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This site is dedicated to the holocaust and is a museum website as well. This website is significant because it can give lots of information while not having to look that far for it. There are different groups of information that you can find by looking in the groups.

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This website explains what the holocaust was, and what it was like. It includes many other articles about things like Ann Frank and the army during the holocaust.

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The Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims.

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by Emalaya this website explains what happened during the holocaust up to 1933 to 1960 it is timeline explaining what happened each year in the time of the holocaust and then theres a link to learn what happened in that year

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Jump to: 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
1933

January 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

February 27, 1933 - Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere.

February 28, 1933 - Emergency powers granted to Hitler as a result of the Reichstag fire.

March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women.

See also : The History Place - Rise of Hitler

July 14, 1933 - Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

In September - Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture, then exclude Jews from the Arts.

1934

June 30, 1934 - The Night of Long Knives occurs as Hitler, Göring and Himmler conduct a purge of the SA (storm trooper) leadership.

July 20, 1934 - The SS (Schutzstaffel) is made an independent organization from the SA.

August 2, 1934 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer.

August 19, 1934 - Hitler receives a 90 percent 'Yes' vote from German voters approving his new powers.

1935

1936
In August - Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).

1937

April 22, 1938 - Nazis prohibit Aryan 'front-ownership' of Jewish businesses.

April 26, 1938 - Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property.

June 14, 1938 - Nazis order Jewish-owned businesses to register.

July 25, 1938 - Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine.

August 11, 1938 - Nazis destroy the synagogue in Nuremberg.

September 27, 1938 - Jews are prohibited from all legal practices.

October 5, 1938 - Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."

October 15, 1938 - Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland.

October 28, 1938 - Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry, leaving them in 'No-Man's Land' near the Polish border for several months.

November 7, 1938 - Ernst vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, is shot and mortally wounded by Herschel Grynszpan, the 17-year-old son of one of the deported Polish Jews. Rath dies on November 9, precipitating Kristallnacht.

November 12, 1938 - Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for damages related to Kristallnacht.

November 15, 1938 - Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

December 14, 1938 - Hermann Göring takes charge of resolving the "Jewish Question."

January 24, 1939 - SS leader Reinhard Heydrich is ordered by Göring to speed up the emigration of Jews.
January 30, 1939 - Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.
March 15/16 - Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish pop. 350,000).

April 19, 1939 - Slovakia passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

April 30, 1939 - Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses.

July 4, 1939 - German Jews denied the right to hold government jobs.

July 21, 1939 - Adolf Eichmann is appointed director of the Prague Office of Jewish Emigration.

September 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

See also : The History Place - World War II in Europe Timeline

September 1, 1939 - Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer.

September 3, 1939 - Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 4, 1939 - Warsaw is cut off by the German Army.

September 17, 1939 - Soviet troops invade eastern Poland.

September 21, 1939 - Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the future "final goal." He also orders a census and the establishment of Jewish administrative councils within the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.

September 23, 1939 - German Jews are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets.

September 27, 1939 -Warsaw surrenders; Heydrich becomes leader of RSHA.

September 29, 1939 - Nazis and Soviets divide up Poland. Over two million Jews reside in Nazi controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet area.

October 6, 1939 - Proclamation by Hitler on the isolation of Jews.

October 12, 1939 - Evacuation of Jews from Vienna.

October 26, 1939 - Forced labor decree issued for Polish Jews aged 14 to 60.

November 23, 1939 - Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

In December - Adolf Eichmann takes over section IV B 4 of the Gestapo dealing solely with Jewish affairs and evacuations.

February 12, 1940 - First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

April 9, 1940 - Nazis invade Denmark (Jewish pop. 8,000) and Norway (Jewish pop. 2,000).

April 30, 1940 - The Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland is sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.

May 1, 1940 - Rudolf Höss is chosen to be kommandant of Auschwitz.

May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500).

June 14, 1940 - Paris is occupied by the Nazis.

June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice with Hitler.

In July - Eichmann's Madagascar Plan is presented, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

July 17, 1940 - The first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France.

August 8, 1940 - Romania introduces anti-Jewish measures restricting education and employment, then later begins "Romanianization" of Jewish businesses.

September 27, 1940 - Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

October 3, 1940 - Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

October 7, 1940 - Nazis invade Romania (Jewish pop. 34,000).

October 22, 1940 - Deportation of 29,000 German Jews from Baden, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France.

In November - Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia become Nazi Allies.

1941 Return to Top of Page

In 1941 - Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states, "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear."

In January - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."

February 22, 1941 - 430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.

In March - Hitler's Commissar Order authorizes execution of anyone suspected of being a Communist official in territories about to be seized from Soviet Russia.

March 1, 1941 - Himmler makes his first visit to Auschwitz, during which he orders Kommandant Höss to begin massive expansion, including a new compound to be built at nearby Birkenau that can hold 100,000 prisoners.

March 2, 1941 - Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish pop. 50,000).

March 7, 1941 - German Jews ordered into forced labor.

March 29, 1941 - A 'Commissariat' for Jewish Affairs is set up in Vichy France.

April 6, 1941 - Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish pop. 75,000) and Greece (Jewish pop. 77,000).

May 14, 1941 - 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

May 16, 1941 - French Marshal Petain issues a radio broadcast approving collaboration with Hitler.

June 22, 1941 - Nazis invade Russia (Jewish pop. 3 million).

June 29/30 - Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.

Summer - Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant Höss to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."

July 21, 1941 - In occupied Polandnear Lublin, Majdanek c oncentration camp becomes operational.

July 25/26 - 3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.

July 31, 1941 - Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.

September 3, 1941 - The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.

September 6, 1941 - The Vilna Ghetto is established containing 40,000 Jews.

September 27/28 - 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine.

In October - 35,000 Jews from Odessa shot.

October 2, 1941 - Beginning of the German Army drive on Moscow.

October 23, 1941 - Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.

In November - SS Einsatzgruppe B reports a tally of 45,476 Jews killed.

November 30, 1941 - Near Riga, a mass shooting of Latvian and German Jews.

December 7, 1941 - Japanese attack United States at Pearl Harbor. The next day the U.S. and Great Britain declare war on Japan.

December 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States. President Roosevelt then asks Congress for a declaration of war on Germany saying, "Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization." The U.S.A. then enters the war in Europe and will concentrate nearly 90 percent of its military resources to defeat Hitler.

December 12, 1941 - The ship "Struma" leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In February 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Russian submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

December 16, 1941 - During a cabinet meeting, Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states - "Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole..."

January 31, 1942 - SS Einsatzgruppe A reports a tally of 229,052 Jews killed.

March 17, 1942 - The deportation of Jews from Lublin to Belzec.

March 24, 1942 - The start of deportation of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz.

March 27, 1942 - The start of deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz.

March 28, 1942 - Fritz Sauckel named Chief of Manpower to expedite recruitment of slave labor.

March 30, 1942 - First trainloads of Jews from Paris arrive at Auschwitz.

In April - First transports of Jews arrive at Majdanek.

In May - In occupied Poland, Sobibor extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with three gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

May 18, 1942 - The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

May 27, 1942 - SS leader Heydrich is mortally wounded by Czech Underground agents.

In June - Gas vans used in Riga.

June 1, 1942 - Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania ordered to wear yellow stars.

June 4, 1942 - Heydrich dies of his wounds.

June 5, 1942 - SS report 97,000 persons have been "processed" in mobile gas vans.

June 11, 1942 - Eichmann meets with representatives from France, Belgium and Holland to coordinate deportation plans for Jews.

June 30 and July 2 - The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

Summer - Swiss representatives of the World Jewish Congress receive information from a German industrialist regarding the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. They then pass the information on to London and Washington.

July 2, 1942 - Jews from Berlin sent to Theresienstadt.

July 7, 1942 - Himmler grants permission for sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

July 16/17 - 12,887 Jews of Paris are rounded up and sent to Drancy Internment Camp located outside the city. A total of approximately 74,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, will eventually be transported from Drancy to Auschwitz, Majdanek and Sobibor.

July 17/18 - Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau for two days, inspecting all ongoing construction and expansion, then observes the extermination process from start to finish as two trainloads of Jews arrive from Holland. Kommandant Höss is then promoted. Construction includes four large gas chamber/crematories.

July 19, 1942 - Himmler orders Operation Reinhard, mass deportations of Jews in Poland to extermination camps.

July 22, 1942 - Beginning of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the new extermination camp, Treblinka. Also, beginning of the deportation of Belgian Jews to Auschwitz.

July 23, 1942 - Treblinka extermination camp opened in occupied Poland, east of Warsaw. The camp is fitted with two buildings containing 10 gas chambers, each holding 200 persons. Carbon monoxide gas is piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but Zyklon-B will later be substituted. Bodies are burned in open pits.

In August - The start of deportations of Croatian Jews to Auschwitz.

August 23, 1942 - Beginning of German Army attack on Stalingrad in Russia.

August 26-28 - 7,000 Jews arrested in unoccupied France.

September 9, 1942 - Open pit burning of bodies begins at Auschwitz in place of burial. The decision is made to dig up and burn those already buried, 107,000 corpses, to prevent fouling of ground water.

September 18, 1942 - Reduction of food rations for Jews in Germany.

October 5, 1942 - Himmler orders all Jews in concentration camps in Germany to be sent to Auschwitz and Majdanek.

October 22, 1942 - SS put down a revolt at Sachsenhausen by a group of Jews about to be sent to Auschwitz.

October 28, 1942 - The first transport from Theresienstadt arrives at Auschwitz.

In November - The mass killing of 170,000 Jews in the area of Bialystok.

In December - Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted.
Map of Concentration/Death Camps
December 17, 1942 - British Foreign Secretary Eden tells the British House of Commons the Nazis are "now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe." The U.S. declares those crimes will be avenged.

December 28, 1942 - Sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin.

The number of Jews killed by SS Einsatzgruppen passes one million. Nazis then use In 1943 - special units of slave laborers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.

January 18, 1943 - First resistance by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

January 29, 1943 - Nazis order all Gypsies arrested and sent to extermination camps.

January 30, 1943 - Ernst Kaltenbrunner succeeds Heydrich as head of RSHA.

In February - The Romanian government proposes to the Allies the transfer of 70,000 Jews to Palestine, but receives no response from Britain or the U.S.

In February - Greek Jews are ordered into ghettos.

February 2, 1943 - Germans surrender to Russian troops at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.

February 27, 1943 - Jews working in Berlin armaments industry are sent to Auschwitz.

March 1, 1943 - In New York, American Jews hold a mass rally at Madison Square Garden to pressure the U.S. government into helping the Jews of Europe.

March 17, 1943 - Bulgaria states opposition to deportation of its Jews.

March 22, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory IV opens at Auschwitz.

March 31, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory II opens at Auschwitz.

April 4, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory V opens at Auschwitz.

April 19-30 - The Bermuda Conference occurs as representatives from the United States and Britain discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries, but results in inaction concerning the plight of the Jews.

May 13, 1943 - German and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allies.

May 19, 1943 - Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei(cleansed of Jews).

June 25, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory III opens at Auschwitz. With its completion, the four new crematories at Auschwitz have a daily capacity of 4,756 bodies.

July 9/10 - Allied troops land in Sicily.

August 2, 1943 - Two hundred Jews escape from Treblinka extermination camp during a revolt. Nazis then hunt them down one by one.

August 16, 1943 - The Bialystok Ghetto is liquidated.

In August - Exterminations cease at Treblinka, after an estimated 870,000 deaths.

In September - The Vilna and Minsk Ghettos are liquidated.

September 11, 1943 - Germans occupy Rome, after occupying northern and central Italy, containing in all about 35,000 Jews.

September 11, 1943 - Beginning of Jewish family transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

October 4 - Himmler talks openly about the Final Solution at Posen.

October 16, 1943 - Jews in Rome rounded up, with over 1,000 sent to Auschwitz.

In November - The Riga Ghetto is liquidated.

In November - The U.S. Congress holds hearings regarding the U.S. State Department's inaction regarding European Jews, despite mounting reports of mass extermination.

November 3, 1943 - Nazis carry out Operation Harvest Festival in occupied Poland, killing 42,000 Jews.

November 4, 1943 - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "It is actually true that the Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass."

December 2, 1943 - The first transport of Jews from Vienna arrives at Auschwitz.

December 16, 1943 - The chief surgeon at Auschwitz reports that 106 castration operations have been performed.

January 3, 1944 - Russian troops reach former Polish border.

January 24, 1944 - In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi control, President Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board.

January 25, 1944 - Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews."

In February - Eichmann visits Auschwitz.

March 19, 1944 - Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000). Eichmann arrives with Gestapo "Special Section Commandos."

April 5, 1944 - A Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and makes it safely to Czechoslovakia. He then warns the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about Auschwitz.

April 7, 1944 - Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which is forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June.

April 14, 1944 - First transports of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, totaling 5,200 persons.

In May - Himmler's agents secretly propose to the Western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.

May 8, 1944 - Rudolf Höss returns to Auschwitz, ordered by Himmler to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews.

May 15, 1944 - Beginning of the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.

May 16, 1944 - Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.

In June - A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report.

June 6, 1944 - D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy on the coast of northern France.

June 12, 1944 - Rosenberg orders Hay Action, the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich.

Summer - Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.

In July - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.'

August 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family are arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

August 6, 1944 - Lodz, the last Jewish ghetto in Poland, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.

October 7, 1944 - A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV.

October 15, 1944 - Nazis seize control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resume deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.

October 17, 1944 - Eichmann arrives in Hungary.

October 28, 1944 - The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz.

October 30, 1944 - Last use of the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Late 1944 - Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.

January 14, 1945 - Invasion of eastern Germany by Russian troops.

January 17, 1945 - Liberation of Warsaw by the Russians.

January 18, 1945 - Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz.

April 23, 1945 - Berlin is reached by Russian troops.

April 30, 1945 - Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.

May 2, 1945 - Theresienstadt taken over by the Red Cross.
Holocaust Statistics
May 7, 1945 - Unconditional German surrender signed by General Alfred Jodl at Reims.
1946 Return to Top of Page
May 9, 1945 - Hermann Göring captured by members of U.S. 7th Army.

May 23, 1945 - SS-Reichsführer Himmler commits suicide while in British custody.

ss, posing as a farm worker, is arrested by the British. He March 11, 1946 - Former Auschwitz Kommandant Hö testifies at Nuremberg, then is later tried in Warsaw, found guilty and hanged at Auschwitz, April 16, 1947, near Crematory I. "History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of all time," Höss writes while in prison, along with his memoirs about Auschwitz.

October 16, 1946 - Göring commits suicide two hours before the scheduled execution of the first group of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. During his imprisonment, a (now repentant) Hans Frank states, "A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Frank and the others are hanged and the bodies are brought to Dachau and burned (the final use of the crematories there) with the ashes then scattered into a river.
1960
December 9, 1946 - 23 former SS doctors and scientists go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty, with 7 hanged.
1961
1947
Copyright © 1997 The History Place™ All Rights Reserved
September 15, 1947 - Twenty one former SS-Einsatz leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Fourteen are sentenced to death, with only 4 (the group commanders) actually being executed - the other death sentences having been commuted.

May 11, 1960 - Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by the Israeli secret service.

April 11 - August 14 - Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962. A fellow Nazi reported Eichmann once said "he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction."

Terms of use: Private home/school non-commercial, non-Internet re-usage only is allowed of any text, graphics, photos, audio clips, other electronic files or materials from The History Place.

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Jump to: 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1933 January 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000. February 27, 1933 - Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere. February 28, 1933 - Emergency powers granted to Hitler as a result of the Reichstag fire.

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This link is about how Anne Frank lived in the Holocaust and what major events happened to her and her family. This article is important for learning about the Holocaust because it has information about how Anne and her family lived and it is about a specific family and how they dealt with the Holocaust. This source could be used to research about the holocaust or it could be used to find out Anne Franks's story. Also, you could use it for any projects in school or if you are curious about the holocaust or Anne Frank.

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The official website of the Anne Frank House, with the most complete and up-to-date information about Anne Frank, her diary, and the Secret Annex. Visit our museum and read more about our educational activities across the world.

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By: Grayden Anderson
This website explains a lot about what happened during the Holocaust before, during, and after. There is over 18 articles to go through on this site and 8 videos. They can tell you anything you need to know about the Holocaust or World War II. You could research all about the Holocaust on this site and how many people died in it. Or how people boycotted Jewish-owned businesses. I would definitely recommend this website to anyone who is looking for things about the Holocaust.

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

Photos and albums -Images of life before, during, and after the Holocaust

Personal stories -Interviews, home movies, memoirs, and diaries

Films -Historical footage and contemporary films about the Holocaust

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A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

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Holocaust Timeline, Videos, Podcasts, and Article.

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Holocaust Timeline, Videos, Podcasts, and Article.

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Julio Sanchez.
This Website explains the Holocaust, it also includes a timeline showing events from before, during, and after the Holocaust. It also includes many videos Regarding holocaust remembrance day and Interviews with holocaust survivors, giving a first hand source of the holocaust. The Website gives a choice of multiple podcasts to chose from as well.

This website clearly appoints many details of the holocaust and why it happened, doin it in many ways possible. i reccomend this article to you.

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30 January 1933

Hitler appointed Chancellor

Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H1216-0500-002 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE h, via Wikimedia Commons

23 March 1933

First concentration camp set up in Dachau

Photo credit: Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration

7 April 1933

Laws barring Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws passed in the Third Reich. After another parliamentary election in March 1933, in which Hitler again failed to win a majority, the Nazi Party created a coalition government with the German National People's Party. Consequently, Hitler passed an act that effectively gave him dictatorial powers, allowing him to target the country's Jewish population.

15 September 1935

The Nuremberg Laws are passed, denying Jews German citizenship

New anti-Semitic and racist laws were passed, including the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans. The Reich Citizenship Law declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The rest of the population remained without any citizenship rights.

13 March 1938

Anschluss - the German Army marches into Austria

Photo credit: Heinrich Hoffmann, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

5 October 1938

German Jews had their passports marked with a red 'J'

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

9 November 1938

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

30 January 1939

Reichstag speech

The Reichstag speech is mainly remembered for Hitler's declaration that if there was another world war, the Jews of Europe would be annihilated. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels helped write the speech, which was delivered on the sixth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power in 1933. It lasted for two-and-a-half hours and dealt with both foreign and domestic policy.

1 September

Germany invades Poland: World War II begins.

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

27 September 1939

Germany sets up ghettos in occupied Poland

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

23 November 1939

Polish Jews ordered to wear yellow stars

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

27 April 1940

Orders issued to set up a concentration camp at Auschwitz

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

1940/41

The Selection Process: "The Nazis arrived and started a selection." - Jack Kagan
"Early morning, lorries arrived, the doors have opened, the Nazi arrived and started a selection. You came out, he asked you, the head of the family, your profession, how many children. To the left, it's to go out to the yard; to the right it's to stand in the corner of the entrance of the building. Came to our turn, my uncle went in front, he said, 'What is your profession?' He said a saddle maker. 'How many children?' Two children. To the left. Came to my father. 'Your profession?' Again, saddle maker, two children. To the right. That means it was no rhyme or reason whom to select to death and whom to life. Because he went in front, two children, saddle maker, the same profession. We were the lucky ones, he left us to remain alive, and them to death. So my uncle Moishke, Soshke, Berol, and Leizer went out to the yard. They sent out four and a half thousand, four thousand people on lorries, took them outside the town into graves, into prepared graves, and massacred them, they shot them. That was Einsatzkommando, that was Einsatzkommando. My mother was standing practically opposite the window, and suddenly out of nowhere police, SS, came, with the back of their rifles hitting everybody, and I knew that this is the end of the people which are standing on the yard. In this execution I lost my mother, I lost my sister Nachama, I lost my auntie, Surcharsky."
Jack Kagan
Born 1929, Novogrodek (Vilna), Lithuania. Novogrodek ghetto. Liberated by Russians, Displaced Persons camp, Poland 1945. Married, three children.

Audio credit:Interview with Jack Kagan, Testimony: Video Interviews With Holocaust Survivors, reference C533/009, © British Library

22 June 1941

German Army invades the Soviet Union.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the mass murder of Soviet Jews by Einsatzgruppen - mobile killing squads - including the 28 September 1941 murder of 33,000 Jews and an unknown number of gypsies at Babi Yar. It is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen and related personnel killed more than two million people between 1941 and 1945.

20 January 1942

Wannsee Conference

At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, leading Nazis developed the plan to murder all the Jews of Europe, the so-called 'Final Solution.' Heydrich explained how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the occupied parts of Poland, where they would be killed.

March 1942

Gas chambers began to operate at Sobibor death camp

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

9 April 1943

The Warsaw ghetto uprising

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

1944

The Camps: [Danish police] "They were unwilling to deport the Jews" - Eugene Heimler
"Then I was taken to this Block 23. Next to us, but approachable, were the Danish police in their military Danish uniform. They were deported because they were unwilling to deport the Jews to the Gestapo, so 'en bloc' they are giving themselves up, march into the Gestapo headquarters, and from there they were taken to Buchenwald. Proud, decent people. One policeman by the name of Niels Ahlmark was very friendly with me. By that time the winter was coming and he gave me his, one of the spare military uniforms, underwear, trousers, what you have, and military cap. And also he gave me from his rations, part of his rations. So that helped."
Eugene Heimler
Born 1922, Szombathely, Hungary.
Ghetto. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Troglitz camps, then back to Buchenwald. Berger-Elster, death march to Czech border, escaped, taken to partisans. Arrived in England 1947. Three marriages, two children, one grandchild. Died December 1990.

Audio credit: Interview with Eugene Heimler by Jennifer Wingate, 1989, Living Memory of the Jewish Community, reference C410/056, © British Library

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

1944

The Camps: "You could smell people being burnt" - Edith Birkin
"Auschwitz was very frightening in a certain extent, because it was full of Germans. Because until then we didn't see a lot of Germans in the ghetto, only occasionally. It was full of Germans and the Germans with dogs, and there were these barbed wires, with electricity in it you know. Discipline, very strict discipline. This feeling of death, all these people going in the gas chamber. It was a very weird place, very weird place. With this atmosphere of death all the time you know, and this unbelievable situation of people being... you could smell, you could smell these people being burnt. All the time you smelt this... it was a little bit like you know, when people used to boil glue, it was the bones that smelt like glue. You had volunteers who would go with the Germans you know, and get a bit of food, and they were what was called the kapo, and the block leader you know. Because every of these huts, it was a block, which was called a block, had a block leader who had a little cubicle all to herself, with the women a woman and with the men a man. Because there were only women in our block, we were separated then from the men, so the men had men and the women had women. And it was like a glass cubicle, so they could see us. And you could recognise them because they were not starved, you know, they looked normal in their faces, in their bodies, they weren't hungry, they had enough to eat, and they had reasonable clothes on, they had good clothes on. So, you knew who they were, and they were very sadistic and very cruel, and they treated us, the other prisoners, very very badly. They were prisoners like us, but they had privileged positions you see."
Edith Birkin
Born 1927, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Lodz ghetto 1941. Auschwitz camp 1944. Sent to work camp and munitions factory. 1945 death march to Flossenburg camp, then to Belsen. Arrived in England 1946. Married, three adopted children.

Audio credit: Interview with Edith Birkin by Katherine Thompson, 1989, Living Memory of the Jewish Community, reference C410/030, © British Library

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

17 January 1945

Death March from Auschwitz begins

In the face of Soviet troops advancing into the Germany-occupied territories, in January 1945 Himmler ordered all camps to be evacuated. Approximately 58,000 Auschwitz detainees were evacuated on foot under SS guard to concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Many of them were shot when unable to continue the so-called Death March.

January-April 1945

The liberation of camps

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

1945

Liberation: "When we are liberated we are going to be dancing and kissing" - Edith Birkin

"It was filth, and lice, and smell, and death around you, and you just waited for the end of the war really, that is what we were doing. One day we were standing, standing, and no Germans came, and then we found out that all the Germans had gone. A couple of days or so later the British came. The tanks started rolling down the... sort of like a main road, but I was so weak I couldn't even go to greet them; most of us couldn't go to greet them, because we were so weak and tired. I was so pleased I could just lie down and sleep. We were always imagining that when we are liberated we are going to be dancing, and kissing them - and I don't think they wanted to be kissed by us to be honest! We didn't think of it that way, we didn't think we were so dreadful you know, but to them we looked absolutely awful of course. And we're going to embrace them, and... be happy, and dance, and God knows what, but all we wanted to do was to lie down and be allowed to be ill.

Edith Birkin
Born 1927, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Lodz ghetto 1941. Auschwitz camp 1944. Sent to work camp and munitions factory. 1945 death march to Flossenburg camp, then to Belsen. Arrived in England 1946. Married, three adopted children.

Audio credit: Interview with Edith Birkin by Katherine Thompson, 1989, Living Memory of the Jewish Community, reference C410/030, © British Library

30 April 1945

Hitler commits suicide

The inevitable military defeat and news that the Italian resistance movement had executed Mussolini increased Hitler's determination to avoid capture. He shot himself in the head in his Berlin bunker rather than be taken prisoner by the encircling Soviet troops. On 8 May 1945, Germany surrendered.

22 November 1945

Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals began

In November 1945 twenty two Nazi political and military leaders were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust. The trial was held before an International Military Tribunal at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. The city was chosen for symbolic reasons, as it was considered to be the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi party and the scene of many of its annual mass rallies. It lasted until 1 October 1946. Judges from Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the US presided over the hearing. At its conclusion they sentenced 12 of the accused to death and 3 to life imprisonment. Four others received jail terms of between 10 and 20 years, while the remaining 3 defendants were acquitted.

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Elizabeth Duddy1

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Holocaust remembrance - Portal - www.coe.int

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Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H1216-0500-002 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE h, via Wikimedia Commons Photo credit: Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws passed in the Third Reich.

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This article is full of different blogs and poems of people who experienced the Holocaust. This article is good if you're just learning about the topic because it shows images and explains what the poems and blogs mean. It's a good source for anybody because it's real-life papers in a museum and legit information. Many people going through the holocaust made blogs and wrote in journals. First-hand evidence such as this article really helps readers understand how people in the holocaust felt. Poems also give you a different way to learn about a topic, you don't see them very often so it's more interesting.

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Telling the Holocaust through poems

Within the Museum's collection of survivor testimony, there are countless stories of resilience, survival and great loss. It is difficult and at times impossible to put into plain words how unimaginable grief, suffering and trauma feels. As a result, many Holocaust survivors still find it difficult to describe their experiences, even today.

We share three poems from our collection of Holocaust poetry:

Song of Theresienstadt

In Song of Theresienstadt, the poet Walter Lindenbaum grapples with his longing for freedom from this dark place where he and others have been dehumanised, and reduced to a base, selfish version of himself. The poem was originally written by Lindenbaum in Theresienstadt, presumably in 1943-1944.

His incredible suffering is palpable. He writes:

Exposed does misery show itself
and every creature is blinded,
failing, in misery and stealing
self-preservation shows itself.

Both at the beginning and end of the poem, Lindenbaum wrestles with the fact that he remains in this "town of children and aged... the left-overs of the millions," a place where countless others would pass through, only to meet their death.

Despite this, he ends his poem on a hopeful note:

And yet we kept the belief going
that at some time things will change
And it will one day become different
and if we get out of here
and become a free people on this earth
then I shall sing my song at home.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow

Magda Bognar (nee Lowinger) was 23-years-old during her incarceration in Altenburg, a sub camp of Ravensbruck concentration camp, from November 1944 - January 1945. Little is known of Magda's Holocaust experiences, as she never spoke of them during her lifetime.

Her three poems in our collection, entitled Ma, tegnap, holmap ( Today, yesterday, tomorrow), Me is megtiidtuk ( We too found out) and Dream, are the only testimony of her experiences, her physical and emotional suffering, and a record of the daily harsh realities she endured.

In each of the poems, Magda chronicles the daily realities of her physical suffering. She writes about

The intern camp dreadful to recall
eight hundred in one place, to sleep on cement
to queue for one bit of bread, a little warm food
terrible struggle for terrible survival....
Our hair shorn, brutally disfigured
waited for our fate in a single silk shred
and the march began, in a horrible procession
we could hardly drag our worn out bodies in the terrible heat...
famished all day you were wallowing in dust....

Magda's resilience can be seen in the powerful use of her imagination. This became a way for her to remember a better past and hope for a better future. Just as in Lindenbaum's Song of Theresienstadt, Magda's poems end with a glimmer of hope.

Dream ends with:

Mama, I know that you are not with me
and yet I feel you here, your hands holding me
and as snowflakes are chased by the storm, so does my imagination fly away with you...
Whatever will happen I do not care anymore
because I believe that the dream will come true soon.

We too found out ends with:

Our dreams must come true one of these days
and when that happens we shall all go home
and we shall re-build our tiny nest all over again
where nobody ever can harm us again
and if they ask
are we happy, is it good to live like this
we shall say yes, because we learnt to suffer and to persevere.

The fate of the poor ever wandering Jew

Genia Kochan utilised poetry to mull over her decision to flee her home and the loss of her parents. Her emotive poem, dated 25 September 1942, was written whilst Genia was in hiding with her brothers and sisters in the city of Dzialoszyce, Poland, with a non-Jewish family by the name of Novak. Genia was one of seven children, who lived in Wadowice in southern Poland near the Czech border.

In 1939 the Germans bombed her city and the family decided to leave and go to Dzialoszyce, 150 kilometres away. After some time they returned home, but in a later Aktion her parents were shot by Polish policemen when trying to hide, while Genia and her siblings escaped back to Dzialoszyce.

Through her poetry, Genia conveys the escalating persecution of Jews and the dread that preceded it:

Despair without borders
A storm is moving from city to city!
And our fears progressively grow larger.

She struggles with the pointlessness of inaction and action. On the one hand, it is pointless to Genia to wait in fear:

Neither bribery, prayers to God nor cries in the cemetery helped
There in front of tombstones, hundreds of people came daily;
Children, the elderly, the youth, all today are as one with God
They beg to be rescued, for survival, they admit all their sins and give an oath to make amends
Today she uttered from the depth of her heart terrible groans, God!
Ease our torment.

On the other hand, she expresses regret for escaping:

I ran away but I myself I don't know why? But I was terribly afraid of death; did I pity my own life? Did I pity the distress of my beloved?
I don't know, I can't say why
I only know one thing; that I am suffering terribly as a result of what had happened and that my heart whilst I am alive will not have any room for greater suffering
There will only remain a bleeding wound; it will never heal.

In her grief, Genia expresses anger towards her parents for leaving her, but it is clear that anger is also directed inwards at herself.

Her poem ends with a sense of despair and we see that in hiding her world becomes bleak:

Everything in the world is pale! Only in painful hearts it is blue.

Shortly before it was written, 10,000 Jews from Dzialoszyce were rounded up and deported to death camps. Terrified of discovery and of putting the Novak family at risk, the Kochan siblings made plans to leave. Though the details are unknown, Genia was captured and deported to Auschwitz where she was murdered.

Her poem was kept by the Novak family and returned to Genia's brother Morrie after the war.

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Holocaust poetry is a medium through which survivors have tried to express their experiences. We share three poems from our collection of Holocaust poetry.

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by: Lily Bolger

It is about how and what happened in the war. It tells me where they were located on Europe's western and eastern fronts after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. This article will tell you about where and when everything happened in the war. It will make you think about how everyone felt about being in the war.

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For four years, from 1914 to 1918, World War I raged across Europe's western and eastern fronts after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the war's battles were devastatingly bloody, claiming an estimated 40 million military and civilian casualties, including 20 million deaths. Fighting under brutal conditions, World War I battles on both land and at sea saw mass carnage, but few decisive victories, with some conflicts waging for months on end. Below is a timeline of the war's most significant battles.

Battle of Mons: August 23, 1914

The first European clash since 1815's Battle of Waterloo, the Battle of Mons takes place in Mons, Belgium, with a British Expeditionary Force that numbers about 75,000 fighting an estimated 150,000 Germans in an attempt to hold the Mons-Conde Canal. In the final of four "Battles of the Frontier" held in the first weeks of World War I, the British forces are overpowered and forced to retreat, handing the Germans a strategic victory. Some 1,600 British and 5,000 Germans casualties are reported.

Battle of Tannenberg: August 26-August 30, 1914

Dubbed the Battle of Tannenberg by the victorious Germans in revenge for the 1410 conflict in which the Poles crushed the Teutonic Knights, this would be the country's biggest win against Russia along the Eastern Front. The battle begins with Russian armies attacking German troops in German East Prussia (now Poland) from the south and the east, which, at first, works. But after intercepting unencrypted radio messages from the Russians, the Germans are able to reorganize their strategy, forcing the Russians into retreat. The Germans pursued the Russians, essentially annihilating the armies with 30,000 casualties and more than 90,000 taken prisoner.

First Battle of the Marne: September 6-12, 1914

The First Battle of the Marne marks an Allied victory about 30 miles northeast of Paris, where the French army and British Expeditionary Force stop Germany's swift advance into France. With an exhausted and weakened German force that had sent nearly a dozen divisions to fight in East Prussia and Belgium, the German First Army faces a counterattack and is forced to retreat to the Lower Aisne River, where the first trench warfare of the conflict begins.

First Battle of Ypres: October 19 to November 22, 1914

In what would become known as the "Race to the Sea," the First Battle of Ypres begins, the first of three battles to control the ancient Flemish city on Belgium's north coast that allows access to English Channel ports and the North Sea. The massive conflict-involving an estimated 600,000 Germans and 420,000 Allies-continues for three weeks until brutal winter weather brings it to an end. Typical of so many World War I battles, both sides engage in trench warfare and suffer massive casualties, but neither makes significant gains.

Battle of Dogger Bank: January 24, 1915

After decoding intercepted German messages, the British Grand Fleet attacks the German Kaiserliche Marine in the North Sea, sparking the Battle of Dogger Bank. The smaller German squadron retreats, but can't outrun the British. Long-range gunfire ensues but while the German SMS Blücher cruiser is sunk, the British HMS Lion is severely damaged.

Battle of Verdun: February 21 to December 18, 1916

The Battle of Verdun becomes World War I's longest single battle. It lasts nearly a year as the French Army fends off a surprise German offensive that causes mass losses on both sides, with more than 600,000 total casualties.

In an attempt to cripple France's part in the war and cause a massive blow to its army's morale, the Germans choose to attack the fort of Verdun, along the banks of the Meuse River. The Germans make advances in the bloody conflict until July when their offensive is called off. The French then begin retaking the stronghold and, as winter sets in and the first Battle of the Somme rages, the Verdun fighting finally comes to an end.

Battle of Gallipoli: February 19, 1915, to January 9, 1916

In modern warfare's first major beach landing, the Gallipoli Campaign sees British and French troops invading the Ottoman Empire at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles Straits (now western Turkey). The invasion is an effort to control the sea route and seize Constantinople. With Western Front fighting stalled, the Ally forces intend the attack to be a swift victory, but ultimately withdraw, suffering some 180,000 casualties, including more than 28,000 Australian soldiers.

Battle of Jutland: May 31 to June 1, 1916

World War I's biggest naval conflict, the Battle of Jutland off the coast of Denmark marks the first and only showdown between German and British battleships. After German forces attack the Royal Navy, 250 ships and 100,000 men take part in the bloody fight, with both sides losing thousands of lives and several ships. Although there is no clear victor, Britain is able to secure North Sea shipping lanes and continue a blockade of German ports. This blockade proves pivotal to the Allies eventually winning the war.

Battle of the Somme: July 1 to November 13, 1916

During one of history's bloodiest battles, on the first day alone of the first Battle of the Somme, British forces suffer more than 57,000 casualties, including 20,000 deaths, as they attempt to overrun German trenches and are easily gunned down.

The Allies soon change tactics in their attempt to fight back the Germans on the Western Front along the Somme River in France, but make minimal breakthroughs over a nearly five-month period. Notable for the firsts use of tanks, the battle finally ends with more than a million casualties.

READ MORE: Why Was the Battle of the Somme So Deadly?

Battles of the Isonzo: June 23, 1915 to October 24, 1917

The 12 battles held along the Italian Front at the Isonzo River at the Adriatic Sea (now part of Slovenia), see the Italians repeatedly attacking the Austrians to gain control of the area and entry to Vienna. After Italy makes some progress after multiple failed attempts, Germany eventually joins the Austrian troops, forcing Italy into retreat.

Third Battle of Ypres: July 31 to November 6, 1917

Also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, the Battle of Passchendaele takes place in Ypres, Belgium, as British forces, with help from the French and the use of tanks, launch an attack to wrest control of Ypres from the Germans. Attacks and counterattacks ensue for four months in the rain and mud, with Canadian forces brought in to help relieve the troops but little ground being won. In the end, it is considered a victory for the Allies, with but one that costs both sides more than 550,000 casualties.

Battle of Vimy Ridge: April 9-Apr 12, 1917

In its first attack as a unified force, the Canadian Corps, consisting of the four Canadian divisions, launches an Easter Sunday offensive at Vimy Ridge in northern France, claiming a quick and decisive victory over the Germans in three days. Part of the Allied Battle of Arras, the well-planned battle uses new artillery tactics and marks the corps as an elite force.

June Offensive: July 1-July 4, 1917

In an attack by Russian forces against the Austro-Hungarians and Germans in Galicia, the June Offensive (also called the Kerensky Offensive and the July Offensive) operation takes place, ordered by Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky against the nation's popular calls for peace. Despite early gains, Russian troops suffer mass casualties and soon revolt. They are quickly overtaken by an Austro-German counterattack and the Russian army essentially disintegrates.

Battle of Caporetto: October 24 to December 19, 1917

Immortalized by Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, the Battle of Caporetto, also called the 12th Battle of the Isonzo, is waged on the Italian Front near Kobarid (now part of Slovenia). German and Austro-Hungarian forces soundly defeat the Italian front line, resulting in nearly 700,000 Italian casualties and seriously diminishing morale.

Battle of Cambrai: November 20 to December 5, 1917

In World War I's first large-scale tank offensive, the Battle of Cambrai near Cambrai, France, ultimately gains little ground, but changes the course of modern warfare with the use of tank brigades and new artillery methods.

On November 20, British forces engage in a surprise attack, gaining some new territory over the next several days. But on November 30, a massive German counterattack results in most of that ground being recovered.

Second Battle of the Somme: March 21 to April 5, 1918

Fought along the Somme River basin in France, the Second Battle of the Somme is launched by the Germans, hoping to capitalize on the Russian army's collapse and attacking British trenches with gas and artillery fire. The British are forced into retreat and the Germans win their biggest single territorial gain along the Western Front since the war's onset. But within a week the Allies regroup and the German offensive begins to lose steam and is eventually halted.

Ludendorff Offensive March 21 to July 18, 1918

Also known as the Ludendorff Offensive, the 1918 Spring Offensive begins with the Germans launching a string of attacks along the Western Front in hopes of winning the war before U.S. troops can join the Allies. Despite making successful advances in four attacks, the territory they retake or newly control doesn't lead to strategic gains. With the American forces arriving in July, a counteroffensive and exhausted soldiers, the Germans, while claiming victory, are badly weakened.

Second Battle of the Marne: July 15-18, 1918

In their last offensive attack of the war, the Germans strike Ally troops near the Marne River in France's Champagne region in a diversionary attempt to lure them from a separate planned attack in Flanders. But fooled by a set of false trenches implemented by the French, the Germans are met by heavy fire and a counterattack by French and American troops as they approach the actual front lines and are forced to retreat.

Battle of Amiens: August 8-11, 1918

The opening attack of what would be come to be called the Hundred Days Offensive, the Battle of Amiens sees one of the most successful advances of World War I, with Allied troops securing more than eight miles in the conflict's first fog-covered day, later called "the black day of the German Army" by General Erich Ludendorff. Catching the Germans by surprise, the Allies attack with the help of 2,000 guns, 1,900 planes and 500 tanks, causing large-scale German casualties and a fatal blow to morale.

Battles of the Meuse-Argonne: September 26 to November 11, 1918

More than 1 million American soldiers take part in the Battles of the Meuse-Argonne in France's dense Forest of Argonne and along the Meuse River, making it the American Expeditionary Forces' biggest World War I operation. It would leave 26,000 Americans dead, with 120,000-plus casualties-the deadliest battle in U.S. history. Joined by the French and aided by tanks and U.S. Air Service planes, the Allies capture tens of thousands of German prisoners and, after four months, Germany finally cedes, beginning its last retreat.

Battle of Cambrai: September 27 to October 11, 1918

As part of the Hundred Days Offensive, British and Canadian Corps forces strike a decisive victory in Cambrai in northern France, which had been held by Germany since 1914. Surrounded, exhausted and with disintegrating morale, the Germans face the certainty that the war has been lost.

Battle of Mons: November 11, 1918

Fought on World War I's final day, the Canadian Corps captures Mons, Belgium, held by the Germans since 1914, in the Battle of Mons. The early morning offensive happens hours before troops learn that Germany has agreed to an armistice at 11 a.m. It also marks the final death of an Allied soldier, a Canadian shot by a sniper minutes before the gunfire ends.

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World War I Timeline: Battles & Major Events - HISTORY

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This World War I timeline of battles outlines the most important engagements of the 1914-1918 war, from the first Battle of Mons to the final 1918 armistice.

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Former inmates of German concentration camps who later became citizens of Israel.

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By: Audrey TenBrink
This website is all pictures of what it was like during the holocaust. They are all of them in a concentration camp and shows what it was like during the holocaust . In my book The boy in the striped pajamas, he goes to a concentration and its not a very fun experience.

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Holocaust Poems from people who lived through it  

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Holocaust Poems from people who lived through it  

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by Taylor Garza
these poems will give you an inside look at what people feel and think about the Holocaust. These are good to look at because they will let you experience their feelings. This will help you to get a better understanding of what people thought and went through.

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I don’t believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people

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By Mackenzie DeHaan

This is an article about how the Germans invaded the Netherlands and the Dutch reaction to it.
The main point of the article is how the Germans invaded. But it also talks about why they invaded, how the Dutch reacted, and what really happened in the five day Invasion. It also goes into depth about how they prepared for the attack while the rest of Europe was being invaded, and this article is on the Anne Frank website which talks about what her and her family did when hiding.
This is a very significant source to the entire history of WWII because the entire domination that the Nazis had over Europe really played out into how the war was going to go, but most of the countries they invaded at least tried to fight back before becoming fully occupied. This would be helpful to someone else that is researching this topic because all of the invasions and controlled areas that the Nazis gained in Europe early on into the World War was very significant on how the Nazis gained other land and were able to build camps and make people work for their benefit during the war.

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War in Europe

On 1 September 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Two days later, England and France, both allies of Poland, declared war on Germany. The Second World War had started, but after the German occupation of Poland, there was no fighting for some time. This period was called the 'Phoney War', because it was clear to all parties that things would not end there.

Strategic interest of the Netherlands

The planned attack on the Netherlands was part of a larger plan of attack, of which the code name was Fall Gelb. The goal of the Germans was to conquer France. They wanted to bypass the French defence line at the eastern border by going through the Netherlands and Belgium. Their occupation of the Netherlands would also prevent England from setting up a base of operations on the European mainland.

Germany planned to defeat Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg by catching them off guard in a swift attack, the so-called Blitzkrieg. The Germans used espionage to discover the weak points in the Dutch defence. Some German officers dressed up as tourists to map out the area, and they also received information from Germans living in the Netherlands.

But not all German preparations were running smoothly. The Belgian army got hold of the German attack plans when a German aircraft made an emergency landing in Belgium in early 1940. Hitler decided to postpone the attack. Subsequent bad weather conditions caused the attack to be postponed several times after that.

Failed attack on The Hague

Bombers attacked the military airfields and barracks around The Hague. Paratroopers descended and German planes dropped soldiers, who hoped for a quick victory by taking Queen Wilhelmina and the government hostage. The plan failed thanks to the fierce opposition of the Dutch soldiers and blunders made on the German side.

Germany successes

The German armies also attacked the Netherlands in the south. There, Dutch troops blew up bridges to slow down the German advance. This did not always work out. Wehrmacht soldiers used a trick to conquer the strategically important Gennep railway bridge: dressed in Dutch uniforms, they overpowered the Dutch soldiers.

On the Grebbeberg, the Dutch army held out against the German army for three days. This line of defence consisted partly of flooded land. It temporarily slowed down the invaders. Even so, the Grebbe Line fell on 13 May.

The bombing of Rotterdam

Rotterdam had been the scene of bitter fighting since the beginning of the attack, but the Germans had not succeeded in taking the city. And so, on 14 May 1940, German general Schmidt presented the Dutch command with an ultimatum. Unless Rotterdam surrendered that same afternoon, the city would be bombed.

The negotiators in Rotterdam did not know that the military leadership in Berlin had other plans. Hermann Göring, leader of the Luftwaff e, meant to use terror bombing to force the country to surrender. Even before the ultimatum had expired, the German bombers appeared on the horizon. They dropped their bombs over the city centre. When the smoke cleared, 80,000 people had lost their homes and between 600 and 900 people had died.

Capitulation of the Netherlands

The Germans went on to threaten to bomb Utrecht as well. Aware of the hopelessness of the situation, the Netherlands surrendered. In a school building in Rijsoord, General Winkelman signed the capitulation agreement on 15 May. The defeat was hard on the Dutch military and civilians. At the same time, many Dutch people were also relieved that the tension had subsided.

Things felt different for the Jewish population. They had the most to fear from the Nazis. Some of them had fled Germany in the 1930s, and now, they were being overtaken by the Nazis. In the months after the invasion, hundreds of Jews committed suicide.

As the Netherlands had surrendered, the Germans installed a new administration on 29 May, headed by Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian Nazi. For the next five years, the Germans called the shots in the Netherlands.

Why did the Netherlands lose the battle?

Contrary to what some people think, the German invasion did not come as a complete surprise. The Netherlands was well prepared for war, but its neutralist policy was an obstacle. It made it impossible to cooperate with England and France on a proper defence strategy.

Although the state of the Dutch army was not as poor as is sometimes claimed, the Dutch armaments were outdated and inadequate. Moreover, the Netherlands did not have the strong military tradition Germany did.

Even so, the Dutch carried out a number of successful military actions. Unfortunately, the army command often lacked the overview and so failed to turn small successes into big victories.

Literature

Amersfoort, Herman & Kamphuis, Piet (eds.), Mei 1940: De strijd op Nederlands grondgebied (Amsterdam: Boom, 2012, 4th revised edition).

Bijkerk, Rein, Een korte oorlog: de slag om Nederland in mei 1940 (Amsterdam: Ambo/Anthos, 2015).

Have, Wichert ten, 1940: verwarring en aanpassing (Houten: Spectrum, 2015).

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War in Europe On 1 September 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Two days later, England and France, both allies of Poland, declared war on Germany. The Second World War had started, but after the German occupation of Poland, there was no fighting for some time.

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This website is made for the holocaust museum has all of the things that were a part of the holocaust and explanations

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This website is a site dedicated to the holocaust. It also has a donations page. They have a lot of info on "fun" facts about the holocaust.

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

Photos and albums -Images of life before, during, and after the Holocaust

Personal stories -Interviews, home movies, memoirs, and diaries

Films -Historical footage and contemporary films about the Holocaust

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A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

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By: Grace Sexton
This interview explains this mans life during WWII and Holocost. He was taken to a prison center as a preschooler and then a women took him in to hide him and she took him back and she went with him and then when thay were calling names to go to the killing centers his name didn't get called and he never got found after that. This is significant because he is one of a small group of people who were jewish that made it out of the war without dying.

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Watch Martin Stern - Taken to a Prison Camp as a Child Clip | HISTORY Channel

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Holocaust survivor Martin Stern recounts being taken to a Nazi prison camp as a child.

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This is a article explaining and giving us information about the Holocaust and telling us what they went through and it also talks about how the jews got hated on my americans This also shows how harsh there lives where
Colt Charlson

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The Holocaust | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims.

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Lexi Mersman-WWII/Holocaust  Children During The Holocaust 

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Lexi Mersman-WWII/Holocaust  Children During The Holocaust 

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When you open my link to the artical of Children During the Holocaust it will tell you all about what the children went threw in that time of their lives. The holocaust really effected them in a lot of ways not only physically but also mentally. It talks about how the children got split up into groups depending on if they were Jewish or not. The kids would get sent to Killing Centers where they could be killed right after birth or even when they were older. A LOT of kids would die from starvation, disease, and lack of adequate clothing and shelter. After the war refugees and displaced people went out to look for what they call "missing children"

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Children were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust.

The Nazis advocated killing children of "unwanted" or "dangerous" groups either as part of the "racial struggle" or as a measure of preventative security. The Germans and their collaborators killed children for these ideological reasons and in retaliation for real or alleged partisan attacks.

Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about 1.5 million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, 5,000-7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents (13-18 years old) had a greater chance of survival, as they could be used for forced labor.

The fates of Jewish and non-Jewish children can be categorized in the following ways:

children killed when they arrived in killing centers

children killed immediately after birth or in institutions

children born in ghettos and camps who survived because prisoners hid them

children, usually over age 12, who were used as forced laborers and as subjects of medical experiments

children killed during reprisal operations

children killed in mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen and other forces in the German-occupied Soviet Union

In the Ghettos

In ghetto settings, Jewish children died from starvation, disease, and a lack of adequate clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to the high death rates. They considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and hence "useless eaters." Because children were generally too young to be used for forced labor, German authorities often selected them, the elderly, ill, and disabled, for the first deportations to killing centers, or as the first victims led to mass graves to be shot.

These trucks bode no good, I mean especially for the little girl.
-Brigitte Friedmann Altman

Only later did I find out that my mother had gone out of the ghetto, sold a diamond and pearl ring to get me an orange. That was the last birthday gift from my parents.
-Gerda Weissmann Klein

In the Killing Centers

Camp authorities sent the vast majority of young Jewish children directly to the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers. SS and police forces in German-occupied Poland and the German-occupied Soviet Union shot thousands of children at the edge of mass graves along with their parents.

Sometimes the selection of children to fill the first transports to the killing centers or to provide the first victims of shooting operations resulted from the agonizing and controversial decisions of Jewish council ( Judenrat) chairmen. The decision by the Judenrat in Lodz in September 1942 to deport children to the Chelmno killing center was an example of the tragic choices made by adults when faced with German demands. Janusz Korczak, director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, however, refused to abandon the children under his care when they were selected for deportation. He accompanied them on the transport to the Treblinka killing center and into the gas chambers, sharing their fate.

Non-Jewish Children

Non-Jewish children from certain targeted groups were not spared. Examples include

Romani (Gypsy) children killed in Auschwitz

5,000-7,000 German children, the vast majority of them non-Jews, killed as victims of the Euthanasia Program

Children murdered in reprisals, as in the destruction of the Czech town of Lidice; and

Children shot as civilians in the German-occupied Soviet Union together with their parents.

In Concentration and Transit Camps

The German authorities also incarcerated a number of children in concentration camps and transit camps. SS physicians and medical researchers used a number of children, including twins, in concentration camps and killing centers like Auschwitz for medical experiments which often resulted in the deaths of the children. Concentration camp authorities deployed adolescents, particularly Jewish adolescents, at forced labor in the concentration camps, where many died because of conditions.

The German authorities held other children under appalling conditions in transit camps and concentration camps. They also interned non-Jewish orphaned children whose parents the German military and police units had killed in so-called anti-partisan operations. Some of these orphans were held temporarily in the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp and other detention camps.

In Occupied Poland and the Occupied Soviet Union

In their "search to retrieve 'Aryan blood'" in German-occupied areas, SS race experts ordered hundreds of children in occupied Poland to be kidnapped and transferred to the Reich. The children were to be adopted by racially suitable German families. Although the basis for these decisions was allegedly "race-scientific," often blond hair, blue eyes, or fair skin was sufficient to merit the "opportunity" to be "Germanized."

Resistance and Rescue

I was very lucky, and now and then I would bring a slice of bread, I would bring a carrot, or a potato, or an egg, and these were very, very great achievements. My mother made me promise that I wouldn't do it anymore, but I disobeyed.
-Charlene Schiff

In spite of their acute vulnerability, some children discovered ways to survive. Because of their small size, children could smuggle needed food, medicines, and supplies from the outside into ghettos in German-occupied eastern Europe. Children in youth movements later participated in underground resistance activities. Many children escaped with parents or other relatives-and sometimes on their own-to family camps run by Jewish partisans.

Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of a rescue effort between 1938 and 1940 which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children (without their parents) to safety in Great Britain from Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories.

Some non-Jews hid Jewish children and, as in the case of Anne Frank, entire families as well. In France, almost the entire Protestant population of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, as well as many Catholic priests, nuns, and lay Catholics, hid Jewish children in the town from 1942 to 1944. In Italy and Belgium, many children survived in hiding.

After the War

After the surrender of Nazi Germany, ending World War II, refugees and displaced persons searched throughout Europe for missing children. Thousands of orphaned children and juveniles found themselves in displaced persons (DP) camps. Many surviving Jewish children fled eastern Europe with or without their families as part of the mass exodus ( Brihah) to the western zones of occupied Germany, en route to the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement in Palestine). Through Youth Aliyah (Youth Immigration), thousands migrated to the Yishuv, and then to the state of Israel after its establishment in 1948.

Last Edited: Aug 10, 2021

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

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Children were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Learn more about the fates of Jewish and non-Jewish children.

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By: Maddy Schultz
This article tells how many were killed and has some interesting pictures from that time. It talks about how Christians blamed the Jews for several bad things so they faced lots of discrimination. It also talks about the rise of Hitler and how he rose to power. It tells how Jews were forced to only marry other Jews. The article mentions how Jews were captured and put in concentration camps and almost instantly murdered when they got there. It also talks about life in the camps and how mistreated the Jews were. Then, it talks about the war's aftermath and how many survivors there were.
This article is useful because it has lots of information to use for things. There are many things in this article that you might not have known beforehand.

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Six million Jews murdered. Millions more stripped of their livelihoods, their communities, their families, even their names. The horrors of the Holocaust are often expressed in numbers that convey the magnitude of Nazi Germany's attempt to annihilate Europe's Jews.

The Nazis and their collaborators killed millions of people whom they perceived as inferior-including Jehovah's Witnesses, gay men, people with disabilities, Slavic and Roma people, and Communists. However, historians use the term "Holocaust"-also called the Shoah, or "disaster" in Hebrew-to apply strictly to European Jews murdered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

No single statistic can capture the true terror of the systematic killing of a group of human beings-and given its enormity and brutality, the Holocaust is difficult to understand. How did a democratically elected politician incite an entire nation to genocide? Why did people allow it to happen in plain sight? And why do some still deny it ever happened?

(How genocide is defined-and why it's so difficult to prove.)

European Jews before the Holocaust

By 1933, about nine million Jews lived across the continent and in every European nation. Some countries guaranteed Jews equality under the law, which enabled them to become part of the dominant culture. Others, especially in Eastern Europe, kept Jewish life strictly separate.

Jewish life was flourishing, yet Europe's Jews also faced a long legacy of discrimination and scapegoating. Pogroms -violent riots in which Christians terrorized Jews-were common throughout Eastern Europe. Christians blamed Jews for the death of Jesus, fomented myths of a shadowy cabal that controlled world finances and politics, and claimed Jews brought disease and crime to their communities.

The rise of Adolf Hitler

It would take one man, Adolf Hitler, to turn centuries of casual anti-Semitism into genocide. Hitler rose to power as leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, also known as the Nazi Party, in the 1920s.

Hitler harnessed a tide of discontent and unrest in Germany, which was slowly rebuilding after losing the First World War. The nation had collapsed politically and economically, and owed heavy sanctions under the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazi party blamed Jews for Germany's troubles and promised to restore the nation to its former glory.

(How the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI-and started WWII.)

Hitler was democratically elected to the German parliament in 1933, where he was soon appointed as chancellor, the nation's second-highest position. Less than a year later, Germany's president died, and Hitler seized absolute control of the country.

The early Nazi regime

Immediately after coming to power, the Nazis promulgated a variety of laws aimed at excluding Jews from German life-defining Judaism in racial rather than religious terms. Beginning with an act barring Jews from civil service, they culminated in laws forbidding Jews from German citizenship and intermarriage with non-Jews.

These were not just domestic affairs: Hitler wanted to expand his regime and, in 1939, Germany invaded Poland. It marked the beginning of the Second World War-and the expansion of the Nazis' anti-Jewish policies.

German officials swiftly forced hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews into crowded ghettoes, and with the help of locals and the German military, specially trained forces called the Einsatzgruppen began systematically shooting Jews and other people the regime deemed undesirable. In just nine months, these mobile murder units shot more than half a million people in a "Holocaust by bullets" that would continue throughout the war.

But Hitler and his Nazi officials were not content with discriminatory laws or mass shootings. By 1942, they agreed to pursue a "final solution" to the existence of European Jews: They would send the continent's remaining Jews east to death camps where they would be forced into labor and ultimately killed.

Genocide in plain sight

By characterizing their actions as the "evacuation" of Jews from territories that rightfully belonged to non-Jewish Germans, the Nazi operation took place in plain sight. Though thousands of non-Jews rescued, hid, or otherwise helped those targeted by the Holocaust, many others stood by indifferently or collaborated with the Nazis.

(Learn about Anne Frank's life in hiding-and why her legacy is still fought over.)

With the help of local officials and sympathetic civilians, the Nazis rounded up Jews, stripped them of their personal possessions, and imprisoned them in more than 44,000 concentration camps and other incarceration sites across Europe. Non-Jews were encouraged to betray their Jewish neighbors and move into the homes and businesses they left behind.

Dachau, which opened near Munich in 1933, was the first concentration camp. Five others-Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka-were designated as killing centers, where most Jews were immediately murdered upon arrival.

The killings took place in assembly-line fashion: Mass transports of Jews were unloaded from train cars and "selected" into groups based on sex, age, and perceived fitness. Those selected for murder were taken to holding areas where they were told to set aside their possessions and undress for "disinfection" or showers.

In reality, they were herded into specially designed killing chambers into which officials pumped lethal carbon monoxide gas or a hydrogen cyanide pesticide called Zyklon B that poisoned its victims within minutes.

The earliest Holocaust victims were buried in mass graves. Later, in a bid to keep the killings a secret, corpses were burned in large crematoria. Some Jews were forced to participate in the killings, and then were themselves executed to maintain secrecy. The victims' clothing, tooth fillings, possessions, and even hair was stolen by the Nazis.

Life in the camps

Those not chosen for death were ritually humiliated and forced to live in squalid conditions. Many were tattooed with identification numbers and shorn of their hair. Starvation, overcrowding, overwork, and a lack of sanitation led to rampant disease and mass death in these facilities. Torture tactics and brutal medical experiments made the camps a horror beyond description.

"It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so," wrote Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in his 1947 memoir. "Nothing belongs to us any more...if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name."

(The first transport to Auschwitz brought 999 young women. This is their story.)

But despite almost inconceivable hardships, some managed to resist. "Our aim was to defy Hitler, to do everything we [could] to live," recalled Majdanek and Auschwitz survivor Helen K. in a 1985 oral history. "He [wanted] us to die, and we didn't want to oblige him."

Jews resisted the Holocaust in a variety of ways, from going into hiding to sabotaging camp operations or participating in armed uprisings in ghettoes and concentration camps. Other forms of resistance were quieter, like stealing food, conducting forbidden religious services, or simply attempting to maintain a sense of dignity.

The aftermath of the Holocaust

As World War II drew to a close in 1944 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to cover up their crimes, burning documents, dismantling death camp sites, and forcing their remaining prisoners on brutal death marches to escape the advancing Allies.

They didn't succeed: As they liberated swaths of Europe, Allied troops entered camps piled high with corpses and filled, in some cases, with starving, sick victims. The evidence collected in these camps would become the basis of the Nuremberg Trials, the first-ever international war crimes tribunal.

In the war's aftermath, the toll of the Holocaust slowly became clear. Just one out of every three European Jews survived, and though estimates vary, historians believe at least six million Jews were murdered. Among them were an estimated 1.3 million massacred by the Einsatzgruppen; approximately a million were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone.

Many survivors had nowhere to go. Poland had Europe's largest Jewish population before the war, but lost 93 percent of that population in just five years. Entire villages and communities were wiped out and families scattered across Europe. Labeled "displaced persons," survivors attempted to rebuild their lives. Many left Europe for good, emigrating to Israel, the United States, or elsewhere.

Holocaust denial

Despite the enormity of evidence, some people sowed misinformation about the Holocaust, while others denied it happened at all. Holocaust denial persists to this day, even though it is considered a form of antisemitism and is banned in a variety of countries.

How to counter the hate? "Educating about the history of the genocide of the Jewish people and other Nazi crimes offers a robust defence against denial and distortion," concluded the authors a of a 2021 United Nations report on Holocaust denial.

Though the number of Holocaust survivors has dwindled, their testimonies offer crucial evidence of the Holocaust's horrors.

"The voices of the victims-their lack of understanding, their despair, their powerful eloquence or their helpless clumsiness-these can shake our well-protected representation of events," said Saul Friedländer, a historian who survived the Holocaust and whose parents were murdered at Auschwitz, in a 2007 interview with Dissent Magazine. "They can stop us in our tracks. They can restore our initial sense of disbelief, before knowledge rushes in to smother it."

Editor's note: This story incorrectly listed the number of Jews that remained in Europe in 1942. It has been updated.

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How the Holocaust happened in plain sight

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Six million Jews were murdered between 1933 and 1945. How Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party turned anti-Semitism into genocide.

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By: Rielyn Nyboer
This website explains the Holocaust and WW2 with 25 facts. This website has tons of different categories so you can learn facts about every aspect of the war. This is a very good source for someone researching the Holocaust and WW2 because it includes so many different facts that I've never known about. This website goes into detail by giving facts about even the little topics in WW2. That is why this is a very helpful website that helps you better understand so many things about the war.

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The term "Holocaust" became popular after the airing on NBC of a four-part fictional miniseries on the subject called "Holocaust" in 1978. The cast included Meryl Streep. Click play on the video above to watch the trailer for the miniseries.
How They Survived

Many Holocaust survivors, including some of those who came to Houston after WWII, were never held in concentration camps. They survived in hiding, in ghettos, by fleeing into the Soviet Union, or by passing as non-Jews.
Additional Victims

Jewish people were not the only victims of the Nazis. Other victims of Nazi mass murder included Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, gay people, and Soviet prisoners of war.
Documenting the Numbers Germany's Jewish Population

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Jewish people made up less than 1% of the German population.
Jewish Victims' Origins

Most Jewish victims of the Holocaust were not from Germany but from Eastern Europe.
How the Nazis Came to Power

The Nazis came to power legally.
1.5 Million Children

Of the about 6 million Jewish people who were murdered in the Holocaust, 1.5 million were children.
The Swastika Concentration Camps People with Disabilities

The earliest victims of Nazi mass murder were people with disabilities. The Nazis saw people with disabilities as a "burden" and killed them using gassing facilities often located at hospitals in Germany. As the Nazis invaded most of Europe, the program expanded to target people with disabilities in multiple countries and people no longer able to work in concentration camps.
Hitler's Religious Beliefs

Despite many rumors, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was not Jewish. Being Jewish means following the religious and/or cultural traditions and beliefs of Judaism, which Hitler never did (he was raised in a Catholic household). Hitler also did not have Jewish ancestors.
What the World Knew Legal Trials

Only about 10% of the Germans who worked at Auschwitz were ever put on trial.
Death Marches

Most concentration camp survivors weren't liberated in the same place they spent most of the war because they were put on death marches toward the center of Germany in the last days of WWII.
Antisemitism

Antisemitism, or the hatred of Jewish people, still exists all over the world today.
Judaism

The Nazis believed that Jewish people were a separate race, but they were wrong. Being Jewish means following a religion and a culture, not being part of a race.
Inspiration from the United States "Nazi"

Although "Nazi" is short for "National Socialist German Worker's Party," the Nazis weren't actually socialist or supportive of workers. They picked words they believed would get Germans to support them.
Jewish Resistance

Jewish people resisted the Nazis in a wide variety of ways, including combat fighting, mutual aid, spiritual resistance, and recording evidence.
Nazi Control of Germany

The Nazis believed they would rule for 1,000 years. They were actually in control of Germany for 12.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many countries decided that they could not leave it up to individual countries to protect the rights of their citizens. This was the birth of the modern human rights movement, beginning with the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Survivor Testimony

In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, many people weren't interested in learning from survivors. After the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, during which Holocaust survivors were called as witnesses, interest in the Holocaust and in survivor testimony began to grow.
Holocaust Denial Genocide

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25 Facts About The Holocaust - Holocaust Museum Houston

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This is a good book because it shows what it was like to live during the holocaust as a kid who never got killed or caught. But the roadblocks that it brought him because he was on his own.
~Ella Raab

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This is ligit the best book ever. I love how its at a childs point of view. I love the adventure. I love how i got lost in the book, it was that good!This is ligit the best book ever. I love how its at a childs point of view. I love the adventure. I love how i got lost in the book, it was that good! I love everything about this book. From the dangerous side of the book to the safe side, the happy side to the sad side. Everything bout this book is amazing, I'd reccomend it to the whole world if i could. ...more (less)

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This is ligit the best book ever. I love how its at a childs point of view. I love the adventure. I love how i got lost in the book, it was that good!This is ligit the best book ever. I love how its at a childs point of view.

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This link tells u about what the survivors of the holocaust i found that this was a good resource for me. I hope you enjoy it

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Mindu Hornick, 13, peered through a crack in the door of her stopped cattle car and read a name: Auschwitz.

"I spelt it out for my mother," Hornick recalled recently. "She says, 'I don't know where it is, I've never heard of the place.' And then suddenly all this clatter of the doors opening, and when the doors opened I mean there was, just, all hell let loose."

They had traveled for days in the dark, 70 women and children packed shoulder to shoulder in a cattle car, with little food and a single sanitation bucket to share. Now they saw piles of rotting bodies, barking dogs, Nazis shouting in German, thick gray ash clotting the air. An official scrambled into their car.

"I think that a kapo must have known that this train of mothers and children-that were no use to them for work-would end up in the gas chambers," said Hornick. "And that's why he must have looked in that coach and thought to himself, 'well perhaps I'll try and save a couple.'"

He advised Hornick's mother to let her two older girls go ahead, while she stayed behind with her younger two sons. You'll see them soon, he assured her in Yiddish. He told Mindu and her sister to lie about their age and skills. "You are a seamstress," he told them.

"You better do as this man says," her mother said. "We looked back and we saw our mother with her spotted scarf, and we waved to her and we went ahead," Mindu said.

She never saw her mother or little brothers again.

Auschwitz and the 'Final Solution'

The Nazis established Auschwitz in 1940 in the Polish suburbs of Oswiecim, building a complex of camps that became central to Hitler's pursuit of a " Final Solution to the Jewish question." Nazis murdered between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, including more than one million Jews, but also Roma, homosexuals, political dissidents and more.

As prisoners arrived, young children, the elderly and infirm were separated and immediately sent to take "showers," which pumped deadly Zyklon-B poison gas into the chambers. Daily mass executions, starvation, disease and torture transformed Auschwitz into one of the most lethal and terrifying concentration camps and extermination centers of World War II.

Children, especially twins, could be selected at any time for barbaric medical experiments conducted without anesthesia by Nazi Josef Mengele. These included injecting serum directly into children's eyeballs to study eye color and injecting chloroform into the hearts of twins to determine if the siblings would die at the same time and in the same way.

In January 1945, Soviet soldiers liberated the camp to find 7,600 emaciated prisoners left behind, heaps of corpses and seven tons of human hair that had been shaved off the prisoners.

Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85 percent of the people sent to Auschwitz. Here are the stories of three who survived. [Comments have been edited for clarity.]

Before the war

Edith Eger, born September 29, 1927

The town that I grew up in was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when it became part of Hungary. I spent a lot of time with my mom because my father played billiards, and so she took me to the opera and she introduced me to Gone with the Wind. I was told at a very young age that I am a very talented gymnast.
Mindu Hornick, born May 4, 1929
I grew up in this shtetl in the Carpathian Mountains. Life was good. We had a lovely home and an orchard and we had nice relations with our neighbors and our school friends, which were not always Jewish.
Billy Harvey, born May 20, 1924
My city was called Berehove, population was approximately 26,000. In the springtime I used to work in a vineyard, cultivate the growth of the grapes, in the fall we used to harvest the grapes. The whole city was like Napa Valley. [My father was injured in World War I], so my mother became the sole supporter of the family. She was a dressmaker, but what I know about her talent today, she was more like a dress designer. There was no indoor plumbing, there was no electricity, my mother had to go every day to the farmers' market, purchase the food, prepare the food for six children, also make a living.

The rise of anti-Semitism
Edith Eger
I wanted to be a gymnast and be competing in the Olympics. I was told by my trainer that 'I have to train someone else who is not Jewish,' and that was to me the biggest shock of my life because I spent at least five hours a day training, training, training. And then I said to my trainer, 'I'm not Jewish.' I denied it, and that's when I realized that when you had a child, you had to go to the City Hall and register the child and put the religion next to it.
Mindu Hornick
[Once we were forced to wear Jewish stars] that was terrible, suddenly we were singled out. We were different to school friends, we were different to our neighbors. My father was taken away from us. His businesses were confiscated, and honestly I don't know how our mother fed us.
Billy Harvey
I graduated age of 18 from a gymnasium [an advanced secondary school]. Unfortunately my graduation present became Birkenau Auschwitz.

Transport to Auschwitz
Mindu Hornick
We were suddenly told to pack our luggage and be ready to come to the station. We were taken to a ghetto first.
Billy Harvey
We were [in the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible sanitation conditions. We were freezing, we had very little food to eat. One day the train arrived...they pushed into one cattle car as many people they possibly can-so that we were crushed like sardines. There [were] no windows on the cattle car. When the sliding doors slammed closed on us, the only light came through the wooden cracks.
Edith Eger
I begged my father to look presentable, to look younger. We were all shmooshed up, you know, very small, little place, in the cattle car, on the floor, sitting down, and I am crawling to him and asking him to shave. He didn't listen to me. My mom hugged me and said, 'We don't know where we're going, we don't know what's going to happen, just remember no one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind.'
Mindu Hornick
It was not a long way from where we were to Auschwitz, but because of railway lines being bombed, [the train] was shunted forward and back...and suddenly we arrived at the place.

Arrival
Mindu Hornick
We were pushed through to the main gate, and once we entered there we thought we'd entered hell. There were bodies everywhere, and there were these watch towers with machine guns pointing at us...this terrible grey ash falling around us. There were the barking dogs, viciously walking around, there were loudspeakers always and these SS men walking around, with shiny boots and guns on their back. I mean, we were just frightened out of our wits.
Billy Harvey
When we first glanced out, it looked like a twilight zone, big chimneys going to the sky, smoke was going all over. We didn't know where the smoke was coming from, but we found out soon enough-the smoke was coming from the crematorium. They were burning-burning between 12,000 and 13,000 people a day.
Edith Eger
Men and women were immediately separated. I never saw my father again. After the war, I met someone who told me that he saw my father going to the gas chamber.
Billy Harvey
Who they wanted to stay alive, go to the right; who was condemned to die, go to the left. Most of the children were bitterly crying, didn't want to be separated from their mother, so the young mothers went to the left, to the gas chamber.
Edith Eger
We stood at the end of the line, with my mum in the middle, Magda [my sister] and I. And [Doctor Josef Mengele] asked, 'Is this your mother or is this your sister?' And I did not forgive myself [for] saying, 'That's my mother.' So Doctor Mengele points my mother to go this way, and my sister and I the other. I followed my mum, and...the very person who annihilates my family grabs me, and there is an eye contact, and tells me, 'You're gonna see your mother very soon, she's just gonna take a shower.'
Billy Harvey
We were stripped from every inch of human dignity. They made us strip completely naked, shaved our hair, gave us a prisoner's suit to wear.
Mindu Hornick
They marched us into shower rooms to be deloused. Our heads shaven and then we were going in to be tattooed with a number and, from then on, we had no name, that was it. For young girls like ourselves, possibly even our mother [hadn't seen] us undressed. We had to sit there naked for men shaving our heads.
Billy Harvey
We passed by where the [women were]...my mother, my aunt, my cousins and their children all were naked as we glanced in, and they looked like they were in a trance. [The Nazis] must have used a gas, a small amount, because they didn't look normal. We weren't allowed to say a word...we'd be murdered immediately.
Edith Eger
We were completely shaven, and then we were in our nakedness, and my sister asked me, 'How do I look?' You know, Hungarian women can be quite vain, and, and I had a choice...realizing that I became her mirror, and I said to her, 'You know Magda, you have such beautiful eyes, and I didn't see it when you had your hair all over the place.'
Mindu Hornick
Once we got through all that routine, we were taken to block 14. It was night, and by that time there was no room for us. We had to sit all night on the stone floor.

Daily Survival
Edith Eger
In Auschwitz you couldn't fight, because if you touched the guard you were shot-right in front of me I saw that. You couldn't flee because if you touched the barbed wires, you were electrocuted. When we took a shower, we didn't know whether gas is coming out of the water.
Billy Harvey
Every morning, four o'clock, they knocked on the door [for] roll call. I don't know what was the purpose of it because nobody could escape-the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire, the barbed wire was connected to electricity and every morning in front of the barracks was piled up naked dead people.
Mindu Hornick
Very often we would see Doctor Mengele walking along, looking very smart in shiny boots and always immaculately dressed, and he would wear a pair of white leather gloves. And if anybody didn't look well, he would wave and they would have to step out of line, and we never saw those people again. If you were feeling pale, or whatever, you weren't feeling right...you would prick your finger to draw some blood and make yourself rosy cheeks.
Billy Harvey
Once a day you got a bowl of soup-they called it soup, I don't know what it was, it wasn't fit for an animal. No utensils. Five to six people have to share it, so we handed it [from] mouth to mouth, back and forth until the soup disappeared.
Edith Eger
I constantly was hallucinating about food. My mother kept Kosher, and she made her challah that was an art piece, and I visualized that in Auschwitz, my mother doing the challah, and mak[ing] her noodles.
Mindu Hornick
I remember a young boy. I think he picked up a potato skin or something. Whenever there was a hanging, we were all called out to watch it, and I remember us shouting, 'For God's sake, where is God?' A young boy hung because he picked some bit of food up.
Edith Eger
I danced for Doctor Mengele and he gave me a piece of bread. I shared it with everyone. We were a family of inmates, we had to care for each other. If you were just for the me, me, me, you never made it. [Later, during one of several death marches] when you stopped you were shot right away, and I was about to stop. I was getting weaker and weaker, and the girls that I shared the bread with...formed a chair with their arms, and they carried me so I wouldn't die.
Billy Harvey
When I wanted to give up, I said [to myself] what a great lady my mother was, who stood by all the hardship, raising six children, all by herself in such a primitive circumstances. That's what gave me the strength to want to survive-and also to tell the world what was happening.
Mindu Hornick
It's a notorious thing that people in the camps survived in pairs, or some other people that were taking care of them. My aunt, my mother's sister...heard that our transport came in, so she came to find us, Auntie Berthe. We were still crying for our mother. She did a secret exchange...and took us into her block to take care of us. When people say, how did you survive? We lived for each other.

Liberation
Edith Eger
All I could tell you [was] that it was quite dark, I saw just kind of darkness, and we didn't know who's alive and who's not alive. I was in a very bad state, I was already among the dead, and then I looked up. It was a man. I saw tears in the eyes, and M&Ms in [his] hand.
Billy Harvey As the Allies approached, the Nazis evacuated Harvey and other prisoners to Buchenwald by cattle car.
People [were] dying left and right from hunger. When they died, we took their clothes off to try to keep warmer. When we arrived back to Buchenwald, they came to collect all the dead people from the cattle car to transport them to the crematorium. I was frozen. I was put among the dead people. When I arrived to the crematorium, the prisoner who worked there discovered that I was still alive. He saved my life. I woke up in the barrack. When I opened my eyes, I thought I was in a five-star hotel. Nobody was hollering at me. Nobody was beating me. I was age of 21. I weighed 72 pounds. I could not stand up well on my feet. But I was so happy to be alive. Next day, I ask the people to carry me outside. I wanted to get some fresh air. They carried me outside. I hear a gentleman speak with the French accent.
Mindu Hornick
I really did not know what happened to us in those last hours [before] liberation. Suddenly the Germans got very, very impatient and they collected us all and put us on a train, and it was the first time we went on a passenger train and [at] either end of the train there were machine guns. The British saw a train moving with machine guns on either side, thinking they've got some valuable cargo, they shot our train up. About 60 or 70 of our girls were killed by the British Armada. We jumped out of the train and started waving. I think now it was a miracle that we weren't killed on that train, either by the British or the Germans, who tried to...kill us in the last moment.

Living as a survivor
Edith Eger
When I was liberated, I got up in the morning, and I realized that my parents are not coming home, and reality hit me. I became very suicidal. I just wanted to die. But I'm glad I did not...because I was able to somehow turn all the tragedy into an opportunity for me to now, not only survive, but also to guide other people to be survivors as well.
Billy Harvey
I was the age of 22 and I came to [the United States] with one pair of shoes and shirt and slacks, and I was determined to make a success out of my life and that's what I did. I also discovered the best revenge in life is success. You can't hate your enemies, as I said, because when you hate you're not living.
Mindu Hornick
Have I ever found an explanation? No, I haven't. I haven't. But if you want to remain normal, and you want to not end up on psychiatrist couches, or something like that, you have to drift back into a life, join a community and be part of it because...when you were brought up in a community, you want to belong again. And that was the most important thing for me: to belong again.
Billy Harvey
I don't believe that the world learned the lessons from the Holocaust. This troubles me very deeply.
Edith Eger
When the children were separated at the border, I had very, very, very many nightmares, and I still do. So when people tell me I overcame, no, I never overcame, and I never forgot.
Billy Harvey
I know that I'm 95, I'm blind, I don't question why that happened to me. I wanna go forward, I wanna enjoy every day of my life. When I wake up in the morning, I say, "You're not gonna let me down, I have to get up, I have to proceed with my lecture because I help people." There is nothing greater and there's nothing bigger.
Edith Eger earned her doctorate in psychology at the University of Texas, El Paso, and works as a clinical psychologist, helping survivors of trauma, including veterans. She is currently writing her second book Billy Harvey established a successful career as a celebrity cosmetologist before opening his own beauty salon, working with actresses including Judy Garland, Mary Martin and Zsa Zsa Gabor. He spoke regularly at the Museum of Tolerance and other venues to share his experiences. He died in April 2022. Mindu Hornick was awarded an MBE in December 2019 for her two decades of work as a Holocaust educator teaching about the dangers of intolerance and hatred. She works with the Holocaust Memorial Trust and the Anne Frank Trust. The Gift and Twelve Lessons from Hell

Fact Check

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Auschwitz Survivors Recall Harrowing and Heroic Moments From the Death Camps | HISTORY

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Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85 percent of the people sent to Auschwitz. Here are the stories of three who survived.

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This website shows several different maps on different things during the Holocaust. There are maps of where the Nazi camps are, where the Concentration Camps were, and even where the designated Jew killing sites. This coul be important to someone learning about the Holocaust if they want to know where things were and how many camps the Nazis had. It could show them how many Nazi soldiers invaded Poland and surrounding areas.

Addyson Beidler

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Media Essay

European Jewish population distribution, ca. 1933

Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. The American Jewish Yearbook placed the total Jewish population of Europe at about 9.5 million in 1933. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population, which was estimated at 15.3 million. Most European Jews resided in eastern Europe, with about 5 1/2 million Jews living in Poland and the Soviet Union. Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a dynamic and highly developed Jewish culture. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and most European Jews- two out of every three -would be dead.
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Nazi concentration camps, 1933-39

The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The Storm Troopers (SA) and the police established concentration camps to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged political opponents of the regime. These camps were established on the local level throughout Germany. Gradually, most of these early camps were disbanded and replaced by centrally organized concentration camps under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS ( Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of the Nazi state). By 1939, seven large concentration camps had been established. Besides Dachau, they were Sachsenhausen (1936) north of Berlin, Buchenwald (1937) near Weimar, Neuengamme (1938) near Hamburg, Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1938), and Ravensbrück (1939).
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European rail system, 1939

The European rail network played a crucial role in the implementation of the Final Solution. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation meant transit to killing centers for most Jews. Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states to hand over their Jews.
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"Euthanasia" centers, Germany 1940-1945

In Nazi usage, " euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed "unworthy of life" because of alleged genetic diseases or defects. Beginning in the fall of 1939, gassing installations were established at Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. Patients were selected by doctors and transferred from clinics to one of these centralized gassing installations and killed. After public outrage forced an end to centralized killings, doctors instead administered lethal injections to those selected for "euthanasia" in clinics and hospitals throughout Germany. In this way, the "euthanasia" program continued and expanded until the end of World War II.
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Persecution of Roma (Gypsies), 1939-1945

Roma (Gypsies) were among the groups singled out on racial grounds for persecution by the Nazi regime. Roma were subjected to internment, deportation, and forced labor, and were sent to killing centers. Einsatzgruppen also killed tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied eastern territories. The fate of the Roma closely paralleled that of Jews.
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Einsatzgruppen massacres in eastern Europe

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Killing centers in occupied Poland, 1942

Killing centers (also referred to as "extermination camps" or "death camps") were designed to carry out genocide. Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis established six killing centers in former Polish territory- Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau (part of the Auschwitz complex), and Majdanek. Chelmno and Auschwitz were established in areas annexed to Germany in 1939. The other camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek) were established in the Generalgouvernement (General Government) of Poland. Both Auschwitz and Majdanek functioned as concentration and forced-labor camps as well as killing centers. The overwhelming majority of the victims of the killing centers were Jews. An estimated 3.5 million Jews were killed in these six killing centers as part of the Final Solution. Other victims included Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war.
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Major deportations to killing centers, 1942-1944

At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and representatives of German government ministries estimated that the " Final Solution," the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe, would involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death.
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European Jewish population distribution, ca. 1950

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The Holocaust
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The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Mass killings began in June 1941 with the shooting of Jewish civilians during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1941, the Germans began deporting Jews to killing centers in occupied Poland. By May 1945, about two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered.
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When you click on this link it shows videos and interveiws of stuff that happened in the holocaust. Theres a video interview that is talking about a girl who survived the holocaust By: Addie

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These educational Holocaust videos explore the experiences of Holocaust survivors, the Museum's collections, and Holocaust history.

This 40-minute film tells Gerda Weissmann's account of surviving the Holocaust, based off her book All but My Life. It was produced in 1995 by HBO and the Museum to commemorate the the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust.

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Key Videos on the Holocaust - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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These videos explore the experiences of Holocaust survivors, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's collections, and Holocaust history.

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map of london during ww2 and bomb damage
by: jordyn

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Stuff About London | A blog on London history - and other stuff

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During the war the London County Council surveyors chronicled the devastation caused by enemy bombing on the capital. Hand colouring street level OS maps, they plotted the buildings damaged; generally speaking, the darker the colour, the more the devastation - black was "total destruction", purple "damaged beyond repair", right through to yellow "blast damage: minor in nature".

Take a look at the example above, the area around St Paul's cathedral showing the destruction caused by 'the second great fire of London' on the night of 29/30 December 1940, when huge swathes of the City burned and the firefighters struggled to contain the conflagration.

Generally speaking, the further east one goes the more the damage, the docks being a strategic target for the Luftwaffe, but there is hardly a district that didn't have some bombs falling, regardless of whether they were close to 'legitimate targets' or simply the rows of residential terraces. (The 'Bomb Sight' project maps these.) As well as the damage caused by the main Blitz of 1940/41, the LCC also recorded the impacts of the V1s and V2s in 1944 and 1945, these terror weapons falling genuinely randomly across the capital.

The maps have been available in book form for some time, and each visit I make to the Cabinet War Rooms I leaf through a copy and wonder how to justify the thick end of fifty quid. However, today those lovely people at Layers of London made the map available online, but it's even better than that.

Because the whole concept of Layers of London is that one can superimpose historic maps on those of the present, or merge two multiple old maps together, making the historic relatable to the present or to another period. So one can look at the bomb damage on a modern map, the maps of the 1960s, or even (should you wish to try it - and I have) in relation to 18thC maps of the city. Below is a screen grab of my street, with the bomb damage superimposed on the modern map (there is infill housing in both places).

This is a stupendous and wonderfully generous piece of work, and I for one will be wasting several hours on the map over the next few days.

You can find Layers of London here.

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The London Blitz Bomb Damage Maps | Stuff About London

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These hand coloured maps of London show the devastation of the Blitz and of Hitler's 'V' weapons.

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this map shows how much land Germany had taken over in WWII and how much power they had over neighboring countries, it also shows how many allies we had in WWII. this map also shows where and how many concentration camps were in surrounding countries and where and how many Jews were affected in this war

this could help someone research by showing occupied areas and where the holocaust/WWII happened, it also shows where Einsatzgruppe or "death squads" and other nazi soldier squads or placed.

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Nazi Germany occupies Poland

In annexed and occupied Poland, the Nazis set up ghettos. Already in 1939 they start deporting Jews to the area around Lublin. First from Vienna and later also from other places.
In 1940, Roma and Sinti are deported from assembly camps in Germany to ghettos in occupied Poland.
After the victory over France, Jews from southwest Germany are sent over the border there to camps in the south.
© Anne Frank House

Einsatzgruppen

As part of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis send special killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, to the conquered parts of the Soviet Union. They kill large groups of Jews, sometimes first collecting them in ghettos or camps.
During the same period, Jews are persecuted in Croatia and Serbia. The most notorious camp in the Balkans is that of Jasenovac.
© Anne Frank House

Reinhard Action

To facilitate the genocide of the Polish Jews, the Nazis begin to use gas in special camps. The first of these camps is Chelmno. The special extermination camps in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka are ready in the spring of 1942.
From the end of 1941, Jews from all over Germany are deported to assembly camps and ghettos in the conquered Soviet Union. Here they are killed or used as forced labourers.
© Anne Frank House

Auschwitz-Birkenau

In the spring of 1942, the large Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp is put into use. Jews, Roma and Sinti are brought to this camp from all occupied parts of Europe, and also to the other extermination camps set up in the Reinhard Action.
As the Soviet army approaches from the east, the Nazis dismantle the extermination camps and kill the prisoners or deport them to camps further west in Germany.
© Anne Frank House

The Shoah

The numbers of Jews murdered in Europe.
© Anne Frank House

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Nazi Germany occupies Poland In annexed and occupied Poland, the Nazis set up ghettos. Already in 1939 they start deporting Jews to the area around Lublin. First from Vienna and later also from other places.In 1940, Roma and Sinti are deported from assembly camps in Germany to ghettos in occupied Poland.After the victory over France, Jews from southwest Germany are sent over the border there to camps in the south.

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By: Anna Hart
Once you go into my link it shows you all the things that the evacuee children carried with them. The children were being evacuated because Britain was getting bombed, and they wanted them to be safe. So they sent them off to places far away they believed to be out of danger. As you can see in the picture a lot of the children are frowning or don't look too happy. They are being sent away from everything they know. This picture captures the real reality of war. All the children have tags attached to their clothing so that people know who the children are and where they came from. Some children were traveling very far and couldn't bring all their
belongings, but only had small paper bags holding only the necessities. All this was done to make sure the children were properly cared for. But in Ada and Jamie's case, they didn't bring anything with them. No tags, belongings, or any knowledge of where they came from. War was a complicated time, and I believe this picture tells a story and is something we can use to learn about that time.

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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This Timeline will tell you about what happened in World War 2 in order of how all the events came about. It also shows how everyone in the war played a part in the United States winning. It will show how all the events unfold as well.
Eli Shamel

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Battle of the Atlantic: September 3, 1939 to May 8, 1945

World War II's longest continuous campaign takes place, with the Allies striking a naval blockade against Germany and igniting a struggle for control of Atlantic Ocean sea routes. The Axis, with its U-boats, responds with a counter-blockade that is at first successful, but the Allies' use of convoys, aircraft and technology eventually turns the tide. Over five years, thousands of ships engage in 100-plus battles in the Atlantic Ocean with approximately 100,000 lives lost.

Battle of Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4, 1940

A German invasion around the French coastal town of Dunkirk separates the French and British armies, marooning Allied forces. But with Adolf Hitler halting Germany's advance there, the Allies are able to perform a daring-and successful-evacuation, called Operation Dynamo. Germany claims victory with remaining Allied troops surrendering, but the evacuation serves to boost British morale, still referred to as the "Dunkirk spirit."

Battle of Britain, July 10 to October 31, 1940

After a nearly four-month air campaign waged over England, Britain's Royal Air Force and Navy respond to heavy bombing attacks from Germany's Luftwaffe air force, including " the Blitz," in an attempt to destroy the RAF before invading. Defense systems, including radar, and Hitler's decision to bomb London, rather than military bases, allows Britain to regroup and eventually win the battle.

Battle of Crete: May 20 to June 1, 1941

Nazi paratroopers invade the Greek island of Crete, marking history's first mostly airborne attack. Day one of the campaign results in heavy losses for the Germans, but fearing a sea assault, Allied forces soon withdraw and evacuate in defeat. With nearly 4,000 Allies and more than 3,000 Germans killed, however, Hitler decries "the day of the parachutist is over" and it is the country's last airborne campaign.

The Siege of Leningrad: September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944

German and Finnish soldiers begin a nearly 900-day siege and blockade of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the second-biggest Soviet city and a major center of industry. With supplies, water, electricity and transportation cut off, 1.3 million people are evacuated. As the Red Army finally begins to break through the blockade, the siege ends and the city is freed, but approximately 800,000 civilians die, most from hunger.

Battle of Moscow: October 2, 1941 to January 7, 1942

Following Germany's Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union, the Axis launches a campaign to capture the capital city of Moscow before winter sets in. In preparation, the Soviets fortify the city and bring in reinforcements. After a series of gains and losses on both sides during harsh weather, the Germans are eventually beaten back and forced to retreat.

Battle of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

In a surprise wave of attacks on the U.S. naval base at Oahu Island, Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, Japan, aligned with the Axis, takes out America's Pacific fleet (the fleet's three aircraft carriers are not present during the attack). With approximately 2,400 U.S. troops killed and another 1,000 wounded, President Franklin D. Roosevelt calls it "a date which will live in infamy" and, the next day, the U.S. officially enters World War II, declaring war on Japan.

Second Battle of Kharkov: May 12-28, 1942

In a counter-offensive after Germany's attack on Moscow, the Soviet Red Army attacks Kharkov, Ukraine with the aid of 1,500 tanks and 1,000 aircraft but German intelligence alerts the Axis to the campaign. Facing nearly 300,000 casualties and gaining little traction, the Soviets are forced to concede.

Battle of Midway, June 4-7, 1942

In one of America's most important World War II naval wins, American intelligence is able to break codes to thwart a Japanese attack on the US. at Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean. With Japan focused on Midway, U.S. forces, including dive bombers, attack, sinking four of Japan's aircraft carriers and the victory serves as a turning point in the conflict.

Battle of the Guadalcanal Campaign: August 7, 1942 to February 9, 1943

Weeks after Japan begins building a strategic airfield on Guadalcanal, part of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, U.S. forces launch a surprise attack, taking control of the airfield and forcing the Japanese into initial retreat. But with reinforcements arriving, hand-to-hand jungle combat follows with Japan finally retreating six months later, with 31,000 casualties and the loss of 38 ships. The Allies lose 29 ships and 7,100 soldiers.

Battle of Stalingrad, August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943

In a conflict that marks the war's outcome tipping in the favor of the Allies, the Red Army defends the Russian city of Stalingrad from German attack, bringing an end to the Axis's eastern Europe advances and handing it its first decisive defeat. One of the longest, biggest and deadliest battles of the war, it ends with close to 2 million casualties, including civilians, with brutal winter weather and a Russian blockade causing many Germans to starve to death.

Operation Torch: November 8-16, 1942

The Allies invade French North Africa in an attempt to draw the Axis away from Soviet attacks on the Eastern Front and gain control of the Mediterranean shipping lanes. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower leads attacks on Oran, Algiers and Casablanca before advancing on Tunis and causing the Vichy French to realign with the Allies. The victory is touted by Winston Churchill as the "end of the beginning."

Battle of Kursk, July 5 to August 23, 1943

Military history's largest tank battle takes place on the Eastern Front involving an estimated 6,000 tanks, 4,000 aircraft and 2 million soldiers. In its last blitzkrieg offensive, Germany attacks the Red Army near Kursk, Russia, but due to delays and the cracking of the German Wehrmacht code, the Soviets are prepared and keep Hitler from conquering Russia.

Battle of Monte Cassino: January 17 to May 18, 1944

Advancing in Italy toward Rome, the Allies attack the Gustav Line, held by the Axis, at the mountain town of Monte Cassino, home to a Benedictine abbey dating to 524 A.D. Evacuated by the Germans, both sides tell the Vatican it will not be attacked or used in military operations. However, in a bomber attack by the Allies, the abbey is destroyed, leading to public outcry and, post-bombing, as shelter for the Nazis. Polish troops capture the abbey on May 18, leading the way for the Allied capture of Rome soon after.

Battle of Anzio: January 22 to June 5, 1944

Attempting to liberate Italy, the Allies land at Anzio, catching the Germans by surprise and quickly securing a beachhead during Operation Shingle. However, continued Axis resistance and counter-attacks ensue, resulting in a stalemate that doesn't end until the fall of Rome. It's seen as a failure for the Allies, although it does keep German troops from moving to France in the days before the invasion at Normandy.

Battle of the Philippine Sea: June 19-20, 1944

Japan attacks Allied forces who have advanced in the Pacific Theater to the Marianas Islands in the war's largest aircraft carrier battle. Prepared for the strike, the United States launches a stunning counter-attack, and the battle is later called the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" due to minimal U.S. casualties and the Japanese losing some 600 aircraft, two oilers and three carriers.

Battle of Normandy, June 6 to August 30, 1944

American, British and Canadian troops storm five beaches at Normandy France June 6, known as D-Day, waging one of military history's largest water invasions. At Omaha Beach, more than 2,000 American casualties are suffered with some 4,000 deaths that day. But by June 11, the beaches are secured and 325,000-plus forces have landed. The Allies begin their advance across Normandy, eventually liberating Paris.

Battle of Leyte Gulf: October 23-26, 1944

In World War II's largest naval battle, the Allies invade the Philippines to retake the commonwealth and create a Southeast Asian blockade. In a counter-attack, Japan deploys its first kamikaze, or suicide, bombers. Despite heavy U.S. casualties-more than 23,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors are killed-Japan suffers nearly 420,000 casualties and the conflict serves to cripple most of Japan's surface fleet, giving the Allies command of the Pacific.

Battle of the Bulge: December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945

Fought in brutal, frigid winter conditions, Hitler's forces launch a surprise, last-ditch counter-attack in an attempt to split the line of the Allies on the Western Front at the forested region of Ardennes in Belgium and Luxembourg. The battle becomes known as Battle of the Bulge, because the Germans created a "bulge" around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line.

After early German success, the Allies regain their positions thanks, in part, to reinforcements and an eventual Christmas Day airstrike once the weather clears. The Allies win (German casualties number 100,000-plus and American casualties are estimated to be 81,000) and continue their advance toward Berlin.

Battle of Iwo Jima: February 19 to March 26, 1945

Fought 660 miles south of Tokyo, U.S. Marines invade the volcanic island of Iwo Jima seeking a strategic staging area for a possible attack on Japan's mainland. Weeks of bloody battle follow and while the Americans eventually gain control, 7,000 Marines are killed, with 20,000 wounded. All but 216 of 18,000 Japanese soldiers are killed. The island later serves as an emergency landing sight for B-29 bombers.

Battle of Berlin, April 16 to May 2, 1945

Soviet forces, with support from American and British aircraft, launch an offensive against the German capital of Berlin in one of World War II's final major battles. As the Red Army encircles the city, capturing Gestapo headquarters, Hilter commits suicide April 30 in the Führerbunker and Germany surrenders a few days later, essentially ending the war.

Battle of Okinawa: April 1 to June 22, 1945

World War II's final major battle-and one of the war's bloodiest-begins Easter Sunday as U.S. Army and Marine forces invade Okinawa in the Ryukyus island chain southwest of Japan with the orders of taking the island to execute air strikes against Japan and create a blockade.

Counter-striking with kamikaze attacks, the Japanese sink 26 Allied ships and damage nearly 170 more, causing more than 12,000 American deaths over the three-month battle. Finally overpowered by the Americans, many surviving Japanese kill themselves rather than surrender. In the end, more than 100,000 Japanese are killed, along with 150,000 civilians.

HISTORY Vault: World War II

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We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict took more lives and destroyed more land and property around the globe than any previous war.

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This article gives an in-depth look at events that led to WWII and the Holocaust. This article includes what happened before, during and after the war.

By; Logan Goodman

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This page will not display properly in your browser. Internet Explorer officially went out of support in June 2022. If you're using a screen reader such as JAWS, please feel free to continue. Otherwise, please consider using another browser.

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Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust.

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This is an article of an interview with a WWII veteran who was apart of the Air Force during the war. It talks about how he was shot down in his plane then had to go with the Dutch underground. Also talking about how he was able to escape. This relates to my book's era because it is during WWII, it relates by talking about the bombings and right now Ada and Jamie are escaping the bombs. So it shows more by showing how there were other planes trying to get rid of the bombing planes.
Aubree Lezman

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Oral History Interview - World War II Kenneth “Tuck” Belton

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The ALPL Oral History Program is dedicated to preserving the stories and memories of Illinois‘s citizens.

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In the book, The War That Saved My Life, Ada runs away from home and finds courage and family during World War 2. This link shows how Ada battles her controlling Mother and finds comfort in her own skin.
By: Gesche Reister

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Abused girl finds courage, family in compelling WWII story. Read Common Sense Media's The War That Saved My Life review, age rating, and parents guide.

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In this link it gives examples of timelines as well as a WWII timeline showing all the events happening through out the whole war, for example, The holocaust, the attack on pearl harbor, and many more.

by: Suvannah Taylor

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This is the timeline of the Vietnam War and it shows you the events that happened during the Vietnam War.
Lily Tucker

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Scout Widner
On this website, seeing these maps, you could infer that the Nazis were really powerful because there were a handful of extermination camps and concentration camps. The Jews were unhappy about this obviously, so the Jews had traveled as far away as possible from the concentration and extermination camps. This resource can help people understand the conditions of the Jews and the Nazis.

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Media Essay

European Jewish population distribution, ca. 1933

Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. The American Jewish Yearbook placed the total Jewish population of Europe at about 9.5 million in 1933. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population, which was estimated at 15.3 million. Most European Jews resided in eastern Europe, with about 5 1/2 million Jews living in Poland and the Soviet Union. Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a dynamic and highly developed Jewish culture. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and most European Jews- two out of every three -would be dead.
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Nazi concentration camps, 1933-39

The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. The Storm Troopers (SA) and the police established concentration camps to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged political opponents of the regime. These camps were established on the local level throughout Germany. Gradually, most of these early camps were disbanded and replaced by centrally organized concentration camps under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS ( Schutzstaffel; the elite guard of the Nazi state). By 1939, seven large concentration camps had been established. Besides Dachau, they were Sachsenhausen (1936) north of Berlin, Buchenwald (1937) near Weimar, Neuengamme (1938) near Hamburg, Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1938), and Ravensbrück (1939).
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European rail system, 1939

The European rail network played a crucial role in the implementation of the Final Solution. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation meant transit to killing centers for most Jews. Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states to hand over their Jews.
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"Euthanasia" centers, Germany 1940-1945

In Nazi usage, " euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed "unworthy of life" because of alleged genetic diseases or defects. Beginning in the fall of 1939, gassing installations were established at Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. Patients were selected by doctors and transferred from clinics to one of these centralized gassing installations and killed. After public outrage forced an end to centralized killings, doctors instead administered lethal injections to those selected for "euthanasia" in clinics and hospitals throughout Germany. In this way, the "euthanasia" program continued and expanded until the end of World War II.
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Persecution of Roma (Gypsies), 1939-1945

Roma (Gypsies) were among the groups singled out on racial grounds for persecution by the Nazi regime. Roma were subjected to internment, deportation, and forced labor, and were sent to killing centers. Einsatzgruppen also killed tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied eastern territories. The fate of the Roma closely paralleled that of Jews.
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Einsatzgruppen massacres in eastern Europe

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Killing centers in occupied Poland, 1942

Killing centers (also referred to as "extermination camps" or "death camps") were designed to carry out genocide. Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis established six killing centers in former Polish territory- Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau (part of the Auschwitz complex), and Majdanek. Chelmno and Auschwitz were established in areas annexed to Germany in 1939. The other camps (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek) were established in the Generalgouvernement (General Government) of Poland. Both Auschwitz and Majdanek functioned as concentration and forced-labor camps as well as killing centers. The overwhelming majority of the victims of the killing centers were Jews. An estimated 3.5 million Jews were killed in these six killing centers as part of the Final Solution. Other victims included Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war.
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Major deportations to killing centers, 1942-1944

At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and representatives of German government ministries estimated that the " Final Solution," the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe, would involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death.
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European Jewish population distribution, ca. 1950

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The Holocaust
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The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. Mass killings began in June 1941 with the shooting of Jewish civilians during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of 1941, the Germans began deporting Jews to killing centers in occupied Poland. By May 1945, about two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered.
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this is about Hitler's rise to power. and this tells you everything about the timeline.  Zavier

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Adolf Hitler's rise to power began during Germany's interwar period, a time of great social and political upheaval. Within a matter of years, the Nazi Party was transformed from an obscure group to the nation's leading political faction.

April 20: Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. His family later moves to Germany.

August: Hitler joins the German military at the start of World War I. Some historians believe this is the result of an administrative error; as an Austrian citizen, Hitler should not be allowed to join the German ranks.

October: The military, fearing the blame from an inevitable defeat, encourages a civilian government to form. Under Prince Max of Baden, they sue for peace.

November 11: World War I ends with Germany signing an armistice.

March 23: Benito Mussolini forms the National Fascist Party in Italy. Its success will be a huge influence on Hitler.

June 28: Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which imposes strict sanctions on the country. Anger at the treaty and the weight of reparations will destabilize Germany for years.​

July 31: A socialist interim German government is replaced by the official creation of the democratic Weimar Republic.

September 12: Hitler joins the German Workers' Party, having been sent to spy on it by the military.

February 24: Hitler becomes increasingly important to the German Workers' Party thanks to his speeches. The group declares a Twenty-Five Point Program to transform Germany.

July 29: Hitler is able to become chairman of his party, which is renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NSDAP.

October 30: Mussolini manages to turn luck and division into an invitation to run the Italian government. Hitler notes his success.

January 27: Munich holds the first Nazi Party Congress.

November 9: Hitler believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, the support of WW1 leader Erich Ludendorff, and browbeaten locals, he stages the Beer Hall Putsch. It fails.

April 1: Having turned his trial into a grandstand for his ideas and become known across Germany, Hitler is given a derisory five-month prison sentence.

December 20: Hitler is released from jail, where he has written the beginning of " Mein Kampf."

February 27: The NSDAP had moved away from Hitler's influence during his absence; now free, he reasserts control, determined to pursue a notionally legal course to power.

April 5: Prussian, aristocratic, right-leaning war leader Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Germany.

July: Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf," a ranting exploration of what passes as his ideology.

November 9: Hitler forms a personal bodyguard unit separate from the SA, known as the SS.

May 20: Elections to the Reichstag yield just 2.6 percent of the vote to the NSDAP.﻿﻿

October 4: The New York Stock Market begins to crash, causing a great economic depression in America and around the world. As the German economy was made dependant on the United States by the Dawes plan, it begins to collapse.

January 23: Wilhelm Frick becomes the interior minister in Thuringia, the first Nazi to hold a notable position in the German government.

March 30: Heinrich Brüning takes charge of Germany via a right-leaning coalition. He wishes to pursue a deflationary policy to counter economic depression.

July 16: Facing defeat over his budget, Brüning invokes Article 48 of the constitution, which allows the government to pass laws without Reichstag consent. It is the start of a slippery slope for failing German democracy, and the start of a period of rule by Article 48 decrees.

September 14: Boosted by the rising unemployment rate, the decline of center parties, and a turn to both left and right extremists, the NSDAP wins 18.3 percent of the vote and becomes the second-largest party in the Reichstag.﻿﻿

October: The Harzburg Front is formed to try to organize Germany's right wing into a workable opposition to the government and the left. Hitler joins.

January: Hitler is welcomed by a group of industrialists; his support is broadening and gathering money.

March 13: Hitler comes a strong second in the presidential elections; Hindenburg just misses out on the election on the first ballot.

April 10: Hindenburg defeats Hitler at the second attempt to become president.

April 13: Brüning's government bans the SA and other groups from marching.

May 30: Brüning is forced to resign; Hindenburg is talked into making Franz von Papen chancellor.

June 16: The SA ban is revoked.

July 31: The NSDAP polls 37.4 percent and becomes the largest party in the Reichstag.﻿﻿

August 13: Papen offers Hitler the post of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refuses, accepting nothing less than being chancellor.

August 31: Hermann Göring, long a leading Nazi and a link between Hitler and the aristocracy, becomes president of the Reichstag and uses his new power to manipulate events.

November 6: In another election, the Nazi vote shrinks slightly.

November 21: Hitler turns down more government offers, wanting nothing less than to be chancellor.

December 2: Papen is forced out, and Hindenburg is influenced into appointing the general, and prime right-wing manipulator, Kurt von Schleicher, chancellor.

January 30: Schleicher is outmaneuvered by Papen, who persuades Hindenburg than Hitler can be controlled; the latter is made chancellor, with Papen vice-chancellor.

February 6: Hitler introduces censorship.

February 27: With elections looming, the Reichstag is set on fire by a communist.

February 28: Citing the attack on the Reichstag as evidence of a mass communist movement, Hitler passes a law ending civil liberties in Germany.

March 5: The NSDAP, riding on the communist scare and aided by a now tame police force boosted by masses of SA, polls at 43.9 percent.﻿﻿ The Nazis ban the communists.

March 21: During the "Day of Potsdam," the Nazis open the Reichstag in a carefully stage-managed act which tries to show them as heirs of the Kaiser.

March 24: Hitler passes the Enabling Act; it makes him a dictator for four years.

July 14: With other parties banned or splitting up, the NSDAP becomes the only political party left in Germany.

June 30: During the "Night of the Long Knives," dozens are killed as Hitler shatters the power of the SA, which had been challenging his goals. SA leader Ernst Röhm is executed after trying to merge his force with the army.

July 3: Papen resigns.

August 2: Hindenburg dies. Hitler merges the posts of chancellor and president, becoming the supreme leader of Nazi Germany.

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Adolf Hitler's rise to power began during Germany's interwar period, a time of great social and political upheaval. Within a matter of years, the Nazi Party was transformed from an obscure group to the nation's leading political faction. April 20: Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary.

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Holocaust survivors got to share their Sad personal stories with thousands of people during live interviews held at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is a good thing for people reading about the Holocaust to watch and hear. If you watch this video then you can have a better understanding of people's true experiences during the holocaust. it is amazing that the museum brought people in to share their stories, it was probably hard for them because the Holocaust was a horrible traumatic experience.

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Bill Benson: Good morning and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My name is Bill Benson. I am the host of the museum's public program, First Person. Thank you for joining us today. We are in our 16th year of our first person program, and our First Person today is Mrs. Agi Geva whom we shall meet shortly.

This 2015 season of First Person is made possible by the generosity of the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. We are grateful for their sponsorship.

First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their firsthand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each of our First Person guests serves as volunteers here at this museum. Our program will continue through mid August. The museum's website, at www.ushmm.org provides information about each of our upcoming First Person guests.

Today's First Person program will be live streamed on the Museum's website. This means hundreds of people will be accessing the program via a link from the Museum's website and watching with us today from across the country and around the world. A recording of this program will be made available on the Museum's website. This is our second time doing this with the first being in March.

Anyone interested in keeping in touch with the Museum and its programs can complete the Stay Connected card that you'll find in your program today or speak with a museum representative at the back of the theater when we close today's program. In doing so, you will also receive an electronic copy of Agi Geva's biography so that you can remember and share her testimony after you leave here today.

Agi will share with us her "First Person" account of her experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor for about 45 minutes. If time allows, there will be an opportunity to ask Agi a few questions.

The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades. What you are about to hear from Agi is one individual's account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with her introduction.

Agi was born Agnes Laszlo on June 2nd 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. This map highlights Hungary. The arrow on this map of Hungary points to Budapest. Agi was one of two daughters of Rosalia and Zoltan Laszlo. Here we see Agi and her sister Zsuzsi. They spent the first six years of their lives in a small farming village where their father managed a large farm. Here we see Agi's parents Rosalia and Zoltan.

Due to her father's failing health and anti Semitism legislation prohibiting Jews from working in the agricultural business, the family moved to Miskolc where Agi's mother managed a boardinghouse. This photo is of the house that was Agi's home.

On March 19, 1944, the same day the German forces occupied Hungary, Agi's father died. Agi, her sister and mother joined a group of 30 Jews sent to work in the fields outside the town. After a month they returned to Miskolc where they lived in the ghetto for a few weeks before being confined to a brick factory on the outskirts of town.

The following month the family was deported to Auschwitz. This map depicts the deportations of Jews from Hungarian ghettos to Auschwitz.

Later, Agi, her mother and sister were interned at the Plaszow concentration camp. The arrow on this map of major Nazi camps shows the location of Plaszow. When the Soviet Army approached Plaszow in the fall, the entire camp, including the three women, were sent back to Auschwitz for a few weeks then were moved to several other labor camps. On April 28, 1945, Agi was liberated by American soldiers. This photo of Agi is from 1950 after she emigrated to Israel.

Agi resides in the Washington, D.C., area. She moved to the United States 13 years ago after living in Israel since 1949, where she worked in the insurance field for 32 years. She has two children: a daughter, Dorit, who lives here; and a son, Johnnie, who lives in Israel. I am pleased to let you know they are both here with Agi today. If you don't mind, raise your hands so people know you're down here.

Welcome.

Agi has four grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Agi speaks four languages fluently: Hebrew, Hungarian, German, and English. In addition to our First Person program Agi participates in the Museum's "Conversations with Survivors" program on Fridays in the Wexner Learning Center. She also speaks frequently about her experience during the Holocaust at schools and universities such as George Mason University in Virginia, Southern Methodist University, University of Utah and Flagler University in Florida, as well as at other such other places as the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Agi is also a contributor to the museum's publication, Echoes of Memory, which features writings by survivors who participate in the museum's writing class for survivors. After today's program, Agi will be available to sign copies of Echoes of Memory, which is also available in the museum's bookstore.

Each time I meet Agi, I learn something new about her. So today, she's accompanied by Everest, who is her piano teacher. With that, I'd like to ask you to join me in welcoming our First Person, Mrs. Agi Geva.

[Applause]

Agi Geva: Where is my scarf? my scarf.

Bill Benson: Oh here, It's right here.

Agi Geva: Oh

[Door Closes]

Agi Geva: Why is this closing?

Bill Benson: It closes so they just see us.

Agi Geva: Will they show the pictures?

Bill Benson: They showed them.

Agi Geva: I want them to show the pictures. Bill Benson: They can't or there will be a light in your eye.

[Bill and Agi sit]

Agi Geva: Good morning.

Bill Benson: Agi thank you so much for your willingness to join us today and be our First Person. You have so much to tell us in a brief one hour period so we'll get right into it.

World War II began, of course, with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. But before we turn to the war and the Holocaust, let's start with you sharing with us a little bit about your family, your community, and yourself in those years before the war began.

Agi Geva: There was a real shock in 1936, that was three years before the war really began, when my father was fired Jews couldn't be in key positions anymore. It was still really far away from the real anti Semitism and real problems that happened later. So he took it very, very badly. He had a heart attack. He hardly recovered from it. He couldn't work anymore. So my mother had to take over the responsibility of the family. So we had to move from our beautiful place beautiful home very big grew up and we went to Miskolc and then 80 kilometers from Budapest, and she opened a small hotel there. It was very successful it was the first time I heard about stay away or to go. We had a very good name. The hotel was important and any people came to visit. She really managed, and my father just had to help a little bit, not too much. Instead of the one year that the doctors told those days he would stay alive, he stayed another nine years after all of his problems.

Bill Benson: Agi you told me that in those early pre war days that you were very full of patriotism for Hungary. Will you say more about that?

Agi Geva: We liked the country I wouldn't say the whole country until then. They sent us away until all the tragedies happened. Really didn't feel any more Hungarians. I was really patriotic I wrote poems I was at every school celebration, actually talking about the Hungarians and the Hungarian way. I love the language. It was really, really big disappointment although the Hungarians were the last to be deported. We thought it would never get to us. We always said, no, this will never happen in Hungary but it happened.

Bill Benson: As we noted earlier, the war began when Germany and Russia invaded Poland in September 1939. But for your community and for Jews in Hungary, the full effect of the war didn't really happen until the spring of 1944. Tell us about that period between the start of the war in September 1939 and before the Nazis came to Hungary. What was that period, a lengthy period. What was that like for you and your family? What took place then?

Agi Geva: We didn't feel antisemitism, actually, very much the kids. I think its also both our parents who were very protective we didn't fully hear the radio and we had no access to the newspaper. We really didn't know it. We had a very happy childhood. It was very peaceful, actually in those days. We were sent to the Protestant school. There was no Jewish school in Miskolc. The Jewish students was very low, for instance we were 14 my classroom only two Jewish girls. We didn't feel actually all of these how shall I tell you? The others, in Slovakia they already felt and in Romania, Austria, it still didn't get to us. That's why my parents also thought that we will never that Hungary would never notice what happened.

Bill Benson: During that time didn't some of your family members leave Hungary and emigrate elsewhere during that time?

Agi Geva: They were, we called them those days, pessimistic. They just tried to leave Hungary. They said they don't want anything out of this remorse going on. They left for Palestine those days it was still Palestine. My aunt and my uncle and family, but they were the only ones who left really all of us remained.

Bill Benson: During that period, again, where the war really hadn't come to Hungary fully, you remember during that time let me rephrase that. Did you know what was happening to Jews elsewhere in Europe? Do you think your family was aware of that?

Agi Geva: Not exactly, not exactly and and even, let's say, wouldn't have known. My sister Zsuzi who was 13, I was 14 at the time, wouldn't have known about the meaning, the deportation meant, the word concentration meant. We heard it, we didn't it just didn't know what it meant. So we even if we heard about it. Always the slogan was the Hungarians will never let it happen.

Bill Benson: It won't happen here.

Agi Geva: No, it won't.

Bill Benson: And, of course, all of that changed in March of 1944. March 19th is a very, very significant date for you.

Agi Geva: On the 19th of March in the morning my dad died. He was sick already but hadn't he died and had heard what happened later on that day they would have killed him anyhow. He died in the morning. My mother called the relatives in Budapest. Everybody was living in Budapest from the family. She called them to come to the funeral. And my aunts told my uncle Nazi and my Uncle Nazi arrived. Nazi was a Hungarian name like Moshe or like any other name. It wasn't connected with the Nazis but my mother understood. She got the second shock that day and didn't even know how to tell it to us, that something dramatic happened. We went to the funeral, only my mother and my sister. Nobody could come. And then we came back from the funeral. Every street corner on every street corner was already a German soldier with us. So it was a shock and a dramatic change from that day on in our lives.

Bill Benson: It happened almost instantly, didn't it?

Agi Geva: From one day to the. The day before we didn't even think, imagine.

Bill Benson: Do you think your mother and other family members had any idea at that point what would happen next?

Agi Geva: I don't think anybody could even imagine what was happening next. It was very gradual. We gradually felt the impact what it means to be an occupied country. That week my mother sent us to a small village, to a friend's house, for protection. She thought so, but we didn't feel protected.

The lady of the house was desperate, hiding Jews. That's how she looked at it. She didn't let us out of the house, she didn't even to look in the windows. She was so frightened and we were so sad because our mourning actually we, we were grieving after my father. We were wearing black we couldn't sit shiva which people sit after their loved ones. Everything was so changed we just called up my mom and told her we want to come home we can't stay away we want to be with her. It was a real big problem because Jews couldn't leave the house these days already without the yellow star on the jackets, or clothes or whatever you were wearing. It was a problem to leave the house without and to leave the house with. There was a nurse who looked after my dad all the years and she stayed with us after he died. She volunteered to come to this village and bring us home by train and We were really worried how this train trip would work out. And when she came we sat down the three of us and had to decide with the yellow star on our clothes or without. We decided without.

We were sitting in the train. The Hungarian gendarme, the German soldiers, they came and they looked at every person who was sitting in those trains. They let people show their papers. They let people get off the trains whose face they didn't like. It was a trauma until we arrived. They looked at us but somehow didn't ask for papers and didn't get suspicious.

Had we been caught without the yellow star on it would have been Siberia definitely or with the stars on and out papers they didn't like it would have been the same that's why we decided to risk it without. So we got to our house safely and it was at least this period over.

Bill Benson: Is my memory correct that that happened on your birthday?

Agi Geva: No the other thing happened.

Bill Benson: OK. In the middle of June, tell us about what happened on your birthday and then, of course, what happened once you were back in Miskolc.

Agi Geva: Actually, after we got back to Miskolc, there were leaflets and there were notes on every walls of what we are supposed to do. One of them was we had to give our dogs to the municipality and our bicycles, which is somehow unheard of the teenagers had to the Jewish teenagers can't have a dog and can't have a bicycle. When we give them to the municipality, there was a note also that those who swore loyalty to Hungary would not have to be will not be deported and we will work in the fields. So we thought anything will do not to be deported. By that time we knew what the word meant. So my mother found some 30, 35 very good friends who were ready to go to the municipality to swear loyalty to Hungary. My patriotism was already a little bit less. They were taken to the fields to the gustav, gustav means farm village. We worked there from 5:00 in the morning until late at night. For the first time in my life my feet were hurting. I never knew before what it meant.

Bill Benson: And you're 14 years old.

Agi Geva: And I was 14. My sister was 15. And we thought it was a hard life but better than to be taken, to be deported. But one day the rule changed, the law changed. They changed their minds, the Hungarians, and they sent the gendarmes and the German soldiers to bring us back to the town. Now when they brought up back on the way there was an air raid and that was on my birthday. Bill Benson: The air raid was on your birthday.

Agi Geva: We were supposed to lie flat and cover us with whatever so they couldn't find you in the fields. The air raid didn't touch us that time, actually for Miskolc and for Budapest it actually was intended. We stopped at a small village. We were all taken to the police station. The women were left outside. The men were taken in for interrogation. We just heard their screams. They were badly, badly beaten. They wanted to find out from them where were the jewels, money, bank accounts, and so on. They were supposed to tell it all.

Then we were taken not back to our houses in Miskolc, we were taken to, we were taken to the ghetto. What means ghetto is not well known, I suppose. Not all of you can even know the word. It was a very, very popular place during the war. Mostly for those there were years in the ghetto with the Polish people. We were there only a few weeks. That meant out of the city part of the town was fenced off and we couldn't go over the fence. We couldn't leave. We couldn't go shopping we couldn't go out walking. You were supposed to stay in the houses.

Now, the houses meant small, two room apartment, where there lived a couple, maybe one child. They brought us in five, six families into this small apartment with one bathroom, one kitchen, one bedroom. We were very uncomfortable, very stressed, very worried, very hungry, very thirsty, very everything. We thought that the worst part could have happened to us and we hoped it would be over soon.

It wasn't the worst. We were taken out of the ghetto. They came to the brick factory.

Bill Benson: To the brick factory.

Agi Geva: The brick factory was, were taken to that factory because it was on the railroad station. Now it had a roof. It had no sides. People could escape, actually. There were many guards but still. And my mother was encouraged to do so, to take my sister and me and just walk out. She was afraid. She was afraid that she would lose one of us she was afraid we would be discovered and shot. She was afraid So she stayed. She regretted it all her life. My good friend escaped and we met her after the war so it was possible to survive. We were waiting for trains. We thought, OK, trains. Trains will be like the trains we knew: sitting, looking out the window, having a sandwich. But when the trains came, it was a far cry from what we thought. They were cattle wagons. And we thought these cattle wagons just came by and would go. But they did not.

Bill Benson: Agi let me ask you one question. Did you have any sense of where those trains, those cattle wagons, where they were to take you? Did you have any sense of that at that time?

Agi Geva: No idea.

Bill Benson: No idea, OK.

Agi Geva: We thought, we guessed it would take us out of the country but it was scary. We didn't want to get on those cars but they pushed us on. The Germans and the gendrames, the Hungarian gendarmes, they helped us up actually it was very high stairs. And even the cattle usually had straw at least there was nothing on the floors. And they pushed in as many people as they could and closed the doors on us.

So we would have been happy to be back in the ghetto, of course. it was worse and we thought there was nothing worse. There were very old people in that certain wagon, boxcar. There were very young people. There were babies. There were pregnant women. There were teenagers. Anybody who was in that group and everybody reacted differently.

There were people who started to scream, couldn't stop screaming. They were hysterical. Kids just didn't know what was happening. How could this be possible? This is not human even. There were babies who couldn't stop crying, of course. There were women, pregnant women, who fainted even. There was nowhere to faint to. We couldn't even sit down. And the train started to move. And there was a very small window, very small one under the roof. That gave us a little bit of indication when it is night and when it is day. We didn't know how many days we were in this horrible conditions, on this wagon. It took three days. They told us later.

When the doors opened and we had to get off these wagons, they immediately separated the men from the women. It was one of the worst things I can really imagine. When wives were clinging to husbands and brothers to mothers, sister to brothers, it was impossible to describe what it meant to be separated from one another. But there was nothing to do about it. We were at gunpoint all the time.

And then the women started to move to a certain space to a certain point. And this time my mother really got worried, worried is not even the word. She regretted of course that she didn't escape. She regretted that she got up to this point. She told us to walk slowly, to stay with the crowd. We were five in a row. And she would go through the front and see what's happening in the front to decide what to do. She got to the front and saw what was happening and slowly, slowly she came back. She wasn't (inaudible) she wasn't short. She could get back to us and tell us the following: "Don't ever call me mom or sister, sister. Families shouldn't be together."

That's what she saw there. the minute someone told them, "Please let me stay with my mom," with my daughter, they were immediately separated. One went to the left side. The other was sent to the right side. My mother didn't know at that time what the other side meant. We found out much later. But she saw that we are not supposed to be young, I'm not supposed to be 13 and 14 because 13 and 14 years old were sent immediately to the left side. So she told us to put on our scarves we brought with us and bind it in a certain way that it would make us older. We should say that we are 18 and 19. And under no conditions say we are less she saw the way we were binding our scarves would make us look older. It makes me look older even now.

[Laughter]

Agi Geva: Then she bound her scarf in a different way that should make her look younger. And that was that way. It might have, something helped, something helped.

Bill Benson: One of the things that we'll learn from you today but you can't even begin to tell us adequately is how extraordinarily just how extraordinary your mother was. And to be able to size that up and adjust like that was remarkable. And there are other incidents like that. You told me about a friend of yours, your best friend, Edith. Will you say a little bit about that?

Agi Geva: Yes. We were two Jewish girls in the classroom. Edith was my best friend and other Jewish girl. And her mother was sent to the left immediately at this point when my mother found out what to do in order to stay together. And this time she didn't even think that it should be, what side it should be but we should stay together. And this wish of hers accompanied us all the way.

The next day, Auschwitz, I will come back to the selection. But the next day that came, trucks with loud speakers telling every girl under 16 should come to the trucks to be in better treatment, better sleeping quarters, better food. And a lot of girls started to run to these trucks, also Shosha, and me, my sister. My mother caught us and told no way. It doesn't matter that you will have better treatment, better food, better whatever, you stay with me. You stay with me. And Edith, you don't go anywhere. You stay with the family and I will look after you as I look after my own daughters. But Edith didn't want to listen to her. She said, "If I go, I might meet my mom. Maybe this car goes somewhere where my mom is staying." She didn't listen to us. I don't have to tell you that we never saw her anymore. We found out later what happened to her.

I just want to go back for a minute to our arrival in Auschwitz when I always told you there was nothing worse, so the worst was just to come. We were led to a big hole, and we were supposed to put down our bags. Now, what were the bags? We had a small bag that we were told when we went to the farm for the work that we can put in it only whatever we can carry ourselves. So it shouldn't be too heavy, it shouldn't be too big. So I put in an old watch [feedback] a book I was recently reading, a dress, kid stuff, teenager stuff. I don't know what my sister had.

So when we had to give our bags, it was not so tragic. However, it meant a lot to us because it was our only connection with home yet, still. So we put it down in the corner. But the grownups, they had in these bags jewels, family pictures, documents, very important stuff and they got really hysterical scared. They were begging the guards. They were crying. They were doing whatever they could. They had to leave it.

Gunpoint. You have to put it down. So it was very hard that act.

But the next one was worse. We had to undress. We had to undress and leave everything you had on to put in another corner, shoes, everything. And this time it turned out that all the grownups thought of the bags that were taken away from them but they remembered that there is another way. So they sewed in their clothes, I am afraid to touch and to show how and where, in the pockets, in the lining, in the dresses, the money, pictures, documents, things that she thought to buy freedom with, food with. We had to take off these dresses. Everything we had to take off. So my mother and her friends had really nothing left. Their last hope was done, to be able to buy some better life work, freedom. And we were standing there without clothes. As if this wasn't enough, they came to shave us from all hair on our bodies. It was the most humiliating thing I have ever had. Later came other ones but that was this time.

And we were led to the showers. We never, not at that time we couldn't find out what it meant to be in the showers. We were so lucky that water came from the showers. Because on the other side as we called it, on the left side where people were sent, gas came from the showers. And this we didn't know. Luckily. Then my mother found out. She was very careful that my sister and I shouldn't know about it, we should never find out about it. She didn't want to spoil our security in a way and to make us panicky and to, she, she, we never foundout actually until the liberation we really didn't know. She knew everything. And by knowing it, she could shield us from all of this, tragedy.

So that was actually the first day. And then we were sent to the barracks where we got two blankets and a plate and I remember a spoon. My sister says, no, we had no spoon. Everybody remembers other stuff. But everything was gray, that's what I remember so very well, everything was grey the blankets, the barracks, the plates, the bowels, the air, the smoke that we didn't know where it came from and we didn't know why it was gray and what it meant.

In the barracks we had these bunks of wood. My mother told us, OK, that's what we have. I sleep on the middle. My sister on top and I was on the lower one. We thought that it will be, that's how it will be. But, no. They put another six, seven people on the same bunk. And if somebody turned, all the six people had to turn and so on. I'm not going to get into more details of this time. Bill Benson: And there's so much more you could say but I know you want to tell us what happened after that. You were sent to Plaszow from there, to very hard labor. Tell us about that.

Agi Geva: There were a few days in Auschwitz, might be few weeks, two weeks, I think. We thought that we were in the worst of the worst of the worst part. Then we were sent back to the railway stations, back into the wagons. And the wagons took us for a one day trip.

We were sent to Plaszow. Now, Plaszow is the place where Schindler's list was taken. And Plaszow was the place where there were where the inmates were criminals; not like us who came from the cities and from the other countries.

Bill Benson: These were murderers and-

Agi Geva: Murderers. We were so scared. From the morning to the evening we were just looking behind us, who is behind us. We were very, very scared. And the work was not only hard, it was senseless it was absolutely humiliating. Big rocks, a quarry, Plaszow. We had to take the big rocks up the hill. And the next day we had to bring it back down. Now, if somebody didn't choose rocks big enough like my sister was 13. Really how big a rock could she carry? So she chose a smaller one. She was very, very badly beaten. And, of course, we couldn't help her because we were not allowed to say mother, sister.

We never spoke about the relationship. Nobody knew that we are family not the guards and the kapos. So this took also quite a while. We were very weakened. Very desperate. When we heard shelling, we were a little happier we thought maybe the Russians are nearing and liberating us. But the Germans heard this, too, of course. And they knew what's happening. They liquidated the camp.

So they took us back to the wagons to the station. So we were again in the wagons, traveling somewhere. We had no idea where to. My sister and I were crying the whole time. We couldn't stop anymore. So my mother kept telling if you were in the worst place, you were in Auschwitz, and the worst place, we were in Plaszow, there is no worse place than these two places so don't worry. We tried not to worry. When the doors opened and we saw where we were taken, it was the end. It was Auschwitz.

Bill Benson: So they took you back to Auschwitz.

Agi Geva: Took us back to Auschwitz. And then my mother really there was nothing more she could say. Except now there would be selections and there was one officer selecting. And the one officer who was selecting was Mengele. I can't even say the doctor it doesn't come to him. He was the worst, the cruelest person ever. He was called the death of angel, angel of death.

Bill Benson: Angel of death, angel of death.

Agi Geva: My mother really got scared. She told look, two things, either you follow me wherever he sends me or you say you want to work, you want to be in the working camp. Germans need workers. So this might save you.

So she said she's going first and my sister after her and I should be the last because I really looked very weak and bad. So she was sent to the right side immediately. My sister behind her. Also to the right side. And I came in front of him. He told me left side. I told him, "No, no. I would like to go there."

Bill Benson: This is to Mengele?

Agi Geva: Mengele. And he was alone deciding but there were lots of soldiers with guns around him, surrounding him. So the guns were pointed at me when I told No. It was there I told him the working camp. He says, "You don't look to me that you can still work." And then he realized that we were talking German. And this is the point I want to tell you that my father knew that something was going to happen. He knew something very bad will come. He told my sister and I one day and told us that you have to know something that can't be taken away from you and this will be languages. And this will give you power. And the knowledge will give you power. And he thought if we knew fluent German and English by the age of 14. So hadn't I known German that day, I really wouldn't be sitting here today.

So he was, Mengele asked me, "how do you know German that well?" It didn't matter anymore. He told me, "OK, go where you want to go." It was unbelievable. My mother fainted when she saw the conversation. She was sure she would never, ever see me again. She didn't even know that I was sent to her, to that side, because she was fainting when I got there.

Bill Benson: Agi, you told me that when you shared this with audiences in the past, people will often ask you well weren't you, weren't you scared of Mangele, to talk, to talk that way to him. Tell the audience what you told me.

Agi Geva: I don't know. I was afraid of my mother.

[Laughter]

Agi Geva: She told me to do this and we had such strict discipline my sister and I. We realized that we are in her hands and, we do whatever she says so.

But then another humiliation, of course. Why not? We were tattooed like cattle, just like that. They put the number on our arms. It was hurting I would say. It was more hurting the knowledge that they kept on telling us, "You have no names from today. You are just numbers." It was humiliating. It was very hurtful.

Bill Benson: And you would continue at Auschwitz for a while longer until late 1944. And then you were sent for the last time from Auschwitz to do more slave labor. Tell us where you were taken. And you were still together at this time. Where did you go from Auschwitz? Tell us about that.

Agi Geva: There were selections every day. Germany needed workers in factories. So sometimesthey looked at strong feet, at strong hands. But sometimes they looked at eyes. And I wore glasses from the age of 5. So my mom put my glasses folded them and put them sideways in her shoe, that I shouldn't look different. And somehow during these selections we stayed together again. And we were sent to the railway station and sent out of Auschwitz. This time we hoped we would never come back to Germany.

Bill Benson: And that's where you went to Rochlitz.

Agi Geva: And then we went to Rochlitz. Rochlitz is a small town near Lipte (?). We were studying there how to make airplane spare parts, small screws. And then they gave me a pencil and a paper and a table and a chair. I couldn't believe. It was the first time I saw a table and the first time I sat on a chair since we were deported. They give me the pencil. I was happy when they handed me a piece of bread. It made me feel in spite of my number that I'm just a number, it made me feel human and responsible again. It wasn't over.

Bill Benson: But that didn't last long either.

Agi Geva: No.

Bill Benson: Where were you then taken?

Agi Geva: We were taken to Calw near Studguard (?), to a big factory where the real work is done we weren't studying anymore. if I told you it was the worst, the worst, the worst, I can't imagine somehow could be something worse. To stay 12 hours on your feet, at night, listening to the monotone noise of the machines and stay awake. How could we stay awake 12 hours at night making these small screws? We couldn't. Until one girl fell asleep really and fell into the machine. She was badly hurt. She stayed alive. It was a wake up call for all of us. So we stayed awake. But it was a struggle that I can't describe.

Bill Benson: And while you were at Calw, your remarkable mother, if I understand correctly, began engaging in little acts of sabotage.

Agi Geva: Yes. It happened by chance the first part of it. I was making the screws from a plan they drew for me, from a small piece of aluminum column. My sister was in at the controls. They were controlling the screws saying if they are too big, too small, or just right. And my mother was at the big filing stone, filing down the screws in case they were a little bit bigger than acceptable. And one somehow the stone exploded. She got so scared that she fainted. And they called her to the headquarters, the Commandant, who explained to her that these stones are very, very delicate and you can't press the screws harder because then they explode and that is a big problem. You can't find a new one. You have to order one and orders were not so easily coming by. Until the stone comes, all the screws were in the crates near the doors waiting to be sent out. Oh, she thought that might be a good idea. She can maybe help a little bit to end the war. So she kept doing this every now and then. She would push the screw harder to the stone, stone exploded, mother fainted.

[Laughter]

Agi Geva: They never found out.

Bill Benson: I was going to say. Did you know she was doing this?

Agi Geva: No. We never found out. She was afraid. She didn't trust anybody. She did it but didn't trust anybody. We found out only much later, after the liberation.

Bill Benson: And Agi, in February, finally in February 1945, you're taken out of Calw but this time you're sent on a forced march which really was a Death March. Tell us about that and what you thought was going to happen and where you went.

Agi Geva: Can you imagine something worse than traveling in these wagons? They couldn't find anything worse. It was the worst of the worst to travel in this, these wagons with no place, no space. I can't even tell you with no what. But this was worse.

They told us to get ready, we are going. We understood the allies might be nearing but we couldn't have imagined where we would be going and how we were going. So we were standing at the door in lines all the time with the Germans (GERMAN WORD) they called it. They kept on counting us. In Auschwitz it was the most occupational therapy, let's say, for them.

Bill Benson: Line up for hours and hours.

Agi Geva: And here they lined us up. We were waiting for a carriage, for a car, for a coach, for something. They said go. Go where? There was nothing. What do you mean nothing? You walk. You go.

We wanted back the wagons. Imagine we wished back for the wagon. We just had to leave in this cold night in Germany, windy, cold. We had nothing I didn't mention that the first day when we had to undress and shower and we were shaved, I didn't mention two things. One, that we were sprayed also. More humility you can't be done to be sprayed. And after the spraying we had to walk to another corner and choose clothes. What is clothes? One dress and one shoe, no stockings, no underwear. So that's what we had on. So I ran back and took my blanket.

Bill Benson: This is the dead of winter.

Agi Geva: In the middle of winter.

Bill Benson: An especially brutal winter as it turned out. Agi Geva: And we walked. We walked step by step in those very bad shoes that didn't fit and were worn out already. We were so cold and the wind was so strong. And we told "you mean really to walk?" We wish the wagons back.

So we walked for 400 kilometers every night. And then morning came, they were afraid the villagers would see us so they found us barns. We were supposed to sit in the barns. Who could sleep would sleep. We had no food of course. So we were looking for something. I remember we found raw cabbage raw potatoes the potato peels. Hardly any water. We were weak, even. Not only cold, we were very weak. And, of course, we couldn't sleep so we were sleepy. And you were walking when the evening came and we were sent out of these barns. We were sleeping walking. This is a period that really I can say was the worst.

Then they kept us telling walk quicker. If you want to go by train you want the wagons, OK, walk quicker. We are going to a railway stations you will get the wagons. There were another two girls who understood German. The news came back to everybody girl by girl that we are not going to go by wagons. The wagons, the trains are bringing the guns to execute us and ordered to do so.

I couldn't walk anymore quicker than I was walking. I couldn't walk even anymore. It came a point when I just sat down and thought, No, no, no, I can't, I just can't. And then I remembered hearing that there were death marches. Why were they called death marches? Because many people, many prisoners, who couldn't walk anymore, really couldn't walk anymore, sat down at the side or fell down to the side of the road and they were shot.

We were 199 women. One woman died from Typhus in Calw. Nobody else got it, at least. So we were still 199. We just kept on walking. And when we heard what was going to happen, part of us believed it, some didn't believe it. I didn't care. I really didn't care whether I will be shot or whether I will just die just like that. I just couldn't walk anymore I couldn't stop crying.

Bill Benson: At that point was your mother still able to encourage you to keep going?

Agi Geva: Yes. She kept us telling also when we were leaving the factory, she kept us not being happy, being normal by telling us stories all the time. Stories about what was and stories what she thinks will be. She always told us what we ate when we were still at home, what means home. And then she told us when we come back we are going to have all this back.

I never believed that I would ever be liberated. I personally really didn't believe it. Then she kept us going. She told us so many encouraging ideas she had while we were walking until she heard where we were walking, that we might be executed. So she just couldn't encourage us to go anymore but we had to. We were again at gunpoint. Remember, all the time we had guards around us with guns. And then we arrived to the railway station, it turned out that the tanks were gone with the guns or they were there to execute us but they had no guns. We found out much later.

An officers we saw got some white envelopes from the station master. We found out later that they were false papers to, to go over to Switzerland. And the soldiers who were just guarding us, they sent us back to the forest. They told they didn't tell us that there are no guns to execute you, of course. But they told us you missed the train, you have to keep on walking. I think that was the most desperate day during the whole year of my life. That was the worst of the worst to go back into the forest, in the cold. There were creeks we had to cross. The shoes were not shoes anymore. My foot was bleeding. This was the worst day. I just sat down and told no more, never more. But, of course, we had to. And my mother kept on I don't know what else she could tell me to keep me going but I did.

When we got back to the forest, after a while, somehow after some walking, one of the elders-she was the kapo, in German that means the kapo, the leader. There were 20 Polish people, 180-179 Hungarians, and the Polish people were the ones between the Germans and us. They got, they were translating and they got the clothes first and then they divided us. They got the food and they divided us. And one of them, the older one, she told, "Listen to me. Stop walking." And then she told me these words: "From now on, 28 of April, 1945, you are"-and she had no heart to tell the words-"free." Until we realized what she told, we looked around, there were no guards around us. There was no one guarding us.

Bill Benson: They had just evaporated.

Agi Geva: Just disappeared.

Bill Benson: Just disappeared.

Agi Geva: And she told us we are free. So the desperate, worst day of my life became the best. I was so happy. I didn't actually know what to do. My sister didn't care. She just sat down, opened her bag, took out all the food there was in it because we had for a few days always reserves but we were not allowed to touch it. She sat down and started to eat. She didn't care. Until somebody warned my mother. She remembered that after hunger and starving, it's the worst thing you can do, to start eating. People really died from this act. So they stopped her.

And then what? We are free. So what? What to do? We are in Germany. It's winter. It's cold. We have nothing. So then. Bill Benson: And the war is not over. Agi Geva: And the war is not over. Exactly. And we were 179 Hungarians with 179 opinions.

[Laughter]

Agi Geva: Everybody has a different idea. One told stay put, the other left, one east, one told wait for the daylight. Everybody had some other idea.

My mother gathered some 30 people around her. They discussed what to do. And these 30 people, 30-something people, agreed what to do. And we started out in a certain direction. We didn't wait a minute in the forest.

Bill Benson: Agi, we're close to the end of our time. I know you're getting there. Tell us about encountering the U.S. soldiers.

Agi Geva: Yes. So we were walking. And then we were scared by hearing voices. We thought, oh my God, we are getting back into German hands. This might be Russians, might be anyone else, might be any soldiers. And then we were supposed to be a little bit brave and started to walk. But everybody heard the voices. And then we heard English speaking voices. So the group said you know English, you should talk to them. OK. I was 14. No, I was 15 already. So we found a stick, and we found on it some underwear-I don't know where but we found it. It was supposed to be white but it wasn't.

[Laughter]

Agi Geva: And the soldiers stopped. I told them who we are, where we come from. They told us never in our life, ever seen a bunch of women so dirty, so desperate, so, so everything. Where were you? What to do with you?

So they told, OK, we are taking you to our headquarter. The headquarters was in Plansey in a hotel. They were very nice to us very, very nice to us. They found doctors and nurses. They looked after us and they treated us. They were just looking after us. It was actually the liberation.

And I never, ever could find these soldiers.

Bill Benson: And you tried.

Agi Geva: I tried here in the museum. I told them the date, the day, the hour, everything I knew about it. We couldn't find them until today. He must be 95 by now. If I was 15 then. We couldn't find them.

Bill Benson: Agi in the very little time we have left there's so many more things that I would love to hear you talk about and I wish we had time for our audience to ask some questions. One of the comments that you said to me is that you just can't bring yourself to describe it as bad as it really was; that, in a way, you're not telling how horrible it really was by what you've told us. Can you say a little bit about that?

Agi Geva: As you surly noticed it's hard for me to talk about all that was. I made it my mission to tell it to anybody interested and everybody should know what happened and how it happened. But it wouldn't be possible for me to continue this mission if I would tell exactly how it was. It was much, much worse. When I told you it was the worst, it was the worst for that minute. But it was much, much worse. The many, many things that I couldn't even mention, the electric fences...

Bill Benson: Electric fences.

Agi Geva: And a lot of things I couldn't mention. I can sleep and I can be calm as long as I don't have to talk about the worst stuff, the worst stuff, what really, really happened. As much as my mother, what she did, taking care of us, that we shouldn't know exactly everything. I can talk about what I spoke today that way. At least that way everybody will know and imagine what there was. But it was much worse.

Bill Benson: We're going to close the program in just a moment. I will turn back to Agi to close our program. Among the many things, of course, that Agi doesn't have time to share with us, not only details and much more from what happened to this point but then what happened going forward. Agi would live for a while under the Communists in Hungary. And many, many traumas associated with that. And then you and your sister would make it to Israel but your mother was not able to. And that way you told me that was your first real separation from your mother.

I wish we could keep you all afternoon. We can't. But we want to thank you for being with us. We remind you we'll have a First Person program every Wednesday and Thursday until the middle of August. So I hope you will be able...

Agi Geva: Not just me, not just me.

[Laughter]

Bill Benson: I also... it's our tradition at First Person that our first person gets the last word. So I'm going to turn back to Agi to close the program. When she's done, Agi is going to get up immediately and go up the stairs here. So if you'll make sure she can do that. Go to the back door. She's going to sign copies of "Echoes of Memory" for anybody who would like one.

Before Agi does that, she would like to share with you, when she's back there, if you want to, as you go by, her tattoo. You can't really see it from the stage here. Agi will be at the door when she finishes. Again, thank you for being with us. On that note, let me turn back to Agi to close our program.

Agi Geva: Thank you for listening. Really. Lipstick.

Bill Benson: I was so wanting. But you brought it up.

Agi Geva: The American soldiers liberated us. We are going shopping and everybody can ask for something among the 30 women who were there. Some people asked for schnitzel, some asked for feathers, some people asked for something they dreamt of the whole year. OK. Chocolate. I asked for lipstick.

[Laughter] Agi Geva: Because when I looked in the mirror, I was so ugly. I was bald. I had no hair. I was pale, I was dirty. I thought, lipstick might help.

[Laughter]

Bill Benson: Thank you. [Applause]

Agi Geva: I wanted to tell you, really, if you have teenagers here, mostly, how very, very important it is the discipline. It's hard for me to tell it. You hear daily from teachers, parents. But hadn't my sister and I listened when my mother told some things, not go here, no don't talk. If we had not listened, we would not be here today. She knew, she saw what's happening. Respect. Very important.

And something else is very, very important, languages, knowledge. It's power, unbelievable power, to know languages and to be able to get around with it. And the last thing is how this museum really was almost could say my second home. There's so much help, there's so much consideration, so much understanding here. It really means a lot to me. You have all the information here from ancestors, war crimes, everything you want to know. You have all of this information in this museum to whom I am very grateful. Thank you. That's it. [Applause] Thank you very, very much. Thank you.

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Agi Geva First Person Interview - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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This First Person program features Agi (Laszlo) Geva who was born on June 2, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary. She survived internment in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Plaszow concentration camp, and then forced labor in a factory in Calw, Germany. On April 28, 1945,

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this video is about girls that were in the Holocaust and is tells you a lot of facts about what the holocaust is and what happened during it.
Presley Hippey

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The lost history of Tynemouth's Holocaust safe house for girls.

Until recently, Rosemary and Martin Anderson from Tynemouth knew nothing about the secret past of the three-storey Victorian house they'd lived in for five years. Their home on Percy Park looks like any other on the seafront, but back in the 1930's, it was home to dozens of terrified Jewish girls who had fled the Nazis.

The girls had been sent to the UK by their parents, travelling alone on the Kindertransport, a rescue effort between 1938 and 1940 which brought thousands of child refugees to Britain. They lived in the house on Percy Park overlooking the sea for about a year, but all trace of their presence there had disappeared in the years since. Tyneside's Jewish community pulled together to save them when so many others perished. So why had the girls' presence in Tynemouth been completely forgotten?

Lauren Laverne tells the story of the forgotten Holocaust safe house and some of the lives it helped save.

Written and researched by Jane Downs and Jo Lonsdale
Executive Producer Rik Martin

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BBC Radio Newcastle - The Girls: The Holocaust Safe House

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The lost history of Tynemouth's Holocaust safe house for girls.

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Holocaust info, podcast. This podcast talks about the kids who had to live without their parents and how they got split up into groups on whether they were Jewish or not. They interview people who have had to deal with this. It also talks about what happened to these children after WWll.
Ashtyn Becksford

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BBC Radio 4 - Lost Children of the Holocaust

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Alex Last traces the fate of 12 children named in a series of post-war BBC radio appeals

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this is the timeline of the Holocaust. because this is the years when war world 2 happened
Ethan Moss

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www.museumoftolerance.com > Education > Teacher Resources > Holocaust Resources > Timeline of the Holocaust: 1933-1945