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The Museum's collections database contains more than 270,000 records, including:

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LIFE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: BLANKA ROTHSCHILD

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LIFE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: BLANKA ROTHSCHILD

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Life After the Holocaust was a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to document the experiences of six Holocaust survivors whose journeys brought them to the United States. Their experiences reveal the complexity of starting over.

Blanka Rothschild, born Blanka Fischer, was born and raised in Lodz, Poland. As an only child she was especially close to her mother and grandmother. Her father died before the war broke out.
Blanka Rothschild: Family Photographs
Listen to Blanka's Story

Transcript

Narrator: San Diego, California. It's Passover - a holiday that conjures up memories of another country and another time.

Blanka: My mother and father were ahm... non-observant Jews. However, the tradition was kept up. We went for all the big holidays to grandparents who kept the Judaism alive. And they were religious.They were not orthodox, but they were religious. I will never forget the Seders, the warm feeling of being with all my family - and with strangers. Because we always... My grandparents invited strangers. This was a tradition. From orphanage; soldiers who were of Jewish origin who did not have a place to go to. And they had a cook and a serving maid. And there was a long, long table laid in with this food. And the people and the happiness and the lights because my grandfather always said, "Let there be a lot of light, it's a holiday." So, all the lights in all the rooms were on. It was such a wonderful, happy feeling.

Narrator: Blanka Rothschild, nee Fischer, was born and raised in Lodz, Poland. As an only child she was especially close to her mother and grandmother. Her father died before the war broke out.

[Hitler's voice is heard, "Since 5:45am, we are returning fire." Crowd responds, "Heil!"]

Narrator: The Fischers were forced to move to the Lodz ghetto in the winter of 1939/1940.

[Goebbels' voice is heard, "I am asking you, do you want total war?" Ecstatic crowd, "Yes!" Marching is heard.]

Narrator: Four years later, the family was separated and Blanka was deported to Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp in Germany. After a few weeks, she was transferred to Wittenberg as a forced laborer in an airplane factory. It was here that a German supervisor beat Blanka so viciously that she suffered broken ribs and permanent spine damage. When the Allied Forces closed in on Wittenberg in April of 1945, the Germans deserted the camp and the women broke free. Propped up by friends and in spite of her pain, Blanka ran towards the advancing Russian army and into the line of fire.

Blanka: As a matter of fact, one of the girls was hit. Ahm - you just didn't have time to look! You were running. Like an animal. The first Russian was of Asiatic origin, because his face, the features were Asiatic. And he was very dirty. I remember his big black leather boots. Filthy uniform. He was the liberator. And we thought we should kiss his boots.

Narrator: They were given something to eat; salty, pickled herring.

Blanka: And, of course, we became very thirsty. There was no water. The pipes were broken. And they told us to leave. You have to understand the circumstances. The Russians were fighting. It was just unbelievable. I didn't see anything there of... of normal food ration or even lazarette, Red Cross. But they had some bandages. And they gave me the bandages, and I was bandaged around my body to hold my ribs.

Narrator: In the nearby fields, they met two Polish men, who had also survived as forced laborers. Together they continued their journey.

Blanka: My friends helped me. We reached the first house in the village. The roof was gone from the bombardment. We went to the basement. The basement was very well prepared with food and sleeping equipment. We lay down. We ate, we lay down and the very same night, two Russians came and raped two girls.

Narrator: Blanka escaped the same fate, because one of the Polish men covered her with blankets and sat down on top of her for the entire night.

Blanka: This was my liberation. Very bitter. I was petrified of the Russians now.

Narrator: Blanka moved into a nearby house, occupied by former French prisoners who agreed to protect her.

[Collage of radio announcements: British reporter, "This is V-Day in Germany." Churchill, "Victory of the cause of freedom." Stalin's voice over a Russian victory song.]

Narrator: On May 8th, the German forces surrendered. The war in Europe was officially over. However, the circumstances made it difficult to know where to go. After several weeks, Blanka decided to join a group of men and women who were walking to Poland.

Blanka: A human being is very strong, unbelievably strong...

Narrator: In search of family members, she made her way back to Lodz.

Blanka: And - our house was standing. And the so-called superintendent was still the same one. And when he saw me, he thought that he... that he saw a ghost! He said in Polish, "How come I survived? Why did I come back?" This was the greeting I received. When I wanted to go upstairs to our place, our apartment, a large place, the people wouldn't let me in.

Narrator: She went to the nearby offices of a Jewish aid organization, where lists were posted with the names of returning survivors. Only one name was familiar - that of a girlfriend who had survived the war in hiding with her husband. Blanka went to stay with the couple for two weeks, but didn't feel comfortable in Poland.

Blanka: I just didn't feel welcome. My - my Poland was not my Poland anymore. And, I decided to move to Berlin, because I was told that they had Displaced Person camps run by the Allied forces. And I thought maybe somebody survived there!

Narrator: Postwar Berlin had been temporarily divided among the Allied powers into four zones: American, Russian, French, and British. While the Displaced Persons camps, also known as DP camps, were under control of the military authorities, care of the DPs was primarily in the hands of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, known as UNRRA, and international refugee organizations. Blanka arrived by train, and made her way to the nearest camp, which was located in the Russian zone. Conditions were crowded and daily life regimented.

Blanka: We were given places to sleep. We were given food. And - ah, I was grateful for the help. But I didn't want this type of... I wanted privacy. And ah - I don't remember too much about it. Maybe because I'm getting older. Things are sort of slowly blending and disappearing. Ahm, I'm trying to remember the good things. And I'm trying to maybe subconsciously forget the sad things. Maybe this helped me to live.

Narrator: Early on, deliberate forgetfulness was a survival tool for Blanka. One memory she has tried to erase from her mind is the image of her emaciated, dying mother whom she found in the liberated concentration camp Sachsenhausen, near Berlin.

Blanka: And she was in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen hospital, but she died. She was completely... (her voice trails off)... I saw her. I don't even want to think about it, because that's a terrible memory.

Narrator: Desperate for a semblance of normalcy, Blanka bribed a German policeman with the precious whole bean coffee she received from a Jewish relief organization. She wanted him to register her in the American zone, where officials might be able to locate her distant relatives in the US And he did. Again, she was moved into a DP camp. Again, it was a difficult experience.

Blanka: People were very enterprising. They were used to the conditions. They had friends. They were going to Poland. They were bringing goods back and forth to Breslau... Wrozlaw. I could not partake in any of this. And all to me was very strange. I couldn't eat the way people were... buying something, sitting at the table... and talking about business. I was lost! I didn't feel good! I wanted to be in a room of my own. I wanted privacy.

Narrator: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, one of the main agencies aiding Jewish DPs, helped locate Blanka's relatives in Detroit. In the winter of 1946/1947, Blanka crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the SS Marine Marlin, a troop transporter. The trip took over two weeks and was beset by storms and rough seas. The ship was damaged, and Blanka, who along with the other refugees was traveling in the lowest quarters, had to walk in water for days.

Blanka: When we arrived and we left the boat, we didn't go to Ellis Island. We went to a pier. There were benches, long benches. And there were letters above, alphabetically; A,B,C... And they told us to go to a letter that was corresponding with your last name. Since my name was Fischer, I went to letter "F." And I was sitting there. And people were coming and picking up their relatives or friends. And I was sitting and sitting and sitting... And, finally, I saw a gentleman, very distinguished looking gentleman walking by with a photo, ahm, showing that picture. And when I looked at the picture, I said in Polish, "This is my grandmother."

Narrator: It was the son-in-law of her grandmother's half-brother from New Jersey, who had come to pick her up. Her grandmother's sister in Detroit who had sponsored Blanka's emigration died one day before the steamer finally arrived. Since that family had a funeral to attend to, Blanka was to stay temporarily with her great-uncle.
Blanka: And we reached his place in ah - Paterson, New Jersey. It was Paterson. And his wife also spoke Polish and German and was the most wonderful, wonderful lady who made me feel good, warm. She hugged me. She kissed me. And that's what I needed. That's what I needed. I didn't need any material things. I just wanted to be loved, to belong. And that was the beginning.

Narrator: After the funeral, the relatives in Detroit invited Blanka to come and to stay. But she didn't find much warmth in this family, nor an understanding for the financial independence she craved. She got herself a menial job in the Polish section of town, saved the money, and returned to New Jersey, began training to become a baby nurse, worked hard to improve her English, and made new friends.

Blanka: What I wanted next was to have a child. I wanted to show Hitler that the seed survived. And I wanted a child the worst way. The doctors told me that it would worsen my condition. It would throw me off. But I felt that it was worth it. Ahm, I had - some ribs were damaged... broken. And the spine... It didn't show when I was clothed, in clothes. But when I was undressed, you could see sticking parts of it... And I was very self-conscious about it. It was very unconventional in those days to have a child without a husband. I got married to a man who is a very nice man. We both are of the same religion. We are both very honest. We are both civically minded people. We both love music, different kinds of music, but music. But we are very different. We are very different people, intellectually. I got married and I immediately, the next month, I got pregnant. I wanted it. And I wanted a daughter, because I always felt that a daughter will be close... closer than a son. So, I was lucky because I do have a daughter who is very close to me and we are very fortunate. We nourish each other. From the very beginning on, my entire life centered around this child. I lived on a fourth floor walk-up apartment in the Bronx. I had only one bedroom. And the bedroom belonged to her. We had a convertible in the living room. I tried to dress her the best I could. I tried to read stories, sing songs, teach her, expose her to music... I - I delighted in bringing her up. It was... my life changed. I was very grateful. When the baby was born, I used to... It was hot. We didn't have air conditioning. New York can be very cruel in the summer - the humidity. And we walked to the park at night. Nobody was afraid. It was a local park. And all the other mothers with their babies were there. And we were sitting at night not being afraid. So, we formed very close friendships. Not one of my friends there was a survivor, strangely enough. One was Italian. Conny, adorable. And three others were Jewish. We played mah-jongg, I remember.

Narrator: Her husband, an inspector for General Dynamics, made a modest living.

Blanka: If you don't have much and your friends don't have much, you're not unhappy. You have food. You have clothes. You - As a matter of fact, we were - when we played - once a week, we used to put, I don't remember, 50 cents or 75 cents on the side. When we had enough money, all the couples went to the theater, because we loved theater. Ahm - financially, I was not in a position to - to do things that I would have liked to. I would have liked to go to a good university. I thought that I had enough brain to do it. But my health was precarious.

Narrator: And still is. For many years now, Blanka has had to wear a full body brace, living in constant pain. But her motivation to give something back to the country that had adopted her, made her an active volunteer, pushing a library cart through a hospital, and helping teachers in her daughter's school. Blanka's daughter Shelley remained the center of her life. And Blanka made sure that Shelley was allowed to pursue her educational ambitions, a Master's degree in Shakespearean literature.

Blanka: My husband used to laugh. He said, "What you will do with Shakespeare?" He said, "How about a little typing on the side?" And she said, "But I love it!" So, I said, "Well, she loves it - so she has to do it. She has to be happy, to do what she likes to do." And we sent her to England to Shakespearean Institute. And - whatever you learn, it's your gain. It's a wonderful thing.

Narrator: In the mid-1970s, when children of survivors began to form groups in which they could share their experiences and support one another as members of the "Second Generation," Shelley did not join.

Blanka: I asked her about it. She said, she lives with it. Seeing my body it reminds her enough of Holocaust. She could not associate with a group and speaking about it. It hurt her too much. She always knew that I was a survivor. Her father was not. But I was a survivor, and I never made a - ahm, secret out of it. I did not tell her in the details, the gory details of what went through. I didn't want to go overboard. Because this was a child. I didn't want to poison her mind. I had to find the middle road for her to grow up to be a bright, open-minded person. But I wanted her to know because this was the legacy! She was entitled to know where her mother came from, my background. I wanted her to be proud of it, which she is. At the same token she resented the people who caused my... my affliction, my being disabled as a result of the tremendous beatings that I was getting. She could not accept it. And I tried to temper her dislike - more than dislike, her hatred into ahm... into understanding that people are people. There were people who were good.

Narrator: Blanka began speaking about her wartime experiences in the early 1970s. Out of a strong sense of obligation to those who perished, and in response to a general public which was now more interested in the Holocaust than it had been in previous decades.

Blanka: I am there on one purpose only, to tell people, oh not my personal story but to spread my message. And my message always was one "Let's tolerate one another. Let's learn about each other." And I always say that, "People, take this with a grain of salt. You don't have to love one another, but tolerate one another. Learn how to live together." The population is growing fast. The earth is getting smaller. We're flying from one place to another in few hours. If we won't learn how to get along, we will perish!

Narrator: First, she spoke to American-born friends, women's groups and churches in San Diego, where she now lives. Then in state schools and universities. But she pays a price.

Blanka: The price is - my health. My innermost feelings... my... my dreams... my nightmares. But you have to decide is it worth it? I lived with a sense of guilt all my life. I felt that maybe I wasn't the one deserving to survive. Maybe I wasn't worth it. There were so many people in the family who were much more deserving to survive, and I was chosen to be the one. You live with this guilt always. So, old age is... it's not so sweet. The only sweetness is the family. My granddaughter's name is Alexis Danielle. She was born in 1978. She's the joy of all our lives. She's beautiful in and out. She's bright. She is in her first year of law school, wants to study environmental law. Her parents are very, loyal wonderful couple. I was very lucky that my daughter married a man who's a wonderful husband and father, and provides cultural background. They do go to theater... Alexis is very well rounded young person, as is my daughter. I believe in some sort of Supreme Being, but I couldn't define it. I did not have Hebrew education. Neither did my mother. Ah... I, I'm an extremely good Jew at heart, because I believe in the commandments... And if you follow the commandments, you're religious. Ahm - my father's idea was more philosophical. He thought that God surrounds us. That God is everywhere, in every human, in every living tree, in the nature. And ah - I sort of adopted this. However, in camp I was questioning, "Where is this supreme being, where is God, what's happening?" These are human beings who are doing this to other human beings. Therefore, is there a God? The questioning - long time. I slowly returned to the faith. I'm not a temple goer, but I feel that I'm a good Jew, because I observe the commandments. I will not steal. I will honor - unfortunately, I don't have parents, I'm an old lady myself. And ah I tried to bring up my daughter in this spirit. And my daughter did not have bat mitzvah, but my granddaughter did. So, it's like coming back. The circle is repeating.

Narrator: Six years of war life; over fifty years of postwar life...

Blanka: They are two different lives. There is no comparison. There is nothing that I can say - I can weigh one against the other. The six years of imprisonment were - German word "Ewigkeit," "eternity." These years now - especially now that I grow older - passing by very quickly, too quickly. I want to live long enough to see my granddaughter graduate. To see good things. To see her get married, and then I will be completely happy. To hear from people again, "I have listened to you and I appreciate it. I learned something from you." That would be wonderful. It would be something... fulfillment.

Credits

Narrator: This program is part of "After the Holocaust", a series of audio profiles of Holocaust survivors in America. It was conceived and written by Regine Beyer and Arwen Donahue.

Studio production by Regine Beyer with Helen Thorington, engineer, at the New Radio and Performing Arts studio in Staten Island, New York.

The narrator was Jane Altman.

Special thanks go to the German Radio Archives, DRA, in Potsdam-Babelsberg; to Belgian producer Ronny Pringels and to German producer Helmut Kopetzky for the use of sounds from their archives.

"After the Holocaust" is a production of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The interviews in this program were conducted for the Oral History Department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with financial support by the Jeff and Toby Herr Grant.

The Museum gratefully acknowledges Jeff and Toby Herr for making these interviews and this audio series possible.

Last Edited: Jul 21, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Life After the Holocaust: Blanka Rothschild

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Life After the Holocaust was a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to document the experiences of six Holocaust survivors whose journeys brought them to the United States. Their experiences reveal the complexity of starting over. Blanka Rothschild, born Blanka Fischer, was born and raised in Lodz, Poland.

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LIFE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: THOMAS BUERGENTHAL

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LIFE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: THOMAS BUERGENTHAL

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Life After the Holocaust documented the experiences of six Holocaust survivors whose journeys brought them to the United States, and reveals the complexity of starting over.

Thomas and his parents were deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. As Soviet troops advanced in January 1945, Thomas and other prisoners were forced on a death march from Auschwitz. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany. After the Soviet liberation of Sachsenhausen in April 1945, Thomas was placed in an orphanage. Relatives located him, and he was reunited with his mother in Goettingen. He moved to the United States in 1951.
Thomas Buergenthal: Family Photographs
Listen to Thomas's Story

Transcript of Interview with Thomas Buergenthal

Narrator: The Netherlands, February 27, 2001.

Thomas: We are at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in my office at the Court. Ahm, on a very sort of (laughs) dark, dreary day...

Narrator: Judge Thomas Buergenthal is well known as a leading advocate of international human rights law, and for his pioneering work in international law. In March of 2000, he was elected the American judge for the principal judicial organ of the United Nations; the International Court of Justice.

Thomas: It's a court where you deal only with disputes between states. So, for an international lawyer like me, this is a dream court and a dream come true. It's like being on the Supreme Court of the United States. This is the court that determines what is and what is not international law. Not that we're that important but in terms of those of us who believe in international law and practice international law, this is the Mecca to which you look. I should tell you that the notice to me that I was going to be the nominee of the United States for the Court, came to me while I was... had just done a visit to Auschwitz, my second visit, and I was in Cracow, had just come back from it, in the evening, in the hotel, when I received the call from the legal advisor. So, it was very special.

Narrator: Buergenthal's first visit to Auschwitz after the war was with his wife, Peggy. He returned again, close to the 55th anniversary of the day when, as a 10 year-old, he left the camp on a forced march. It was one of the infamous "death marches" that the retreating Nazis forced on most concentration camp prisoners, rather than leaving them to be liberated by the advancing Allied forces.

Thomas: It was easier when my wife and I went, because it was summer and it was easier to take. When we were there on the 20th of January 19 of 2000, it was just as it was, as I remembered it in terms of the cold. The road was all ice. And all I could think about was, "How did I ever survive this?" Because I was dressed in the heaviest jacket with sweaters, with hat-and I was freezing! And I was there as a child with a little blanket and thin prison uniform and-and I made it. It's... hard to believe. [Thunder is heard, then sounds of war.]

Narrator: Those prisoners from the Auschwitz men's camp who survived the death march, ended up in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, Germany. In March, Thomas entered the infirmary, where two of his frostbitten toes were amputated. In April, when the battle over Berlin had already begun, Sachsenhausen was evacuated, and Thomas was left behind with the other prisoners who couldn't walk.

Thomas: The next morning I got up, and it was very, very quiet except for the shooting coming closer. I crawled out, went out and looked up and saw in the entrance of the camp, over the entrance on the inside-they always had a machine gun mounted with SS guards sitting on, and there was nobody there, the machine gun was empty. I came back and told people. Of course, nobody believed me (laughing) that this was happening. And then we just waited. And the shooting came closer. Then we began hearing small arms fire and suddenly sort of, I think it was in the early afternoon... the camp had a big bell in the middle of this field, and a Russian soldier was ringing-was driven in with a jeep and was ringing the bell saying, "You're free." You know when I see pictures of people who were liberated by American troops, by British troops, they were liberated. We were sort of... there were none of these scenes as far as I remember. The Russians just told us, "You can go." I mean, we felt a great sense of relief, because we expected to be shot. But I didn't have any sense of the tremendous joy that other people must have experienced. I was alone in many ways. I think if my parents had been there it would have been different.

Narrator: Thomas had been separated from his parents for several months. He was taken in by members of a Polish Army unit under Russian command. The soldiers assumed that he was a Christian Polish child. And Thomas had experienced enough discrimination to know that it was not safe to tell them that he was Jewish and from Czechoslovakia. The Polish he had learned in the ghetto of Kielce and in Auschwitz proved good enough for his new comrades.

Thomas: They made me a small uniform. And I had shoes. They even gave me a small revolver-not a revolver-automatic pistol. I had-they had found a circus horse some place, a pony, and-because much of the army was still horse-drawn. They had-supplies of the Russian and Polish army was still brought in by horse-drawn carts. There was a lot of horses. And I had my horse, and I could keep up with the soldiers. And I had a wonderful time. (Laughs). The strange thing is that the sort of-the absurdity of it, the comic aspect of it never occurred to me as a child. And, you know, at the same time I-all of this I thought was going to lead to my being reunited with my parents. And I never even thought that this wasn't going to happen. This was all part of a process. And in the meantime I could eat and I no longer had to be afraid and I had fun.

Narrator: The soldiers fed him vodka to stimulate his appetite. They also shared bacon and bread. For the 10-year-old, none of it seemed out of the ordinary.

Thomas: And I think it has a lot to do with having, being a child and taking a lot of these things for granted. This is life and this is what happened. One day you don't have anything to eat, and the next day there's suddenly food. What I remember though is that I for years afterwards would always think that you should always eat before you did anything of importance because you never knew when you were going to eat again.

Narrator: Only one of the Polish soldiers, a Jew himself, found out that Thomas was Jewish. Eventually, he made arrangements for the boy to be taken to a Jewish orphanage. In 1946, his mother tracked him down, and Thomas was smuggled to Germany to be reunited with her. They settled in Goettingen, his mother's hometown. And suddenly, life took on different shades of normalcy. Going to school, catching up...

Thomas: With my mother we discussed-there was a lot of reminiscing about the camp and you know, "Where was this and that. What happened...?" The truth of the matter is that we often laughed about things in retrospect, about things that happened that were funny, about this or that that happened. So ahm, the human spirit-you couldn't take all of this, if it were only reminiscences about all of the terrible things. I saw the fact that I survived as a victory, that we had won over them. They wanted to kill us and we made it; we didn't give them the joy of killing us. So there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction, that of survival, unlike what one reads now that people supposedly feel bad that they survived and others didn't. We never had that feeling. Neither did my mother. Because my mother survived. I mean, we felt very bad that, for example, my father didn't survive. He died just shortly before the end of the war. But we never felt that-guilty about the fact of surviving. On the contrary.

[German reporter heard in background, "Goering ist gefragt worden, ob er hoeren kann.]

Narrator: In 1946, at the war crime trials in Nuremberg, 19 out of 22 German war criminals were convicted. Twelve were sentenced to death.

[1946 sentence is read "... The International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging..."]

Thomas: The first, almost first English words that I remember was "by hanging." I remember listening to the radio when they-when they announced the sentences. And we were, we were listening to that and with sort of, with joy... And sitting on the balcony on a Sunday and seeing the German families taking a walk and my father hadn't come back. And at that point, you know, the desire of sort of seeing-when I first came back I would love to mount a machine gun on that balcony and shoot all of them. But then you realize that, you know these are people you don't know whether they killed your father. Most of them probably didn't. And you make friends. And you find for example, we lived in the house with somebody, who ah, a Catholic family that had actually helped the Jews in town, and had been in danger themselves. And so you-the sort of abstract hatred becomes transformed into the fact that they're human beings regardless of whether they're Germans or not Germans. And not every German was guilty.

Narrator: The only Jewish student in class, he never experienced antisemitism, yet never felt quite comfortable either. In 1951, Thomas left for America.

Thomas: We were on one of the troop carriers, the transports, the Liberty boats. It was the SS General Greely, I still remember the name. And I think it was a 10-day trip from Bremerhaven to New York. With a lot of refugees, people from all over... from Eastern Europe.

Narrator: His mother had decided that the 17-year-old should broaden his cultural horizon and his academic opportunities. He was to stay with her brother and sister-in-law in New Jersey, and return after a year.

Thomas: And it was a very scary experience, except that I knew I was coming to live with my uncle. And in that sense it-and I was young, so it wasn't as scary as what it must have meant for a lot of other people. It was strange, we got on the boat and people were told they had to scrub the decks, paint the ship and do all these things. But they needed people who could... announce-make announcements in different languages. And so, I volunteered for that (laughs). At least it kept me above deck, which was nicer then, because the ship was very crowded. But arriving in New York, you know... and we set-We actually arrived in the evening, so we weren't unloaded. I couldn't disembark until the next morning and to see New York with all the lights and everything was... quite... in some ways exciting, in some ways it brought back memories of the past. When I saw the lights, I thought of the crematories in Auschwitz.

Narrator: Living with his uncle and aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, was not a problem.

Thomas: Oh no, I got along wonderfully! They are wonderful people. And they had... they were not well off, really. My aunt worked in a textile factory at the time, and my uncle in an aircraft factory. They had a little daughter there. When I came, they didn't really have an extra room for me. But they... they shared everything with me and took me in. Ahm, and really were my parents for that period of time. Narrator: He went to high school and made friends. Yet again, a sharp division between the past and the present remained.

Thomas: Nobody really wanted to know in those days about the past. Nobody asked. They wanted to know where I came from, what I did. But it went sort of... It was like asking "How are you?" you know, you don't really expect to get an answer. No, really, there was no great interest in finding out. It was just "Here is somebody new. He's come to America and he is now our buddy." And that was it! But no interest. Ahm, even my uncle and aunt, my uncle comes from Goettingen, my aunt from Berlin-they had a club of basically German Jews who'd come from there. They took me in, but nobody really asked where I was or cared. That came, I think it much, much later. They were just too busy making a living. And life was pretty hard. They had come, like my uncle and aunt during the depression basically. It wasn't easy. It wasn't an easy life, they came with nothing.

Narrator: Thomas too, was busy getting on with his life, college on a full scholarship, New York University Law School, Harvard Law School. Citizenship in 1957, marriage two years later. He never returned to live in Germany, but he remained in close contact with his mother until her death in 1991. At home, Thomas focused on his three sons who were born in the early '60s. At work, he was drawn to international law-a discipline of little interest to most American law students and lawyers at the time. He was also interested in human rights law, a relatively new discipline.

Thomas: I don't know, I've often been asked, well, is it my experience that drove me to it. I'm never quite sure. Ah, but what I think is true is this; that I felt from my concentration camp experience where we always looked to the US and to England to save us really, that in a situation where one was in trouble from a human rights point of view, one couldn't rely on the domestic scene, on the domestic environment, and you had to look-you had to have some international mechanisms that could protect you. Really the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been adopted in '48, but nothing much was happening. And then in the early '50s the European Convention on Human Rights came into being, and I was fascinated... wanted to see how did this work, really. Is there a chance that this might prevent what I went through? And that began to interest me. But it wasn't only human rights. It was also-and this is fascinating considering where I am today-what also interested me was international tribunals. I was interested in compliance mechanisms. How international institutions can have an impact on states and on individuals and protect individuals.

Narrator: It was the Inter-American Court of Justice in Costa Rica that provided Buergenthal's first real experience in this fledgling field. One of the first members of the Court, he spent 12 years laying the groundwork for a human rights tribunal which today is playing an important role, particularly in Latin America. Under Buergenthal's presidency, the Court rendered a landmark decision; it awarded compensation to the families of victims of "disappearance" in Honduras-people who were kidnapped by government forces, murdered, and their bodies hidden.

Thomas: So, it was a-a terrible experience in one way, and a gratifying experience in the sense also of laying the foundation for the law on that subject and also establishing the principle that the government has responsibilities and has to compensate the victims. You have a sense you've done something.

Narrator: In Costa Rica, he also met his second wife, Peggy-an interpreter of Peruvian and British descent. And a divorced mother of two. With Peggy, he talked extensively about his past. More than he had with his children when they were growing up.

Thomas: We have great disagreement in my-about that in my family. My kids will say to me sometimes, "Why didn't you tell us that?" And I will say, "You guys were never interested in hearing anything about it!" Now, I don't know who's right. But I, I thought that I tried to tell them. And we've speculated, my wife and I, about it. And her sense is that the kids thought it was so painful that they didn't want to hear about it. And that's why they didn't ask. And I took that to mean that they were not interested, and that they were in fact interested. And she has some of that... talking with them. But, it's quite clear that they know much less about my background still than they really should. Although what is interesting now, is that my youngest son has begun to be very-now that he has his first child, very interested in family roots and backgrounds and has asked my uncle who is in his late 80s now to put together an album. And had asked me to do that. So, there is interest... Ahm, but it's, it's sort of interest on the run.

Narrator: The same man who unflinchingly studied and prosecuted human rights abuses against other people has difficulty looking at representations of his own past.

Thomas: It's strange, because in many ways, memories fade... At the same time, the emotional impact today is much greater. I also think we get softer in our old age in terms of one's own experience. But-you know, what is interesting is that while memories of details fade, what doesn't fade is the memory of the episode as a whole. And I wish I could-I could have the poet's soul to write about it, ah... to capture that. Because I think... I'm not sure that one-that that is coming through in the literature. I don't know, as a matter of fact I haven't read any books about the camps. I can't. I can't go to movies that show it. I never could. I had wanted to take my children to the Holocaust Museum. And I realized I could not do it. I wouldn't be able to last.

Narrator: But his work with the US Holocaust Memorial Council and its Museum dates back to the late 1970s. From 1997-99, for instance, he was chairman of the Committee on Conscience.

[Recording of Buergenthal's introduction is heard: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like first of all to welcome you to the Museum and to this program on Kosovo: Options and Obstacles. This program, as you know, is sponsored by the Committee on Conscience. The Council of the Museum is the governing body of the Museum. And the Committee on Conscience is one of its principal standing committees. Through the Committee on Conscience, the Council seeks to relate the suffering of the Holocaust to contemporary genocides and crimes against humanity. For who better than the victims of the Holocaust..." recording fades out.]

Thomas: The Committee on Conscience was something that was very close to my heart. Because I feel very strongly that the Museum shouldn't be just a cemetery. The Museum has to be a living organism that tries to make sure that these things don't happen again. And that means also speaking out where other crimes against humanity and genocide are being committed. We have an obligation as survivors and we owe it to the people who died, to make sure that these things don't happen in other places. And so, and that was really the function of the Committee on Conscience. And that I felt... that I found that was really worthwhile and very important.

Narrator: In addition to teaching and writing landmark books and articles on human rights law, Buergenthal has been a key member of several international bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Committee; the Truth Commission for El Salvador, and the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland.

Thomas: What is impressive about it is not my career. I mean that, those things are often happenstance than anything else. But what is signficant about it this is an example of the fact that one can overcome certain... not I personally, but that we can overcome some of these murderous things that have happened and still be able to work for a better world! That to me has always been the sort of significant aspect of my activities. I spoke once in Germany, I think in connection when I got the honorary degree. And I said, "It's so wonderful when you think that when you go down the Rhine and when you remember that the Rhine was reinforced on both sides between France and Germany with canons, and today you don't even need a passport!" There's tremendous things that have happened that should give us a sense of optimism. Yet, you know, the cynics keep saying, nothing is changing. Lots of terrible things happening. But a lot of good things have been happening, and that-that should inspire people to want to do things.

Credits

Narrator: This program is part of "After the Holocaust," a series of audio profiles of Holocaust survivors in America. It was conceived and written by Regine Beyer and Arwen Donahue.

Studio production by Regine Beyer with Helen Thorington, engineer, at the New Radio and Performing Arts studio in Staten Island, New York.

The narrator was Jane Altman.

Special thanks go to the German Radio Archives, DRA, in Potsdam-Babelsberg; to Belgian producer Ronny Pringels, and to German producer Helmut Kopetzky for the use of sounds from their archives.

"After the Holocaust" is a production of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The interviews in this program were conducted for the Oral History Department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with financial support by the Jeff and Toby Herr Grant.

The Museum gratefully acknowledges Jeff and Toby Herr for making these interviews and this audio series possible.

Last Edited: Jul 21, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Life After the Holocaust: Thomas Buergenthal

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Life After the Holocaust documented the experiences of six Holocaust survivors whose journeys brought them to the United States, and reveals the complexity of starting over. Thomas and his parents were deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. As Soviet troops advanced in January 1945, Thomas and other prisoners were forced on a death march from Auschwitz.

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Series: Adolf Hitler

Under the racist and antisemitic leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi regime was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims. Browse a series of articles that explain some of the factors underlying Hitler's ideology; describe strategies he used to mobilize popular support for the Nazi Party; and show how he eventually dismantled German democratic structures.

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Under the racist and antisemitic leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi regime was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims. Browse a series of articles that explain some of the factors underlying Hitler’s ideology; describe strategies he used to mobilize popular…

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The story of Anne Frank is among the most well-known of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Browse a series of resources about Anne Frank and about the experiences of children during the Holocaust.

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The story of Anne Frank is among the most well-known of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Browse a series of resources about Anne Frank and about the experiences of children during the Holocaust.

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Document

A notice sent by the American Consulate General in Berlin regarding immigration visas

Document

A notice sent by the American Consulate General in Berlin to Arthur Lewy and family, instructing them to report to the consulate on July 26, 1939, with all the required documents, in order to receive their American visas. German Jews attempting to immigrate to the United States in the late 1930s faced overwhelming bureaucratic hurdles. It was difficult to get the necessary papers to leave Germany, and US immigration visas were difficult to obtain. The process could take years.

Aaron A. Eiferman Letter: Page 1

Document

Aaron A. Eiferman, a member of the 12th Armored Division, wrote this letter to his wife in the United States. Writing "We have seen what can be called the living dead," he describes his experiences as the 12th overran a Dachau subcamp in the Landsberg area on April 27, 1945.

Advertisement for the Violetta women's club

Document

A newspaper advertisement for the Damenklub Violetta, a Berlin club frequented by lesbians, 1928. Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, lesbian communities and networks flourished in Germany.

American propaganda announcement

Document

Announcement dropped by American planes on Shanghai near the end of the war. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]

Anti-Nazi Cartoon

Document

This cartoon, “The Modern Mercury” by Jerry Doyle, appeared in The Philadelphia Record, December 7, 1935. The faded large figure in the background bears the label “Olympics ideals of sportsmanship and international good will.” The image of Hitler in the foreground bears the words “1936 Olympics,” “Intolerance and discrimination,” and “Nazism.”

Antisemitic cartoon

Document

Antisemitic cartoon showing a Jew leading a Soviet official by a leash. It reads "The 'ideal' person for the chosen people: There’s no accounting for taste."

Antisemitic illustration

Document

Antisemitic propaganda of an agricultural worker kicking a stereotypically depicted Jewish man through a fence. It reads "German export: Out of our German country with the slimy Jewish band."

Cartoon depicting enemies of the Nazis

Document

Cartoon depicting Jews, communists, and other enemies of the Nazis hanging on a gallows, 1935

Census Card

Document

On December 17, 1941, the Romanian government issued a decree requiring a census of all those with "Jewish blood.” All persons having one or two Jewish parents or two Jewish grandparents were ordered to register at the Central Jewish Office. This is a census certificate issued by that office in 1942.

Census Card

Document

On December 17, 1941, the Romanian government issued a decree requiring a census of all those with “Jewish blood.” All persons having one or two Jewish parents or two Jewish grandparents were ordered to register at the Central Jewish Office. This is a census certificate issued by that office in 1942.

Certificate of "Aryan" Descent

Document

A certificate of "Aryan" descent, issued to Joseph Schäfer of Mühlheim, Germany. To prove one's "Aryan" racial status in Nazi Germany, an individual had to trace their ancestry back to 1800. Signed by an official justice of the peace, this certificate attests to Schäfer's parentage and baptism. Dated January 14, 1936.

Certificate of Polish citizenship (inside)

Document

Many refugees had difficulties replacing lost or invalidated personal identification documents. The certificate of Polish citizenship shown here was valid in place of a passport. A Polish Jewish refugee used this certificate to travel legally from Lithuania, through the Soviet Union, to Japan. It contains the Curacao notation needed to obtain Soviet and Japanese visas. The bearer of this certificate aimed to reach Palestine, but ended up spending most of the war in Calcutta, India, part of the British…

Dismissal letter

Document

During the interwar period Dr. Susanne Engelmann served as the principal of a large public high school for girls in Berlin. This letter notified her of her dismissal, as a "non-Aryan," from her teaching position. The dismissal was in compliance with the Civil Service Law of April 7, 1933. On April 7, the German government issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and political opponents from all civil…

Dismissal letter from the Berlin transit authority

Document

A letter written by the Berlin transit authority (Berliner Verkehrs Aktiengesellschaft) to Viktor Stern, informing him of his dismissal from his post with their agency as of September 20, 1933. This action was taken to comply with provisions of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. On April 7, the German government issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and political opponents…

Document Belonging to Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz

Document

One page of a document belonging to Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz listing the defendants in the Einsatzgruppen Case along with their position and crimes, line of defense, counts against them, and sentence.

Documentation for a false identity: Simone Weil

Document

Simone Weil kept this blank identification card bearing her picture in case her cover as "Simone Werlin" were blown and she needed to establish a new false identity. Both resistance workers and sympathetic government employees provided her the necessary stamps and signatures. Such forged documents assisted Weil in her work rescuing Jewish children as a member of the relief and rescue organization Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children's Aid Society; OSE).

German Map of the Baltic Countries

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This German map indicates the number and distribution of Jews living in the Baltic countries as of 1935. It served as a reference for the SS mobile killing squad assigned to carry out the mass murder of the Jews there.

German passport issued to Alice "Sara" Mayer (inside)

Document

A German passport issued to Alice Mayer on February 24, 1939, in Bingen, Germany. Mayer's daughter, Ellen, is also listed on the passport. Both mother and daughter's names include the middle name "Sara." This middle name became a mandatory addition required by a law of August 17, 1938. Thereafter, all Jewish women in Germany with a first name of "non-Jewish" origin had to add "Sara" as a middle name on all official documents. Jewish men had to add the name "Israel". This enabled German officials to…

German passport Issued to Erna "Sara" Schlesinger (inside)

Document

German police authorities issued this passport to Erna "Sara" Schlesinger on July 8, 1939, in Berlin. This first page of the passport illustrates the German laws that facilitated the identification of Jews in Germany. From 1938, German regulations required that Jewish women with a first name of "non-Jewish" origin use the middle name "Sara" on all official documents. Jewish men had to add the name "Israel". The letter "J" (standing for "Jude," that is, the word "Jew" in German) was stamped in red on the…

Hand-drawn plan of Westerbork transit camp

Document

The Dutch government established a camp at Westerbork to intern Jewish refugees who had entered the Netherlands illegally. This sketch of the Westerbork transit camp was made by a Jewish inmate who was able to emigrate to the United States. In early 1942, the German occupation authorities decided to enlarge Westerbork and convert it into a transit camp for Jews. The systematic concentration of Jews from the Netherlands in Westerbork began in July 1942. From Westerbork, Jews were deported to the killing…

Identification papers issued to Erika Tamar

Document

Identification papers issued to Erika Tamar stating that she was born in Vienna on June 10, 1934. Erika was one of the 50 children rescued by Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus.

Ilona Kellner's recipe for butter scones with jam

Document

Ilona Kellner and her family lived in Pelsöc, which became part of Hungary before World War II. Following the German occupation of Hungary, Ilona, her sister Vera, and her parents Karoly and Jolan were forced into a ghetto in another area of the town. In mid-June, the family was deported to the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland. Ilona's parents were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau. In early August, Ilona and her sister were deported to Hessisch Lichtenau, a subcamp of the Buchenwald…

Ilona Kellner's recipe for various strudel fillings

Document

Ilona Kellner and her family lived in Pelsöc, which became part of Hungary before World War II. Following the German occupation of Hungary, Ilona, her sister Vera, and her parents Karoly and Jolan were forced into a ghetto in another area of the town. In mid-June, the family was deported to the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland. Ilona's parents were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau. In early August, Ilona and her sister were deported to Hessisch Lichtenau, a subcamp of…

Intourist service voucher for the Trans-Siberian Railroad

Document

Voucher for travel on the Trans-Siberian Railroad purchased at the "Intourist Travel Company of the USSR" in England for Joseph and Ruth Schaffer. Thousands of Jewish refugees fled Nazi Europe on the Trans-Siberian Railroad through the Soviet Union to Japan with the help of Japanese visas provided by Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. [From the USHMM special exhibition Flight and Rescue.]

Letter from Esther Lurie regarding lost art, 1945

Document

This document is one page of a letter from artist Esther Lurie, written after the war, asking for help in following down leads and locating the artwork she had created and hidden while imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania.  She wrote, "The matter concerns a collection of 200 pen-and-ink drawings representing scenes of ghetto life which I made during my internment in the Kaunas Ghetto (Lithuania) in 1941-1944.  I left the drawings buried in the earth as I felt that I had no hope of survival."

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A notice sent by the American Consulate General in Berlin to Arthur Lewy and family, instructing them to report to the consulate on July 26, 1939, with all the required documents, in order to receive their American visas. German Jews attempting to immigrate to the United States in the late 1930s faced overwhelming bureaucratic hurdles.

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From 1945 to 1957, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps and urban centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Browse this series of articles to learn more about what life was like for Holocaust survivors living in DP camps after World War II. While DP camps existed in most Allied zones of occupation, this series focuses primarily on individual DP camps administered by the United States.

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Displaced Persons Camps | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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From 1945 to 1957, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps and urban centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Browse this series of articles to learn more about what life was like for Holocaust survivors living in DP camps after World War II.

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Series: Book Burning

Browse a series of articles about the 1933 book burnings in Nazi Germany, including information about the works burned and the symbolism of the book burnings.

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Browse a series of articles about the 1933 book burnings in Nazi Germany, including information about the works burned and the symbolism of the book burnings.

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EXPERIENCES OF BLACK PEOPLE DURING THE HOLOCAUST AND WORLD WAR II

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EXPERIENCES OF BLACK PEOPLE DURING THE HOLOCAUST AND WORLD WAR II

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Browse this multimedia series about the experiences of Black people during the Holocaust and World War II. Read about the Nazi persecution of Black people in Germany beginning in 1933 until the end of the war and about how the lives of Black individuals were impacted by a racist Nazi ideology in German-occupied Europe. Find out more about the impact of racism on African American athletes who journeyed from the United States to participate in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Browse photographs of Black American soldiers who fought in World War II and learn more about their experiences as liberators and witnesses to Nazi atrocities.

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Experiences of Black People during the Holocaust and World War II | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Browse this multimedia series about the experiences of Black people during the Holocaust and World War II. Read about the Nazi persecution of Black people in Germany beginning in 1933 until the end of the war and about how the lives of Black individuals were impacted by a racist Nazi ideology in Ger…

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In January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a donation of a photograph album. The inscription "Auschwitz 21.6.1944" on its first page signaled the uniqueness of the album-there are very few wartime photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which included Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center.

Though his name does not appear anywhere in the album, the dates of the photographs and various decorations including adjutant cords on the uniform of the album's owner, indicate that the album almost certainly belonged to and was created by SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer. Höcker was stationed at Auschwitz from May 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945.

The photographs depict Höcker with other SS officers in Auschwitz in the summer and fall of 1944 and provide us with a new understanding of their lives and activities in the camp. Even in the final months of the war, after Soviet troops had liberated concentration camps and labor camps to the east, SS officers stationed at Auschwitz enjoyed social functions and formal ceremonies. The album shows Auschwitz at a pivotal time-the period during which the gas chambers were operating at maximum efficiency-as the Hungarian Jews arrived and during the last months before the evacuation of the camp. The only other known album of photographs taken at Auschwitz, published as the "Auschwitz Album" (first published in 1980), specifically depicts the arrival of the Hungarian Jews and the selection process that the SS imposed upon them.

In December 2006, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and former member of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) wrote to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) Archives. As one of its many tasks as a military intelligence agency, the CIC conducted investigations of Nazi perpetrators for US prosecutors in the Judge Advocate General's Office after World War II. While stationed in Germany in 1946, this officer had found a photograph album in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt and had taken it home with him. Now elderly, he was ready to donate the album to the Museum, but wanted his donation to remain anonymous.

Karl Höcker, the SS officer who owned the album, shows up on almost every page of photographs, but rarely appears in historical records. Yet he was the adjutant to the commandant of the Auschwitz complex for some of the most murderous months of the camp's existence. Who was he? How did he get to Auschwitz? What did he do there?

Karl Höcker was born in Engershausen, Germany, in December 1911, as the youngest of six children. His father, a construction worker, was killed in World War I, and his mother struggled to support the family. Höcker, who worked as a bank teller in Lubbecke, joined the SS in 1933 and the Nazi Party in 1937. He married in 1937, had a daughter in 1939 and, in October 1944, a son. Upon the outbreak of war, Höcker was assigned to the Neuengamme concentration camp and spent the entire war administering various concentration camps. In 1943, he became the adjutant to the commandant at Lublin-Majdanek.

When SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer became the commandant of Auschwitz in May 1944, Höcker was also reassigned to the camp, again in the position of adjutant. Before he was executed for war crimes, Rudolf Höss, the most famous commandant of Auschwitz, described the role of the adjutant in his memoirs:

[The adjutant] is the first assistant to the Kommandant. He must ensure that no important event in the camp remains unknown to the Kommandant. The adjutant is the superior of all noncommissioned officers and men of the Kommandant's staff... The officer of the day and the first watch commander report to the adjutant, present their duty reports for this information and sign them...

Höcker remained at Auschwitz until its evacuation, and then moved with Baer in January 1945 when Baer assumed command of Dora-Mittelbau. Höcker fled before the Allies liberated the camp. British troops captured him near Hamburg in possession of identification as a combat soldier. Lacking an accurate description of him, British authorities released Höcker in 1946 after only 18 months' incarceration in a prisoner-of-war camp. Until West German prosecutors began looking for him in the wake of the Eichmann trial, no one came for Karl Höcker. He resumed his life in Engershausen with his wife and two children. He had turned himself in for a de-Nazification proceeding in 1952 but did not serve any time. He took up gardening in his spare time and became the chief cashier of the regional bank in Lubbecke. Though he lost his job when he was indicted in 1963 during the Frankfurt Auschwitz proceedings in 1963-1965, he was rehired in 1970 after his release from prison.

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Collections Highlight: Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS

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In January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a donation of a photograph album. The inscription "Auschwitz 21.6.1944" on its first page signaled the uniqueness of the album-there are very few wartime photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which included Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center.

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Photo

11-year-old girl who was a victim of medical experiments at Auschwitz

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United Nations personnel vaccinate an 11-year-old concentration camp survivor who was a victim of medical experiments at the Auschwitz camp. Photograph taken in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, Germany, May 1946.

13-year-old survivor of the Mauthausen concentration camp

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A 13-year-old orphan, a survivor of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Photograph taking following liberation of the camp. Austria, May 1945.

14th Street exterior

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Detail of the 14th Street facade of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC, April 2003.

1915 portrait of Willem Arondeus

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A 1915 portrait of Willem Arondeus. During World War II, Arondeus, a gay member of the Dutch resistance, participated in an attack on the Amsterdam Population Registry offices. His group set fire to several thousand files in an attempt to destroy government records of Jews and others sought by the Nazis. Soon after the attack, his unit was betrayed. The Nazis arrested and executed Arondeus in 1943. Blaricum, the Netherlands, 1915.

1930s street scene in the Jewish quarter of Paris

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Street scene in the Jewish quarter of Paris before World War II and the Holocaust. Paris, France, 1933–39.

1931 studio portrait of Abraham Moshe Muhlbaum

Photo

Abraham and his family fled from Berlin to Amsterdam in October 1938. They found refuge in the Netherlands until January 28, 1943, when all the members of the Muhlbaum family, except Abraham, were deported to Westerbork. Abraham escaped over the rooftops during the round-up. He gradually established a new life as a member of a Dutch resistance group that included Joop Westerweel. In 1944, Abraham was arrested as a member of the resistance (his Jewish identity remained hidden). He was held…

1934 Nazi Party propaganda poster

Photo

Nazi propaganda constantly reinforced the notion that Hitler was the embodiment of the national will. Here, a determined looking Hitler in military dress stands with clenched fist, poised for action above the adoring crowd. The text on the poster says "Yes! Leader, We Follow You!" (Ja! Führer wir folgen Dir!) This poster, designed for a 1934 public referendum on uniting the posts of German chancellor and president, conveys unanimous popular support for Hitler.

1935 portrait of three-year-old Anna Glinberg

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Close-up studio portrait of a young Jewish girl named Anna Glinberg, who was later killed during the mass execution at Babi Yar.

1936 portrait of two-year-old Mania Halef

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1936 portrait of two-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child, who was later killed during the mass execution at Babi Yar.

1936 poster: "All of Germany Listens to the Führer with the People's Radio"

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1936 poster: "All of Germany Listens to the Führer with the People's Radio." The poster depicts a crowd surrounding a radio. The radio looms large, symbolizing the mass appeal and broad audience for Nazi broadcasts. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (Plak003-022-025)

1937 studio portrait of Suri and Ari Deutsch

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Prewar studio portrait in Sighet of Jewish siblings Suri and Ari Deutsch, both of whom died in the Holocaust. This photograph comes from the album of their cousin, Rosalia Dratler Roiter. Rosalia was deported to and died at Auschwitz. Sighet, Romania, 1937.

1943 portrait of Edgar Krasa drawn by Leo Haas in Theresienstadt

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1943 portrait of Edgar Krasa drawn by Leo Haas in Theresienstadt. Haas (1901-1983) was a Czech Jewish artist who, while imprisoned in Nisko and Theresienstadt during World War II, painted portraits and produced a large volume of drawings documenting the daily life of the prisoners.

1943 still life of a violin and sheet of music behind prison bars by Bedrich Fritta

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1943 still life of a violin and sheet of music behind prison bars by Bedrich Fritta (1909–1945). Fritta was a Czech Jewish artist who created drawings and paintings depicting conditions in the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto. He was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944; he died there a week after his arrival.

1943 watercolor landscape of Theresienstadt painted by Otto Samisch

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1943 watercolor landscape of Theresienstadt painted by Otto Samisch. Despite the terrible living conditions and the constant threat of deportation, Theresienstadt had a highly developed cultural life.

1945 Nazi propaganda poster

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This poster from 1945 shows an embattled German family proclaiming, "Frontline City Frankfurt will be held!" A Frontstadt was a city Hitler declared must be defended against Allied attack at all costs. In the final months of the war, propaganda efforts were directed at rallying the populace for a final defense of the country.

1945 photograph of Miles Lerman

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Miles Lerman (who married Regina's sister Krysia), Lodz, Poland, 1945.

1945 photograph of Regina (Laks) Gelb

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Photograph of Regina (Renia) taken on June 2, 1945, in Lodz, Poland.

1945 portrait of Eta Wrobel

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1945 portrait of Eta Wrobel who was born on December 28, 1918, in Lokov, Poland. During the Holocaust,  Eta helped organize an exclusively Jewish partisan unit of close to eighty people.  She was the only child in her  family of ten to survive.

1957 Czech postage stamp commemorating Lidice

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A Czech postage stamp issued in 1957, commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the destruction of Lidice.

1989 Days of Remembrance

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Members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council pose with President George Bush (third from right) on the occasion of the 1989 Days of Remembrance. Benjamin Meed is fourth from the right. Washington, DC, 1989. Learn more about Days of Remembrance.

2001 Days of Remembrance ceremony

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Scene during the 2001 Days of Remembrance ceremony, in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. Flags of the liberating divisions feature prominently in the Museum's Days of Remembrance ceremonies. Washington, DC, 2001.

2003 Days of Remembrance ceremony

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Benjamin Meed (left) with Fred S. Zeidman, Colin L. Powell, Elie Wiesel, and Ruth B. Mandel at the 2003 Days of Remembrance ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda.

2004 portrait of Blanka Rothschild

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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.  She and her mother were deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany in 1944. From Ravensbrueck, Blanka and her mother were sent to a subcamp of Sachsenhausen. Blanka was forced to work in an airplane factory…

2004 portrait of Norman Salsitz

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Born Naftali Saleschutz, Norman was the youngest of nine children in a devout Hasidic Jewish family. They lived in Kolbuszowa, Poland. In the Hasidic tradition, he wore a long black coat and shoulder-length earlocks. He first faced antisemitism in the second grade when his teacher cut one earlock off each Jewish boy.

2004 portrait of Regina (Laks) Gelb

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Born as Regina Laks in 1929, she was raised in Starachowice, an industrial city in central Poland. Her mother, Pola Tennenblum, was an active member of the Zionist movement. Her father, Isaac Laks, was an engineer in the lumber industry. She had two older sisters.

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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.

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Link to MANY oral histories by holocaust survivors

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Link to MANY oral histories by holocaust survivors

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Oral History

Abraham Bomba describes cutting women's hair before they were gassed in Treblinka

Oral History

Abraham was raised in Czestochowa, Poland, and became a barber. He and his family were deported to the Treblinka killing center from the Czestochowa ghetto in 1942. At Treblinka, Abraham was selected for forced labor. He was forced to cut women's hair before they were gassed, and he sorted clothing from arriving transports. Abraham escaped from the camp in 1943 and made his way back to Czestochowa. He worked in a labor camp from June 1943 until liberation by Soviet troops in 1945.

Abraham Bomba describes gassing operations at Treblinka

Oral History

Describes gassing operations at Treblinka

Abraham Bomba describes the Treblinka gas chambers

Oral History

Excerpt from Holocaust survivor Abraham Bomba's oral history testimony describing gas chambers at the Treblinka killing center.

Abraham Klausner describes encountering survivors of the Dachau camp

Oral History

Rabbi Abraham Klausner was a US Army military chaplain. He arrived in the Dachau concentration camp in May 1945. He was attached to the 116th evacuation hospital unit and worked for about five years in displaced persons camps, assisting Jewish survivors.

Abraham Klausner describes postwar efforts to reunite survivors

Oral History

Rabbi Abraham Klausner was a US Army military chaplain. He arrived in the Dachau concentration camp in May 1945. He was attached to the 116th evacuation hospital unit and worked for about five years in displaced persons camps, assisting Jewish survivors.

Abraham Lewent describes conditions in Skarzysko camp

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes conditions in the Warsaw ghetto

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes deportation to and conditions in Majdanek

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes food shortages after the invasion of Warsaw

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes hiding during a raid in which his mother and sisters were seized for deportation from Warsaw to Treblinka

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes his father's death at Majdanek

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes hunger and death in the Warsaw ghetto

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes performing forced labor in Warsaw and increased Polish antisemitism

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent describes the moments following his liberation from a death march from the Dachau camp

Oral History

Like many other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Lewent recalls how, while ill with typhoid, he persuaded the Skarzysko doctor that he was fit to work

Oral History

Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Abraham Malnik describes massacre in Kovno's Ninth Fort, near the Kovno ghetto

Oral History

Abraham came from a wealthy family that was ordered into the Kovno ghetto after the Germans occupied Lithuania in 1941. Abraham's mother urged his father to flee, but he returned for them. Begging for mercy, he was able to save them from a massacre in the Ninth Fort, one of several forts around Kovno. Abraham and his father survived internment in five camps before they were finally liberated in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Abe's mother perished at the Stutthof camp.

Agate (Agi) Rubin describes events following the German occupation of Hungary

Oral History

In April 1944, after the German occupation of Hungary, Agi, her mother, six-year-old brother, and aunt were forced into the Munkacs ghetto. Before deportation to Auschwitz, Agi was forced to work in the ghetto's brick factory. At Auschwitz, Agi, then 14 years old, was chosen as part of a Sonderkommando. This forced-labor detachment had to sort the clothing and possessions of inmates and victims at Auschwitz. In January 1945, Agi and other prisoners were forced on a death march from Auschwitz. She was…

Agate (Agi) Rubin describes the role of interpersonal bonds in surviving the Auschwitz camp

Oral History

In April 1944, after the German occupation of Hungary, Agi, her mother, six-year-old brother, and aunt were forced into the Munkacs ghetto. Before deportation to Auschwitz, Agi was forced to work in the ghetto's brick factory. At Auschwitz, Agi, then 14 years old, was chosen as part of a Sonderkommando. This forced-labor detachment had to sort the clothing and possessions of inmates and victims at Auschwitz. In January 1945, Agi and other prisoners were forced on a death march from Auschwitz. She was…

Agnes Allison describes the Hitler Youth movement at her school

Oral History

Agnes Allison (née Agnes Suzannah Halàsz) was born on October 28, 1926, in Budapest, Hungary, to Ilona Gero and Robert Halász. She had a younger sister, Judy. Agnes attended a private German school established for the children of diplomats. There was a Hitler Youth movement at the school. Agnes and her family were forced out of their home following the German occupation of Hungary. She went into hiding in December 1944.  Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an…

Agnes Mandl Adachi describes Raoul Wallenberg's efforts to save Jews from deportation

Oral History

Agnes was in Switzerland in 1939 to study French. She returned to Budapest in 1940. After the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, Agnes was given refuge in the Swedish embassy. She then began to work for Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in his efforts to save the Jews of Budapest, including the distribution of protective passes (Schutzpaesse). When the Soviets entered Budapest, Agnes decided to go to Romania. After the war, she went to Sweden and Australia before moving to the United States.

Agnes Mandl Adachi describes rescue activity on the banks of the Danube River and the role of Raoul Wallenberg

Oral History

Agnes was in Switzerland in 1939 to study French. She returned to Budapest in 1940. After the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, Agnes was given refuge in the Swedish embassy. She then began to work for Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in his efforts to save the Jews of Budapest, including the distribution of protective passes (Schutzpaesse). When the Soviets entered Budapest, Agnes decided to go to Romania. After the war, she went to Sweden and Australia before moving to the United States.

Alan Zimm describes a hanging in the Dora-Mittelbau camp

Oral History

The Germans occupied Kolo in 1939. In 1942 Alan was deported to the Lodz ghetto where he worked in food distribution. He took food each day to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Jewish council. In 1944 Alan was forced to unload trainloads of coal and munitions in Czestochowa. In 1945 he was sent to the Dora-Mittelbau camp. As the Soviet army advanced, the inmates were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where British forces liberated them in April.

Alan Zimm describes liberation from Bergen-Belsen

Oral History

The Germans occupied Kolo in 1939. In 1942 Alan was deported to the Lodz ghetto where he worked in food distribution. He took food each day to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Jewish council. In 1944 Alan was forced to unload trainloads of coal and munitions in Czestochowa. In 1945 he was sent to the Dora-Mittelbau camp. As the Soviet army advanced, the inmates were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where British forces liberated them in April.

Alexander Schenker describes working as a lumberjack in a labor camp in Siberia

Oral History

Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Alexander and his family fled eastward to Lvov. His father then fled to Vilna, hoping to obtain visas for the family to escape through Japan. The rest of the family was caught while trying to cross border into Lithuania in order to meet up with Alexander's father. They returned to Lvov. Alexander and his mother were later arrested for refusing to declare Soviet citizenship. They were sent to a labor camp in the Soviet interior. After their release…

Alice (Eberstarkova) Masters describes going to a home for refugee children in England after arriving on a Kindertransport

Oral History

Alice grew up in a small village in Czechoslovakia. She was the middle of three daughters in a well-to-do, close-knit family. Her parents were religious and active in the Jewish community. After the German annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, antisemitism became more pronounced. Alice's uncle, a businessman who had moved to Great Britain, helped her parents arrange to send Alice and her two sisters on a Kindertransport (Children's Transport) to Britain. The sisters lived in a children's…

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A-Z: Oral Histories | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Abraham was raised in Czestochowa, Poland, and became a barber. He and his family were deported to the Treblinka killing center from the Czestochowa ghetto in 1942. At Treblinka, Abraham was selected for forced labor. He was forced to cut women's hair before they were gassed, and he sorted clothing from arriving transports.

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Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Thank you for supporting our work We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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MADELINE DEUTSCH DESCRIBES GHETTOIZATION IN HUNGARY

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MADELINE DEUTSCH DESCRIBES GHETTOIZATION IN HUNGARY

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Oral History

Madeline was born into a middle class family in an area of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Hungary in 1938-1939. Her father worked out of their home and her mother was a homemaker. Madeline attended high school. In April 1944 her family was forced into a Hungarian ghetto. The family lived in the ghetto for two weeks before being transported to Auschwitz. Madeline and her mother were separated from her father and older brother. Neither her father nor brother survived the war. A week after arriving in Auschwitz, Madeline and her mother were sent to work in an ammunition factory in Breslau. They were in the Peterswaldau subcamp of Gross-Rosen for one year until liberation by Soviet forces in May 1945. Madeline and her mother lived in a displaced persons camp in Munich while awaiting visas to the United States. They arrived in New York in March 1949.

Transcript

Little by little, it became just worse and worse. But within weeks...it was...as a matter of weeks. We were in April...it was the beginning of April. I think we were invaded around the end of March, and, uh, in April already we were in the ghetto. And what was the ghetto? Now what happened here was the German SS in cooperation, with total cooperation of the Hungarian police and the Hungarian gendarmes came to our homes very early in the morning at dawn and knocking real hard, and "Jews, get out of your house. Get out and line up in front of the house." We couldn't imagine what was happening. I mean it was just a horrible, horrible thing. The children were screaming, and all of us were...were afraid. We didn't know what was happening and what was to come. And then we were told that we'll be allowed back to the house for just a few minutes to get a little suitcase or a little handbag in which we could put a...a change of clothing and maybe some food, just dry food like a piece of bread or something that we had, and then we were to come out again and line up in front of the...our homes. So we each got a little bag and put just the bare minimum in there. And then we were being marched down the streets where there was the small ghetto.

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Madeline Deutsch describes ghettoization in Hungary

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Little by little, it became just worse and worse. But within weeks...it was...as a matter of weeks. We were in April...it was the beginning of April. I think we were invaded around the end of March, and, uh, in April already we were in the ghetto. And what was the ghetto?

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ABRAHAM LEWENT DESCRIBES DEPORTATION TO AND CONDITIONS IN MAJDANEK

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ABRAHAM LEWENT DESCRIBES DEPORTATION TO AND CONDITIONS IN MAJDANEK

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Transcript

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Abraham Lewent describes deportation to and conditions in Majdanek

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto.

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ABRAHAM LEWENT DESCRIBES CONDITIONS IN SKARZYSKO CAMP

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ABRAHAM LEWENT DESCRIBES CONDITIONS IN SKARZYSKO CAMP

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Transcript

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Abraham Lewent describes conditions in Skarzysko camp

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto.

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ABRAHAM BOMBA DESCRIBES THE TREBLINKA GAS CHAMBERS

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ABRAHAM BOMBA DESCRIBES THE TREBLINKA GAS CHAMBERS

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Abraham Bomba describes the Treblinka gas chambers

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Excerpt from Holocaust survivor Abraham Bomba's oral history testimony describing gas chambers at the Treblinka killing center.

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Aerial View of Dachau Concentration Camp Video

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Aerial View of Dachau Concentration Camp Video

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[This video is silent]

The Dachau concentration camp, northwest of Munich, Germany, was the first regular concentration camp the Nazis established in 1933. About twelve years later, on April 29, 1945, US armed forces liberated the camp. There were some 30,000 starving prisoners in the camp at the time. This footage shows an aerial view of the camp and the entrance gate to the prisoner compound.

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Aerial view of Dachau concentration camp

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This video is silent] The Dachau concentration camp, northwest of Munich, Germany, was the first regular concentration camp the Nazis established in 1933. About twelve years later, on April 29, 1945, US armed forces liberated the camp. There were some 30,000 starving prisoners in the camp at the time.

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Holocaust Survivor "ID Cards" - Read people's stories 

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Holocaust Survivor "ID Cards" - Read people's stories 

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Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Holocaust Encyclopedia | Identification Card

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Thank you for supporting our work We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

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Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust presented a host of difficulties. The Allied prioritization of "winning the war" and the lack of access to those who needed rescue hampered major rescue operations. Individuals willing to help Jews in danger faced severe consequences if they were caught, and formidable logistics of supporting people in hiding. Finally, hostility towards Jews among non-Jewish populations, especially in eastern Europe, was a daunting obstacle to rescue.

Rescue took many forms.

Denmark

German-occupied Denmark was the site of the most famous and complete rescue operation in Axis-controlled Europe. In late summer 1943, German occupation authorities imposed martial law on Denmark in response to increasing acts of resistance and sabotage. German Security Police officials planned to deport the Danish Jews while martial law was in place. On September 28, 1943, a German businessman warned Danish authorities of the impending operation, scheduled for the night of October 1-2, 1943. With the help of their non-Jewish neighbors and friends, virtually all the Danish Jews went into hiding. During the following days, the Danish resistance organized a rescue operation, in which Danish fishermen clandestinely ferried some 7,200 Jews (of the country's total Jewish population of 7,800) in small fishing boats, to safety in neutral Sweden.

German-Occupied Poland

In the so-called Generalgouvernement (German-occupied Poland), some Poles provided assistance to Jews. For instance, Zegota (code name for Rada Pomocy Zydom, the Council for Aid to Jews), a Polish underground organization that provided for the social welfare needs of Jews, began operations in September 1942. Although members of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa-AK) and the communist Polish People's Army (Armia Ludowa-AL) assisted Jewish fighters by attacking German positions during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943, the Polish underground provided few weapons and only a small amount of ammunition to Jewish fighters. From the beginning of the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center in late July 1942 until the German occupiers leveled Warsaw in the autumn of 1944 after suppressing the Home Army uprising, as many as 20,000 Jews were living in hiding in Warsaw and its environs with the help of Polish civilians.

Religious Backgrounds

Rescuers came from every religious background: Protestant and Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Muslim. Some European churches, orphanages, and families provided hiding places for Jews, and in some cases, individuals aided Jews already in hiding (such as Anne Frank and her family in the Netherlands). In France, the Protestant population of the small village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon sheltered between 3,000 and 5,000 refugees, most of them Jews. In France, Belgium, and Italy, underground networks run by Catholic clergy and lay Catholics saved thousands of Jews. Such networks were especially active both in southern France, where Jews were hidden and smuggled to safety to Switzerland and Spain, and in northern Italy, where many Jews went into hiding after Germans occupied Italy in September 1943.

Individuals

A number of individuals also used their personal influence to rescue Jews. In Budapest, the capital of German-occupied Hungary, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg (who was also an agent of the US War Refugee Board), Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, and Italian citizen Giorgio Perlasca (posing as a Spanish diplomat), provided tens of thousands of Jews in 1944 with certification that they were under the "protection" of neutral powers. These certifications exempted the bearers from most anti-Jewish measures decreed by the Hungarian government, including deportation to the Greater German Reich. Each of these rescuers worked closely with members of the Budapest Jewish communities. For example, Perlasca, whose credentials were the most vulnerable to challenge, worked closely with Otto Komoly and the Szamosis-Laszlo and Eugenia-to obtain protective papers and shelter for scores of Jews in Budapest.

The Sudeten German industrialist Oskar Schindler took over an enamelware factory located outside the Krakow ghetto in German-occupied Poland. He later protected over a thousand Jewish workers employed there from deportation to Auschwitz.

The deportation of more than 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot to Treblinka in March 1943 by the Bulgarian military and police authorities shocked and shamed key political, intellectual, and religious figures in Bulgaria into an open protest against any deportations from Bulgaria proper. The protest action, which included members of the government's own ruling party, induced the Bulgarian King, Boris III, to reverse the decision of his government to comply with the German request to deport the Jews of Bulgaria. As a result of Boris' decision, the Bulgarian authorities did not deport any Jews from Bulgaria proper.

Other non-Jews sought to expose Nazi plans to murder the Jews. Among them was Jan Karski, a courier for the London-based Polish government-in-exile to the non-communist underground movements. Karski met with Jewish leaders in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Izbica transit ghetto in late summer of 1942. He transmitted their reports of mass killings in the Belzec killing center to Allied leaders, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with whom he met in July 1943.

Groups

Some US-based groups engaged in rescue efforts. The Quakers' American Friends Service Committee, the Unitarians, and other groups coordinated relief activities for Jewish refugees in France, Portugal, and Spain throughout the war. A variety of US-based organizations (both religious and secular, Jewish and non-Jewish) cooperated in securing entry visas into the United States and arranging placement and, in some cases, eventual repatriation for around 1,000 unaccompanied Jewish refugee children between 1934 and 1942.

Choices in Extreme Circumstances

Whether they saved a thousand people or a single life, those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust demonstrated the possibility of individual choice even in extreme circumstances. These and other acts of conscience and courage, however, saved only a tiny percentage of those targeted for destruction.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust presented a host of difficulties. The Allied prioritization of "winning the war" and the lack of access to those who needed rescue hampered major rescue operations. Individuals willing to help Jews in danger faced severe consequences if they were caught, and formidable logistics of supporting people in hiding.

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Before World War II, trials had never played a major role in efforts to restore peace after international conflict. After World War I, for example, the victorious Allies forced Germany to give up territory and pay large sums in reparations as punishment for waging an aggressive war. During World War II, however, as Nazi Germany and its Axis allies committed atrocities on a massive scale, trying those responsible for such crimes in a court of law became one of the war aims of the Allied powers.

In October 1943, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin signed the Moscow Declaration of German Atrocities. The declaration stated that at the time of an armistice, Germans deemed responsible for atrocities would be sent back to those countries in which the crimes had been committed.There, they would be judged and punished according to the laws of the nation concerned. "Major" war criminals, whose crimes could be assigned no particular geographic location, would be punished by joint decision of the Allied governments.

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg

In August 1945, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States signed the London Agreement and Charter (also called the Nuremberg Charter). The Charter established an International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany, to try major German war criminals. It assigned the IMT jurisdiction over crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which include such crimes as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds."

The most famous of the war crimes trials held after the war is the trial of 22 leading German officials before the IMT in Nuremberg. This trial began on November 20, 1945. The IMT reached its verdict on October 1, 1946, convicting 19 of the defendants and acquitting 3. Of those convicted, 12 were sentenced to death, among them Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, Hans Frank, Alfred Rosenberg, and Julius Streicher. The IMT sentenced 3 defendants to life imprisonment and 4 to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years.

In addition to the Nuremberg IMT, the Allied powers established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo in 1946, which tried leading Japanese officials.

Subsequent Nuremberg Trials

Under the aegis of the Nuremberg IMT, US military tribunals conducted 12 further trials. These trials are often referred to collectively as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings.

Between December 1946 and April 1949, US prosecutors tried 177 persons and won convictions of 97 defendants. Among the groups who stood trial were: leading physicians; Einsatzgruppen members; members of the German justice administration and German Foreign Office; members of the German High Command; and leading German industrialists.

Other Trials in the Allied Occupation Zones

In the immediate postwar years, each of the four Allied powers occupying Germany and Austria-France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States - tried a variety of perpetrators for wartime offenses committed within their zone of occupation. The overwhelming majority of these post-1945 war crimes trials involved lower-level Nazi officials and functionaries. Much of our early knowledge of the German concentration camp system comes from the evidence and eyewitness testimonies at some of these trials.

Allied occupation officials saw the reconstruction of the German court system as an important step in the denazification of Germany. Allied Control Council Law No. 10 of December 1945 authorized German courts to try crimes against humanity committed during the war years by German citizens against other German nationals or against stateless persons in Germany. As a result, such crimes as the Nazi murder of persons with disabilities (referred to by the Nazis as " euthanasia ")-where both victims and perpetrators had been predominantly German nationals-were tried under newly reconstructed German tribunals.

Postwar Trials in Germany

In 1949, Germany was formally divided into two separate countries. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was established in the zones occupied by Britain, France, and the United States and was allied to those countries. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was established in the Soviet occupation zone and was allied with the Soviet Union. Both countries continued to hold trials against Nazi-era defendants in the following decades.

Since 1949, over 900 proceedings trying defendants of National Socialist era crimes have been conducted by the Federal Republic of Germany (meaning, West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and united Germany afterwards). These proceedings have been criticized because most defendants were acquitted or received light sentences. In addition, thousands of Nazi officials and perpetrators never faced trial, and many returned to the professions they had practiced under the Third Reich. For example, former Nazi officials comprised the majority of judges in West Germany for several decades after the war.

Other Postwar Trials

Many nations that Germany occupied during World War II or that collaborated with the Germans in the persecution of civilian populations, including Jews, also tried both German perpetrators and their own citizens who had perpetrated crimes during the war. Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, among others, tried thousands of defendants. For example, the Soviet Union held its first trial, the Krasnodar Trial, against local collaborators in 1943, long before World War II had ended.

In Poland, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal tried 49 Nazi officials who had perpetrated crimes during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Among them was Rudolf Höss, the longest serving Auschwitz commandant. He was sentenced to death and hanged in the execution block at Auschwitz in April 1947. The Supreme National Tribunal also tried and sentenced to death other Auschwitz personnel, including former commandant Arthur Liebehenschel, as well as Amon Göth, who commanded the Plaszow concentration camp.

By 1950, international concerns about the Cold War eclipsed interest in achieving justice for the crimes of World War II. Trials outside of Germany largely ceased, and most of the convicted perpetrators who were not executed were set free during the 1950s.

The Eichmann Trial

Outside of Poland, crimes against Jews were not the focus of most postwar trials, and there was little international awareness or understanding of the Holocaust in the immediate postwar period. This changed in 1961 with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, chief administrator of the deportation of European Jews, before an Israeli court. The Eichmann trial also brought attention to the presence of accused Nazi perpetrators in a number of countries outside Europe, because Eichmann had settled in Argentina after the war.

In 1979, the United States Department of Justice established the Office of Special Investigations to pursue the perpetrators of Nazi crimes who were living in the United States. A decade later, Australia, Britain, and Canada also sought to prosecute Nazi perpetrators living within their borders. The hunt for German and Axis war criminals has continued into the 21st century.

The postwar prosecutions of Nazi crimes set important legal precedents.

In 1946, the United Nations unanimously recognized the crime of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as offenses under international law. The UN subsequently recognized additions to international criminal law designed to protect civilians from atrocities. For example, in 1948, the UN adopted the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Since the end of the Cold War, a number of special tribunals have tried international crimes committed in specific countries, such as the genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994. In 2002, a new, permanent International Criminal Court began to operate. Domestic courts in some countries also prosecute the perpetrators of international crimes. Although such prosecutions remain rare, today there is widespread agreement that states have a duty to protect civilians from atrocities and to punish those who commit them.

Last Edited: Oct 26, 2020

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Before World War II, trials had never played a major role in efforts to restore peace after international conflict. After World War I, for example, the victorious Allies forced Germany to give up territory and pay large sums in reparations as punishment for waging an aggressive war.

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Organized armed resistance was the most forceful form of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies in German-occupied Europe. Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.

In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors that the Germans would deport the remaining ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka killing center. As German SS and police units entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and other Jewish groups attacked German tanks with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and a handful of small arms. Although the Germans, shocked by the ferocity of resistance, were able to end the major fighting within a few days, it took the vastly superior German forces nearly a month before they were able to completely pacify the ghetto and deport virtually all of the remaining inhabitants. For months after the end of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, individual Jewish resisters continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto, which SS and police units patrolled to prevent attacks on German personnel.

During the same year, ghetto inhabitants rose against the Germans in Vilna (Vilnius), Bialystok, and a number of other ghettos. Many ghetto fighters took up arms in the knowledge that the majority of ghetto inhabitants had already been deported to the killing centers; and also in the knowledge that their resistance even now could not save from destruction the remaining Jews who could not fight. But they fought for the sake of Jewish honor and to avenge the slaughter of so many Jews.

Thousands of young Jews resisted by escaping from the ghettos into the forests. There they joined Soviet partisan units or formed separate partisan units to harass the German occupiers.

Although many Jewish council ( Judenrat) members cooperated under compulsion with the Germans until they themselves were deported, some, such as Jewish council chairman Moshe Jaffe in Minsk, resisted by refusing to comply when the Germans ordered him to hand over Jews for deportation in July 1942.

Jewish prisoners rose against their guards at three killing centers. At Treblinka in August 1943 and Sobibor in October 1943, prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the SS staff and the Trawniki-trained auxiliary guards. The Germans and their auxiliaries killed most of the rebels, either during the uprising or later, after hunting down those who escaped. Several dozen prisoners eluded their pursuers and survived the war, however. In October 1944, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, members of the Jewish Special Detachment (Sonderkommando) mutinied against the SS guards. Nearly 250 died during the fighting; the SS guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying the members of the Sonderkommando with explosives to blow up a crematorium. All five women were killed.

In many countries occupied by or allied with the Germans, Jewish resistance often took the form of aid and rescue. Jewish authorities in Palestine sent clandestine parachutists such as Hannah Szenes into Hungary and Slovakia in 1944 to give whatever help they could to Jews in hiding. In France, various elements of the Jewish underground consolidated to form different resistance groups, including the Armée Juive (Jewish Army) which operated in the south of France. Many Jews fought as members of national resistance movements in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Slovakia.

Jews in the ghettos and camps also responded to Nazi oppression with various forms of spiritual resistance. They made conscious attempts to preserve the history and communal life of the Jewish people despite Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews from human memory. These efforts included: creating Jewish cultural institutions, continuing to observe religious holidays and rituals, providing clandestine education, publishing underground newspapers, and collecting and hiding documentation, as in the case of the Oneg Shabbat archive in Warsaw that would tell the story of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, despite its destruction in 1943.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Resistance comes in many forms, both violent and non-violent, collective and individual. Learn more about Jewish resistance to Nazi oppression.

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0:06 / 38:31•Watch full video

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The Origins of the Swastika

The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit svastika , which means "good fortune" or "well-being." The motif (a hooked cross) appears to have first been used in Eurasia, as early as 7000 years ago, perhaps representing the movement of the sun through the sky. To this day , it is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism. It is a common sight on temples or houses in India or Indonesia. Swastikas also have an ancient history in Europe, appearing on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures.

Its "Discovery" and Meanings in Modern Europe

The symbol experienced a resurgence in the nineteenth century, as a result of growing European interest in the ancient civilizations of the Near East and India. During his extensive excavations, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the hooked cross on the site of ancient Troy. He connected it with similar shapes found on pottery in Germany and speculated that it was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors." Other European scholars and thinkers linked the symbol to a shared Aryan culture that spanned Europe and Asia.

In the beginning of the twentieth century the swastika was widely used in Europe. It had numerous meanings, the most common being a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness.

The Appropriation of the Swastika as a Nazi Symbol

However, the work of European linguists and other scholars was taken up by racist groups, for whom the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan identity" and German nationalist pride. This conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people is likely one of the main reasons why the Nazi Party formally adopted the swastika or Hakenkreuz (Ger., hooked cross) as its symbol in 1920.

The Nazi Party was not the only party to use the swastika in Germany. After World War I, a number of far-right nationalist movements adopted the swastika. As a symbol, it became associated with the idea of a racially "pure" state. By the time the Nazis gained control of Germany, the connotations of the swastika had forever changed.

In Mein Kampf , Adolf Hitler wrote:

"I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika."

The color scheme for the Nazi flag intentionally drew on the colors of the flag of Imperial Germany (1871-1918), which still resonated with many Germans who rejected democracy and the Weimar Republic. The color combination with the swastika made for a powerful logo, a trademark that became indelibly linked with the Nazi Party. Most political parties in democratic Germany did not have a political logo; the Communist Party and the Nazi Party were exceptions.

The swastika became the most recognizable symbol of Nazi Mein Kampf propaganda, appearing on the flag referred to by Hitler in , as well as on election posters, arm bands, medallions, and badges for military and other organizations. A potent symbol intended to elicit pride among Aryans, the swastika also struck terror into Jews and others deemed enemies of Nazi Germany.

Nazi Symbol: The Swastika in the Third Reich

Shortly after taking power in 1933, Hitler's regime replaced the constitutionally-mandated black-red-gold flag of the Weimar Republic that had been linked with Germany's democratic traditions. On March 12, 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler issued a decree stating that henceforth the old German Imperial flag (black-white-red) was to be flown together with the swastika flag. "These flags," the edict spelled out,

"connect the glorious past of the German Empire to the powerful rebirth of the German nation. Together they embody the power of the state and the inner solidarity of the national circles of the German people!"

Two months later, on May 19, 1933, the Nazi government prohibited the "symbols of German history, of the German state, and of the national revolution from being publicly used in a way that was likely to damage the feeling of dignity of these symbols." The legislation was aimed at preventing private advertisers, companies, and others from using the swastika and other Nazi symbols or images in marketing their commercial goods and services without the approval of the regime. At that point the German market was flooded with products-including coffee, cigarettes, and cake pans-emblazoned with swastikas, Hitler's face, or other symbols. The new law made the producers of unauthorized products subject to criminal proceedings.

The Reich Flag and the Nuremberg Race Laws

At the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in September 1935, the German government passed new legislation aimed at further disenfranchising Germany's Jews. Included among the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws was the Reich Flag Law (September 15, 1935) that declared that henceforth the swastika flag would constitute the official national flag of the German Reich. That same day, the government passed the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, which prohibited marriages and sexual relations between citizens of "German or those of kindred blood" and Jews. A further stipulation spelled out that Jews were banned from raising the new German flag (the swastika) and displaying the national colors.

The impetus behind the Reich Flag Law was the Nazi regime's anger over events in New York in the summer and fall of 1935. On July 26, several hundred anti-Nazi demonstrators assembled around the German passenger liner, the SS Bremen , then docked at New York's pier to protest recent anti-Jewish incidents in Berlin. A group of protesters ripped the swastika banner from the ship's bow and tossed it into the river. New York police arrested several of the demonstrators. The German government promptly issued a formal protest to US authorities.

In response to a judicial ruling that freed most of the defendants, the Nazi government passed the Reich Flag Law.

Postwar Bans on the Use of the Swastika and Cultural Controversies

Following Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, the Allied governments ruling the nation outlawed Nazi organizations. Their symbols and propaganda were removed and further dissemination criminalized. Subsequent German governments continued the ban on Nazi symbols and propaganda, including the swastika. Today in Germany and other European states, public display of Nazi symbols, including on the Internet , is prohibited by law and individuals violating such terms are subject to criminal proceedings.

In the United States, it is legal to display Nazi symbols and propaganda because of the country's traditions and laws protecting free speech.

At various times and in various nations, the swastika has become a controversial cultural icon. Some motorcycle gangs in the United States beginning in the 1950s wore Nazi insignia to highlight their outlaw nature. In the late 1970s, some punk rock performers and enthusiasts openly displayed the swastika as a symbol of youthful rebellion against the status quo.

Sometimes, Nazi symbols take on neutral or even positive connotations in countries with little or no connection to the history of Nazi ideology and mass murder. The swastika as a symbol of Nazism, other Nazi signs, and even the figure of Adolf Hitler have taken on new life in some countries, where they have come to signify national unity, strength, discipline, anti-colonialism, and law and order. Symbols such as the swastika have a long history. To avoid misunderstanding and misuse, individuals should consider the context and past use of Nazi symbols and symbols in general.

Last Edited: Aug 7, 2017

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit svastika , which means "good fortune" or "well-being." The motif (a hooked cross) appears to have first been used in Eurasia, as early as 7000 years ago, perhaps representing the movement of the sun through the sky.

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"task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."

Communicating the Nazi Message

Nazi Following the seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry's aim was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.

There were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935 (before the Nuremberg Race Laws of September) and in 1938 (prior to the barrage of antisemitic economic legislation following Kristallnacht ). Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and "restoring order."

Real and perceived discrimination against ethnic Germans in east European nations which had gained territory at Germany's expense following World War I, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, was the subject of Nazi propaganda. This propaganda sought to elicit political loyalty and so-called race consciousness among the ethnic German populations. It also sought to mislead foreign governments-including the European Great Powers-that Nazi Germany was making understandable and fair demands for concessions and annexations.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Nazi propaganda stressed to both civilians at home and to soldiers, police officers, and non-German auxiliaries serving in occupied territory themes linking Soviet Communism to European Jewry, presenting Germany as the defender of "Western" culture against the "Judeo-Bolshevik threat," and painting an apocalyptic picture of what would happen if the Soviets won the war. This was particularly the case after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943. These themes may have been instrumental in inducing Nazi and non-Nazi Germans as well as local collaborators to fight on until the very end.

The Role of Film

(1938), depicted the Films in particular played an important role in disseminating racial antisemitism, the superiority of German military power, and the intrinsic evil of the enemies as defined by Nazi ideology. Nazi films portrayed Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating Aryan society. For example, The Eternal Jew (1940), directed by Fritz Hippler, portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites, consumed by sex and money. Some films, such as The Triumph of the Will (1935) by Leni Riefenstahl , glorified Hitler and the National Socialist movement. Two other Riefenstahl works, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty and promoted national pride in the successes of the Nazi regime at the Olympics. 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

The Role of Newspapers

Newspapers in Germany, above all Der Stürmer (The Attacker), printed cartoons that used antisemitic caricatures to depict Jews. After the Germans began World War II with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi regime employed propaganda to impress upon German civilians and soldiers that the Jews were not only subhuman, but also dangerous enemies of the German Reich. The regime aimed to elicit support, or at least acquiescence, for policies aimed at removing Jews permanently from areas of German settlement.

Covering up Atrocities and Mass Murder

During the implementation of the " ," the mass murder of European Jews, SS officials at Final Solution killing centers compelled the victims of the Holocaust to maintain the deception necessary to deport the Jews from Germany and occupied Europe as smoothly as possible. Concentration camp and killing center officials compelled prisoners, many of whom would soon die in the gas chambers, to send postcards home stating that they were being treated well and living in good conditions. Here, the camp authorities used propaganda to cover up atrocities and mass murder.

In June 1944, the German Security Police permitted an camp-ghetto, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (today: Czech Republic). The SS and police had established Theresienstadt in November 1941 as an instrument of propaganda for domestic consumption in the German Reich. The camp-ghetto was used as an explanation for Germans who were puzzled by the deportation of German and Austrian Jews who were elderly, disabled war veterans, or locally known artists and musicians "to the East" for "labor." In preparation for the 1944 visit, the International Red Cross team to inspect the Theresienstadt ghetto underwent a "beautification" program. In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish "residents" of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. When the film was completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

Mobilizing the Population

The Nazi regime used propaganda effectively to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest until the very end of the regime. Nazi propaganda was likewise essential to motivating those who implemented the mass murder of the European Jews and of other victims of the Nazi regime. It also served to secure the acquiescence of millions of others-as bystanders -to racially targeted persecution and mass murder.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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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.

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yellow posts like this one are the least sensitive material

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yellow posts like this one are the least sensitive material

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A young girl living in the ghetto in Poland kept a diary of her experiences. Her name remains unknown, but her diary entries show her fear and suffering.

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Having trouble finding a resource? It may have been retired as part of a website redesign.

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BLANKA ROTHSCHILD DESCRIBES ANTISEMITIC REGULATIONS IN OCCUPIED LODZ, POLAND

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BLANKA ROTHSCHILD DESCRIBES ANTISEMITIC REGULATIONS IN OCCUPIED LODZ, POLAND

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Curfews, yellow stars, money frozen in bank

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Blanka Rothschild describes antisemitic regulations in occupied Lodz, Poland

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The Germans started to issue laws. Curfew was one of the first. We were not permitted on the streets past, I believe, five o'clock, I'm not too sure about the hour. We were required to wear yellow stars with the sign "Jude" identifying us as Jews.

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FRITZIE WEISS FRITZSHALL DESCRIBES RESTRICTIONS PLACED ON JEWS IN KLUCARKY

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FRITZIE WEISS FRITZSHALL DESCRIBES RESTRICTIONS PLACED ON JEWS IN KLUCARKY

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"We became Jewish overnight.. there were certain rules we had to follow overnight"

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Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall describes restrictions placed on Jews in Klucarky

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We became quote "Jewish" overnight. My mother had to sit down with us and tell us the facts of life. Tell us why we were not allowed to go to school anymore. Tell us that the country was invaded by a man called Hitler, who was a bad man.

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DESCRIBES WEARING THE COMPULSORY JEWISH BADGE.

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DESCRIBES WEARING THE COMPULSORY JEWISH BADGE.

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Edward Lessing describes wearing the compulsory Jewish badge.

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Then came a decree one day that you had to wear a star. All Jews had to wear a star if they went out of the house. So my mother sewed on stars on my clothes. And I remember an incident. I have a cousin, my cousin, Hans, he lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, now.

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RESTRICTIONS ON JEWS IN AMSTERDAM & YELLOW STAR

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RESTRICTIONS ON JEWS IN AMSTERDAM & YELLOW STAR

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Jerry von Halle describes restrictions on Jews in Amsterdam

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We were, of course, uh, Jews were not allowed to go on the streetcar. Jews were not allowed to have radios. You had to turn them in. Jews weren't allowed to have silver. You had to turn it in. Uh, then came the yellow star. Everybody had to wear the yellow star.

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Primary Source

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Collection of First Hand Accounts (videos) from WWII veterans and liberators

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Collection of First Hand Accounts (videos) from WWII veterans and liberators

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In 1971, Kenneth Colvin, United States Army Veteran was chosen to attend the Liberators Conference in Washington. Colvin describes reuniting with his fellow liberators and how they were still affected by their experiences in World War II.

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In 1971, Kenneth Colvin, United States Army Veteran was chosen to attend the Liberators Conference in Washington. Colvin describes reuniting with his fellow liberators and how they were still affected by their experiences in World War II.

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View the sites of MOST of the Nazi concentration camps in WW2.

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After watching the murders of 100 Jews by his unit in fall 1941, an Einsatzgruppen commander said to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, "Look at the eyes of the men in this Kommando, how deeply shaken they are! These men are finished for the rest of their lives.

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"You and I never had a chance to dance together"

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Shave head, tattoo, clothing

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Miso (Michael) Vogel describes arrival at Auschwitz

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So they marched us through the gate with whips and beatings and dogs jumping on us. We came to a huge brick building. They shoved us...shoved us into the huge brick building, and there were prisoners and SS telling us what to do next. It was tables, long tables.

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I call the events of November 1938 a pogrom because they fall in the tradition of violent, state-mandated actions against Jews, specifically against Jews. There was a long history of pogroms carried out by many different peoples at different times and this falls into that tradition. In early November 1938, a young Jewish man named Herschel Grynszpan walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot the Third Secretary of the embassy.

His parents were Polish Jews who lived in Hanover in northern Germany. They had been rounded up and they had been taken to the border between Germany and Poland and the Germans had tried to push them, along with about 30,000 other Jews, across the border into Poland. The Poles had refused to accept them and they stood there for several weeks in no man's land.

Grynszpan was desperately upset about what was happening to his parents and that's what prompted him to go to the embassy and shoot this person as a way of drawing international attention to what his parents were experiencing. And this, the German propaganda apparatus immediately drummed up as part of the international Jewish opposition to Germany.

The Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, published a report of this attempted assassination, and by November 8th, there were already wild cat attacks on Jews and Jewish property. So there was already stoking of popular resentment, hatred, and violence-- street violence. As ill luck would have it, the party leadership was meeting just at that time in Munich and it was a moment for them to show their loyalty to their Führer.

The party leaders wrote, telephoned, telegrammed the local party bosses across the country telling them to attack Jewish property and telling them that the police would not intervene, that the fire department would not quell the fires. It turned into an explosion of violence.

Most of the synagogues in the country were burned down that night, Jews' private residences were attacked, their furniture thrown into the streets. Thousands and thousands of shop windows, about 200 synagogues, burning in this way. It was a much more public act of violence than anything that had come before. This was open, manifest violence occurring in the downtowns of every major city in some of the most prominent places within the community, and occurring to places that had hither-to been regarded as sacred.

They burned Torah scrolls, they burned Bibles, they burned religious artifacts, they destroyed the very essence of what the synagogue represents. They also destroyed the economic infrastructure-- looted, ransacked, broke the glass, and they arrested 30,000 Jewish men aged 16 to 60. And they did so for all to see, none could not see it, none could deny it.

They see the leadership sees just how much they can get away with. A lot of this is this kind of pushing of the envelope and seeing how things are going to play out and how the general public is going to respond. And there was no uprising about the pogrom. Instead, ordinary Berliners referred to it as Kristallnacht, broken shards of glass, which need to be cleaned up.

Most interesting part of that is what happened three days later. They have a meeting in the economics ministry and the meeting essentially is to assess the damage of Kristallnacht. And the economic minister is not very happy because there were the destruction of 7,000 Jewish businesses, which in order to repair would have essentially meant that the entire foreign reserves would have to be used to buy glass.

They then said, let's come out with a total fine of the Jewish people equivalent to the damage that had been done. And once that happened at the meeting they decided, OK, let's go. Jews expelled from civil service, all businesses have to be transformed to non-Jewish by January 1st. And the meeting concluded with the following cynical words: "I should not like to be a Jew in Germany today."

In one respect, this was a radical departure from what had occurred before. There had been occasional street riots, there was a pogrom in a little town in Bavaria in 1933, but on the whole, the Nazis had not attacked Jews physically. On the other hand, it came at the end of a whole year of mounting persecution.

More and more German-Jewish owned businesses had been driven out of business, more and more restrictions had been imposed on the Jews of Germany-- they had been required to adopt identifying middle names, for example, their identity papers had been stamped with the red J, so on. In early 1938, there were more applications on file for visas to enter foreign countries than there were Jews left in Germany. That doesn't mean every Jew had applied, because sometimes they applied to multiple countries, but that does give you a sense of how clearly people understood that the future in this country would not be good for us.

So the violence on the one hand did not change the mentality of German Jews but it did increase the urgency of leaving. That's when the desperate migration began. The desperation to get out of Germany now, immediately, and the young people first because the young people were the future of the community.

Within the German Reich, it's clear that you want to get out if you're Jewish. Outside the Reich, the international response was outrage. It should have been more, we should have done more than we did. The US recalled its ambassador temporarily-- we didn't break up diplomatic relations with Germany at this time. The British, they recognized how dangerous the regime was. They started to facilitate the transportation of children to Great Britain and about 10,000 children came to the United Kingdom in this way.

It's a glass half empty, half full. Clearly there's international outrage. On the other hand, clearly the international community didn't do enough at this point. I don't think there was yet a willingness to stand up and protest and I don't think a protest would have made much difference to Hitler. We now know that that attack, first on property but then on people-- and it's the attack on people that I focus on-- that was the beginning of the end.

It was the end of any hope that Jews could have of living as Jews in Germany and it was the transition to systematic violence, which ultimately became slaughter.

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"Kristallnacht": The November 1938 Pogroms

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Scholars discuss the events of Kristallnacht, a series of violent attacks against Jews in Germany, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in November, 1938.

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Sam Itzkowitz describes the gas chambers in Auschwitz

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The gas chamber was also a hall just like this one, with two chutes, two, uh, like chimneys going all the way to the top, with perforated metal. Had holes about a quarter of an inch all around, all four corners, and it was two or three sheets of metal, one into the other with holes.

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Anti-Semitism had roots long before Hitler

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RUTH MEYEROWITZ DESCRIBES SURVIVING A SELECTION FOR THE GAS CHAMBER

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RUTH MEYEROWITZ DESCRIBES SURVIVING A SELECTION FOR THE GAS CHAMBER

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Ruth Meyerowitz describes surviving a selection for the gas chamber

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When I came to Auschwitz, a few months later, I think almost everybody became very sick. My mother had malaria too, but she never had typhus.

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Ghettos like this were placed in every major city throughout Nazi occupied Germany.

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My dear hosts, distinguished map historians, ladies and gentlemen.

My time being so confined, I will dispense with the courtesies of saying what a delight and honour it is for me to be invited at this 24th International Conference on the History of Cartography in this most famous library, the Российская государственная библиотека (Russian State Library, Moscow). So I want to come straight into the subject of my presentation: the analysis of maps of the Warsaw Ghetto.

(2) I start with some modern maps. This basic digital map is from The Teachers Guide to the Holocaust. This Map of the Warsaw Ghetto dominates the internet and is copied many thousand times. Unfortunately, the map is quite incorrect and misleading: it suggests that the ghetto walls follow the streets, which is only partially correct. The Great Tlomackie Synagogue (number 4) lies outside the ghetto, while in fact it started inside. There is no indication of the Umschlagplatz, the railway station so central for the mass deportations to Treblinka. The map gives no date and therefore suggests that it represents its entire history from November 1940 until May 1943. The area depicted on the map is a third larger than the ghetto ever was on the ground, etcetera. Of course all basic maps are limited and simplifying, though they need not be incorrect. A fine example of correct educational maps of this ghetto are on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

(3) At the other side of the spectrum we have very detailed maps of the Warsaw Ghetto, like this one with the Borders before the great liquidation action in the summer of 1942. This map allows us to trace and date the exclusions from the ghetto (in light blue) and the inclusions in it (in light green) of particular area's, sections of streets and blocks of houses. This is one of the 8 maps, carefully drawn by Pawel Weszpinski, which form an integral part of the 900 pages book by Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak: The Warsaw Ghetto, a Guide to the Perished City (2009). The basis for these modern maps of the ghetto comes from cadastral and other pre-war maps of Warsaw. My only problem is that they don't indicate the heavy destructions caused by bombardments and fires during the German assault on the city; though there still exists a detailed German map of Warsaw on this topic from early 1940. There are three other chronological maps: one with the Residual ghetto after the great liquidation action, one map on The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April/May 1943 and one map with the Structure of Streets and Remains of Buildings in March 2001. Moreover the book presents four maps on key themes of daily life in the ghetto: there is a map on Communication, one on Offices, Health Care, Children and Education, one on Trade, Services and Production, and one on Social Life. Together they form a modern atlas of the Warsaw ghetto, a cartographic reconstruction that is unprecedented in scale, method and precision. So what more could I say about maps of the ghetto, after this masterful Guide ?

There remains however one question that is central in my work as a historian and map curator. When I study the history of maps I am as much interested in the ways how maps are used as in how they were made. But research on how maps shape history lags far behind the research in the history of cartography. So today, when I analyse maps of the Warsaw ghetto, my question is: to what extent are plans and maps instrumental to the organisation of terror and of resistance? Sources for dealing with this question are not abundant. Most of the official texts about changing plans and personal memoirs on how they were perceived and acted upon are cited in the Guide of Engelking and Leociak. Moreover, there are several original wartime maps that have survived. Most of these are in my private collection, of others I have scans in different qualities.

(5) This map in the scale of 1 to 20.000 is made by the General Staf of the German Army. Its department for military geography, also called the Topographietruppe, produced all kinds of war maps by revising local maps on the basis of aerial photographs and information gathered by spies. Together with target pictures this map was essential for preparing the air-raids of september 1939. The heaviest bombardement of Warsaw wrought especially havoc in the old Jewish neighbourhood. That was on September 25; in the Jewish calendar this is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Rarely studied is the role that plans for a ghetto play in creating a climate of fear in occupied Warsaw in 1939/40. I will follow some of them. Saturday (!) the 4th of November 1939 the SS calls for an extraordinary session of the recently installed Jewish Council and orders the Jews to concentrate in the old Jewish district within three days. They bring several maps with different boundaries of the planned ghetto drawn in. Their intention to set up a ghetto for Jews spreads like wildfire and causes panic. A chronicler notes: Families scattered throughout the entire town, who have assimilated into the Polish population, are ordered to move to Jewish neighbourhoods, to a community with which they often no longer have anything in common. After long days of negotiations between Chairman Czerniaków of the Jewish Council and the Military Commander of the city the Germans give up their plan, giving the impression that it is possible to come to terms with them. But on November the 30th it becomes compulsory for all Jews over twelve to wear an armband with the star of David. The term Jew is used in the definition of the Nuremberg Laws, covering also converts to Christianity and those who are only partially of 'Jewish blood'.

(6) Already on October 5, 1939, when Hitler in Warsaw takes the salute of a triumphant parade, the central Jewish neighbourhood was a no-go area. This simple map in a photobook from end 1939 with the parade route of the German troops shows the Jewish district. Five months later, March 1940, the Jewish Council is ordered to fence off streets around this district because it is an area threatened by epidemics (Seuchensperrgebiet). The teacher Chaim Kaplan writes in his diary: They treat Jews like lepers. The construction of fences coincides with anti-Jewish excesses in Warsaw. In the same week shops are plundered, apartments looted, traditional looking Jews beaten up and anti-semitic slogans shouted. These excesses are inspired by Germans but carried out by Polish hooligans. This brings the desired propaganda effects: the Poles are compromised and the Germans can be represented as defenders of the Jews. We have here a dual image: the Jews threaten non-Jews because they are bearers of infection and at the same time the Jews are threatened. Both claims come down to the same measure; to wall in their district.

(7) In April 1940 a plan for two ghetto's is put forward: one in the West covering the area of Wola and Kolo, the other in the East covering Grochów. It is assumed that ghetto's on the outskirts cause minimal damage to the economy and communication. But when the Führer considers sending millions of European Jews after the war in the West to the French colony of Madagascar, the plan is postponed until August. By then the Department of Resettlement in Warsaw claims that relocating 600.000 people, Jews and Poles, will require at least four months. But creating a ghetto in the old Jewish district can be completed before the winter, when epidemics will spread. The decision to designate this area as a ghetto provokes new fears among Jews but also some hopes of postponing its realisation or at least avoid the worst: a sealed ghetto. Kaplan's diary reads: It is hard to live in a time when you are not sure of tomorrow, and there is no greater torture than waiting. It is the torture of those condemned to die.

Then October 12 1940, again Yom Kippur, a decree on setting up three housing districts - German, Polish and Jewish - makes the ghetto inevitable. On October 15 the German controlled Gazeta Zydowska and Nowy Kurier Warszawski publish this new plan(8). All Jews of Warsaw living outside this area have to move within a few weeks to the ghetto which takes in some of the poorest and most crowded parts of the city. I'm sure you recognize the plan(9). Its outlines are the same as in the Teachers Guide to the Holocaust. But how did it get there? I found the missing link: this map(10) in the Black Book of Polish Jewry from New York 1943. The newspaper map is indeed the first public map of a ghetto in Warsaw. And while families living elsewhere start feverishly to sell their property and look for some room inside this ghetto, the quarrel about its exact borders becomes very intense.

Already the next day the newspapers point out that the boundary streets are to be inhabited on both sides by an Aryan population. Jews are to move out of them. This means that most of the closing walls of the gettho will have to go through backyards. And this is not the last alteration. On the contrary, the chaos is getting worse. On October 22 Kaplan notes: The Polish side began to haggle - in this neighbourhood they have a church; another is mainly inhabited by Aryans; ... there is a factory employing thousands of Aryan workers... Thus they excised .. street after street, of the Jewish area, and the boundaries of the ghetto grew more and more constricted. This proces of continual adjustments of boundaries is the reason why thousands of families have to move several times. We see also how the nazis succeed in framing their racial terms as this diary fragment speaks about the bickering between Aryans and Jews instead of between Jewish Poles and Catholic Poles.

After a month of conflicts the Nowy Kurier Warszawski publishes November 14 a new detailed plan of the boundary of the Jewish district. (11) I have here the map on which this plan is based. You recognise the secret map of Warsaw that is used as background for the handdrawn boundaries of the Judenghetto. This manuscript plan is by SS-Sturmbannführer Jesuiter, chief of staff of the Warsaw SS. In the picture you see Max Jesuiter in the center.

(12) November 16 the ghetto is completely sealed off. People can only leave with special passes. The gates of the ghetto are guarded by German gendarmerie, by Polish police and from the inside by Jewish police. Kaplan writes: We went to bed in the Jewish quarter, and the next day we awoke in a closed Jewish ghetto.

I have colored on the map from the Teachers Guide the large reductions in red and the few small extensions in yellow(13), just for the one month from the first public plan to the start of the ghetto. Even at the very last moment there is a new development. Nowy Kurier Warszawski for 16/17 November lists in detail the boundaries of the ghetto, specifying the streets and the numbers of the houses besides which the border runs. An innovation compared to the Jesuiter plan is the designation of a small enclave.

(16) I analyse only a few differences. From January to March 50.000 Jews living west of Warsaw have to join the already very crowded ghetto. In the same months the Germans attempt to exclude a part where many well-to-do Jewish families live: Sienna Street and Wielka Street in the South and the South East of the ghetto. But in Sienna Street a 'select committee' collects money and buys 3 kilos of gold, which they present through a middleman to the German authorities. Bribes like this remove the planned exclusion, but only for half a year. It is generally believed that German ánd Jewish officials are bribeable. On a caricature map that circulates in the ghetto, jukeboxes are drawn in office places, the various dimensions of these jukeboxes are suppose to correspond to their degree of corruption.

In the year between these maps 10 % of the 440.000 Jews in the ghetto die. There still are some restaurants and nightclubs, with music and wines for the rich and the corrupt but in many places people are dying from typhoid, hunger and cold. The ghetto is reduced even faster than its death rate. November 28, Nowy Kurier Warszawski brings the news: Jews Vandalized an Apartment in Revenge for Being Forced to Leave It. Some weeks later this framing is mirrored hundredfold. The historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, the head of the secret archive group Oneg Shabbat (Joy of Sabbath), records that after the forced secession of 4 large areas from the ghetto, the Jews get some small blocks at its western border in return, on Wolnosc, Chlodna and Zelazna streets: The Christians left their appartments in a terrible state. They've taken the windows, locks, door frames, even floors and gas meters. They completely demolish them.

In this year the gates are reduced in number, from 22 to 9, making communication even more difficult. To survive there is one dangerous but very profitable activity: smuggling. Almost more food arrives in the ghetto by smuggling than by legal methods. Children are the heroes among the individual smugglers. They manage to squeeze their little bodies through holes under the walls. Special pockets sown inside their coats carry potatoes, onions or other goods. Often the survival of whole families depends on their courage and cunning. But in October the Nazis issue the death penalty for the unauthorized leaving of the ghetto and the same penalty on Aryans sheltering Jews. The new boundaries intend also to reduce the smuggling. They move from often invisible walls in backyards and adjoining cellars into guarded streets. Chances of getting caught become now much greater and most guards don't hesitate to beat up or even to shoot children. A passage I read, on a ten year old smuggler, keeps haunting my memory. When the German guard got hold of him, the man lifted a sewer hatch and simply dropped the boy into it.

(17) On the map from beginning 1942 you see that the ghetto is now divided into a small and a larger part. On January 26 a wooden footbridge is opened over Chlodna Street to connect the two. Its 52 steps at either side become a heavy burden for people already suffering from malnutrition. Guards hit slow pedestrians to speed up; especially here the topography of the ghetto enters the body. The footbridge is called Bridge of Sighs for another reason as well. The Jews can get a nice panorama of Warsaw on top of the bridge. A view of a world that exists almost at arms length, but remains inaccessible.

(18) I will be very brief on the Great Deportation and the Ghetto Uprising, since they are well known. July 22 1942, on the eve of the commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem, the Great Deportation begins. The Germans use lists of Jews and maps of their residences provided by the Jewish Council. The deportees are held in check by SS led units, assisted by Jewish Police. The same day the liquidation of the small ghetto starts. The internal resettlement is also meant to distract the attention from the raging deportations. Many Jews still hope that through production work for the German Army the majority will be able to survive in Warsaw. But the employment certificates gradually lose their value. Two months later, on September 21, again Yom Kippur, the last transport departs from the railway station, the Umschlagplatz. In the meantime almost 300.000 Jews have been deported. On this reconstruction map from Engelking and Leociak's Guide the red and yellow dotted lines indicate the borders of the residual ghetto in autumn '42. In these areas of the big German factories 35.000 Jews work legally while some 25.000 remain illegally. The pinkish colored areas of the former ghetto are included in the 'Aryan' part of the city. The blue parts are uninhabited 'wild' areas, though many Jews remain there hidden in attics and cellars.

(19) The deportees are told they will be taken to camps in the east where there is a shortage of agricultural laborers. But railway men inform the Jewish underground that the train wagons are back at the Umschlagplatz within days. In September an escapee from Treblinka, Jakub Abraham Krzepicki, returns to the ghetto and reports what goes on in this camp. This simple manuscript map in Polish, drawn in indelible ink with typed explanations, is based on his observations. It is preserved in the Ringelblum Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. You see a sketch of the extermination camp with the train tracks to the left. Number 9 is the 'tube' to 'the shower building' (number 10) where the Jews are gassed. Their bodies are burned on open-air grids and the remains thrown in mass graves. In larger Treblinka there are barracks for Jewish forced labourers, for Ukrainian guards and for German overseers. In Warsaw, people like Ringelblum had already in Februari 1942 reached the conclusion that the new policy of the nazis is to kill the Jews of Europe. But most people could not believe this. Ringelblum reflects in december: Initially people did not believe at all in Treblinka, and anyone who spoke about it was shouted down as a spreader of panic. ... It was not understood that is was possible simply to murder tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Maps like this one by Oneg Shabbat are not only made for the prosecution when time would come to bring the nazis to justice. This simple map functions foremost as a means to locate the unimaginable. Even for people who know many facts it is not easy to admit that they are in the midst of a genocide. There is one decent alternative: to die fighting.

(20) The largest Jewish Fighting Organization (the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) is formed in the summer by members of Jewish youth organizations, who call for the Jews to resist deportation. However, the ZOB is not yet ready to stage a revolt. In October they incorporate members of zionist and socialist organizations and establish contact with the Polish underground. Mordechai Anielewicz is appointed as commander. When the deportations resume in January 1943 the first armed Jewish resistance breaks out which, after four days, brings them to a halt. In March Anielewicz requests more arms from the Polish Underground Home Army: I am prepared to submit within two days accurate plans of our positions, with maps, so that there need be no doubt whatsoever concerning the necessity of the supply. The Home Army, realising that an uprising can only succeed when it is actively supported by the Allies, provides a small number of weapons and escape maps through the sewer system. Some of their groups fear that the arms will go to Jews who sympathise with the Soviets. On April 19, the eve of Pesach, the Germans return to liquidate the remaining ghetto; now the heroic uprising breaks out. I have only this reconstruction map from the Guide. Here you see insurgents bunkers and places of the greatest fights and also red arrows of small but brave Polish actions of armed help. In the meantime German special forces start burning the ghetto, building by building, to force the Jews out of their hiding places. Nevertheless the Jewish guerilla continues for weeks.

(21) On May 8 the bunker of the ZOB command at 18 Mila Street is uncovered, the main entrance is forced, and canisters of poison gas are thrown in. Some fighters, like Anielewicz, take their own lives rather than surrender, while others perish from the gas. A handful succeed in taking shelter in an alcove and later escape via the sewers. Here you see a map of Warsaw from 1936 with its sewer system, recently published online by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny. Not many Jews can leave the burning ghetto through this labyrinth, which in many parts is only 70 cm high. Marek Edelman recalls how a paid sewage worker guides him and 40 other Jews: In the sewers we constantly came across wire entanglements made by the all-forseeing Germans. The manholes were covered with rubble. ... Every now and then the Germans dropped in poison gas. Still 30 persons of this group manage to get out. May 16 the Germans blow up the Great Synagogue in Tlomaskie Street as a sign that the uprising is finally crushed.

Ringelblum Emmanuel, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum.

© Harrie Teunissen
Leiden/Moscow, July 2011
From Mauritsstad to New Amsterdam: Mapping Early Jewish Presence in the Americas The Holocaust in Contemporary Maps Lebensraum und Getto. Karten der Warthegau, Pläne von Litzmanstadt
Harrie Teunissen and his partner John Steegh are map-collectors from Leiden in Holland. Their jointly build up collection of some 8000 maps and 1200 atlasses and travel guides, mostly from 1750 - 1950, focuses on water management, city development, ethnic relations and military conflicts. They organise exhibitions based on this collection, like 'The Balkan in maps, five centuries of struggle about identity' (Leiden University Library 2003). This presentation forms part of Teunissen's project 'Mapping Jewish History'.

A Select Bibliography

Apenszlak, Jacob (ed.), The Black Book of Polish Jewry. New York 1943

Engelking, Barbara & Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto. A Guide to the Perished City.
New Haven and London 2009 (Originally published in Polish in 2001)

Friedländer, Saul, The Years of Extermination; Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.
New York 2007

Gutschow, Niels & Barbara Klain, Vernichtung und Utopie. Stadtplanung Warschau 1939-1945.
Hamburg 1994

Kaplan, Chaim Aron, Scroll of Agony, The Warsaw Diary. London 1999

Kassow, Samuel, Who will write our History? Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive.
Bloomington 2007

Ringelblum, Emmanuel, Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War. New York 1976

New York 1974

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Topography of Terror: Maps of the Warsaw Ghetto

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My dear hosts, distinguished map historians, ladies and gentlemen. My time being so confined, I will dispense with the courtesies of saying what a delight and honour it is for me to be invited at this 24th International Conference on the History of Cartography in this most famous library, the Российская государственная библиотека (Russian State Library, Moscow).

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This photograph shows Jewish women and children from Ukraine walking toward the gas chambers at Auschwitz, where they would be murdered.

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Oral History

Hanne's family owned a photographic studio. In October 1940, she and other family members were deported to the Gurs camp in southern France. In September 1941, the Children's Aid Society (OSE) rescued Hanne and she hid in a children's home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Her mother perished in Auschwitz. In 1943, Hanne obtained false papers and crossed into Switzerland. She married in Geneva in 1945 and had a daughter in 1946. In 1948, she arrived in the United States.

Transcript

Kristallnacht, I went to school in the morning, Jewish school obviously, and something seemed wrong, yet I didn't know what. And when I came to school and I mentioned that I saw the fire engines standing in front of a building and in the back of this building was the Orthodox synagogue. I was told, "Don't you know what's going on?" And I said, "No, I don't." She said...this one told me, "My father was arrested. This father was arrested," and it was just a terrible situation. The teachers, other than the female teachers, did not come in. They were arrested. And they sent us home, I think, after about two hours. And when I came home all our show windows had been smashed. My mother was sweeping up the street. Okay. To the taunts and harassment of the population or the people who were made to look like population. Uh...next to us was a store that dealt in oriental carpets. The show windows gone. Inks thrown over the carpets. It was...it was impossible. The only reason our apartment and business was not touched at the time was that they simply knew there was not a man to be arrested, so our apartment and our business upstairs remained intact.

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Hanne Hirsch Liebmann describes the effects of Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass")

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Kristallnacht, I went to school in the morning, Jewish school obviously, and something seemed wrong, yet I didn't know what. And when I came to school and I mentioned that I saw the fire engines standing in front of a building and in the back of this building was the Orthodox synagogue.

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DESCRIBES JEWISH LIFE IN PREWAR LVOV, INCLUDING RESTRICTIONS ON ADMISSION TO SCHOOLS

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DESCRIBES JEWISH LIFE IN PREWAR LVOV, INCLUDING RESTRICTIONS ON ADMISSION TO SCHOOLS

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Wilek (William) Loew describes Jewish life in prewar Lvov, including restrictions on ad...

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The Jewish life, uh, in Lvov was, was, uh, at best can be said, uh, back in 1937, '38, what I recall, was lukewarm. It wasn't very bad, it wasn't very good.

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LOSING A FRIEND TO MEMBERSHIP IN THE HITLER YOUTH

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LOSING A FRIEND TO MEMBERSHIP IN THE HITLER YOUTH

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Guy Stern was born on January 14, 1922, in Hildesheim, Germany, into a Jewish family. As a child, he attended a German school, where he had many non-Jewish friends.

Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an important role to play in the new Nazi regime. Through these organizations, the Nazi regime planned to indoctrinate young people with Nazi ideology. This was part of the process of Nazifying German society. The aim of this process was to dismantle existing social structures and traditions. The Nazi youth groups were about imposing conformity. Youth throughout Germany wore the same uniforms, sang the same Nazi songs, and participated in similar activities.

Guy describes how propaganda and membership in the Hitler Youth turned one of these friends from his staunchest defender to his worst enemy.

Transcript

Critical Thinking Questions

What is the significance of survivor testimonies in our understanding of the history of the Holocaust?

How do oral histories differ from other primary sources such as artifacts, documents, and photographs? What can we learn from different types of primary sources?

What can this excerpt tell us about the role of Nazi propaganda in society?

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Guy Stern describes losing friends to membership in the Hitler Youth

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Guy Stern was born on January 14, 1922, in Hildesheim, Germany, into a Jewish family. As a child, he attended a German school, where he had many non-Jewish friends. Beginning in 1933, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls had an important role to play in the new Nazi regime.

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Rochelle Blackman Slivka describes the formation of the Vilna ghetto

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In '41...right before...they used to...the Jewish holidays. They...the SS decided to make a ghetto in our town, in Vilna. And there was a poor section where a lot of Jews used to live there. And, uh, the Jewish home for the aged was there, and the biggest synagogue of the city of Vilna was there.

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Oral History

Lucine was born to a Jewish family in Lublin. Her father was a court interpreter and her mother was a dentist. War began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Lucine's home was raided by German forces shortly thereafter. Soon after the German occupation of Lublin, Jews there were forced to wear a compulsory badge identifying them as Jews. A ghetto in Lublin was closed off in January 1942. Lucine survived a series of killing campaigns and deportations from the ghetto during March and April of the same year. Those who held valid labor cards were moved to a new ghetto in April 1942—the Majdan Tatarski ghetto, near the Majdanek killing center. Lucine escaped from Majdan Tatarski in November 1942, the month the Germans liquidated the ghetto. She eventually made her way to Warsaw where she first entered the ghetto and then went into hiding on the "Aryan" side.

Transcript

The Germans would round up a certain area of the city, take out the Jews, beat 'em up, and ship 'em someplace off. We did not know what what happened to these people, what happened to the families, because we had no contact with newspapers, radios--everything was taken away from us. So we merely existed, not in our own home anymore. As the Jewish population was getting smaller and smaller, um, the the Germans had been giving the Jews smaller quarters to live. And because they wanted them all together, they were forming what wasn't even a ghetto yet, but an area what they would dedicate it for the Jews. And they would put, like, four or five families in one apartment. So that when they need to take them out, it would be easier for them to have them all together. Well, we lived through many of those actions. And fortunately both of my parents were working. Working so that the Germans needed them. Therefore, we were spared at the beginning, because my mother as a dentist was working in a hospital and the Germans needed care. Now, my father also had a job, in the administration of the ghetto, so they also needed him. But as I was already 14 years old, I needed a job of my own in order to be spared. So I got a little job in the bank helping out. And that's how, through all these actions, we were able to somehow survive.

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Lucine Horn describes conditions in the Lublin ghetto

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The Germans would round up a certain area of the city, take out the Jews, beat 'em up, and ship 'em someplace off. We did not know what what happened to these people, what happened to the families, because we had no contact with newspapers, radios--everything was taken away from us.

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Leo Schneiderman describes conditions in the Lodz ghetto

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The whole ghetto was designed, actually, to starve the people out. Uh, if the, if the war would last another 10 years, they would liquidate the entire ghetto without firing one shot, because the statistics showed that every month more people died and died.