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Click on one (or all) of the links to view photographs from Auschwitz.

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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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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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Contents

1. Before the Holocaust: Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler's Rise to Power

2. Nazi Revolution in Germany, 1933-1939

3. Beginning of War, 1939-1940

4. Towards the "Final Solution," 1940-1941

5. Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945

6. Nazi Rule Comes to an End, as Holocaust Continues to Claim Lives, 1945

7. Aftermath & Lasting Impact of the Holocaust

8. Photo Galleries

The word "Holocaust," from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the ideological and systematic state-sponsored persecution and mass murder of millions of European Jews (as well as millions of others, including Romani people, the intellectually disabled, dissidents and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.

To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler's "final solution"-now known as the Holocaust-came to fruition under the cover of World War II, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland. Approximately six million Jews and some 5 million others, targeted for racial, political, ideological and behavioral reasons, died in the Holocaust. More than one million of those who perished were children.

Before the Holocaust: Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler's Rise to Power

Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Though use of the term itself dates only to the 1870s, there is evidence of hostility toward Jews long before the Holocaust-even as far back as the ancient world, when Roman authorities destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and forced Jews to leave Palestine. The Enlightenment, during the 17th and 18th centuries, emphasized religious toleration, and in the 19th century Napoleon and other European rulers enacted legislation that ended long-standing restrictions on Jews. Anti-Semitic feeling endured, however, in many cases taking on a racial character rather than a religious one.

Did you know? Even in the early 21st century, the legacy of the Holocaust endures. Swiss government and banking institutions have in recent years acknowledged their complicity with the Nazis and established funds to aid Holocaust survivors and other victims of human rights abuses, genocide or other catastrophes.

The roots of Hitler's particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitism are unclear. Born in Austria in 1889, he served in the German army during World War I. Like many anti-Semites in Germany, he blamed the Jews for the country's defeat in 1918. Soon after the war ended, Hitler joined the National German Workers' Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), known to English speakers as the Nazis. While imprisoned for treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Hitler wrote the memoir and propaganda tract "Mein Kampf"(My Struggle), in which he predicted a general European war that would result in "the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany."

Hitler was obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the "pure" German race, which he called "Aryan," and with the need for "Lebensraum," or living space, for that race to expand. In the decade after he was released from prison, Hitler took advantage of the weakness of his rivals to enhance his party's status and rise from obscurity to power. On January 30, 1933, he was named chancellor of Germany. After President Paul von Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler anointed himself as "Fuhrer," becoming Germany's supreme ruler.
WATCH: Third Reich: The Rise on HISTORY Vault
Nazi Revolution in Germany, 1933-1939

The twin goals of racial purity and spatial expansion were the core of Hitler's worldview, and from 1933 onward they would combine to form the driving force behind his foreign and domestic policy. At first, the Nazis reserved their harshest persecution for political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. The first official concentration camp opened at Dachau (near Munich) in March 1933, and many of the first prisoners sent there were Communists.

Like the network of concentration camps that followed, becoming the killing grounds of the Holocaust, Dachau was under the control of Heinrich Himmler, head of the elite Nazi guard, the Schutzstaffel (SS), and later chief of the German police. By July 1933, German concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in German, or KZ) held some 27,000 people in "protective custody." Huge Nazi rallies and symbolic acts such as the public burning of books by Jews, Communists, liberals and foreigners helped drive home the desired message of party strength.

In 1933, Jews in Germany numbered around 525,000, or only 1 percent of the total German population. During the next six years, Nazis undertook an "Aryanization" of Germany, dismissing non-Aryans from civil service, liquidating Jewish-owned businesses and stripping Jewish lawyers and doctors of their clients. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a Jew, while those with two Jewish grandparents were designated Mischlinge (half-breeds).

Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution. This culminated in Kristallnacht, or the "night of broken glass" in November 1938, when German synagogues were burned and windows in Jewish shops were smashed; some 100 Jews were killed and thousands more arrested. From 1933 to 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews who were able to leave Germany did, while those who remained lived in a constant state of uncertainty and fear.

Beginning of War, 1939-1940

In September 1939, the German army occupied the western half of Poland. German police soon forced tens of thousands of Polish Jews from their homes and into ghettoes, giving their confiscated properties to ethnic Germans (non-Jews outside Germany who identified as German), Germans from the Reich or Polish gentiles. Surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, the Jewish ghettoes in Poland functioned like captive city-states, governed by Jewish Councils. In addition to widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger, overpopulation made the ghettoes breeding grounds for disease such as typhus.

Meanwhile, beginning in the fall of 1939, Nazi officials selected around 70,000 Germans institutionalized for mental illness or disabilities to be gassed to death in the so-called Euthanasia Program. After prominent German religious leaders protested, Hitler put an end to the program in August 1941, though killings of the disabled continued in secrecy, and by 1945 some 275,000 people deemed handicapped from all over Europe had been killed. In hindsight, it seems clear that the Euthanasia Program functioned as a pilot for the Holocaust.

Towards the "Final Solution," 1940-1941

Throughout the spring and summer of 1940, the German army expanded Hitler's empire in Europe, conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Romani people, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a new level of brutality in warfare. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppenwould murder more than 500,000 Soviet Jews and others (usually by shooting) over the course of the German occupation.

A memorandum dated July 31, 1941, from Hitler's top commander Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (the security service of the SS), referred to the need for an Endlösung ( final solution) to "the Jewish question." Beginning in September 1941, every person designated as a Jew in German-held territory was marked with a yellow star, making them open targets. Tens of thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR.

Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz, near Krakow. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust.
READ MORE: Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII's Deadliest Concentration Camp
Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945

Beginning in late 1941, the Germans began mass transports from the ghettoes in Poland to the concentration camps, starting with those people viewed as the least useful: the sick, old and weak and the very young. The first mass gassings began at the camp of Belzec, near Lublin, on March 17, 1942. Five more mass killing centers were built at camps in occupied Poland, including Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and the largest of all, Auschwitz-Birkenau. From 1942 to 1945, Jews were deported to the camps from all over Europe, including German-controlled territory as well as those countries allied with Germany. The heaviest deportations took place during the summer and fall of 1942, when more than 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw ghetto alone.

Fed up with the deportations, disease and constant hunger, the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up in armed revolt. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from April 19-May 16, 1943 ended in the death of 7,000 Jews, with 50,000 survivors sent to extermination camps. But the resistance fighters had held off the Nazis for almost a month, and their revolt inspired revolts at camps and ghettos across German-occupied Europe.

Though the Nazis tried to keep operation of camps secret, the scale of the killing made this virtually impossible. Eyewitnesses brought reports of Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Allied governments, who were harshly criticized after the war for their failure to respond, or to publicize news of the mass slaughter. This lack of action was likely mostly due to the Allied focus on winning the war at hand, but was also a result of the general incomprehension with which news of the Holocaust was met and the denial and disbelief that such atrocities could be occurring on such a scale.

At Auschwitz alone, more than 2 million people were murdered in a process resembling a large-scale industrial operation. A large population of Jewish and non-Jewish inmates worked in the labor camp there; though only Jews were gassed, thousands of others died of starvation or disease. And in 1943, eugenicist Josef Mengele arrived in Auschwitz to begin his infamous experiments on Jewish prisoners. His special area of focus was conducting medical experiments on twins, injecting them with everything from petrol to chloroform under the guise of giving them medical treatment. His actions earned him the nickname "the Angel of Death."

Nazi Rule Comes to an End, as Holocaust Continues to Claim Lives, 1945

By the spring of 1945, German leadership was dissolving amid internal dissent, with Goering and Himmler both seeking to distance themselves from Hitler and take power. In his last will and political testament, dictated in a German bunker that April 29, Hitler blamed the war on "International Jewry and its helpers" and urged the German leaders and people to follow "the strict observance of the racial laws and with merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples"-the Jews. The following day, Hitler committed suicide. Germany's formal surrender in World War II came barely a week later, on May 8, 1945.

German forces had begun evacuating many of the death camps in the fall of 1944, sending inmates under guard to march further from the advancing enemy's front line. These so-called "death marches" continued all the way up to the German surrender, resulting in the deaths of some 250,000 to 375,000 people. In his classic book "Survival in Auschwitz," the Italian Jewish author Primo Levi described his own state of mind, as well as that of his fellow inmates in Auschwitz on the day before Soviet troops arrived at the camp in January 1945: "We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside us. The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to conclusion by the Germans in defeat."
READ MORE: The Horrifying Discovery of Dachau Concentration Camp-And Its Liberation by US Troops
Aftermath & Lasting Impact of the Holocaust

The wounds of the Holocaust-known in Hebrew as Shoah, or catastrophe-were slow to heal. Survivors of the camps found it nearly impossible to return home, as in many cases they had lost their families and been denounced by their non-Jewish neighbors. As a result, the late 1940s saw an unprecedented number of refugees, POWs and other displaced populations moving across Europe.

In an effort to punish the villains of the Holocaust, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, which brought Nazi atrocities to horrifying light. Increasing pressure on the Allied powers to create a homeland for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust would lead to a mandate for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Over the decades that followed, ordinary Germans struggled with the Holocaust's bitter legacy, as survivors and the families of victims sought restitution of wealth and property confiscated during the Nazi years. Beginning in 1953, the German government made payments to individual Jews and to the Jewish people as a way of acknowledging the German people's responsibility for the crimes committed in their name.

Photo Galleries

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Before the Holocaust: Historical Anti-Semitism & Hitler's Rise to Power Nazi Revolution in Germany, 1933-1939 Beginning of War, 1939-1940 Towards the "Final Solution," 1940-1941 Holocaust Death Camps, 1941-1945 Nazi Rule Comes to an End, as Holocaust Continues to Claim Lives, 1945 Aftermath & Lasting Impact of the Holocaust Photo Galleries The word "Holocaust," from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar.

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Arrange yourselves in groups of 3 or 4. Click on the link. Choose one of the stories to read. You can narrow down the stories by country and topic. No one else in your group should read the same story. I will set a 15 minute timer for you to read your stories and explore any photos or documents associated with them. Fill out a paper with the following info for each story:
Who they are:
What they did to be considered "Righteous":
When did this occur (and for how long):
Where did it take place:
Why did they rescue them/ what was their motivation?
(if the why is provided):
Why do you think ordinary people risked their lives for strangers?:

If you finish early, read another story.

When the timer is finished, you will share stories in your group. Explain your story to them, who the people were, what they did, and why they are considered "righteous."

Turn in your paper and explore the virtual tour of Auschwitz and the photo galleries linked to the right (or read more stories) for the rest of class.

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Among the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust were Armenians - some of them motivated by the memory of the atrocities committed against them at the beginning of the 20th century. These acts of rescue took place where the Armenians fled subsequent to the genocide - Ukraine, Crimea, France, Hungary, and Austria.

Christian conduct during the Holocaust continues to challenge the Christian world well into the 21st century. Many factors played a role in influencing the behavior of church leaders and clergy when confronted with the murder of the Jews. Some spoke out against the persecution, others remained silent, many acquiesced, and some even collaborated. A few - from all Christian denominations - risked their lives to save Jews.

As Nazi Germany intensified its anti-Jewish policy, increasing numbers of Jews were driven to flee and to seek ways to emigrate. Long lines of desperate people seeking visas formed in front of foreign consulates, but the free world was reluctant to permit entry of the many refugees. Most diplomats continued to employ ordinary procedures in extraordinary times; only very few proved to be an exception and faced with the refugees' plight, were willing to act against their government's policy and instructions and suffer the consequences.

While indifference and hostility towards the Jews were the general rule in Nazi occupied Europe, there were always a few who risked their lives to help the persecuted. Among the Righteous Among the Nations there are also Muslims from Albania, Bosnia, Turkey, countries of the former Soviet Union. and an Egyptian doctor residing in Berlin.

They were young girls of very modest or poor background, who had to leave their parents' home at an early age and go to work taking care of other people's households and children. When the war broke out the situation often changed overnight and a reversal of fortunes took place: the Jewish employers were stripped of their status, assets and rights and became helpless victims to persecution and murder, and it was the nursemaids who, despite the danger, their young age and lack of education, took charge and assumed full responsibility for the Jewish families' survival.

Rescue acts were by their very nature performed in secret. The danger of denunciation was great, and Jews had to be hidden not only from the perpetrators, but also from neighbors. Yet, in several places organized rescue was put in place, with rescuers joining together and pooling their resources and efforts. Sometimes these groups were part of organized resistance movements; in other cases they were spontaneous.

On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, the last such camp still functioning. They found 7,000 survivors. Another 50,000 inmates had been marched out several days earlier by the camp's staff in order to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Most of them perished before the war ended. Auschwitz, where over one million people - most of them Jews - were killed, has become a symbol for the Holocaust and for evil as such, and rightly so. For the Jewish people, it is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world, a cemetery without graves.

And yet, even within the horror that was Auschwitz, there were flickers of light. Despite the total dehumanization that was part of the camp system, there were remarkable acts of solidarity and humanity by camp inmates. Among them were non-Jews, who at risk to their own lives, sought to ease the pain, to give aid and to rescue Jews. They proved that even within the brutality and the murder, people could choose not to remain indifferent. These non-Jews are among the more than 21,000 who by 2006 have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Since 1963, as mandated by the Israeli Parliament, Yad Vashem has honored those non-Jews who, during the Holocaust, saved Jewish lives in circumstances that posed a risk to his or her life, without intending to receive a reward, monetary or otherwise.

We bring you here six of their stories.

During the Holocaust most people abandoned their Jewish neighbors, turned a blind eye or even participated in the persecution of the Jews. Among them were teachers, who watched as their students were marked, harassed, discriminated against and finally murdered. Only some felt that it was their duty not only to educate and instill values in the classroom, but to live by those ideals, even at the risk of their lives. Yad Vashem has recognized those teachers as Righteous Among the Nations.

These Righteous Among the Nations, who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, and are featured in this unique exhibition, embodied the Olympic spirit by dedicating their lives to "social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles". (taken from the Olympic Charter).

In order to perpetrate the murder of six million Jews it was necessary to enlist the cooperation of different state institutions. Many of those involved were, so they claimed, professionals merely doing their job. Only a small minority mustered the necessary courage and honesty to recognize the real significance of what they were doing or what they were required to do and decided to defy their superiors and their orders and instructions.

About One and a half million Jewish children perished in the Holocaust. Every child, every baby was targeted - only because they were born Jewish - in the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. A whole generation was killed; only a few survived. In trying to save their children, parents often had to take the painful decision to part from them; other children were hidden after their parents were deported or killed.

In a Europe where Jews were ostracized and targeted for murder, most people abandoned their former neighbors, and only a few stood by their side. The price that rescuers had to pay for their actions differed from one country to another. In Eastern Europe, notices were put up threatening those who helped Jews and their families with death. In Germany and Western Europe punishment was generally less severe. However, witnessing the brutal treatment of the population and the perpetrators' determination to hunt down every single Jew, people must have feared that they would suffer greatly if they attempted to help the persecuted. Moreover, in many places rescuers had to beware not only of the authorities, but there was a great risk of denunciation on the part of their neighbors.

Some of the rescuers had to pay the ultimate price. Here are some of their stories:

A little over half of the Righteous Among the Nations recognized by Yad Vashem are women. While many of them acted in cooperation with other family members, some of these courageous women were the initiators of the rescue and acted independently to save Jews. Here are some of their stories.

Featured here are several dozen stories of Righteous Among the Nations arranged by topics and by countries. All the Righteous Among the Nations recognized by Yad Vashem are included in the Database of the Righteous.

The "Pianist"'s Rescuer: Wilhelm (Wilm) Hosenfeld

Rescue in the Sewers: Leopold & Magdalena Socha

The Nanny That Kept Her Promise: Gertruda Bablinska

The Port Worker Who Turned Rescuer: Jan and Johana Lipke

"Our Helpers" in the Secret Annex: Hermine (Miep) and Jan Augustus Gies

A Mother's Deathbed Confession: Ida Brunelli-Lenti

Chinese Visas in Vienna: Feng-Shan Ho

Here Is the List of Jews You Required: Metropolitan Chrysostomos and Mayor Lucas Carrer

The Life Saving Stay in the Hospital: Roger and Jeanette Voinot

Murdered by Their Neighbors: Vasiuta Wegrzynowska and her children

Rescued by an Egyptian in Berlin: Dr. Mohamed Helmy and Frieda Szturmann

Murder in Markowa: Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma

Shelter During the Massacres: Ignat and Sofya Yermolovich

The Policeman who Lifted the Border Barrier: Paul Grueninger

The Rescue of the Future Chief Justice: Jaroslavas Rakevičius and his sons

Teaching the Rescuer's Daughters Math and Reading: Antonina Kulakovskaya and daughter Vera Gribanova (Kulakovskaya)

"We are all Jews": Roddie Edmonds

"Saint Feodosiya": Filip & Teklya Konyukh and their sons Aleksander and Andrey

In Search of Esther: Stanislaw and Tasilia Pozniak and daughter Janina

Three Boys in the Studite Monastery: Hieromonk Daniil Tymchyna

Rescue in a Circus: Adolf and Maria Althoff

An American in Marseille: Varian Fry

The Assisi Network: Monsignor Giuseppe Placido Nicolini, Father Aldo Brunacci, Father Rufino Nicacci, Luigi Brizi and his son Trento

British POWs: Stan Wells, George Hammond, Tommy Noble, Alan Edwards, Roger Letchford, Bill Keeble, Bert Hambling, Bill Scruton, Jack Buckley and Willy Fisher

Priests, Farmers and Noblemen: Joseph Celis and his children; Marie Louise Tabruyn, Father Louis Celis' housekeeper; Alfons and Clementina Maris; and Baron Raymond and Baroness Marcelle de Tornaco

18 Months in a Haystack: Pavel and Lyubov Gerasimchik and their children

Mykola and Maria Dyuk

The Insubordinate Consul: Aristides De Sousa Mendes

The Priest's Request: Father Bronius Paukstys

A Tale of Two French Butchers: Jules and Jeanne Roger and mother Louise Roger, Esther and Roger Perret

Schindler's List: Oskar and Emilie Schindler

Visas to Japan: Chiune Sempo Sugihara

Geulen's List: Andree Geulen-Herscovici

With Fishing Boats to Sweden: Henry Christen and Ellen Margrethe Thomsen

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: André and Magda Trocmé, Daniel Trocmé

Muslim rescuers in Albania: Vesel and Fatima Veseli and their children: Refik, Hamid and Xhemal

Swedish Rescuer in Budapest: Raoul Wallenberg

The Witness to Murder Who Decided to Act: Hermann Friedrich Graebe

Hiding in Cages in the Zoo: Jan and Antonina Zabinski

Paul Grüninger

Robert and Johanna Sedul, Otilija Schimelpfening

Nikolaou Kostas

Petrus (Pieter) and Adriane Kleibroek and their daughter Nelie

Russian Orthodox Father Aleksey Glagolev

Florence Network

Mikas and Elena Lukauskas

Anna Krezo and her daughter Nadezhda Soloviova

Theodor and Jaroslawa Florczak

Hermanna van Corbach

Józef & Natalia Roztropowicz, and their daughters, Janina and Stanislawa

Theodorus and Maria Schouten, and their daughter Cornelia Anna

Jonas and Felicija Radlinskas

Jan and Anna Puchalski, and their children, Irena, Krystyna and Sabina

Paul and Suzanne Gibaud, Louis and Georgette Barthelemy, Albert and Renee Sarro

Jan and Antonina Zabinski

Raoul Wallenberg

Vesel and Fatima Veseli and their children: Refik, Hamid and Xhemal

Henry Christen and Ellen Margrethe Thomsen

Andree Geulen-Herscovici

Chiune Sempo Sugihara

Oskar and Emilie Schindler

Mykola and Maria Dyuk

Jules and Jeanne Roger and mother Louise Roger, Esther and Roger Perret

Father Bronius Paukstys and his brother Juozas

Aristides De Sousa Mendes

Pavel and Lyubov Gerasimchik and their children Klavdiya Kucheruk, Galina Gavrishchuk and Nikolay

The Celis Family

British POWs

Hieromonk Daniil Tymchyna

Feng-Shan Ho

Jan and Johana Lipke

Monsignor Giuseppe Placido Nicolini, Father Aldo Brunacci, Father Rufino Niccacci, Luigi Brizi and his son Trento

Adolf and Maria Althoff

The Konyukh, the Kalutas and the Kuyavas

Jaroslavas Rakevičius and his sons Česlovas, Juozas, Zenonas and AlgimantasJonas and Ona Mozūraitis, and their children

Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma

Roger and Jeanette Voinot

Leopold and Magdalena Socha

Wilhelm (Wilm) Hosenfeld

Władysław & Stanisław Swierczewski

Euzebia Bartkowiak

Ignat and Sofya Yermolovich

Jerzy Pozimski

Dr. Ella Lingens

Jerzy Bielecki

Lorenzo Perrone

Dr. Adelaide Hautval

Ludwig Wörl

Andrée Geulen

Amato Billour

Jelena Glavaški

Sister Gertruda Stanisława Marciniak

Vladimir Chernovol

Gerda Valentiner

Benjamin Blankenstein

Aleksander Kramarovskiy

Elisabeth Abegg

Ali Sheqer Pashkaj

Destan and Lime Balla

Besim and Aishe Kadiu

Danielius Žilevičius, Ona and Adolfina Žilevičienė

Anthonie Pieter Wetemans and Judith Wetemans (de Graaff)

Martin Uher

Béla Stollár

Margit Eugénie Mallász

Jan Kasper Klein

Tadeusz Gebethner

Maria Helena Friedlander (Bruhn)

Boris and Žarko Dolinar

Gino Bartali

Karolina Juszczykowska

Sofia Kritikou (Kritikoy)

Bronislava Krištopavičienė

Caecilia Antonia Maria Loots

Antonina Gordey

Lois Gunden

Ludviga Pukas

Elisabeta Strul (Nicopoi)

Maria Agnese Tribbioli

Anna Igumnova

Johanna Eck

Jeanne Daman-Scaglione

Suzanne Spaak

Sofka Skipwith

Grigori and Pran Tashchiyan, and their children Asmik and Tigran Tashchiyan

Ashkhen Agopyan

Arut and Natalya Zagoruyko-Kisheshyan and their daughter Almaza Kisheshyan

Harutyun Khachatryan

Albert and Makrouhi Hougassian and their daughter Berthe

Aram and Felicia Taschdjian

Vartan Mkrtchyan and his mother Arakel, Knarik Shakhbazyan

Georges Dilsizian and his son André-Gustave

Ara Jeretzian

Yervante and Elbis Beurkdjian

Peruza Bagdasarian and her son Sarkis

Jozef Marchwinski

Heinrich and Maria List

Andrey and Anastasiya Cheremukha, and their son - Valentin

Johan Gerard and Wilhelmina Dora Westerweel

René Dumonteil

René and Hélène Bindel, their son Jean, and Clotilde Pava

Julien Henri Marius and Pauriol Heniette Augustine

Monsignor Pierre-Marie Théas

Pastor Jean Séverin Lemaire

Raoul Laporterie

Marie-Louise Carven

Marie-Rose Gineste

Monseigneur Jules-Gérard Saliège

Germaine Ribière

Gilbert Lesage

Father Jean Fleury

Anne-Marie Mingat and her mother, Marthe Lerme

Malgorzata Wolska and her children Mieczyslaw, Halina (Michalecka-Wolska), Wanda (Szandurska- Wolska) and nephew Janusz Wysocki

Anna Borkowska

Jan Zwartendijk

Leokadia Jaromirska

Yefim Buldov

Wladyslawa Wierzbicka-Kostanska and her son, Jan Kostanski

Waitstill and Martha Sharp

Vladimir and Galina Imshennik

Traian Popovici

Tatiana Zelenskaya and Pavel Chariuta

Tadeusz and Wladyslawa Korsak, Jan and Maria Michalowski

Tadeusz Czezowski, his wife Antonina Czezowska and their daughter Teresa Czezowska

Stojan-Bogoja Siljanovski

Stanisław and Regina Świda

Stanislawa Rotman-Kaczmarczyk

Stanislaw and Tasilia Pozniak and daughter Janina

Selahattin Ülkümen

Prokofiy and Lidiya Ivanov, Yelizaveta Kondratyeva

Princess Alice

Pierre Nicolini

Per Faye Hansen

Olena Hryhoryshyn

Mykolas and Jadvyga Šimelis

Mustafa and Zejneba Hardaga, Izet and Bachriya Hardaga, Ahmed Sadik

Milena Jesenská

Milena Herbenova

Metropolitan Chrysostomos, Mayor Lucas Carrer

Maria Walewska

Maria Chomova and her daughter, Olga Sramkova

Maria Burdowa

Luis Martins de Souza Dantas

Lucien Bunel (Father Jacques)

Klaas and Hendrika van der Knoop

Karl Plagge

Joseph Migneret

Johan Benders and Gerritdina Benders-Letterboer

Jean Phillipe

Jean Deffaugt

Jan and Yekaterina Karijev

Jacob and Wijntje de Vries

Ivan (Ivica) Vranetic

Irena Sendler

Iosif and Anna Nazaruk

Ida Brunelli-Lenti

Hermine (Miep) and Jan Augustus Gies

Hermann Friedrich Graebe

Hendrikus (Hein) and Martha Snapper

Gijsbertje Duizer-Verhoef and Hilde Van Straten-Duizer

Gertruda Babilińska

François and Berthe Bousson

Frans and Rie Pakker (De Wit)

Feodor Mikhailichenko

Father Pierre-Marie Benoit

Father Arrigo Beccari and Dr. Giuseppe Moreali

Erzsebet Fajo

Elisabeth Hedwig Leja Gessler

Dr. Mohamed Helmy and Frieda Szturmann

Dorothea Neff

Domicele Pagojute

Djina-Gertruda Beritic and her son - Tihomil

Dimitar Peshev

The Cooymanses, the Numanses, the Kohlys and the Roelofsens

Camille Ernst

Bertha and Klaas Crum

Bernhard Lichtenberg

Armin T. Wegner

Anton Sukhinski

Anton Schmid

Angela and Frantiszek Melo and their son - Frantiszek

André and Magda Trocmé, Daniel Trocmé

Boris M. and Vaska Altiparmak

Aleksander and Antonina Wyrzykowski

Elisabeth and Karel Eckhart and mother Gertrude Eckhart

Victor Bodson

Henriette (Hetty) Voute and Gisela Wieberdink-Soehnlein

Julija Vitkauskienė and her son Arėjas-Stasyss Vitkauskas

Kipras Petrauskas and Elena Žalinkevičaite-Petrauskienė

Johannes and Anna Syrier

Hein and Henk Sietsma

Pieter Adriaan Meerburg

Don Gaetano Tantalo

József and Margit Strausz

Jozsef Vamos

Imre Irsay, his wife and son György

Ferenc and Teresa Bankuti, Cecilia Schindele

Clara Ambrus

Yiorgos and Magdalini Mitzeliotis, Stefanos and Magdalini Korfiatis

Jane Haining

Francis Foley

Ilse Sonja Totzke

Gustav Schroeder

Alfred Rossner

Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim

Gertrud and Reverend Otto Mörike

Hermann Maas

Gertrud Luckner

Loni and Albert Harder

Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz

Dr. Hans Georg Calmeyer

Berthold and Elsa Beitz

Dr. Albert Battel

Wiktoria and Stanislaw Szumielewicz

Manko and Maryna Swierszczak, Michal and Genowefa Dukiewicz

Helena Sitkowska and her son Andrzej Sitkowski

Karolina Sapeta

Maria Kotarba

Stanislaw Jasinski and his daughter Emilia Slodkowska (née Jasinska)

Stefan Jagodzinski

Magdalena Grodzka-Guzkowska

Antoni Gawrylkiewicz

Jun Shun Pan

Jadwiga Dudziec

Krystyna Danko

Roza Sober-Dragoje and Zekira Besrević

Aracy Carvalho de Guimarães Rosa

Mariya Yevdokimova

Yevgeniya Yemelyanova

Aleksander Novosad

Fatima Kanapatskaiya and her daughter Aysha (Anna) Trofimova-Kanapatskaiya

Olga Chirun

Varvara Tsvileneva

Marcel and Celestine Arnoldy

Bishop Pavel Gojdic

Jozef and Augusta De Winne

Eduardo Propper de Callejon

Angel Sanz Briz

Vasiuta Wegrzynowska and her children Jan, Mikhal and Docia

Fedora Vagun (Kontush)

Maria Tykva

Mariya Podolyan and her mother Sofya Shapovalova

Raisa Makarevich and her mother Feokla Levitkaya

Antonina Kulakovskaya and her daughter Vera Gribanova (Kulakovskaya)

Mefodiy and Kseniya Logatzky and daughter Darya

Roddie Edmonds

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Featured here are several dozen stories of Righteous Among the Nations arranged by topics and by countries.

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Click on the link below. You can click on the different arrows to move around the camp. At the bottom of the screen, you can also click PANORAMAS or MAP to navigate differently. You can click on specific areas.

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The Nazi German concentration camp and center for the extermination of Jews created during World War II on the outskirts of Oświęcim. Initially it consisted only of Auschwitz I, created in the spring of 1940, later also of the considerably larger Birkenau camp, and later still of Monowitz and almost…