forget that 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust. We must also remember that millions intentionally or unintentionally colluded in the Holocaust. These stories must be told so we can continue to learn. It is our individual and collective responsibility to never let this happen again. It is also our responsibility to work together to do what ever it takes to create a world where we, and all of our children can flourish.

Today, Joe is a Principal in the Private Client Practice of Bernstein Global Wealth Management, Inc. He is a co-founder of the firm's Washington, DC office. He is a presidential (of the United States) appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, the museum's governing board. Joe's father is 93 years old and his mother is 87. After coming to the United States, his father went dancing every night until he was 87 years old. One night he met Jack Lemon, which resulted in him being cast in a dozen movies because of his love of dance and commitment to joy. Take it from me, Joe, his wife Shelly and their daughters Ariella and Talia exude the same joy as Joe's father. I have learned a great deal about the Holocaust from Joe. He also reinforced the importance of doing our part to help end the pain and suffering in the world, and at the same time, choosing to live life to it's fullest. Joe and his family are a gift to the human spirit.

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A Campaign to Remember: The Lessons of the Holocaust Are Critically Relevant Today

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I was watching the HBO special, Night Will Fall, which depicts the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. I was deeply affected by these horrific acts and wanted to do something, anything to help us to remember, and to inspire us to do our part to make sure this never happens again.

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Alayna Imo
Ashley Park
Emily D.
Chloe Gill
Kylie Storaker