# data[].attributes.headline
Watch this short (17 minutes) video about the American response to the Holocaust. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Watch this short (17 minutes) video about the American response to the Holocaust. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Narrator:
The history of the Holocaust raises challenging questions about our responsibility as a nation to offer refuge and rescue to persecuted people from beyond our borders. In the spring of 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, the MS St. Louis set sail from Germany. Most of its 937 passengers were Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution. Five years later, with the world now engulfed in war and well after the United States had learned about the Holocaust, over 400,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to German killing centers. In both instances, public opinion and government policy determined how the United States responded. What can we learn from American action-and inaction-in the face of these events that could help us prevent future genocides?

[TEXT ON SCREEN]
Confronting the Holocaust: American Responses

Narrator:
On November 9, 1938, the Nazi Party engaged in a campaign of violence against Jews throughout Germany and Austria, an event that became known as Kristallnacht-night of broken glass.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor:
Kristallnacht started for us early in the morning. My uncle wanted to close the shutters, leaving the outside world outside, and my grandmother said to him, "Stop that. It's too late. That's not going to protect us."

Narrator:
After five years of Nazi rule, hundreds of thousands of Jews were desperate to escape. The problem was few countries were willing to take in more refugees. Many looked to the United States, but did not yet have immigrant visas. Some hoped that Cuba might offer temporary refuge until their US visas came through. This set the stage for the voyage of the St Louis.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
On May 13, 1939, the St. Louis left Hamburg to go to Cuba, and on board were 937 passengers. The vast majority of these were Jews. This was the beginning of something new, something good, but when they arrived in Havana harbor, those dreams were shattered.

Narrator:
The Cuban government reversed its policy, invalidating most of the passengers' landing certificates. Only those with valid immigration visas could disembark in Havana.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sent a delegate to Cuba, but the negotiations fell apart and the St Louis had to leave Cuban waters. The captain decided that they were going to sail to the United States. They were America bound anyway, so it was believed that there'd be some flexibility. They sent telegrams to government officials, to President Roosevelt, and to the State Department asking for entry. The State Department stated that though they had waiting numbers to get into the United States, they would have to wait their turn and leave American waters.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
By 1938 and 1939, public opinion is clearly against Nazi Germany, but that doesn't translate into a willingness to bring in refugees.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Even confronted with specific lives right off the coast of Miami Beach, American public opinion was so against increasing the immigration quota.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
If immigrants come into the United States, it might represent a competition for jobs. Bad economic times fueled xenophobia. It also fueled antisemitism.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
So the St. Louis left American shores on June 7, 1939. Fortunately, with the intervention again of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a deal was brokered with four western European countries to take in the passengers: Belgium, Holland, France, and England.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
This was celebrated, that these refugees had finally found homes. What nobody knew at that time is that Europe would be engulfed in war just a few months afterwards.

Narrator:
In December 1941, the United States was officially at war with the Axis powers: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan. For Europe's Jews, the situation had greatly worsened and they were increasingly trapped. By the middle of 1942, information about the Nazi policy to murder Jews began to reach the United States public. We now know that almost two million Jews had been killed by that time.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The persecution of the Jews in Europe had reached a really unimaginable scale, and that millions of people were now threatened with death. There was a new wave of interest in doing something, a sense that there had to be some kind of effort on behalf of the refugees.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
This creates a mood among Jewish organizations to call public attention to what's happening and to urge action to save what remains of Europe's Jewish population.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
So by the end of 1943, there is enough public awareness of the murder of the Jews that the Senate and the House of Representatives issued what is called the Rescue Resolution, calling for a US government agency designed for the relief and rescue of Jews and other persecuted minorities. Simultaneously in the executive branch, a battle was going on between the State Department and the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department, who needed to approve licenses for relief and rescue, realized that the State Department was delaying assisting some of these Jewish aid organizations to send money into Europe.

[TEXT ON SCREEN OF REPORT]
"Officials in our State Department...have been guilty...of willful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler."

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Treasury Department officials compile a report that is placed before President Roosevelt in January of 1944, and almost immediately Roosevelt decides on the creation of the War Refugee Board.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The War Refugee Board staff came from the Treasury Department. It was a group who worked with sending money overseas. John Pehle, as Director of the Foreign Funds Control, became the executive director largely because of the good work that his group was doing.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
These were people who were really committed-morally committed, as well as politically committed-to saving lives.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The Board organizes some relief, but for the most part they're working through other agencies, streamlining the process. They are able to facilitate sending millions of dollars into Europe and have a much greater impact.

Narrator:
Still, the War Refugee Board confronted a daunting task. The people it hoped to save remained far behind enemy lines, and the Board could not divert vital military resources from the Allies' goal of winning the war as soon as possible. Options were very limited.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
In the spring of 1944, the War Refugee Board was faced with one of its greatest crises, which was what to do about Hungary.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
The Hungarian government had engaged in secret negotiations to leave the Axis. When the Germans found out about this they sent troops into the country, and along with the troops came Adolf Eichmann's team of deportation specialists.

Narrator:
At the time of the German invasion in March 1944, Hungary was home to the largest Jewish community left in Europe, about 800,000 Jews. Within two months, at the request of the Germans, Hungarian authorities began deporting Jews by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
President Roosevelt held a news conference in which he warned the Hungarian government not to cooperate with Germany in its persecution. Government shortwave broadcasts to eastern Europe threatened the Hungarian government, that war criminals who cooperated with Germany in mass killings would be prosecuted after the war. This was not enough.

Steven Fenves, Holocaust Survivor:
There was a long, long line of railroad cars, and an order came to mount the cars. And I remember even at thirteen I had to help people like my grandmother, people like my aunt, to get up on the high car. And eventually the doors were closed, the locks were put on, and I don't know how many hours wait, and then the trains took off.

Agnes Laszlo Geva, Holocaust Survivor:
And we just couldn't believe that this is possible to transport people like this. It was, of course, standing places only, and there was a small window under the roof and a pail in the corner. It was unbelievable. People became hysterical. They were screaming. Some people were yelling, some people were fainting, some people were crying. It was a situation that I never, ever could imagine to happen to human beings.

Narrator:
On July 7, 1944, the Hungarian ruler announced his order to halt the deportations to Auschwitz. A variety of outside pressures, including a US bombing of Budapest on July 2, 1944, influenced his decision. By that time, over 400,000 people had been deported. Hungary's decision to halt the deportations offered the Jews remaining in Budapest a chance to survive-an opportunity the War Refugee Board seized.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
There were approximately 120,000 Jews in Budapest in July of 1944. For the moment, they were spared, but no one knew how long they would be spared.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The War Refugee Board petitions and cables to all of the neutral nations of Europe-to Portugal, to Spain, to Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey-and asks them if they could increase their diplomatic representation in Hungary.

Narrator:
Working through diplomatic posts and other intermediaries, like the International Red Cross, the War Refugee Board assisted a complex network of rescuers. They employed an array of tactics, from false passports and citizenship papers to safe houses and clandestine escapes. These measures enabled tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest to survive. Unfortunately, by July 1944, over 300,000 Hungarian Jews had already lost their lives.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The time for a War Refugee Board would have been before the war, when you really had refugees who were still looking for visas and able in some fashion to get out. If you wait until, in the case of the Holocaust, Hitler begins to expand his Reich across Europe, it's already too late.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
I think one of the lessons is that the individual has power. It's public pressure that leads to the rescue resolutions in Congress in the fall of 1943. It's a number of people writing; it's people showing up to protests; it's people saying: I know what's going on in Europe, I believe it, and I want this government to try to stop it.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
People want to know, have we learned from history? Have we learned specifically from the history of the Holocaust? And my answer is yes, but we learn very, very slowly.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Terrible things continue to happen. Governments continue to fail to respond sufficiently or soon enough to help victims of genocide around the world, and it's a tough call. There's no easy answer. There are challenges to intervening in a foreign country. There are certainly challenges when you implement a refugee policy that lets a lot of people in at once. And yet, we really do need to think about this. When you have millions of people that are left homeless, who are murdered, whose lives are destroyed-those ruins have a ripple effect for every nation on this planet. It carries such a heavy cost that we have a responsibility to figure this one out.

[TEXT ON SCREEN]
Many refugees from the St. Louis who returned to Europe were imprisoned or sent to killing centers after Germany invaded western Europe. Two hundred and fifty-four former passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

Shortly after Kristallnacht, Jill Pauly's family immigrated to Kenya and settled in the United States after the war.

Steven Fenves survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. After the war, he was reunited with his father, Lajos, and sister, Estera. Steven's grandmother was murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz and his mother died a few weeks later.

Agnes Laszlo Geva survived the Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps with her mother, Rozsa, and sister, Zsuzsanna.

Transcript

Narrator:
The history of the Holocaust raises challenging questions about our responsibility as a nation to offer refuge and rescue to persecuted people from beyond our borders. In the spring of 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, the MS St. Louis set sail from Germany. Most of its 937 passengers were Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution. Five years later, with the world now engulfed in war and well after the United States had learned about the Holocaust, over 400,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to German killing centers. In both instances, public opinion and government policy determined how the United States responded. What can we learn from American action-and inaction-in the face of these events that could help us prevent future genocides?

[TEXT ON SCREEN]
Confronting the Holocaust: American Responses

Narrator:
On November 9, 1938, the Nazi Party engaged in a campaign of violence against Jews throughout Germany and Austria, an event that became known as Kristallnacht-night of broken glass.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor:
Kristallnacht started for us early in the morning. My uncle wanted to close the shutters, leaving the outside world outside, and my grandmother said to him, "Stop that. It's too late. That's not going to protect us."

Narrator:
After five years of Nazi rule, hundreds of thousands of Jews were desperate to escape. The problem was few countries were willing to take in more refugees. Many looked to the United States, but did not yet have immigrant visas. Some hoped that Cuba might offer temporary refuge until their US visas came through. This set the stage for the voyage of the St Louis.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
On May 13, 1939, the St. Louis left Hamburg to go to Cuba, and on board were 937 passengers. The vast majority of these were Jews. This was the beginning of something new, something good, but when they arrived in Havana harbor, those dreams were shattered.

Narrator:
The Cuban government reversed its policy, invalidating most of the passengers' landing certificates. Only those with valid immigration visas could disembark in Havana.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sent a delegate to Cuba, but the negotiations fell apart and the St Louis had to leave Cuban waters. The captain decided that they were going to sail to the United States. They were America bound anyway, so it was believed that there'd be some flexibility. They sent telegrams to government officials, to President Roosevelt, and to the State Department asking for entry. The State Department stated that though they had waiting numbers to get into the United States, they would have to wait their turn and leave American waters.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
By 1938 and 1939, public opinion is clearly against Nazi Germany, but that doesn't translate into a willingness to bring in refugees.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Even confronted with specific lives right off the coast of Miami Beach, American public opinion was so against increasing the immigration quota.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
If immigrants come into the United States, it might represent a competition for jobs. Bad economic times fueled xenophobia. It also fueled antisemitism.

Scott Miller, Director, Curatorial Affairs, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
So the St. Louis left American shores on June 7, 1939. Fortunately, with the intervention again of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a deal was brokered with four western European countries to take in the passengers: Belgium, Holland, France, and England.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
This was celebrated, that these refugees had finally found homes. What nobody knew at that time is that Europe would be engulfed in war just a few months afterwards.

Narrator:
In December 1941, the United States was officially at war with the Axis powers: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan. For Europe's Jews, the situation had greatly worsened and they were increasingly trapped. By the middle of 1942, information about the Nazi policy to murder Jews began to reach the United States public. We now know that almost two million Jews had been killed by that time.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The persecution of the Jews in Europe had reached a really unimaginable scale, and that millions of people were now threatened with death. There was a new wave of interest in doing something, a sense that there had to be some kind of effort on behalf of the refugees.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
This creates a mood among Jewish organizations to call public attention to what's happening and to urge action to save what remains of Europe's Jewish population.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
So by the end of 1943, there is enough public awareness of the murder of the Jews that the Senate and the House of Representatives issued what is called the Rescue Resolution, calling for a US government agency designed for the relief and rescue of Jews and other persecuted minorities. Simultaneously in the executive branch, a battle was going on between the State Department and the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department, who needed to approve licenses for relief and rescue, realized that the State Department was delaying assisting some of these Jewish aid organizations to send money into Europe.

[TEXT ON SCREEN OF REPORT]
"Officials in our State Department...have been guilty...of willful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler."

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Treasury Department officials compile a report that is placed before President Roosevelt in January of 1944, and almost immediately Roosevelt decides on the creation of the War Refugee Board.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The War Refugee Board staff came from the Treasury Department. It was a group who worked with sending money overseas. John Pehle, as Director of the Foreign Funds Control, became the executive director largely because of the good work that his group was doing.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
These were people who were really committed-morally committed, as well as politically committed-to saving lives.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The Board organizes some relief, but for the most part they're working through other agencies, streamlining the process. They are able to facilitate sending millions of dollars into Europe and have a much greater impact.

Narrator:
Still, the War Refugee Board confronted a daunting task. The people it hoped to save remained far behind enemy lines, and the Board could not divert vital military resources from the Allies' goal of winning the war as soon as possible. Options were very limited.

Steven Luckert, Curator, Permanent Exhibition, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
In the spring of 1944, the War Refugee Board was faced with one of its greatest crises, which was what to do about Hungary.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
The Hungarian government had engaged in secret negotiations to leave the Axis. When the Germans found out about this they sent troops into the country, and along with the troops came Adolf Eichmann's team of deportation specialists.

Narrator:
At the time of the German invasion in March 1944, Hungary was home to the largest Jewish community left in Europe, about 800,000 Jews. Within two months, at the request of the Germans, Hungarian authorities began deporting Jews by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
President Roosevelt held a news conference in which he warned the Hungarian government not to cooperate with Germany in its persecution. Government shortwave broadcasts to eastern Europe threatened the Hungarian government, that war criminals who cooperated with Germany in mass killings would be prosecuted after the war. This was not enough.

Steven Fenves, Holocaust Survivor:
There was a long, long line of railroad cars, and an order came to mount the cars. And I remember even at thirteen I had to help people like my grandmother, people like my aunt, to get up on the high car. And eventually the doors were closed, the locks were put on, and I don't know how many hours wait, and then the trains took off.

Agnes Laszlo Geva, Holocaust Survivor:
And we just couldn't believe that this is possible to transport people like this. It was, of course, standing places only, and there was a small window under the roof and a pail in the corner. It was unbelievable. People became hysterical. They were screaming. Some people were yelling, some people were fainting, some people were crying. It was a situation that I never, ever could imagine to happen to human beings.

Narrator:
On July 7, 1944, the Hungarian ruler announced his order to halt the deportations to Auschwitz. A variety of outside pressures, including a US bombing of Budapest on July 2, 1944, influenced his decision. By that time, over 400,000 people had been deported. Hungary's decision to halt the deportations offered the Jews remaining in Budapest a chance to survive-an opportunity the War Refugee Board seized.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
There were approximately 120,000 Jews in Budapest in July of 1944. For the moment, they were spared, but no one knew how long they would be spared.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The War Refugee Board petitions and cables to all of the neutral nations of Europe-to Portugal, to Spain, to Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey-and asks them if they could increase their diplomatic representation in Hungary.

Narrator:
Working through diplomatic posts and other intermediaries, like the International Red Cross, the War Refugee Board assisted a complex network of rescuers. They employed an array of tactics, from false passports and citizenship papers to safe houses and clandestine escapes. These measures enabled tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest to survive. Unfortunately, by July 1944, over 300,000 Hungarian Jews had already lost their lives.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The time for a War Refugee Board would have been before the war, when you really had refugees who were still looking for visas and able in some fashion to get out. If you wait until, in the case of the Holocaust, Hitler begins to expand his Reich across Europe, it's already too late.

Rebecca Erbelding, Archivist, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
I think one of the lessons is that the individual has power. It's public pressure that leads to the rescue resolutions in Congress in the fall of 1943. It's a number of people writing; it's people showing up to protests; it's people saying: I know what's going on in Europe, I believe it, and I want this government to try to stop it.

Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University:
People want to know, have we learned from history? Have we learned specifically from the history of the Holocaust? And my answer is yes, but we learn very, very slowly.

Victoria Barnett, Director, Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
Terrible things continue to happen. Governments continue to fail to respond sufficiently or soon enough to help victims of genocide around the world, and it's a tough call. There's no easy answer. There are challenges to intervening in a foreign country. There are certainly challenges when you implement a refugee policy that lets a lot of people in at once. And yet, we really do need to think about this. When you have millions of people that are left homeless, who are murdered, whose lives are destroyed-those ruins have a ripple effect for every nation on this planet. It carries such a heavy cost that we have a responsibility to figure this one out.

[TEXT ON SCREEN]
Many refugees from the St. Louis who returned to Europe were imprisoned or sent to killing centers after Germany invaded western Europe. Two hundred and fifty-four former passengers were murdered in the Holocaust.

Shortly after Kristallnacht, Jill Pauly's family immigrated to Kenya and settled in the United States after the war.

Steven Fenves survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. After the war, he was reunited with his father, Lajos, and sister, Estera. Steven's grandmother was murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz and his mother died a few weeks later.

Agnes Laszlo Geva survived the Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps with her mother, Rozsa, and sister, Zsuzsanna.

Narrator
As we remember those whose lives were lost in the Holocaust, we're confronted by the question, "Could it have been prevented?" While at the time few saw that the events of 1938 were leading to the Holocaust, there were warning signs. Can our understanding of these events help us anticipate and prevent genocide in our own time?

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
1938 is such a key year because it marked an escalation both of the persecution of the Jews, the violence against Jews. It became more widespread. It also marked an escalation of the Nazi policy of expansion. This is where we can see all the dominoes begin to fall.

Narrator
From the time that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, German Jews had gradually seen their rights as citizens stripped away, and their employment options severely limited. But in those early years of the Third Reich, no one could imagine the physical annihilation of the Jews of Europe.

Hedi Pope, Holocaust Survivor
My parents and a lot of other of that generation tried to ignore it. They said, "Oh, this isn't going to last. This man is crazy. It's not going to last." Well, they were wrong.

Narrator
An initial warning sign of 1938 came in mid-March, when Germany annexed neighboring Austria, an act known as the Anschluss. Within hours, an explosion of violence engulfed the Jewish population in Vienna. It spread throughout Germany in the following months, accompanied by new anti-Jewish legislation. Jews no longer felt safe and tried to get out while they could.

Peter Black, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Beginning in March 1938, you have a real push for the first time since 1933 in Germany of large numbers of people trying to get out at any cost. Even if they had to give up all of their assets.

Narrator
But despite official Nazi policy demanding that the Jews leave Germany, emigration was not a simple matter.

Fritz Gluckstein, Holocaust Survivor
My parents really tried to leave. But where to go? We had some very distant relatives in the United States and some friends. But you needed an affidavit. And even if you had an affidavit, there was a quota number.

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
There's several reasons why governments didn't open their doors. The main one is cold, calculated self-interest. In the United States, you know, looking to the issues that were on the front burner in this country, the depression, the widespread isolationism of the American population, antisemitism.

Narrator
The United States was not alone in its refusal to raise its immigration quota.

Peter Black, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Many of the world's governments showed sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany and also showed, obviously, concern for Nazi intentions elsewhere in Europe. But few were willing to take significant steps to meet either crisis.

Narrator
This became clear in July of 1938 at the Evian Conference, convened by President Franklin Roosevelt to address the growing humanitarian crisis faced by German Jews.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
With the exception of the Dominican Republic, every single country refused to open its doors, to expand its immigration quotas.

Narrator
Over the summer of 1938, Germany threatened to invade Czechoslovakia to take control of the Sudetenland, a western border region where the majority of the population was ethnic German. Unprepared for war, Great Britain, France, and Italy agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland in an attempt to guarantee peace.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This was a cause for great jubilation in much of Europe because it was believed that war had been forestalled or prevented altogether. Other Europeans realized, though, that this was just Germany flexing its muscles and seeing whether or not the world would back down.

Narrator
And soon, Nazi policy toward Jews became even more aggressive. On November 9th and 10th, the Nazi Party unleashed a wave of anti-Jewish violence throughout Greater Germany.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass," represents the first national, organized, physical attack on the Jews. It was a very public event. Germans saw it happening, and many participated in it.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor
I saw the smoke and the fire of the synagogue burning, and we both of us, my sister and I, started screaming from fear.

Susan Taube, Holocaust Survivor
Mid-morning came a hoard of people to the door. Just smashed the door down, came in with scissors and all kinds of instruments and just demolished the whole apartment.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor
It was so dreadful when my mother went into the house that she at that point internalized what was going to happen to us and to all the other Jews.

Hedi Pope, Holocaust Survivor
To me, this was the true beginning of the Holocaust.

Narrator
German police rounded up about 30,000 Jewish men and held them in concentration camps. In the weeks that followed, German authorities closed Jewish communal organizations and schools, and forced Jews to sell their businesses, property and stocks to non-Jews, usually at a great loss.

Susan Taube, Holocaust Survivor
I mean, no more business, no more income, nothing, nothing. The business was closed. They just put things in front of it, plywood or whatever it was, and nailed it down so nobody could come in anymore.

Narrator
In spite of the escalating violence, very few nations, individuals, or groups chose to help. Those who did made a difference. A small group of British and German Jews persuaded the British government to allow unaccompanied Jewish children to enter the United Kingdom under a program known as the Kindertransport.

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
It's a poignant success story because these are children who were, you know, their families put them on these trains to get out of harm's way, knowing full well that they might never see their children again. And in many cases didn't see their children. But the children survived. These were 10,000 lives that were rescued.

Narrator
As 1938 ended Nazi Germany's intentions were increasingly clear. In the coming year, Germany would occupy the Czech lands and invade Poland, igniting World War II. Efforts to rescue Jews, such as the Kindertransport, were effectively shut down. Looking back at the events of 1938, the signs of impending war and the Holocaust are clearer today than they were then. Unfortunately, acts of genocide have continued into the 21st century. But there's hope that the world has begun to heed the warning signs.

Cameron Hudson, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
We've learned enough, we've seen enough, we've studied enough the case of the Holocaust and the cases since the Holocaust to understand what those signs are.

Michael Abramowitz, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The choice is not just between sending in the 101st Airborne and doing nothing. There's diplomatic efforts, there's intelligence, there's financial sanctions. There's a range of different things that governments can do to prevent genocide.

Cameron Hudson, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The thing that we need to be conscious of is how quickly these events can develop into an act that cannot be undone. And so, why not take preventative steps early on so that we're not dealing with the effects of true mass violence and genocide?

[Text on screen] Our choices in response to hatred truly do matter. Together we can help fulfill the promise of "Never Again."

Transcript

Narrator
As we remember those whose lives were lost in the Holocaust, we're confronted by the question, "Could it have been prevented?" While at the time few saw that the events of 1938 were leading to the Holocaust, there were warning signs. Can our understanding of these events help us anticipate and prevent genocide in our own time?

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
1938 is such a key year because it marked an escalation both of the persecution of the Jews, the violence against Jews. It became more widespread. It also marked an escalation of the Nazi policy of expansion. This is where we can see all the dominoes begin to fall.

Narrator
From the time that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, German Jews had gradually seen their rights as citizens stripped away, and their employment options severely limited. But in those early years of the Third Reich, no one could imagine the physical annihilation of the Jews of Europe.

Hedi Pope, Holocaust Survivor
My parents and a lot of other of that generation tried to ignore it. They said, "Oh, this isn't going to last. This man is crazy. It's not going to last." Well, they were wrong.

Narrator
An initial warning sign of 1938 came in mid-March, when Germany annexed neighboring Austria, an act known as the Anschluss. Within hours, an explosion of violence engulfed the Jewish population in Vienna. It spread throughout Germany in the following months, accompanied by new anti-Jewish legislation. Jews no longer felt safe and tried to get out while they could.

Peter Black, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Beginning in March 1938, you have a real push for the first time since 1933 in Germany of large numbers of people trying to get out at any cost. Even if they had to give up all of their assets.

Narrator
But despite official Nazi policy demanding that the Jews leave Germany, emigration was not a simple matter.

Fritz Gluckstein, Holocaust Survivor
My parents really tried to leave. But where to go? We had some very distant relatives in the United States and some friends. But you needed an affidavit. And even if you had an affidavit, there was a quota number.

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
There's several reasons why governments didn't open their doors. The main one is cold, calculated self-interest. In the United States, you know, looking to the issues that were on the front burner in this country, the depression, the widespread isolationism of the American population, antisemitism.

Narrator
The United States was not alone in its refusal to raise its immigration quota.

Peter Black, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Many of the world's governments showed sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany and also showed, obviously, concern for Nazi intentions elsewhere in Europe. But few were willing to take significant steps to meet either crisis.

Narrator
This became clear in July of 1938 at the Evian Conference, convened by President Franklin Roosevelt to address the growing humanitarian crisis faced by German Jews.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
With the exception of the Dominican Republic, every single country refused to open its doors, to expand its immigration quotas.

Narrator
Over the summer of 1938, Germany threatened to invade Czechoslovakia to take control of the Sudetenland, a western border region where the majority of the population was ethnic German. Unprepared for war, Great Britain, France, and Italy agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland in an attempt to guarantee peace.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This was a cause for great jubilation in much of Europe because it was believed that war had been forestalled or prevented altogether. Other Europeans realized, though, that this was just Germany flexing its muscles and seeing whether or not the world would back down.

Narrator
And soon, Nazi policy toward Jews became even more aggressive. On November 9th and 10th, the Nazi Party unleashed a wave of anti-Jewish violence throughout Greater Germany.

Ann Millin, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass," represents the first national, organized, physical attack on the Jews. It was a very public event. Germans saw it happening, and many participated in it.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor
I saw the smoke and the fire of the synagogue burning, and we both of us, my sister and I, started screaming from fear.

Susan Taube, Holocaust Survivor
Mid-morning came a hoard of people to the door. Just smashed the door down, came in with scissors and all kinds of instruments and just demolished the whole apartment.

Jill Pauly, Holocaust Survivor
It was so dreadful when my mother went into the house that she at that point internalized what was going to happen to us and to all the other Jews.

Hedi Pope, Holocaust Survivor
To me, this was the true beginning of the Holocaust.

Narrator
German police rounded up about 30,000 Jewish men and held them in concentration camps. In the weeks that followed, German authorities closed Jewish communal organizations and schools, and forced Jews to sell their businesses, property and stocks to non-Jews, usually at a great loss.

Susan Taube, Holocaust Survivor
I mean, no more business, no more income, nothing, nothing. The business was closed. They just put things in front of it, plywood or whatever it was, and nailed it down so nobody could come in anymore.

Narrator
In spite of the escalating violence, very few nations, individuals, or groups chose to help. Those who did made a difference. A small group of British and German Jews persuaded the British government to allow unaccompanied Jewish children to enter the United Kingdom under a program known as the Kindertransport.

Victoria Barnett, Committee on Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
It's a poignant success story because these are children who were, you know, their families put them on these trains to get out of harm's way, knowing full well that they might never see their children again. And in many cases didn't see their children. But the children survived. These were 10,000 lives that were rescued.

Narrator
As 1938 ended Nazi Germany's intentions were increasingly clear. In the coming year, Germany would occupy the Czech lands and invade Poland, igniting World War II. Efforts to rescue Jews, such as the Kindertransport, were effectively shut down. Looking back at the events of 1938, the signs of impending war and the Holocaust are clearer today than they were then. Unfortunately, acts of genocide have continued into the 21st century. But there's hope that the world has begun to heed the warning signs.

Cameron Hudson, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
We've learned enough, we've seen enough, we've studied enough the case of the Holocaust and the cases since the Holocaust to understand what those signs are.

Michael Abramowitz, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The choice is not just between sending in the 101st Airborne and doing nothing. There's diplomatic efforts, there's intelligence, there's financial sanctions. There's a range of different things that governments can do to prevent genocide.

Cameron Hudson, Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The thing that we need to be conscious of is how quickly these events can develop into an act that cannot be undone. And so, why not take preventative steps early on so that we're not dealing with the effects of true mass violence and genocide?

[Text on screen] Our choices in response to hatred truly do matter. Together we can help fulfill the promise of "Never Again."

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video.

Narration: Winter and Spring, 1945. As Allied troops advanced across Europe toward Germany, they encountered Nazi concentration camps and liberated thousands of prisoners. In the camps, combat-hardened soldiers witnessed first-hand the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazi regime and its so-called policies of "racial superiority." They found piles of unburied corpses and barracks filled with dead and dying prisoners. The small percentage of inmates who survived often required immediate assistance after months and years of maltreatment, starvation, and forced labor at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower made a deliberate visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp in order to witness personally the evidence of Nazi atrocities. He urged others to see the camps directly, lest "the stories of Nazi brutality" be forgotten or dismissed as "merely propaganda." The weeks and months following liberation did not bring an immediate return to normal life. Survivors struggled to restore their health, regain their dignity, and rebuild lives disrupted and destroyed during the Holocaust. Sixty-five years after the end of World War II, we honor and remember the victims of the Holocaust and the military personnel who liberated and cared for the survivors.

George Salton, Survivor: I ran in that direction and as I came onto that place I noticed many prisoners yelling and screaming and jumping and dancing. And there, standing among them were seven giants, young people. They must have been 18 or 19... American soldiers. There were seven or eight of them standing inside the camp. Apparently they cut the wire and came into the camp. They were bewildered by us, wild and unkempt and dirty and, I'm sure, smelly people, jumping and dancing and trying to embrace them and kiss them. And I did too. I also joined the crowd and yelled and screamed and somehow knew that the day of liberation has come. It was a strange feeling for me, however, because as I remember it, on the one hand, I was, I was overwhelmed by this unexpected and unhoped for encounter of freedom, but at the same time, what was happening was outside of me. I really... I didn't know what to make of it. I knew I was free, but I didn't count on it. I somehow didn't know what it meant. And I knew it was great, but I... I was overjoyed because all people around me were overjoyed and were singing and dancing and, and...But I was 17. I was free, but what it meant I wasn't sure.

Nicholas White, Sergeant, U. S. 7th Army: From there we go into the barracks. They were long, almost like a poultry building that we might see down in Missouri, perhaps a hundred feet long and maybe twenty-five feet wide. But as we went into this first barracks, we were overrun almost by about twenty-five or thirty of these inmates, who came and hugged us and tried to show us the gratitude they had for us being there liberating them. Actually, we did not liberate them. It was the infantry units themselves that liberated these people. But anyway, they were so overwhelmed with emotion that they tried every way they could to show us appreciation. But I remember this young man. His name was, we called him Bud. He and I both had some caramels and I had some K-ration biscuits, and we started to distribute them among these soldiers, or rather, these camp inmates. And the net result was all, we almost started a riot because they fought like animals trying to get anything that looked like food. And this man and I have discussed that since then and we have never encountered such an atmosphere of complete desolation of the, of mankind. And then I recall that in these, in this building itself, it was made like shelves that went clear to the ceiling and they would be just maybe two feet wide and two feet square, and these went the full length of the building, and these people would climb up and slide into these slots, I guess you could call them, and not a blanket, not any kind of bed clothes at all, nothing but pure wood. And there they slept at night, and no, no ventilation, and no sanitary equipment that they would need. But that, what bothered me the most was out of these 25 or 30, there was 6 or 8 that just stared at the walls. I mean, there was not one bit of a feeling of or any kind of expression of who they were or what they were doing there. They just stared at the walls and I've often wondered, I wonder how many of these ever will be able to recover from that traumatic experience that they had been through. And so, that left me sad to say the least.

Pat Lynch, First Lieutenant, U.S. Army nurse: They were so thin. I couldn't pick any of them up. I tried to, but if I were to pick them up I'd tear the skin. So we had to be very, very careful moving them out. The skin was just so terrible. So it would take, oh, about at least three people, one person take the head, one person take the legs, and very carefully lift them up and get them outside, go ahead and get them outside of that place. We put up tents outside. We had cots and clean bedding. So we'd take them out there. Or, if there was a hospital nearby, we'd go and take over that hospital and move them in there. But we couldn't... for typhus, that was the main thing, there was no medication. Just supportive treatment and get fluids down them. Well they couldn't drink anything, so we had to feed them with medicine droppers. And we couldn't give them hypos because there was no place to stick them. There was no skin at all... no muscle, just skin and bone. There was no place to give them a hypo.

Bella Tovey, Survivor: I want you to know that when the war ended, I weighed the equivalent of probably what is 70 pounds, and I was skin and bone. And I do remember that when that British soldier came and asked me... he said he's... can he do something for me? And I said to him I'd like two things. I'd like him to give me, bring me warm socks. We're talking, this was already May. It was warm. I was cold. I wanted warm socks, knee-length socks. And I wanted sugar. So he brought me - I was craving sugar, I suppose - he brought me socks and I do remember two things. I remember when he... that I put on the socks and I started to cry because I didn't have any calf. I was all bones and this... the knee-length socks wouldn't stay on. But I also remember that when he gave me the sugar, and it may not have been more than maybe a quarter of a pound maybe, a little bag of sugar, but it was maybe, as I said, sugar, just plain sugar. I took that bag and I just poured it into my mouth. I just ate it like that. And I remember... I remember it because he got scared, and he ran out looking for the nurses because he thought God knows what I did to myself by eating all this sugar. And I remember the nurse said to him in German that it's okay. I was probably just craving sugar.

Gerda Weissman Klein, Survivor, and Kurt Klein, Lieutenant, U.S. Army:
GERDA: My very clear view of freedom and liberation came that morning when I stood in this doorway of that abandoned factory and I saw a car coming down the hill. And the reality of that came when I saw the white star on its hood and not the swastika. There were two men in that car. One jumped out.
KURT: I saw some skeletal figures trying to get some water from a hand pump. But over on the other side, leaning against the wall next to the entrance of the building, I saw a girl standing, and I decided to walk up to her.
GERDA: I remember that aura of him, of that awe, of that disbelief in daylight, to really see someone who fought for our freedom, for my ideals. And he looked like God to me.
KURT: And I asked her in German and in English whether she spoke either language, and she answered me in German.
GERDA: And I knew what I had to say. And I said to him, "We are Jewish, you know." For a very long time - at least to me it seemed very long - he didn't answer me. And then his own voice betrayed his emotion. He was wearing dark glasses. I couldn't see his eyes. He said, "So am I."
KURT: I asked about her companions.
GERDA: He said, "May I see the other ladies?"A form of address we hadn't heard for six years. I told him most of the girls were inside. They were too ill to walk. And he said to me, "Won't you come with me?" I didn't know what he meant. So he held the door open for me and let me precede him. And that was the moment of restoration of humanity, of humaneness, of dignity, of freedom.
KURT: We went inside the factory. It was an indescribable scene. There were women scattered over the floor on scraps of straw, some of them quite obviously with the mark of death on their faces.
GERDA: I took him to see my friends.
KURT: The girl who was my guide made sort of a sweeping gesture over this scene of devastation and said the following words, "Noble be man, merciful and good." And I could hardly believe that she was able to summon a poem by the German poet Goethe, which was called, is called, "The Divine," at such a moment. And there was nothing that she could have said that would have underscored the grim irony of the situation better than what she did.
GERDA: And this first young American of Liberation Day is now my husband. He opened not only the door for me, but the door to my life and my future.

Leon Bass, Sergeant, U.S. 3rd Army: On this day in April 1945, with some of my comrades, I walked through the gates of a place called Buchenwald. I was totally unprepared for what I saw. For someone of 19, they couldn't be prepared. They haven't lived long enough. I was still trying to develop my values system. I was still trying to sort things out. And then all of a sudden, slap, right in the face was the horror perpetrated by man against man. But nevertheless the story must be told. We must talk about the crematoriums. We must talk about the dead. We must talk about the denigration of human personalities. How they tried to make people less than human. And the purposes are beyond me. It boggles the mind for me to try to figure out, why? Why would someone take millions of people and in a planned, organized, systematic way try to destroy them and exterminate them? I have yet to come to grips with that in my own mind. But I know that I must share this so that the history books really tell the story as it is. That nobody sugarcoats the history as they did with slavery. And make you think that all slaves loved the plantation when it's not true. We cannot, even though the revisionists are out there today writing books and telling students that it never happened, we cannot ignore our responsibilities to tell the stories. Yes, we must be graphic. We must use the media. We must come together like this to focus attention across the world. But in the final analysis my friends, if we want to avoid another Holocaust, if we want to make sure that this doesn't happen again, then we have a personal responsibility to do something about it.

Transcript

Narration: Winter and Spring, 1945. As Allied troops advanced across Europe toward Germany, they encountered Nazi concentration camps and liberated thousands of prisoners. In the camps, combat-hardened soldiers witnessed first-hand the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazi regime and its so-called policies of "racial superiority." They found piles of unburied corpses and barracks filled with dead and dying prisoners. The small percentage of inmates who survived often required immediate assistance after months and years of maltreatment, starvation, and forced labor at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower made a deliberate visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp in order to witness personally the evidence of Nazi atrocities. He urged others to see the camps directly, lest "the stories of Nazi brutality" be forgotten or dismissed as "merely propaganda." The weeks and months following liberation did not bring an immediate return to normal life. Survivors struggled to restore their health, regain their dignity, and rebuild lives disrupted and destroyed during the Holocaust. Sixty-five years after the end of World War II, we honor and remember the victims of the Holocaust and the military personnel who liberated and cared for the survivors.

George Salton, Survivor: I ran in that direction and as I came onto that place I noticed many prisoners yelling and screaming and jumping and dancing. And there, standing among them were seven giants, young people. They must have been 18 or 19... American soldiers. There were seven or eight of them standing inside the camp. Apparently they cut the wire and came into the camp. They were bewildered by us, wild and unkempt and dirty and, I'm sure, smelly people, jumping and dancing and trying to embrace them and kiss them. And I did too. I also joined the crowd and yelled and screamed and somehow knew that the day of liberation has come. It was a strange feeling for me, however, because as I remember it, on the one hand, I was, I was overwhelmed by this unexpected and unhoped for encounter of freedom, but at the same time, what was happening was outside of me. I really... I didn't know what to make of it. I knew I was free, but I didn't count on it. I somehow didn't know what it meant. And I knew it was great, but I... I was overjoyed because all people around me were overjoyed and were singing and dancing and, and...But I was 17. I was free, but what it meant I wasn't sure.

Nicholas White, Sergeant, U. S. 7th Army: From there we go into the barracks. They were long, almost like a poultry building that we might see down in Missouri, perhaps a hundred feet long and maybe twenty-five feet wide. But as we went into this first barracks, we were overrun almost by about twenty-five or thirty of these inmates, who came and hugged us and tried to show us the gratitude they had for us being there liberating them. Actually, we did not liberate them. It was the infantry units themselves that liberated these people. But anyway, they were so overwhelmed with emotion that they tried every way they could to show us appreciation. But I remember this young man. His name was, we called him Bud. He and I both had some caramels and I had some K-ration biscuits, and we started to distribute them among these soldiers, or rather, these camp inmates. And the net result was all, we almost started a riot because they fought like animals trying to get anything that looked like food. And this man and I have discussed that since then and we have never encountered such an atmosphere of complete desolation of the, of mankind. And then I recall that in these, in this building itself, it was made like shelves that went clear to the ceiling and they would be just maybe two feet wide and two feet square, and these went the full length of the building, and these people would climb up and slide into these slots, I guess you could call them, and not a blanket, not any kind of bed clothes at all, nothing but pure wood. And there they slept at night, and no, no ventilation, and no sanitary equipment that they would need. But that, what bothered me the most was out of these 25 or 30, there was 6 or 8 that just stared at the walls. I mean, there was not one bit of a feeling of or any kind of expression of who they were or what they were doing there. They just stared at the walls and I've often wondered, I wonder how many of these ever will be able to recover from that traumatic experience that they had been through. And so, that left me sad to say the least.

Pat Lynch, First Lieutenant, U.S. Army nurse: They were so thin. I couldn't pick any of them up. I tried to, but if I were to pick them up I'd tear the skin. So we had to be very, very careful moving them out. The skin was just so terrible. So it would take, oh, about at least three people, one person take the head, one person take the legs, and very carefully lift them up and get them outside, go ahead and get them outside of that place. We put up tents outside. We had cots and clean bedding. So we'd take them out there. Or, if there was a hospital nearby, we'd go and take over that hospital and move them in there. But we couldn't... for typhus, that was the main thing, there was no medication. Just supportive treatment and get fluids down them. Well they couldn't drink anything, so we had to feed them with medicine droppers. And we couldn't give them hypos because there was no place to stick them. There was no skin at all... no muscle, just skin and bone. There was no place to give them a hypo.

Bella Tovey, Survivor: I want you to know that when the war ended, I weighed the equivalent of probably what is 70 pounds, and I was skin and bone. And I do remember that when that British soldier came and asked me... he said he's... can he do something for me? And I said to him I'd like two things. I'd like him to give me, bring me warm socks. We're talking, this was already May. It was warm. I was cold. I wanted warm socks, knee-length socks. And I wanted sugar. So he brought me - I was craving sugar, I suppose - he brought me socks and I do remember two things. I remember when he... that I put on the socks and I started to cry because I didn't have any calf. I was all bones and this... the knee-length socks wouldn't stay on. But I also remember that when he gave me the sugar, and it may not have been more than maybe a quarter of a pound maybe, a little bag of sugar, but it was maybe, as I said, sugar, just plain sugar. I took that bag and I just poured it into my mouth. I just ate it like that. And I remember... I remember it because he got scared, and he ran out looking for the nurses because he thought God knows what I did to myself by eating all this sugar. And I remember the nurse said to him in German that it's okay. I was probably just craving sugar.

Gerda Weissman Klein, Survivor, and Kurt Klein, Lieutenant, U.S. Army:
GERDA: My very clear view of freedom and liberation came that morning when I stood in this doorway of that abandoned factory and I saw a car coming down the hill. And the reality of that came when I saw the white star on its hood and not the swastika. There were two men in that car. One jumped out.
KURT: I saw some skeletal figures trying to get some water from a hand pump. But over on the other side, leaning against the wall next to the entrance of the building, I saw a girl standing, and I decided to walk up to her.
GERDA: I remember that aura of him, of that awe, of that disbelief in daylight, to really see someone who fought for our freedom, for my ideals. And he looked like God to me.
KURT: And I asked her in German and in English whether she spoke either language, and she answered me in German.
GERDA: And I knew what I had to say. And I said to him, "We are Jewish, you know." For a very long time - at least to me it seemed very long - he didn't answer me. And then his own voice betrayed his emotion. He was wearing dark glasses. I couldn't see his eyes. He said, "So am I."
KURT: I asked about her companions.
GERDA: He said, "May I see the other ladies?"A form of address we hadn't heard for six years. I told him most of the girls were inside. They were too ill to walk. And he said to me, "Won't you come with me?" I didn't know what he meant. So he held the door open for me and let me precede him. And that was the moment of restoration of humanity, of humaneness, of dignity, of freedom.
KURT: We went inside the factory. It was an indescribable scene. There were women scattered over the floor on scraps of straw, some of them quite obviously with the mark of death on their faces.
GERDA: I took him to see my friends.
KURT: The girl who was my guide made sort of a sweeping gesture over this scene of devastation and said the following words, "Noble be man, merciful and good." And I could hardly believe that she was able to summon a poem by the German poet Goethe, which was called, is called, "The Divine," at such a moment. And there was nothing that she could have said that would have underscored the grim irony of the situation better than what she did.
GERDA: And this first young American of Liberation Day is now my husband. He opened not only the door for me, but the door to my life and my future.

Leon Bass, Sergeant, U.S. 3rd Army: On this day in April 1945, with some of my comrades, I walked through the gates of a place called Buchenwald. I was totally unprepared for what I saw. For someone of 19, they couldn't be prepared. They haven't lived long enough. I was still trying to develop my values system. I was still trying to sort things out. And then all of a sudden, slap, right in the face was the horror perpetrated by man against man. But nevertheless the story must be told. We must talk about the crematoriums. We must talk about the dead. We must talk about the denigration of human personalities. How they tried to make people less than human. And the purposes are beyond me. It boggles the mind for me to try to figure out, why? Why would someone take millions of people and in a planned, organized, systematic way try to destroy them and exterminate them? I have yet to come to grips with that in my own mind. But I know that I must share this so that the history books really tell the story as it is. That nobody sugarcoats the history as they did with slavery. And make you think that all slaves loved the plantation when it's not true. We cannot, even though the revisionists are out there today writing books and telling students that it never happened, we cannot ignore our responsibilities to tell the stories. Yes, we must be graphic. We must use the media. We must come together like this to focus attention across the world. But in the final analysis my friends, if we want to avoid another Holocaust, if we want to make sure that this doesn't happen again, then we have a personal responsibility to do something about it.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Days of Remembrance Commemoration Themes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Narrator: The history of the Holocaust raises challenging questions about our responsibility as a nation to offer refuge and rescue to persecuted people from beyond our borders. In the spring of 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, the MS St. Louis set sail from Germany.

# data[].attributes.headline
View and listen to this short TEDEd Talk about Hitler's Rise to Power (5.5 minutes).

# data[].attributes.subject
View and listen to this short TEDEd Talk about Hitler's Rise to Power (5.5 minutes).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How did Hitler rise to power? - Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Decades after the fall of the Third Reich, it feels impossible to understand how Adolf Hitler, the tyrant who orchestrated one of the largest genocides in human history, could ever have risen to power in a democratic country. So how did it happen, and could it happen again?

# data[].attributes.headline
Read and view this "Visual Essay" about the impact of Nazi Propaganda.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read and view this "Visual Essay" about the impact of Nazi Propaganda.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Propaganda was one of the most important tools the Nazis used to shape the beliefs and attitudes of the German public. Through posters, film, radio, museum exhibits, and other media, they bombarded the German public with messages designed to build support for and gain acceptance of their vision for the future of Germany. The gallery of images below exhibits several examples of Nazi propaganda, and the introduction that follows explores the history of propaganda and how the Nazis sought to use it to further their goals.

Introduction to the Visual Essay

The readings in this chapter describe the Nazis' efforts to consolidate their power and create a German "national community" in the mid-1930s. Propaganda-information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions-was one of the most powerful tools the Nazis used to accomplish these goals.

Hitler and Goebbels did not invent propaganda. The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to discredit Protestant teachings in the 1600s. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I, for example. But the Nazis were notable for making propaganda a key element of government even before Germany went to war again. One of Hitler's first acts as chancellor was to establish the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, demonstrating his belief that controlling information was as important as controlling the military and the economy. He appointed Joseph Goebbels as director. Through the ministry, Goebbels was able to penetrate virtually every form of German media, from newspapers, film, radio, posters, and rallies to museum exhibits and school textbooks, with Nazi propaganda.

Whether or not propaganda was truthful or tasteful was irrelevant to the Nazis. Goebbels wrote in his diary, "no one can say your propaganda is too rough, too mean; these are not criteria by which it may be characterized. It ought not be decent nor ought it be gentle or soft or humble; it ought to lead to success." Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that to achieve its purpose, propaganda must "be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away."

Some Nazi propaganda used positive images to glorify the government's leaders and its various activities, projecting a glowing vision of the "national community." Nazi propaganda could also be ugly and negative, creating fear and loathing by portraying the regime's "enemies" as dangerous and even sub-human. The Nazis' distribution of antisemitic films, newspaper cartoons, and even children's books aroused centuries-old prejudices against Jews and also presented new ideas about the racial impurity of Jews. The newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker), published by Nazi Party member Julius Streicher, was a key outlet for antisemitic propaganda.

This visual essay includes a selection of Nazi propaganda images, both "positive" and "negative." It focuses on posters that Germans would have seen in newspapers like Der Stürmer and passed in the streets, in workplaces, and in schools. Some of these posters were advertisements for traveling exhibits-on topics like "The Eternal Jew" or the evils of communism-that were themselves examples of propaganda.

1. As you explore the images in this visual essay, consider what each image is trying to communicate to the viewer. Who is the audience for this message? How is the message conveyed?

2. Do you notice any themes or patterns in this group of propaganda images? How do the ideas in these images connect to what you have already learned about Nazi ideology? How do they extend your thinking about Nazi ideas?

3. Based on the images you analyze, how do you think the Nazis used propaganda to define the identities of individuals and groups? What groups and individuals did Nazi propaganda glorify? What stereotypes did it promote?

4. Why was propaganda so important to Nazi leadership? How do you think Nazi propaganda influenced the attitudes and actions of Germans in the 1930s?

5. Some scholars caution that there are limits to the power of propaganda; they think it succeeds not because it persuades the public to believe an entirely new set of ideas but because it expresses beliefs people already hold. Scholar Daniel Goldhagen writes: "No man, [no] Hitler, no matter how powerful he is, can move people against their hopes and desires. Hitler, as powerful a figure as he was, as charismatic as he was, could never have accomplished this [the Holocaust] had there not been tens of thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans who were willing to help him." Do you agree? Would people have rejected Nazi propaganda if they did not already share, to some extent, the beliefs it communicated?

6. Can you think of examples of propaganda in society today? How do you think this propaganda influences the attitudes and actions of people today? Is there a difference between the impact of propaganda in a democracy that has a free press and an open marketplace of ideas and the impact of propaganda in a dictatorship with fewer non-governmental sources of information?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Propaganda was one of the most important tools the Nazis used to shape the beliefs and attitudes of the German public. Through posters, film, radio, museum exhibits, and other media, they bombarded the German public with messages designed to build support for and gain acceptance of their vision for the future of Germany.

# data[].attributes.headline
What is Rosh Hashanah, and how is it celebrated?

# data[].attributes.subject
What is Rosh Hashanah, and how is it celebrated?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rosh Hashanah: Dates, Traditions & History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Celebrated in September or October, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is one of Judaism’s holiest days.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Yom Kippur: Significance, Facts & Traditions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—is considered the most important holiday in the Jewish faith. Falling in the month of Tishrei (September or October in the Gregorian calendar), it marks the culmination of the 10 Days of Awe, a period of introspection and repentance that follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jew…

# data[].attributes.headline
Read and explore the videos and links on different acts of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read and explore the videos and links on different acts of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Resistance comes in many forms, both violent and non-violent, collective and individual. Learn more about Jewish resistance to Nazi oppression.

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article  about Japanese American Wartime Incarceration in Oregon

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article  about Japanese American Wartime Incarceration in Oregon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Masuo Yasui, together with many members of Hood River's Japanese community, spent the evening of December 6, 1941, rehearsing the annual Christmas show at a local community center. Yasui, an Issei (first-generation immigrant from Japan) had traveled to America in 1903 at the age of sixteen and eventually settled in Oregon, where he became a successful businessman, farmer, and community leader. When he learned about Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, he raced to the Japanese community hall and warned those attending church to "remain calm" and "return to your homes." That night, rumors flew throughout Hood River that local Japanese had known about the attacks, that they had been at the community center planning a victory celebration, and that they were planning to blow up Bonneville Dam.

Hysterical headlines about the role the Japanese population had played in the attack appeared in newspapers in Oregon and up and down the West Coast. One paper reported that the bodies of Japanese navy men had been found near Cannon Beach. The Hillsboro Argus reported that "Officials Feel Japanese May Try Anything." American Legion chapters in Oregon spread the story that hidden supplies of arms and ammunition had been found in Japanese homes.

Federal restrictions on Issei quickly followed. The federal government froze Japanese bank assets and imposed travel restrictions and a curfew. Issei, now considered "enemy aliens," were prohibited from owning firearms, explosives, shortwave radios, and cameras. The week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI searched Issei homes and arrested two thousand Issei men living on the West Coast, detaining one man in Hood River when they found a single bullet in his woodshed. They also detained Masuo Yasui after searching his house, where they confiscated maps and his children's drawings. The FBI would later use those maps to accuse him of planning to blow up the Panama Canal. They detained Masuo Yasui because he was "a wealthy...merchant and farmer" who was "strongly Japanese and wants to do something for that government."

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the secretary of war to "prescribe military areas...from which any or all persons may be excluded." The order was predicated on the idea that, as an alien people unable to assimilate, the Japanese remained loyal to Japan. Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt recommended that all people of Japanese ancestry be removed from the West Coast. He argued that "the Japanese race is an enemy race. The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." DeWitt's fears proved unfounded; no person of Japanese ancestry living in the United States was ever charged with an act of sabotage.

Ten days after Roosevelt signed the order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 1, which created Military Areas 1 and 2. Japanese living in these zones, the eastern edge of which roughly followed Highway 97 in Oregon, were to be forcibly removed to incarceration camps farther inland. The few Nikkei living east of the exclusion area were not affected.
/media-collections/67/
Masuo Yasui's son, Minoru, a practicing attorney, believed that 9066 was unconstitutional and unenforceable. On March 28, 1942, he deliberately broke the federally imposed 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew that applied to all Nikkei (persons of Japanese ancestry) in Military Areas 1 and 2 by walking around downtown Portland. He then turned himself in to the police. In his initial trial, Judge James Fee ruled that the United States, in the absence of martial law, had no right to impose a curfew on its citizens.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, without ruling or review, sent the case directly to the Supreme Court, where Yasui v. United States was heard as a companion case to Hirabayashi v. United States. Gordon Hirabayashi, a student at the University of Washington, had reported to the Seattle FBI office that he had violated the curfew order in that city and intended to violate the exclusion order. He was sentenced to ninety days of hard labor. The Supreme Court heard both cases in May 1943 and unanimously ruled that the United States could impose such a curfew out of military necessity.

In April 1942, officials posted Civil Exclusion Orders No. 25 and No. 26 on telephone poles and store windows throughout Multnomah County. A few weeks later, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 49 was posted in Hood River. The orders gave all Nikkei only a few days to put their affairs in order before they had to report for evacuation. Many quickly sold their businesses, homes, and property at whatever price they could obtain. Mrs. Itsu Akiyama, who lived in Hood River, later remembered: "Caucasians came to buy our cow and calf. They told me, 'This is forty dollars. This is fifty dollars.' I would just reply, 'All right.'"

On May 5, 1942, Nikkei in Military Area No. 1 reported to the Portland Assembly Center, leaving their pets, possessions, and lives behind. The center-a hastily constructed camp on the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition-was surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and military guards armed with machine guns. The center had a peak population of 3,676. Those living in Military Area No 2, including the Japanese Americans in Hood River, were sent by train to the Pinedale Assembly Center in California's San Joaquin Valley.

The government-named assembly centers served as temporary detention camps while ten permanent camps were being built. Overall, there were sixteen such camps, the majority of which were built on racetracks or fairgrounds and located relatively close to Japanese populations. The assembly centers lacked privacy and basic sanitation. At the Portland camp, thin sheets of plywood were used to create housing units that were each lighted with a single, bare bulb. Because the living areas had no ceilings, families could hear everything their neighbors were doing. The smell of manure was often overwhelming.
/media-collections/68/
By the summer of 1942, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) began to transfer the Japanese to permanent "relocation centers." Those living in Hood River and southwest Oregon were moved to Tule Lake, just south of Klamath Falls in northern California. Most of the people at the Portland Assembly Center were sent to Minidoka, Idaho, one of ten camps located in remote areas of the West. Ironically, by the time the camps were constructed, the United States had turned the tide of the war in the Pacific at the battle of Midway, eliminating the threat of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast.

The camps were prisons with deplorable living conditions. Surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, the installations were tightly managed by the WRA. Both Tule Lake and Minidoka were located in desert plains, and the rapidly constructed barracks meant that those held there faced blistering heat and blowing dust in summer and bone-chilling cold in winter. Latrines were open-pit toilets built back-to-back in rows of six. Women would often use cardboard to screen themselves or use latrines late at night, when they could find some privacy. Food poisoning and illness were rampant. The WRA assigned living quarters based on immediate family but with no regard for extended family. Many Issei mourned the erosion of traditional family life, as children ate with their friends, not their family.

Nikkei did their best to create a community and make the camps livable. They set up fire and police departments, published newspapers, held dances, and formed baseball teams. They planted "victory gardens" that augmented the food produced by the large-scale agricultural enterprises overseen by the WRA. Men used scrap lumber to make furniture, including desks, tables, and chairs; and at Topaz (Utah), women dug shells from a ditch inside the camp that they made into jewelry. Men and women offered classes of all kinds, including flower arranging, sewing, and English.

Most of the adults held jobs in food production, construction, maintenance, meal preparation, and security. They received a small wage, initially ranging from eight to sixteen dollars a month. Children attended school, although there were no books or desks. The children sat on the floor while teachers held a small blackboard. Eventually, some books and desks were provided, but classrooms remained overcrowded and had insufficient materials.

Even before the Japanese were moved from the assembly centers, the government wavered on its decision to permanently incarcerate all Nikkei. College-age Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) were allowed to attend college if they left the West Coast military zone. Exceptions were also made for agricultural laborers and armed services volunteers.

In 1942, labor shortages led to the WRA's formation of an agricultural leave program. In Malheur County, for example, the Amalgamated Sugar Company had persuaded local farmers to increase their production of sugar to meet increased war demands, and they petitioned the government for Japanese labor to thin and harvest sugar beets. In response to the need for agricultural labor, Oregon Governor Charles Sprague and his executive secretary George Aiken developed what became known as the Oregon Plan. At an April 1942 WRA conference, Aiken outlined his plan to relocate Oregon's Japanese residents to abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Malheur, Harney, and Crook Counties.

While the plan was rejected, the WRA consented to a more modest program that allowed for as many as four hundred Japanese to provide labor in Malheur County. The program had strict regulations designed to prevent the exploitation of workers and also to eliminate conflict with anti-Japanese locals. Forty-three people volunteered. The first laborers persuaded others to join them, and by summer 400 Japanese were tending potatoes, onions, and celery as well as threshing grain and maintaining irrigation canals. While some locals complained that the workers were taking over the county, there was only one documented incident of violence.

Another route out of the camp was enlistment in the armed services. In 1943, the U.S. government announced the formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up of 1,200 Nisei volunteers from the camps and 3,000 Nisei men from Hawaii. The 442nd became one of the most highly decorated units in American history. In World War II, 8,000 Nisei served in the armed forces.
/media-collections/69/
In December 1944, when it was clear that the Japanese military no longer posed any threat to the West Coast and the Supreme Court was about to hand down its decision in Ex Parto Endo, a case that questioned whether incarceration could any longer be justified, the military ended its policy of exclusion. Although the War Department declared that as of January 2, 1945, the Japanese were free to leave camps, by March only 100 had returned to Oregon. Understanding that racism coupled with fears of economic competition meant that many communities strongly opposed the Nikkei's return, the WRA urged those still in the camps to head east.

Many Oregonians actively campaigned against the return of Japanese Americans to their communities. In February, the Oregon House passed Joint Memorial No. 9, urging President Roosevelt to "prevent the return of said Japanese aliens and said citizens of Japanese extraction to the west coast states for the duration of the present war with Japan." In Hood River, almost every store displayed a "No Japs Allowed" placard in their windows. Former Oregon governor Walter Pierce spoke for many when he said, "We should never be satisfied until every last Jap has been run out of [the] United States and our Constitution changed so they can never get back." A few individuals and groups welcomed the returning Nikkei. In Hood River, a group of citizens formed the League for Liberty and Justice, which sought to assist Nikkei by meeting them at trains, buying them goods, and driving their produce to market.

Nikkei rightfully feared violence if they returned. Vigilantes vandalized their farm equipment, broke their windows, and harassed and intimidated them. In November 1944, American Legion Post No. 22 in Hood River voted to remove the names of sixteen Nisei from a plaque honoring those who had served in World War II. The action received extensive local and nationwide criticism, and the Hood River News received dozens of letters to the editor demanding that the names be restored. In April 1945, under pressure from the American Legion national headquarters, the names were once again added to the plaque.

Eventually, 70 percent of the 4,000 incarcerated Nikkei from Oregon returned to the state. Incarceration had damaged the Japanese Americans psychologically, socially, and economically. By the time the war ended, they held title to only 25 percent of the land they had held prior to incarceration. Many lost faith in the United States and its institutions and expressed shame and humiliation. Ironically, however, the camps also brought the Japanese American community closer together. For many, incarceration in the camps became a defining experience.

The civil rights and ethnic power movements began to change how many Americans viewed the camps. Prodded by activists Raymond Okamura and Edison Uno, in 1970 the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) supported a resolution demanding that the government compensate Nikkei incarcerated during World War II. In 1980, Congress created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. After holding hearings and doing extensive archival research, the commission's 1983 report acknowledged that "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership," not military necessity, had led to Japanese incarceration. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that provided $20,000 for each person incarcerated. Two years later, the first nine Nikkei received their checks along with an official apology from President George H.W. Bush.

In Oregon, activists held commemorations that publicized the injustice of incarceration. Modeled on an event held in Washington State a few months earlier, Portland's Japanese American Citizens League held its first Day of Remembrance on February 17, 1979, at the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition. The Day of Remembrance is celebrated annually in Portland on February 19, the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066; other Days of Remembrance have been held in Hood River and Eugene. The Japanese American Historical Plaza at Waterfront Park is another way Oregon has memorialized the hardships suffered by Nikkei during World War II. Dedicated in 1990, landscape architect Robert Murase used thirteen engraved stones of basalt and granite to tell the story of Japanese incarceration and to reiterate the importance of the Bill of Rights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Japanese American Wartime Incarceration in Oregon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Masuo Yasui, together with many members of Hood River's Japanese community, spent the evening of December 6, 1941, rehearsing the annual Christmas show at a local community center. Yasui, an Issei (first-generation immigrant from Japan) had traveled to America in 1903 at the age of sixteen and eventually settled in Oregon, where he became a successful businessman, farmer, and community leader.

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this overview of what was happening in the U.S. at the time.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this overview of what was happening in the U.S. at the time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Home Front During World War II: Rationing - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the home front during World War II, life in the U.S. was changed by rationing, defense production, women's jobs and popular radio and movie entertainment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this short article about Japanese American Internment in Oregon.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this short article about Japanese American Internment in Oregon.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Feb. 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized regional Army commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded."

In the hysteria after World War II, it quickly became clear that Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt considered the West Coast's Japanese Americans any and all people -- just because they looked like the enemy.

"The Japanese race is an enemy race," DeWitt argued in early 1942. "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken."

Japanese American bank assets were seized. Curfews followed. Eventually, an "assembly center" was built atop cattle yards in North Portland.

The military ordered every local citizen and immigrant resident of Japanese ancestry in the Portland area - men, women, children, farmers, business owners -- to report to the facility to be relocated to inland internment camps for the duration of the war.

More than 100,000 people lost their homes, livelihoods and freedom. More than 4,000 were rounded up in the Portland area.

At the time, The Oregonian's coverage of the events may have seemed appropriate. But 74 years later, it's appalling.

In one story, state officials debate how they should use farms "evacuated" by families with Japanese ancestry, as if the owners had a choice to leave the land on which they raised crops and American legacies.

News of an assembly center in North Portland for thousands of Japanese Americans being ordered to the camps rated only a mention next to a community play in The Oregonian in April 1942 - on page 17.

The stories asked no hard questions. The newspaper failed to perform its basic function of fostering debate, seeking the truth and questioning authority when human lives hang in the balance.

At a time when many Americans worry about the xenophobic tone of politics, consider the heartbreak of Executive Order 9066, which opened the dark, heavy door to one of the greatest civil liberties tragedies in Oregon - and U.S. - history.

Read more about Japanese American incarceration during World War II at Oregon Encyclopedia.

Dayofremebrance.org provides some excellent reflections on the anniversary. On Tuesday, Wilsonville Public Library, Wilsonville-Boones Ferry Historical Society and McMenamins History Pub will present "Detained By My Country" at the Wilsonville Old Church, featuring Mitzi Loftus, who was incarcerated with her family as a child.

Meanwhile, the Portland Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League will hold a Day of Remembrance event on Sunday at 2 p.m. in Portland State University's Hoffman Hall.

The even will honor Minoru Yasui, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for showing the courage to challenge the constitutionality of Roosevelt's order. His Brother, Homer, and Daughter, Holly, will speak at the event.

Never forget.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Japanese-American imprisonment in Oregon: Never forget

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Feb. 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized regional Army commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded." In the hysteria after World War II, it quickly became clear that Lt. Gen. John L.

# data[].attributes.headline
This podcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors. Listen to a few.

# data[].attributes.subject
This podcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors. Listen to a few.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than 70 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

Thispodcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted at the Museum as part of our First Person public program. Listen to these interview excerpts below. You can also watch video recordings of interviews from our First Person seasons here.
First Person is made possible by generous support from the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Arlene and Daniel Fisher Foundation..

Helen Goldkind discusses the humiliation she and her family experienced as they were forced by the Germans to move from their hometown of Volosyanka to the Uzhgorod ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944.

Manny Mandel discusses wearing a yellow star as a young boy in Budapest. Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany in the 1930s and joined the Axis alliance in 1940. During this time, Jews in Hungary were increasingly subjected to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws modeled on those in Germany.

Tags: hungary yellow star

Estelle Laughlin discusses her liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945 from the Czestochowa concentration camp in Poland. In the days immediately following liberation, she and her mother and sister encountered both hostile and helpful people as they traveled through Poland and struggled to rebuild their lives.

George Pick discusses experiencing antisemitism as a young boy in Hungary in the early 1940s. Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany in the 1930s and joined the Axis alliance in 1940. During this time Jews in Hungary were increasingly subjected to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws modeled on those in Germany.

Frank Liebermann discusses life in Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Shortly after taking power, the Nazis began to eliminate individual rights and freedoms for Jews in Germany. This changed daily life for Frank and his family in many ways. Frank's father was a physician and it became increasingly difficult for him to practice medicine after 1933.

Tags: anti-jewish legislation education gleiwitz

Regina Spiegel discusses her deportation from the ghetto in Pionki, Poland, and her arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center. She and her boyfriend, Sam, were deported together in 1944 but were separated upon arrival at Auschwitz.

Tags: auschwitz concentration camp deportation fear humiliation poland uniforms

Julius Menn discusses his family's flight eastward from advancing German troops invading Poland in September 1939. Julius's family escaped from Bialystok, Poland, to Vilna, Lithuania, eventually making their way through the Soviet Union to Palestine, where they had previously lived.

Isak Danon discusses the attack on the synagogue in his hometown of Split, Yugoslavia, in the summer of 1942. Germany had invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, and shortly after Split was occupied by the Italians, allied to Nazi Germany.

Tags: italian fascists yugoslavia

Fritz Gluckstein discusses life immediately after World War II in Berlin and his eventual immigration to the United States. Born to a Jewish father and Christian mother, he was classified under Nazi law as Mischlinge, of mixed ancestry, or part Jewish. He spent the war in Berlin assigned to various forced labor battalions.

Tags: berlin emigration liberation separation from family

Helen Luksenburg discusses forming a close friendship with Welek, now William Luksenburg, a fellow prisoner in Gleiwitz, a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 70 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

# data[].attributes.headline
Learn more about Kristallnacht- a key event leading up to the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.subject
Learn more about Kristallnacht- a key event leading up to the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On November 9–10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence. This became known as Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass.” Learn more

# data[].attributes.headline
Explore this page to learn about concentration camps and how they evolved throughout the war. Read, watch videos, and make sure to scroll to the bottom to keep exploring.

# data[].attributes.subject
Explore this page to learn about concentration camps and how they evolved throughout the war. Read, watch videos, and make sure to scroll to the bottom to keep exploring.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Concentration camps ( Konzentrationslager; abbreviated as KL or KZ) were an integral feature of the regime in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945.

The term concentration camp refers to a camp in which people are detained or confined, usually under harsh conditions and without regard to legal norms of arrest and imprisonment that are acceptable in a constitutional democracy.

The First Concentration Camps in Germany

The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, the SA ( Sturmabteilung; commonly known as the Storm Troopers), the SS ( Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons-the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy.

German authorities established camps all over Germany on an ad hoc basis to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives. The SS established larger camps in Oranienburg, north of Berlin; Esterwegen, near Hamburg; Dachau, northwest of Munich; and Lichtenburg, in Saxony. In Berlin itself, the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under investigation by the Gestapo (the German secret state police) until 1936.

Centralization of the Concentration Camp System

The SS gained its independence from the SA in July 1934, in the wake of the Röhm purge. Hitler then authorized SS leader Heinrich Himmler to centralize the administration of the concentration camps and formalize them into a system. Himmler chose SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke for this task. Eicke had been the commandant of the SS concentration camp at Dachau since June 1933. Himmler appointed him Inspector of Concentration Camps, a new section of the SS subordinate to the SS Main Office.

After December 1934, the SS became the only agency authorized to establish and manage facilities that were formally called concentration camps. Local civilian authorities did continue to establish and manage forced-labor camps and detention camps throughout Germany. In 1937, only four concentration camps were left: Dachau, near Munich; Sachsenhausen near Berlin; Buchenwald near Weimar; and Lichtenburg near Merseburg in Saxony for female prisoners.

Purposes of the Camp System

Concentration camps are often inaccurately compared to a prison in modern society. But concentration camps, unlike prisons, were independent of any judicial review. Nazi concentration camps served three main purposes:

To incarcerate people whom the Nazi regime perceived to be a security threat. These people were incarcerated for indefinite amounts of time.

To eliminate individuals and small, targeted groups of individuals by murder, away from the public and judicial review.

To exploit forced labor of the prisoner population. This purpose grew out of a labor shortage.

Concentration Camp Administration

Already as commandant of Dachau in 1933, Eicke developed an organization and procedures to administer and guard a concentration camp. He issued regulations for the duties of the perimeter guards and for treatment of the prisoners. The organization, structure, and practice developed at Dachau in 1933-34 became the model for the Nazi concentration camp system as it expanded. Among Eicke's early trainees at Dachau was Rudolf Höss, who later commanded the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Special "political units on alert" ( Politische Bereitschaften) originally guarded the SS concentration camps. They were renamed "SS Guard Units" ( SS-Wachverbände) in 1935 and "SS Death's-Head Units" ( SS-Totenkopfverbände) in April 1936. One SS Death's-Head Unit was assigned to each concentration camp. After 1936, the camp administration, including the commandant, was also a part of the SS Death's-Head Unit.

Although all SS units wore the Death's-Head symbol (skull and crossbones) on their caps, only the SS Death's-Head Units were authorized to wear the Death's Head Symbol on their lapels. The "SS Death's-Head Division" of the Waffen SS was created in 1940. Its officers were recruited from concentration camp service. They also wore the Death's-Head symbol on their lapel.

The SS Death's-Head Unit at each camp was divided into two groups. The first was the camp staff, which covered:

the commandant and his personal staff

a Security Police officer and an assistant to maintain and update prisoner records

the commandant of the so-called protective detention camp (Schutzhaftlagerführer) which housed the prisoners, and his staff (including the labor allocation officer, the roll call officer, and the Blockführer, who were responsible for the individual prisoner barracks)

an administrative staff responsible for the fiscal and supply administration of the camp

an infirmary run by an SS physician assisted by one or two SS sanitation officers and/or medical orderlies.

The second group constituted the guard detachment ( SS-Wachbataillon), which prior to 1939 was at battalion strength.

The model established by Eicke in the mid-1930s characterized the concentration camp system until the collapse of the Nazi regime in the spring of 1945. The daily routine at Dachau, the methods of punishment, and the duties of the SS staff and guards became the norm, with some variation, at all German concentration camps.

Authority to Imprison People in Concentration Camps

After 1938, authority to incarcerate persons in a concentration camp formally rested exclusively with the German Security Police (made up of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police).

The Security Police had held this exclusive authority de facto since 1936. The "legal" instrument of incarceration was either the "protective detention" ( Schutzhaft) order or the "preventative detention" ( Vorbeugungshaft) order. The Gestapo could issue a "protective detention" order for persons considered a political danger after 1933. The Criminal Police could issue a "preventative detention" order after December 1937 for persons considered to be habitual and professional criminals, or to be engaging in what the regime defined as "asocial" behavior. Neither order was subject to judicial review, or any review by any German agency outside of the German Security Police. As the concentration camp system expanded, the camps fell within the exclusive authority of the SS. The German judicial administration had no jurisdiction with the growing camp system.

Expansion of the Camp System

Nazi Germany expanded by bloodless conquest into Austria and Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1939. The numbers of those labeled as political opponents and as "asocials" in German society increased, requiring the establishment of new concentration camps.

By the time the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, unleashing World War II, there were six concentration camps in the so-called Greater German Reich: Dachau (founded 1933), Sachsenhausen (1936), Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg in northeastern Bavaria near the 1937 Czech border (1938), Mauthausen, near Linz, Austria (1938), and Ravensbrück, the women's camp, established in Brandenburg Province, southeast of Berlin (1939), after the dissolution of Lichtenburg.

Forced Labor

From as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants used prisoners as forced laborers for SS construction projects such as the construction or expansion of the camps themselves. By 1938, SS leaders envisioned using the supply of forced laborers incarcerated in the camps for a variety of SS-commissioned construction projects. To mobilize and finance such projects, Himmler revamped and expanded the administrative offices of the SS and created a new SS office for business operations. Both agencies were led by SS Major General Oswald Pohl, who would take over the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in 1942.

Beginning a pattern that became typical after the war began, economic considerations had an increasing impact on the selection of sites for concentration camps after 1937. For instance, Mauthausen and Flossenbürg were located near large stone quarries. Likewise, concentration camp authorities increasingly diverted prisoners from meaningless, backbreaking labor to still backbreaking and dangerous labor in extractive industries, such as stone quarries and coal mines, and construction labor.

Concentration Camps after the Outbreak of World War II

After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. The war did not change the original function of the concentration camps as detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The climate of national emergency that the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted the SS to expand the functions of the camps.

The concentration camps increasingly became sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding centers for a rapidly growing pool of forced laborers used for SS construction projects, SS-commissioned extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, the production of armaments, weapons, and related goods for the German war effort.

Despite the need for forced labor, the SS authorities continued to deliberately undernourish and mistreat prisoners incarcerated in the concentration camps. Prisoners were used ruthlessly and without regard to safety at forced labor, resulting in high mortality rates.

Last Edited: Jun 27, 2019

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about early concentration camps the Nazi regime established in Germany, and the expansion of the camp system during the Holocaust and World War II.

# data[].attributes.headline
Watch this 5 minute video about "The secret student resistance to Hitler."

# data[].attributes.subject
Watch this 5 minute video about "The secret student resistance to Hitler."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The secret student resistance to Hitler - Iseult Gillespie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1943, Allied aircraft rained tens of thousands of leaflets on Nazi Germany below. The leaflets urged readers to renounce Hitler, to fight furiously for the future— and to never give up hope. Their call to action rippled through homes and businesses— and their message even reached concentration ca…

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article about prominent SS physician Josef Mengele, called the "Angel of Death" by his victims, who conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article about prominent SS physician Josef Mengele, called the "Angel of Death" by his victims, who conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Josef Mengele is one of the most infamous figures of the Holocaust. His service at Auschwitz and the medical experiments he conducted there have made him the most widely recognized perpetrator of the crimes committed at that camp. His postwar life in hiding has come to represent the international failure to bring the perpetrators of Nazi crimes to justice.

Because of his infamy, Mengele has been the subject of numerous popular books, films, and television shows. Many of these portrayals distort the real facts of Mengele's crimes and take him out of his historical context. Some portray him as a mad scientist who conducted sadistic experiments with no scientific basis.

The truth about Mengele is even more disturbing. He was a highly trained doctor and medical researcher, as well as a decorated war veteran. He was respected in his field and worked for one of the leading research institutions in Germany. Much of his medical research at Auschwitz supported the work of other German scientists. He was one of dozens of biomedical researchers who conducted experiments on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. And he was one of a number of medical professionals who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Mengele acted within the norms of German science under the Nazi regime. His crimes represent the extreme danger posed by science when it is conducted in the service of an ideology that denies the rights, dignity, and even humanity of certain groups of people.

Mengele before Auschwitz

Josef Mengele was born on March 16, 1911, in the Bavarian city of Günzburg, Germany. He was the eldest son of Karl Mengele, a prosperous manufacturer of farming equipment.

Mengele studied medicine and physical anthropology at several universities. In 1935, he earned a PhD in physical anthropology from the University of Munich. In 1936, Mengele passed the state medical exams.

In 1937, Mengele began working at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, Germany. There, he was an assistant to the director, Dr. Otmar von Verschuer. Verschuer was a leading geneticist known for his research on twins. Under Verschuer's direction, Mengele completed an additional doctorate in 1938.

Embracing Nazi Ideology

Mengele did not actively support the Nazi Party before it came to power. However, in 1931, he joined the , the paramilitary of another right-wing party, the German National People's Party. Mengele became a member of the Nazi Stahlhelm SA when it absorbed the Stahlhelm in 1933, but he ceased actively participating in it in 1934.

During his university studies, however, Mengele embraced racial science, the false theory of biological racism. He believed that Germans were biologically different from and superior to members of all other races. Racial science was a fundamental tenet of Nazi ideology. Hitler used racial science to justify the forced sterilization of persons with certain physical or mental diseases or physical deformities. The Nuremberg Race Laws, which outlawed marriage between Germans and Jewish, Black, or Romani peoples, were also based upon racial science.

In 1938, Mengele joined the Nazi Party and the SS. In his work as a scientist, he sought to support the Nazi goal of maintaining and increasing the supposed superiority of the German "race." Mengele's employer and mentor, Verschuer, also embraced biological racism. In addition to conducting research, Verschuer and his staff - including Mengele - provided expert opinions to Nazi authorities who had to determine whether persons qualified as German under the Nuremberg Laws. Mengele and his colleagues also evaluated Germans whose physical or mental condition might qualify them to be forcibly sterilized or barred from marriage under German law.

Serving on the Eastern Front

In June 1940, Mengele was drafted into the German army ( At first, he worked for the Wehrmacht ). A month later, he volunteered for the medical service of the Waffen -SS (the military branch of the SS). SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) in German-occupied Poland. There, Mengele evaluated the criteria and methods used by the SS to determine whether persons claiming to be of German descent were racially and physically suitable to qualify as Germans.

Around the end of 1940, Mengele was assigned to the engineering battalion of the SS Division " " as a medical officer. For about 18 months beginning in June 1941, he saw extremely brutal fighting on the Wiking eastern front. In addition, in the first weeks of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, Mengele's division slaughtered thousands of Jewish civilians. Mengele's service on the eastern front earned him the Iron Cross, both 2nd and 1st Class, and promotion to SS captain (SS- Hauptsturmführer ).

Mengele returned to Germany in January 1943. While awaiting his next Waffen - SS assignment, he began to work again for his mentor Verschuer. Verschuer had recently become the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin.

Assigned to Auschwitz

On May 30, 1943, the SS assigned Mengele to (literally, "Gypsy camp"). Beginning in 1943, nearly 21,000 Auschwitz. There is some evidence that Mengele himself requested this assignment. He worked as one of the camp physicians at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of the Auschwitz camps and also served as a killing center for Jews deported from throughout Europe. In addition to other duties, Mengele had responsibility for Birkenau's Zigeunerlager Romani men, women, and children (pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner or "Gypsies") were sent to Auschwitz and imprisoned in the Zigeunerlager . When this family camp was liquidated on August 2, 1944, Mengele participated in selecting the 2,893 Romani prisoners who were to be murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed chief physician for the part of the Auschwitz camp complex called Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz II. In November 1944, he was assigned to the Birkenau hospital for the SS.

"Angel of Death": Selecting Prisoners to be Murdered

As part of their camp duties, medical staff at Auschwitz performed so-called selections. The purpose of the selections was to identify persons who were unable to work. The SS considered such persons useless and therefore murdered them. When transports of Jews arrived at Birkenau, the camp medical personnel selected some of the able-bodied adults to perform forced labor in the concentration camp. Those not selected for labor, including children and older adults, were murdered in the gas chambers.

Camp physicians at Auschwitz and at other concentration camps also conducted periodic selections in the camp infirmaries and barracks. They conducted these selections in order to identify prisoners who were injured or had become too ill or weak to work. The SS used various methods to murder these prisoners, including lethal injections and gassing. Mengele routinely carried out such selections at Birkenau, leading some prisoners to refer to him as the "angel of death." Prisoner Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist at Birkenau, later recalled how Mengele's appearance in the women's infirmary filled the prisoners with terror:

We feared these visits more than anything else, because [. . .] we never knew whether we would be permitted to live [. . . .] He was free to do whatever he pleased with us.

- Quoted according to Gisella Perl's memoir I was a Doctor in Auschwitz 1

After World War II, Mengele became infamous for his work at Auschwitz thanks to the accounts of prisoner physicians who had worked under him and of prisoners who had survived his medical experiments.

Mengele was one of some 50 physicians who served at Auschwitz. He was neither the highest ranking doctor in the Auschwitz camp complex nor the commander of the other doctors there. Nevertheless, his name is by far the best known of all the doctors who served at Auschwitz. One reason for this was Mengele's frequent presence on the ramp where selections took place. When Mengele did not himself perform selection duty, he often still appeared at the ramp, looking among the prisoners for twins for his experiments and physicians for the Birkenau infirmary. Consequently, many survivors who underwent selection upon arrival at Auschwitz assumed that Mengele was the doctor who had selected them. However, Mengele performed this task no more often than his colleagues.

Biomedical Researchers at Auschwitz

The SS authorized German biomedical researchers to conduct unethical and often lethal human experiments in the concentration camps. Auschwitz provided prisoners for human experiments conducted at various other camps. It also served as the site of a variety of human experiments. This is because of the number of prisoners sent there. The SS sent 1.3 million men, women, and children from many different national and ethnic backgrounds to Auschwitz. Researchers looking for human subjects who met specific criteria could more easily find them at Auschwitz than at other camps.

Mengele was one of more than a dozen SS medical personnel who conducted experiments on people imprisoned at Auschwitz. These doctors included:

Eduard Wirths, the head Auschwitz physician;

Carl Clauberg, a noted specialist in the treatment of infertility;

Horst Schumann, who gassed thousands of patients with disabilities during the Nazi Euthanasia Program;

SS physician Helmut Vetter, who conducted drug trials for the Bayer subsidiary of IG Farben on prisoners at Dachau, Auschwitz, and Gusen concentration camps;

Johann Paul Kremer, a professor of anatomy.

These doctors saw their appointment to Auschwitz as an exciting opportunity to advance their research.

Types of Experiments Conducted

The experiments in the concentration camps permanently maimed many victims or caused them to die. In some experiments, death was the intended outcome for the victims. The medical professionals who conducted experiments at Auschwitz did not seek the prisoners' consent or inform them of their treatment or possible effects. The types of experiments conducted at Auschwitz included:

Testing methods of mass sterilization;

Inflicting wounds on prisoners or infecting them with diseases to study the effects and test treatments;

Conducting unnecessary surgeries and procedures on patients for research purposes or to train medical professionals;

Murdering and dissecting prisoners for anthropological and medical research.

Mengele's Experiments at Auschwitz

Separate from his regular duties at Auschwitz, Mengele conducted research and experiments on prisoners. His mentor Verschuer may even have arranged Mengele's assignment to Auschwitz for the purpose of supporting the research of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A). Throughout his time at Auschwitz, Mengele sent his colleagues in Germany blood, body parts, organs, skeletons, and fetuses. These were all taken from Auschwitz prisoners. Mengele collaborated on his colleagues' research projects by conducting studies and experiments for them using prisoners.

In addition to his work with the KWI-A, Mengele also conducted his own experiments on Auschwitz prisoners. He hoped to publish the results and thereby gain the credentials to qualify for a university professorship.

In the course of his service at Auschwitz, Mengele organized a research complex located in a number of barracks. He chose his staff from among the prisoners who were medical professionals. Mengele was able to obtain up-to-date instruments and equipment for his research and even set up a pathology lab.

Research Goals

Mengele's own research and the research he conducted for the KWI-A generally focused on how genes develop into specific physical and mental traits. When conducted ethically, this is a legitimate and important field of genetic research. However, the work of Mengele, Verschuer, and their colleagues was warped by their belief in a pseudoscientific theory of race that was fundamental to Nazi ideology. This theory held that human races are genetically distinct from each other. It established a hierarchy of races and stressed that "inferior" races are genetically more likely to exhibit negative traits than members of "superior" races. These negative hereditary traits supposedly included more than just physical and mental illnesses and deficiencies. They also supposedly included socially unacceptable or immoral behaviors, such as vagrancy, prostitution, and criminality. According to the false theory of race, intermarriage between races passed negative traits to "superior" races and undermined them.

Mengele sought to identify specific physical and biochemical markers that could definitively identify the members of specific races. Mengele and his colleagues believed that finding such markers was vitally important for preserving the supposed racial superiority of the German people. For Mengele and his colleagues, the importance of the research justified conducting harmful and lethal experiments on people - in this case Auschwitz prisoners - whom they considered to be racially inferior.

Who were Mengele's Victims?

Mengele drew his victims mainly from two ethnic groups: Roma and Jews. These groups were of particular interest to biomedical researchers in Nazi Germany. Nazi ideology considered both Roma and Jews to be "subhuman" and to pose a threat to the German "race." For this reason, Nazi scientists did not consider medical ethics to apply to members of these groups.

While Mengele served at Auschwitz-Birkenau, more than 20,000 Roma were imprisoned there and hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived there on transports. Nowhere else in the world could scientists have access to so many members of these groups concentrated in one place. And nowhere else did they have the power to experiment on human beings in whatever way they wanted. Mengele commented to a colleague that it would be a crime not to take advantage of the opportunities for human experimentation at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Roma

In addition to choosing Roma as subjects for his medical experiments, Mengele conducted an anthropological study of the Roma men, women, and children in the Zigeunerlager . When there was an outbreak of Noma, a gangrene of the mouth, among Roma children in the camp, he assigned prisoner physicians to study it. Noma is a bacterial infection that primarily afflicts extremely malnourished children. However, Mengele believed that the Roma children at Auschwitz suffered from Noma because of their heredity rather than because of the conditions at the camp. The prisoner physicians discovered how to cure Noma, which was normally fatal. Nevertheless, all of the children who were cured were eventually murdered in the gas chambers.

Twins

In the 1930s, twins were a major focus of human genetic research. Before World War II, Verschuer and other biomedical researchers used twins to study the hereditary basis of diseases. These earlier researchers obtained the consent of the twins or their parents, but it was difficult for researchers to enlist many twins for these studies. At Auschwitz, Mengele collected hundreds of pairs of twins from among the Jews who arrived there on transports and from among the Roma imprisoned there. No researcher had ever been able to study and experiment on such a large number of twins.

Mengele ordered his staff to measure and record every aspect of the twins' bodies. He drew large amounts of blood from the twins and sometimes performed other painful procedures on them.

[...] They also gave us injections all over our bodies. As a result of these injections, my sister fell ill. Her neck swelled up as a result of a severe infection. They sent her to the hospital and operated on her without anesthetic in primitive conditions. (...)

From the account of Lorenc Andreas Menasche, camp number A 12090. 2

Mengele also murdered sets of twins at the same time in order to conduct autopsies of their corpses. After he studied the autopsies, Mengele sent some of their organs to the KWI-A.

Persons with Congenital Anomalies

When he conducted selections of arriving Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mengele looked for people with physical abnormalities. These people included dwarfs, people with gigantism, or persons who had a club foot. Mengele studied these people and then had them murdered. He sent their bodies to Germany for study by researchers.

Mengele also sought out Roma and Jews with heterochromia, a condition in which a person's eyes differ from each other in color. One of Mengele's colleagues at KWI-A was particularly interested in this condition. Mengele had persons with heterochromia murdered at Auschwitz and sent their eyes to this colleague.

Children

Most of the victims of Mengele's medical experiments were children. The children Mengele selected for experiments lived in separate barracks from the other prisoners and received somewhat better food and treatment. Mengele was friendly toward the children. Moshe Ofer, a survivor of Mengele's experiments, recalled in 1985 that

[Mengele] visited us as a good uncle, bringing us chocolate. Before applying the scalpel or a syringe, he would say: 'Don't be afraid, nothing is going to happen to you...' ...he injected chemical substances, performed surgery on Tibi's spine. After the experiments he would bring us gifts...In the course of later experiments, he had pins inserted into our heads. The puncture scars are still visible. One day he took Tibi away. My brother was gone for several days. When he was brought back, his head was all dressed in bandages. He died in my arms. 3

Mengele used children for his own experiments and also to support the work of the KWI-A. He collaborated in a study of the development of eye color by putting a substance supplied by one of his colleagues in the eyes of children and newborns. The results ranged from irritation and swelling to blindness and even death.

A prisoner who was assigned to care for Jewish twins selected for Mengele's experiments later described how the children reacted emotionally and physically to their treatment:

Samples of blood were collected first from the fingers and then from the arteries, two or three times from the same victims in some cases. The children screamed and tried to cover themselves up to avoid being touched. The personnel resorted to force. (...) Drops were also put into their eyes....Some pairs of children received drops in both eyes, and others in only one. ....The results of these practices were painful for the victims. They suffered from severe swelling of the eyelids, a burning sensation.... 4

Evading Justice

In January 1945, as the Soviet Red Army advanced through western Poland, Mengele fled Auschwitz with the rest of the camp's SS personnel. He spent the next few months serving at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and its subcamps. In the final days of the war, he donned a German army uniform and joined a military unit. After the war ended, the unit surrendered to US military forces.

Posing as a German army officer, Mengele became a US prisoner of war. The US Army released him in early August 1945, unaware that Mengele's name was already on a list of wanted war criminals.

From late 1945 until spring 1949, Mengele worked under a false name as a farmhand near Rosenheim, Bavaria. From here he was able to establish contact with his family. When US war crimes investigators learned of Mengele's crimes at Auschwitz, they tried to find and arrest him. Based on lies told by Mengele's family, however, the investigators concluded that Mengele was dead. The US effort to arrest him forced Mengele to recognize that he was not safe in Germany. With financial support from his family, Mengele immigrated to Argentina under yet another false name in July 1949.

By 1956, Mengele was well established in Argentina and felt so safe that he obtained Argentine citizenship as José Mengele. In 1959, however, he learned that West German prosecutors knew he was in Argentina and were seeking his arrest. Mengele immigrated to Paraguay and obtained citizenship there. In May 1960, Israeli intelligence agents abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel to be tried. Correctly guessing that the Israelis were also looking for him, Mengele fled Paraguay. With support from his family in Germany, he spent the rest of his life under an assumed name near São Paulo, Brazil. On February 7, 1979, Mengele suffered a stroke and drowned while swimming at a vacation resort near Bertioga, Brazil. He was buried in a suburb of São Paulo under the assumed name "Wolfgang Gerhard."

The Discovery and Identification of Mengele's Body

In May 1985, the governments of Germany, Israel, and the United States agreed to cooperate in tracking down Mengele and bringing him to justice. German police raided the home of a Mengele family friend in Günzburg, Germany, and found evidence that Mengele had died and been buried near São Paulo. Brazilian police located Mengele's grave and exhumed his corpse in June 1985. American, Brazilian, and German forensic experts positively identified the remains as those of Josef Mengele. In 1992, DNA evidence confirmed this conclusion.

Mengele eluded arrest for 34 years and was never brought to justice.

Last Edited: Feb 21, 2023

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Prominent SS physician Josef Mengele, called the "angel of death" by his victims, conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners in the Auschwitz camp.

# data[].attributes.headline
Required: Read through this timeline and learn about Elie Wiesel, the author of Night.

# data[].attributes.subject
Required: Read through this timeline and learn about Elie Wiesel, the author of Night.

# data[].attributes.headline
Take a virtual tour of Auschwitz -Birkenau 

# data[].attributes.subject
Take a virtual tour of Auschwitz -Birkenau 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Virtually explore Auschwitz-Birkenau in a fully immersive 360-degree experience.

# data[].attributes.headline
Learn More About the History of AntiSemitism

# data[].attributes.subject
Learn More About the History of AntiSemitism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
[Narrator] Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis killed about six million Jews and millions of other civilians throughout Europe.

These are some who were slaughtered in the Holocaust-a generation lost forever.

[Text on screen] EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE HOLOCAUST

[Narrator] Jews are the people of the Hebrew Bible who lived in a land now known as Israel. They believe that there is only one God.

Christianity emerged from Judaism. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew who preached a singular religious message. The first Christians were Jews who prayed in Hebrew and observed the customs and religious rituals of Judaism. The Last Supper was a Jewish religious meal, probably at Passover.

Jesus was put to death at the hands of Roman authorities under Pontius Pilate in Judea, but the gospel accounts were interpreted as blaming all Jews for the crucifixion. To his followers, Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah. His death, sacrificial atonement. Most Jews believed the Messiah had not yet come. Redemption was not at hand.

Soon after the crucifixion, Roman armies destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. Jews were exiled and scattered-to live as a dispersed minority. By the 5th century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.

The early Christian church portrayed Jews as unwilling to accept the word of God; illuminations showed Satan binding the eyes of the Jews. Some church leaders intensified the charge-condemning Jews as agents of the devil and murderers of God. The accusation was not renounced until the 1960s when the Second Vatican Council officially repudiated the ancient charge that Jews had murdered Christ.

For centuries, state and Church laws restricted Jews, preventing them from owning land and holding public office. Guilds excluded Jews from most occupations, forcing them into pursuits like money-lending, trade, commerce. Excluded from Christian society, Jews maintained their religious and social customs.

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the liberation of Jerusalem. Christian crusaders set off to free the Holy Land from the Muslims. On the way, they slaughtered thousands of Jews.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians persecuted Jews. Portrayed as alien, Jews were regarded as usurers. It was said Jews poisoned the wells of Europe, causing the Black Plague. Illustrations depicted Jews as the devil, with horns and cloven feet, and showed them using the blood of Christian children in ritual sacrifices. These lies came to be taken as truth.

But where they were needed, Jews were tolerated. When they were allowed to participate in the larger society, Jews thrived.

In many places, secular and religious states forced Jews into segregated districts later called ghettos. England, France, Spain, Portugal, and many German states expelled masses of Jews-most of whom migrated eastward taking with them their religious convictions and traditions.

In 1517, Martin Luther attacked the Pope and corruption within his own Roman Catholic Church, beginning the Protestant Reformation. The young Luther hoped that tolerance would persuade Jews to convert. But when Jews adhered to their own religious beliefs and refused to join his new reformed church, Luther's disappointment turned to hatred.
What then shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? . . .Their synagogues . . .should be set on fire, and what does not burn must be covered over with earth so that no man will ever see stone or cinder of them again. . . .Their houses also should be razed and destroyed. . . . All their prayer books. . .should be taken from them.
The Protestant Reformation brought no end to the anti-Jewish tradition of Christianity.

With the 18th century Enlightenment's emphasis on reason, the domination of the Church diminished. Some Enlightenment thinkers called for full rights for Jews, but only on the condition that they discard their religious customs. Others blamed Judaism as the source of irrational religious faith.

Even though many Jews assimilated socially and culturally, prejudice did not disappear.

In France in 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jewish member of the French Army's general staff, was convicted of passing military secrets to Germany. Later, proof of forgery confirmed his innocence, but Dreyfus remained the victim of a cover up to divert attention from army corruption. A century after the French Revolution proclaimed Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, giving Jews their freedom, frenzied mobs in the streets of Paris chanted Death to the Jews.

[Text on screen] It is not a question of religion. The enemy is JUDAISM!

[Narrator] Religious discrimination had gradually changed into a thriving secular, political, and social antisemitism.

Nevertheless, freed from some restrictions, many Jews entered the Christian World and became prominent citizens.

Then, around 1900, a new lie was promoted: that Jews conspired to dominate the world using their money and intelligence to manipulate trusting Christians. Russian secret police forged a document to support the story of a take-over plot supposedly authored by a conference of Jewish leaders. A proven forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was nevertheless translated into every major language and distributed worldwide. It is circulated even today despite indisputable proof that it is a fake.

To divert popular discontent at appalling living conditions and autocratic control, Russian authorities encouraged antisemitic violence. Jews were blamed for the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Pogroms, murderous rampages against Jews, erupted in Russia many times during the next three decades.

The second half of the 19th century saw the emergence of yet another kind of antisemitism. At its core was the theory that Jews were not merely a religious group but a separate "race"-Semites-set apart because of genetically inherited characteristics.

Antisemites believed racial characteristics could not be overcome by assimilation or even conversion. Jews were said to be dangerous and threatening because of their "Jewish blood." Antisemitic racism united pseudoscientific theories with centuries old anti-Jewish stereotypes. These ideas gained wide acceptance.

The devastation of World War I, the demeaning peace of Versailles, the hyperinflation of the 1920s, and the depression of 1929 fueled mass discontent.

The presence of Jews in German cultural, economic, and political life made them convenient scapegoats for Germany's misfortunes.

Enter: Adolf Hitler. Hitler viewed world history as a racial struggle for survival of the fittest. He saw Jews as the source of all evil: disease, social injustice, cultural decline, capitalism and all forms of Marxism, especially Communism.

Antisemitism would become the predominant ideology of the Third Reich.

Nazi racism victimized many groups of people, but it was against the Jews that the Nazi state mobilized all its resources for terror.

After the Nazi takeover of power, anti-Jewish measures were put into effect one after another: Jewish businesses were boycotted, then seized. Jews were defined, separated from non-Jews. Jews were excluded from professions and studies. Jewish children were barred from schools. Jews were subjected to public humiliation.

The changes-whether gradual or sudden-were incomprehensible. Few could imagine what would happen. Even Jews.

The Nazis took antisemitism to an unprecedented level of violence. Genocide: the systematic murder of millions of people deemed inferior. Six million Jews. These are some of them.

[Text on screen] In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, have re-examined their teachings on the Jews and Judaism.

Many denominations are continuing to address the role played by centuries of Christian antisemitism in contributing to circumstances that made the Holocaust possible.

Antisemitism did not end with the Holocaust and persists in Europe, the United States, and around the world today. Efforts to minimize, deny, or even celebrate the Holocaust are among the many ways antisemitism endures.

Hatred of Jews is fueled by myths, lies, and conspiracy theories. Some advocates of religious, political, and racial ideologies continue to exploit the hatred of Jews to achieve their own ends.

As the Holocaust demonstrates, antisemitism often appears alongside other forms of hatred, with potentially devastating consequences for individuals, communities, and nations.

Learn more at ushmm.org/antisemitism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the Jews: History of Antisemitism - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This 13-minute film explains the history of antisemitism from the days of the early Christian church until the 20th century.

# data[].attributes.body
This will take you to a series of short videos about big questions on the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What is the Holocaust? Who were its victims? When did it occur? What were the ghettos, and why were they established? How did the "Final Solution" evolve?

# data[].attributes.body
A look at the different types of camps and their purposes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nazi Germany persecuted, brutalized, and murdered groups of people whom they saw as enemies or threats. The Nazis saw Jews as their primary enemy. They targeted Jewish men, women, and children with unrelenting focus. The scope of terror and the scale of human loss raise the questions: What groups did the Nazis target? And why did they target these specific groups of people?

Nazi Germany targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic . From the very beginning, the Nazi German regime took steps to ruthlessly and tirelessly isolate, impoverish, and discriminate against Jewish people in Germany. During World War II, this policy escalated to mass murder. In total, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews in a genocide now known as the Holocaust.

In addition to the genocide of Europe's Jews, the Nazis also persecuted, brutalized, or murdered additional groups of people. In some cases, they did so with the help of their allies and collaborators. 1

The Nazis targeted people as members of the following groups ( listed in alphabetical order for ease of reference ):

Black people in Germany;

civilians (non-Jewish) accused of disobedience, resistance, or partisan activity;

gay men, bisexual men, and other men accused of homosexuality in Germany;

Jehovah's Witnesses;

people with disabilities;

Poles;

political opponents and dissenters in Germany;

Roma and other people derogatorily labeled as "Gypsies";

social outsiders in Germany derogatorily labeled as "asocials" or "professional criminals"; and

Soviet Prisoners of War.

Why did the Nazis target groups of people for persecution and murder?

Nazi Germany dehumanized and devalued entire groups of people on the basis of Nazi ideology. Ideology is a set of beliefs about how the world operates. Nazi ideology was racist, antisemitic, and ultra-nationalist. It drew on a number of existing concepts. These concepts included racism, nationalism, antisemitism, anticommunism, antigypsyism, and eugenics. The Nazis combined these concepts and took them to destructive, murderous extremes.

The Nazis evaluated people according to biological, racial, political, and social criteria . According to Nazi ideology, certain groups of people-such as Jews and Roma-were racial threats that undermined the racial purity of the German people. Others-such as people with disabilities-were considered biological threats. The Nazis believed they compromised the genetic health of the German people. Still others were seen as social, political, and/or ideological threats to Nazi control in Germany and beyond. During World War II (1939-1945) , the Nazis conquered much of Europe. They treated real and supposed enemies as existential threats. Among those targeted as existential threats were members of the Polish elite, Soviet Prisoners of War, and members of resistance groups. During the war, Nazi Germany perpetrated a genocide of Europe's Jews and numerous other mass atrocities.

How did the Nazis target Jews?

Nazi Germany persecuted and murdered millions of Jewish people because the Nazis were radically antisemitic . This meant that the Nazis were prejudiced against and hated Jews.

Their intense hatred of Jews drove the Nazis to obsessively seek ways to make Germany, and ultimately Europe, "free of Jews" (" judenrein "). Beginning in 1933, the Nazi German regime used discriminatory laws to drive Jews out of all aspects of German life.

During World War II, Nazi leaders radicalized their treatment of Europe's Jews. Their actions escalated from persecution to mass murder. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Soon after, Nazi German authorities imprisoned Jews in ghettos . Many Jews died as a result of disease, starvation, and brutal treatment. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators began to commit mass shootings of entire Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe. In 1941-1942, Nazi Germany created killing centers to murder Jewish people using poison gas. With the help of their allies and collaborators, they deported Jews of all ages to their deaths.

In total, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews. The systematic persecution and murder of Europe's Jews is now known as the Holocaust. The Nazis' unrelenting fixation on targeting and ultimately destroying the Jewish people made the Holocaust unique among Nazi German atrocities.

How did the Nazis target non-Jewish groups of people?

The Nazis targeted Jews and other groups of people in different, but overlapping ways. In some cases, they did so with the help of their allies and collaborators.

The Nazis targeted the groups of people listed below with some combination of the following forms of persecution:

extralegal imprisonment in a concentration camp;

discrimination on the basis of supposed racial identity;

torture, including inhumane medical experiments;

forced sterilization; and/or

mass murder.

Not all groups were subjected to all of these forms of persecution and brutality. For instance, the Nazis targeted some groups with discrimination and wrongful imprisonment, but not mass murder.

The Nazis did not target these groups with the same degree of intensity. Throughout the twelve years of the Nazi German regime, Jews remained the Nazis' primary enemy and target. At varying points, the Nazis also turned their attention to other groups of people. The timing and intensity of Nazi persecution was based on a number of evolving factors, including Nazi ideology and practical realities (such as war). But, in all cases, the Nazis behaved with extreme cruelty.
For ease of reference, below is an alphabetical list of non-Jewish groups of people persecuted and/or murdered by the Nazis. Each section serves as an introduction to how and why they targeted a specific non-Jewish group of people.
Black People in Germany

Black people in Germany became victims of the Nazi German regime because the Nazis viewed them as racially inferior. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were several thousand Black people living in Germany. The Nazis applied the Nuremberg Race Laws to Black people. They referred to Black people using the derogatory label " Neger und ihre Bastarde " ("Negros and their bastards"). The people targeted as part of this group included Africans, African Americans, multiracial people, and other people racialized as Black and living in Germany. This group included several hundred multiracial children who were born in the Rhineland region of Germany in the interwar era. These children had a variety of ethnic backgrounds (including Arab and Vietnamese). However, they were all labeled as Black and derogatorily referred to as the "Rhineland Bastards."

While there was no centralized, systematic program targeting Black people in Germany for murder, many were imprisoned, forcibly sterilized, and murdered by the Nazis. An unknown number of them, perhaps hundreds, were killed.

Civilians (non-Jewish) Accused of Disobedience, Resistance, or Partisan Activity

During World War II, Nazi German authorities brutalized and murdered innocent civilians in the name of eliminating resistance to German occupation. Throughout occupied Europe, Germans and their allies and collaborators targeted real and suspected members of resistance groups. They arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and sometimes executed individuals. The Germans also targeted non-German civilians, including foreign forced laborers, who violated German-issued decrees, policies, or other regulations .

The Germans also carried out collective punishment. Together with their allies and collaborators, they killed innocent civilians in massacres. The Nazis called the killings "reprisal actions" or "anti-partisan pacification measures." During these massacres, the perpetrators sometimes leveled entire villages. They often murdered all of the inhabitants. This type of terror was far more common in occupied eastern and southern Europe than it was in western and central Europe. In occupied Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the Nazis were especially indiscriminate and cruel. In total, hundreds of thousands of people became victims of reprisal massacres. Victims included Belarusians, Greeks, Italians, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians, and others.

Gay Men, Bisexual Men, and Other Men Accused of Homosexuality in Germany

The Nazi German regime persecuted gay men , bisexual men, and other men as part of its campaign against male homosexuality. The Nazis saw gay men as threats to the birth rate and thus to the fate of the German people. They arrested tens of thousands of men under Paragraph 175 . Paragraph 175 was the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men. In Germany, there was no similar law prohibiting sexual relations between women. Nonetheless, the Nazis created a climate of restriction and fear for many lesbians .

Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned as "homosexual" (" ") offenders in This group of prisoners was typically required to wear a pink triangle on their camp uniforms as part of the homosexuell concentration camps. Some men accused of homosexuality were forcibly castrated. prisoner classification system. Hundreds, or possibly thousands, died.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Nazi Germany persecuted because of their refusal to give up their religious beliefs and serve the Nazi German regime. Jehovah's Witnesses refused to give the Nazi salute, join Nazi Party organizations, take the oath to Adolf Hitler, or let their children join the Jehovah's Witnesses Hitler Youth. As pacifists, they also refused to serve in the German military.

In Germany, the Nazis banned many Jehovah's Witness activities and publications. Authorities sometimes took Witnesses' children from their families and placed them into foster care. Many male Witnesses who refused military service as conscientious objectors were executed. Thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses from Germany and occupied Europe were imprisoned in concentration camps for refusing to comply with Nazi demands. In the camps, Jehovah's Witnesses had to wear purple badges. About 1,700 Jehovah's Witnesses were killed during the Nazi era.

People with Disabilities

Nazi Germany persecuted and murdered people with disabilities because the Nazis viewed them as biologically inferior. In order to eliminate this supposed hereditary threat, the Nazi German regime implemented a radical form of eugenics . In 1933, Nazi Germany enacted the Hereditary Health Law . This law resulted in the forcible sterilization of about 400,000 people diagnosed with certain supposedly hereditary disabilities.

In 1939, the Nazi German regime began to murder children born with certain disabilities. Soon after, authorities began to kill adults with disabilities living in institutions and care facilities. German doctors and nurses carried out these murders as part of the Euthanasia Program (codenamed Aktion T-4). Authorities killed tens of thousands of people with disabilities in gas chambers at euthanasia program killing centers . They sometimes killed people by giving them lethal doses of medication or starving them. German units also shot people with disabilities in occupied eastern Europe. In total, some 250,000-300,000 people with disabilities were killed.

Poles

Nazi Germany persecuted and murdered Poles during World War II. They did so because they saw Poland and certain Polish people as obstacles to their expansionist goals. They viewed Polish people as "subhumans" ( Untermenschen ), suited only to be Germans' slaves.

Beginning in 1939, the Nazis conquered Polish territory. They planned to turn much of it into "living space" ( Lebensraum ) for the German people. German authorities carried out ethnic cleansing in occupied Poland. They tried to Germanize Polish people, places, and territory. German authorities carried out special murder operations against Polish educated elites. They imprisoned and shot tens of thousands of people in these operations. Among the victims were Polish school teachers, university professors, clergy, politicians, and others.

German authorities also forcibly displaced Poles from their homes. They stole their land and property. They kidnapped tens of thousands of Polish children for Germanization. German authorities exploited Poles for forced labor. And they responded harshly to any signs of Polish opposition. For example, they leveled entire Polish villages as retaliation for alleged partisan activities. They also arrested and imprisoned tens of thousands of Poles in concentration camps as political prisoners. In total, about 1.8 million Poles were murdered by the Germans during World War II.

Political Opponents and Dissenters in Germany

Nazi Germany persecuted German political opponents and dissenters who expressed opposition to the Nazi Party or the Nazi regime. Immediately after coming to power, the Nazis carried out an assault on German democracy. They rapidly arrested and abused tens of thousands of leaders from opposing political parties. In particular, they targeted Communists and Social Democrats. The Nazis transformed Germany from a democracy with free speech and a free press into a dictatorship that banned dissent in all forms. Many Germans supported this transformation and embraced the regime. But a small minority of Germans chose to express opposition for ethical, religious , political, or other reasons.

Germans who openly spoke out against the Nazis were punished. Many were imprisoned in concentration camps as political prisoners , where they had to wear red badges on their camp uniforms. The regime broadly defined what constituted treason or treasonous activities. For example, telling a joke about Adolf Hitler could be grounds for arrest and even execution. During World War II, Germans who were caught engaging in active resistance were often executed. Tens of thousands of German political opponents and dissenters were killed.

Roma and Other People Derogatorily Labeled as "Gypsies"

Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators persecuted and murdered Romani people and other people derogatorily labeled as "Gypsies." They did this because the Nazis espoused antigypsyism. Antigypsyism, also called anti-Roma sentiment, is the hatred of or prejudice against Romani people and other people derogatorily labeled as "Gypsies." The Nazis viewed Roma as racially inferior and socially delinquent.

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany persecuted Romani people using racial laws and other means. In 1935, German authorities began to establish Zigeunerlager ("Gypsy camps") where they interned Romani families. They forcibly sterilized Romani people, legally and extralegally.

Nazi policy towards Romani people radicalized after World War II began. During the war, the Nazis and their allies and collaborators committed a genocide of European Roma . They murdered Romani people in killing centers, in mass shooting operations, and through brutal treatment in ghettos and camps. The "Gypsy Camp" ( Zigeunerlager ) at Auschwitz was particularly infamous. At Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Nazi doctors subjected Romani prisoners to cruel medical experiments . In total, at least 250,000-but possibly as many as 500,000-Romani people were killed.

Social Outsiders in Germany

The Nazi regime persecuted certain Germans whom they considered to be social outsiders. They targeted people who were marginalized and impoverished, as well as people with certain types of criminal records. The Nazi German regime referred to these Germans using the derogatory labels "asocials" (" Asozialen ") and "professional criminals" (" Berufsverbrecher "). People labeled as "asocials" often lacked permanent addresses or stable jobs. Many had been arrested multiple times for begging, vagrancy, or prostitution. The Nazis viewed them as biologically inferior and/or socially deviant. People labeled as "professional criminals" usually had criminal records for property crimes and many were recidivists. But some had never been charged with a crime.

The Nazi German regime cruelly mistreated people it considered social outsiders. Those viewed as social outsiders were often forcibly sterilized. They were also wrongfully and indefinitely imprisoned in concentration camps. In the camps, people imprisoned as "asocials" had to wear black badges. Those who were imprisoned as "professional criminals" had to wear green badges. Tens of thousands of people labeled as "asocials" or "professional criminals" died as a result of Nazi policies.

Soviet Prisoners of War

During World War II, Nazi Germany committed the systematic mistreatment and mass murder of Soviet Prisoners of War (POWs). The Nazis treated Soviet POWs with a level of extreme cruelty that differed from their treatment of British, French, or American POWs. They did so because the Nazis viewed the Communist Soviet Union (USSR) as an existential enemy that needed to be annihilated. They viewed many of the peoples who lived in the Soviet Union as racially and culturally subhuman .

Nazi Germany in June 1941. The German military quickly captured millions of Soviet soldiers. Sometimes the army conducted summary executions of POWs. The SS and police routinely selected and killed tens of thousands of Soviet POWs just because they were Jews, invaded the Soviet Union political commissars, or members of the Communist Party. A significant number of Soviet POWs from Central Asia were also executed by the Nazis because of their race or because they were circumcised and mistaken for Jews. Other Soviet POWs were subjected to long marches, systematic starvation, no medical care, little or no shelter, and forced labor. Many were held under exceptionally brutal conditions in POW camps and in concentration camps. The German treatment of Soviet POWs was particularly cruel in 1941 and early 1942. By war's end, about 3.3 million Soviet prisoners (about 58 percent) died in German captivity. Most had been killed in the first eight months of the German-Soviet war.

Last Edited: Apr 4, 2024

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Groups of People did the Nazis Target?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jews were the primary targets for mass murder by the Nazis and their collaborators. Nazi policies also led to the brutalization and persecution of millions of others.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Boy Scouts' motto was "Be Prepared." But nothing could prepare Max Ebel, a German teenager, for what happened after Hitler banned the Boy Scouts. As other boys cheered, the 17-year-old was surrounded by a gang of Nazi Youth-one of whom had a knife. Ebel's refusal to leave scouting behind had just turned into a fight for his life.

From Boy Scouts to Hitler Youth

It was 1937, and the Boy Scouts were one of many youth organizations on the Nazis' verboten list. Now, every non-Jewish boy in Germany was required to be part of the Hitler Youth, the Nazis' youth arm, instead. Ebel, a pacifist who distrusted the Nazis, refused-and paid the price.

The Boy Scout was harassed and then attacked by a group of Nazi Youth. In an attempt to force him to join, one of the members stabbed him in the hand. Ebel fought back, grabbed the knife, and cut the other boy's face. Later, realizing his life was in danger, he escaped Germany and eventually became a U.S. citizen.

Ebel was just one of millions of young Germans whose lives were changed by the Hitler Youth-a group designed to indoctrinate kids into Hitler's ideology, then send them off to war.

By the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, hundreds of thousands of kids were members of youth organizations like the Boy Scouts, which was invented in England in 1909 and quickly spread to Germany. But there was also another powerful youth movement afoot-one invented by the Nazis. Since 1922, the National Socialists had had a youth arm designed to train and recruit members for its paramilitary. As the Nazis became more powerful, their youth arm grew.

The Nazis' Youth Movement Surges

In January 1933, there were 50,000 members of the Hitler Youth. By the end of the year, there were more than 2 million. And as the 1930s progressed, the Nazis waged war on the groups so popular among German youth. First, they banned children's groups associated with political movements like Communism. And in 1936, they banned all youth groups-including the Boy Scouts-and forced members to become part of the Hitler Youth instead. Jewish children were banned from participation.

Banning scouting sent a message-obey, or be punished. It had a practical effect, too: Since other scouting organizations were banned, the only way for kids to get scouting experience was to join the Hitler Youth. As Germany hurtled toward war, children who refused to join were alienated, then punished. By 1939, over 90 percent of German children were part of the Hitler Youth organization.

For the Nazis, the group had other benefits. Not only did it allow the Third Reich to indoctrinate children at their most impressionable, but it let the Nazis remove them from the influence of their parents, some of whom opposed the regime. The Nazi Party knew that families-private, cohesive groups not usually under political sway-were an obstacle to their goals. The Hitler Youth was a way to get Hitler's ideology into the family unit, and some members of the Hitler Youth even denounced their parents when they behaved in ways not approved of by the Reich.

Hitler's Youth Co-opted Boy Scouts Traditions

Though the Boy Scouts were banned, the Nazis co-opted many of its activities and traditions. Hitler Youth took part in typical scouting-type activities like camping trips, singing, crafts and hiking. They went to summer camps, wore uniforms, recited pledges and told stories over campfires.

But over time, the activities changed. Though girls' groups focused on things like rhythmic gymnastics and winter coat drives, the boys' groups became more like a mini military than a Boy Scout den. They imposed military-like order on members and trained young men in everything from weapons to survival. And all groups included hefty doses of propaganda that encouraged an almost religious devotion to the Führer.

Alfons Heck's experience was typical. As he told the Boston Globe in the 1980s, he couldn't wait to become a full-fledged Hitler Youth member and relished marching, singing and attending rallies. "I belonged to Adolf Hitler, body and soul," he recalled. It took him years to step away from that indoctrination after the end of World War II.

Some boys refused to join the Hitler Youth and took their youth groups underground. One such group, the Edelweiss Pirates, even attacked Hitler Youth members and worked to sabotage their activities. About 5,000 Edelweiss Pirates are thought to have defied the Nazis, scribbled anti-war graffiti on walls, and participated in various types of violent and nonviolent resistance. In 1944, six were hanged in Cologne without a trial due to their suspected involvement in the black market. Scouts in occupied countries resisted, too: In France, for example, Boy Scouts rescued 40 Jewish children from deportation, and in Auschwitz, a group of Polish boy scouts resisted and even escaped the Nazis.

The Hitler Youth Become Soldiers

As the war ground on, it became clear that the Hitler Youth's real goal was to create more soldiers for the Reich. Children who had been saturated in Nazi ideology for years made obedient, fanatical soldiers. Eventually, those soldiers became younger and younger. Starting in 1943, all boys 17 and older were forced to serve in the military.

In 1945, the desperate Nazi leadership began pulling younger boys out of school and sending them to the front. These inexperienced children were essentially conscripted for suicide missions-and if they balked, they were executed. Those who survived faced harsh treatment at the hands of the Allies who captured them.

After the war, the Hitler Youth was disbanded. Today, the group is considered one of the most chilling facets of the Nazi regime-proof that a totalitarian state can use children to feed its armies and further its hateful ideologies.

HISTORY Vault: Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil

Fact Check

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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Hitler Youth Turned a Generation of Kids Into Nazis | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hitler's war against Boy Scouts fueled the Third Reich's ideology-and its military might.

# data[].attributes.body
History Story

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Haviva Reik looked out over the fields of Slovakia. For the first time in years she was home-or, rather, above home, flying in an English warplane. It was summer 1944. For years, Slovakia had been a Nazi puppet. And now it was time for Reik, a Jew, to jump into enemy territory at the height of the Holocaust.

Just days before, Reik had been told that she couldn't participate in one of World War II's most daring missions, a plot in which Jewish parachutists from Palestine would jump into Nazi-occupied countries, infiltrate them, and organize Jewish resistance against the Nazis. But now, after refusing to step down from her task, she had been grudgingly accepted into the mostly-male mission. She was finally ready. She stood at the door of the aircraft and jumped.

Reik was one of over 240 men and women who volunteered for what seemed to be a suicidal mission. Since 1942, when the Nazis exchanged 282 Jewish prisoners for Germans, Jews in Palestine had known what was at stake for their fellow Jews in Europe. As word of the Nazis' treatment of European Jews spread throughout Palestine, a group of paramilitary fighters from the Haganah, the secret Jewish army in British-occupied Palestine, hatched an ambitious plan to help Jews not through prisoner exchanges or outside pressure, but from the inside.

It wouldn't be easy. First, they pressured Great Britain to help them get into Europe. Britain refused the plan-it was too ambitious, and they were focused on tactical objectives that didn't include saving Jews. Finally, the Haganah managed to convince the British to help them in exchange for assistance locating and helping downed Allies in enemy territory. Great Britain promised Jewish fighters space on British warplanes in exchange for a pledge that military missions would take precedence over saving Jews.

The Haganah now had the ability to get Jews into Europe. Next it needed fighters who were tough enough to head into hostile territory. At the time, the Nazis were deep into the Final Solution, their plan to annihilate all Jews. Much of Europe was in ruins and it would take daring and smarts to infiltrate occupied countries, then help Jews.

Of the 240 people who volunteered for the mission, only 110 were trained. Finally the group was narrowed down to 32. These men and women were mostly from Europe and spoke languages like Romanian and Hungarian fluently. Some were part of the Haganah's elite fighting force, the Palmach, others were associated with the British army, and others were active in the Zionist youth movement fighting to make Palestine a Jewish state. They gathered in Cairo to train as paratroopers. When they weren't shooting or practicing jumping from planes, the fighters were given code names, missions and cover stories.

Training wasn't easy. Some fighters, like Surika Braverman, lost their nerve when they got in the air and couldn't jump. Others, like Yoel Palvi, were shaken by the news from Europe. When he found out that his native Hungary had just been occupied by the Nazis, he despaired. "Our fears have come true," he wrote. "We're too late! Now there will be no one to rouse the Jews to resistance. There will be no one to instill in every Jew the knowledge [that they must] drop everything and flee for their lives at all cost."

Between 1943 and 1945, 32 men and women parachuted into Europe, and five others, including Braverman, snuck into Europe via other countries. They headed to Yugoslavia, Romania, Austria, France, Bulgaria and Hungary with missions to join and create resistance groups, link Allied sympathizers with resources in England, establish partisan camps, and help Jews resist the Nazis.

One group of parachutists helped organize the Slovak Uprising; others served alongside British agents in Yugoslavia, made contact with resistance groups throughout Europe, and helped Allied prisoners of war in Romania.

For seven of the parachutists, the missions were fatal. Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian woman who was approached to serve in the mission, was captured and tortured. Her Hungarian mother was dragged to jail by the Hungarian authorities, too. After a show trial, Szenes refused to beg for her life. She was executed by a firing squad. Her mother survived and then championed her daughter's legacy, including her poems and plays.

As for Reik, who fought for inclusion in the mission to Slovakia, she was captured in the Slovakia mountains after helping found a Jewish soup kitchen and assisting Allied soldiers stranded in Slovakia. She had refused to leave behind the very old and very young members of the group when they fled a group of Ukrainian collaborators. Reik and the Jews she had helped were murdered in a forest and dumped into a mass grave.

Those who survived became legends in occupied Europe, where their presence gave hope to displaced and hunted Jews. "Every Jewish community heard of the parachutists," writes Marie Syrkin for Commentary. "Of course all kinds of fairy-tales sprang up around these men and women. Their numbers grew in the popular mind; the nature of their deeds assumed a more spectacular character. This idealization was inevitable. The combination of desperate need and poetic answer was bound to create the myth."

The surviving parachutists worked their missions until the end of the war; in fact, the last group of parachutists was sent down the day before the war ended in Europe. "These missions were meant to be just the beginning for Jewish groups infiltrating Nazi-occupied Europe," notes Yad Vashem. Even though their work had been cut short, some parachutists stayed behind in Europe to help POWs and displaced people find housing. Most returned to Palestine and lived out the remainder of their lives in modern-day Israel, where they are revered as heroes today.

"Hero" is a label that many of the parachutists who saw their brave work as part of their duty to other European Jews, struggled with. Their mission may have been treacherous, but the hope they brought to the Holocaust-era Jews made the danger worth it. "We didn't think they would make us heroes," Braverman later told the Jerusalem Post 's Seth J. Frantzman. "We wanted to go to the Jews of Europe and say that we had come to help."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
These Jewish Resistance Volunteers Parachuted into Nazi-Occupied Europe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Haviva Reik looked out over the fields of Slovakia. For the first time in years she was home-or, rather, above home, flying in an English warplane. It was summer 1944. For years, Slovakia had been a Nazi puppet. And now it was time for Reik, a Jew, to jump into enemy territory at the height of the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It was a frigid day in occupied Poland, and for all Shmuel Beller knew, it could be his last. As Russian forces advanced toward Auschwitz, Beller and other prisoners had been told by their captors that they had to leave the death camp. So he ran into one of the storage facilities and rifled through a pile of clothing-the belongings of some of the 6,000 Jews gassed each day at the camp. Finally, he found what he was looking for: a pair of leather shoes.

Beller was one of 60,000 prisoners who were forced on what is now known as the death march of Auschwitz-part of the Nazis' mad scramble to escape Allied forces in January 1945. As Russian and American forces closed in, the Nazis attempted to dismantle the camps and hide their crimes. But nothing could obliterate the dark truth of the death camp where they'd murdered 1.1 million people.

Over the weeks that ensued, most of the remaining inmates of Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazis' more than 42,000 camps and incarceration facilities, were marched to other camps near and far, walking tens and sometimes even hundreds of miles. Along the way, Beller saw Nazi guards murder prisoners who tried to escape and shoot those who lagged-including women and children so exhausted from starvation and the brutal conditions they could no longer go on. As he marched on, his feet protected by the shoes he'd grabbed before leaving Auschwitz, he saw ordinary Germans standing along the road, watching the prisoners go by.

"We walked through fields of ice, snow and blizzards," Beller later recalled as part of the Shoah Foundation oral history program devoted to preserving testimony of Holocaust victims. "Unbelievable."

The last days of Auschwitz, which was opened by the Nazis in Oswiecim, Poland, in 1940, were marked by chaos, cowardice and an attempt to destroy what was once one of Nazi Germany's most efficient tools in the quest to eradicate European Jews. By late 1944, as the Allied forces of World War II wrested much of occupied Europe out of Nazi hands, it had become clear that the Nazi military-once a mighty force that had invaded and occupied most of Europe after Hitler's rise to power in 1933-was headed toward a spectacular defeat.

As the government and military began to collapse within Germany, Nazi officials in both Germany and occupied Poland began to think about their endgame. In November 1944, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and one of the architects of the Holocaust, issued an abrupt order to destroy the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Auschwitz's three main camps. Historians disagree on why he issued the command, which was in direct opposition to a previous order by Adolf Hitler to destroy the remaining Jews in Europe.

Officials at the camp obeyed Himmler. In late 1944, they dismantled part of the gas chambers, forcing, eyewitnesses would later recall, the Sonderkommando-a group of mostly Jewish prisoners who were made to run the gas chambers-to dismantle the structures piece by piece. Then, as the Russians closed in that January, the remaining buildings were destroyed, blown up completely using dynamite. However, the ruins remained.

Then, the marches began. The remaining prisoners deemed healthy enough to march were told to assemble into columns and leave Auschwitz. About 7,000 were left behind as 60,000 marched. Nazi guards led them through the forests and fields of southern Poland on their way to Germany. The Germans called the march an "evacuation"; prisoners immediately dubbed it the "death march."

The trek was brutal. Those who couldn't keep up were shot or beaten by frustrated guards, and the cold, starvation and disease exacted a terrible toll on prisoners. "Anyone who dared even to bend over-who stopped even for a moment-was shot," recalled Iba Mann, who was 19 at the time.

The Nazis' goal wasn't only to destroy evidence of the camp: They had plans to force the prisoners to serve as slave laborers for the Reich. Some prisoners were stuffed into train cars to complete their journey to Germany; others escaped into the sub-zero temperatures. Of those forced to walk, some died along the way, though it remains unclear how many were killed over the course of the marches.

The only people left behind in the camp were people deemed unfit for labor-those who were too ill or weak. An SS order came down to murder any prisoners who were left, and the SS killed about 700 prisoners in response. However, order at the camp was breaking down. SS officers began escaping themselves, and the strict hierarchy that had kept prisoners in line disappeared. Those officers who stayed burned documents in a last-ditch attempt to hide their crimes. Meanwhile, the prisoners who remained huddled in hospital beds and bunks and waited. A few others escaped as the remaining guards fled.

Then, on January 27, 1945, the Red Army reached the camp. Inside, they found prisoners covered in excrement and starving to death, children who had been used for medical experiments, and other shocking evidence of the Nazis' crimes. At Birkenau, the guards had failed to destroy some of the storerooms where prisoners' stolen belongings were stored before being transported back to the Reich. Among the remaining items were 7.7 tons of human hair, 370,000 men's suits and 837,000 women's coats and dresses.

Only 7,000 prisoners remained at the camp upon liberation, and the Red Army immediately began to help feed and care for them. Half of the surviving prisoners died of starvation, disease and exhaustion shortly after liberation; the others slowly recovered and began their lives as displaced persons.

Though the Russians had just come across the Holocaust's deadliest camp, the liberation of Auschwitz didn't even make front page news. A communiqué published in the New York Times on January 28, 1945, doesn't even mention the camp, just the city; on February 3, the paper devoted two paragraphs to the "murder factory" at Oswiecim but gave few details. As World War II raced to its end, few people could even grasp the horror that was found in the camps.

Only after the true scope of the Holocaust's horrors were known did the world begin to react to what had happened at Auschwitz. Though the Nazis fled and tried to cover up their deeds, making it impossible to ever know the complete history of their crimes, the voices of the victims and survivors live on through their testimony.

All in all, 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust. Today, a museum and memorial at Auschwitz preserves the remnants of the Nazis' crimes-a reminder of the many who were killed and a testament to those who survived.

Fact Check

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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Nazis Tried to Cover Up Their Crimes at Auschwitz | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the winter of 1945, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of the Holocaust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, aimed to eliminate Europe’s Jews and other perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. Learn more.

# data[].attributes.headline
Another article with video about Nazi propaganda.

# data[].attributes.subject
Another article with video about Nazi propaganda.

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

Communicating the Nazi Message

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

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

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

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

The Role of Film

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

The Role of Newspapers

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

Covering up Atrocities and Mass Murder

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

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

Mobilizing the Population

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nazi propaganda had a key role in the persecution of Jews. Learn more about how Hitler and the Nazi Party used propaganda to facilitate war and genocide.

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article about the end of the war as Allied troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps.

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article about the end of the war as Allied troops liberated the Nazi concentration camps.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The first major Nazi camp to be liberated was Majdanek, located in Lublin, Poland. It was liberated in the summer of 1944 as Soviet forces advanced westward. The previous spring, the SS had evacuated most of the Majdanek prisoners and camp personnel. The evacuated prisoners were sent to concentration camps further west, such as Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen. As the Soviet troops approached Majdanek at the end of July, the remaining camp personnel hastily abandoned the Majdanek concentration camp without fully dismantling it.

Soviet troops first arrived at Majdanek during the night of July 22-23 and captured Lublin on July 24. Majdanek was captured virtually intact. At Majdanek, the Soviet troops encountered a number of prisoners who had not been evacuated in the spring, mostly Soviet prisoners of war. They also encountered substantial evidence of the mass murder committed at Majdanek by Nazi Germans. Soviet officials invited journalists to inspect the camp and evidence of the horrors that had occurred there.

Six months later, on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi killing center and concentration camp complex. In the weeks preceding the arrival of Soviet units, Auschwitz camp personnel had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward in what would become known as " death marches." When they entered the camp, Soviet soldiers found over six thousand emaciated prisoners alive. These prisoners greeted the soldiers as their liberators.

As at Majdanek, there was abundant evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses in the camp. But in those warehouses that remained, Soviet soldiers found personal belongings of the victims. Among these personal items were hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's garments, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

In the following months, Soviet units liberated additional camps in the Baltic states and Poland. Shortly before Germany's surrender in May 1945, Soviet forces liberated the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps.

Other Camps

Shortly after the Soviet capture of Majdanek in July 1944, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps in the German-occupied east be forcibly evacuated into the interior of the Reich. Thus, as Allied troops launched offensives within Germany, they encountered tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Most of these prisoners were suffering from starvation and disease.

US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945. Earlier that day before the arrival of US troops, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards. When American forces arrived, they encountered more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. That April, US troops also liberated Dachau, Dora-Mittelbau, and Flossenbürg. They liberated Mauthausen in early May.

British forces liberated concentration camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. They entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April 1945. Some 60,000 prisoners, most in critical condition because of a typhus epidemic, were found alive. More than 13,000 of them died from the effects of malnutrition or disease within a few weeks of liberation.

Impact of Liberation

Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery.

Last Edited: Feb 12, 2021

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first major Nazi camp to be liberated was Majdanek, located in Lublin, Poland. It was liberated in the summer of 1944 as Soviet forces advanced westward. The previous spring, the SS had evacuated most of the Majdanek prisoners and camp personnel. The evacuated prisoners were sent to concentration camps further west, such as Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Final Solution: Read this article about the Nazi's end plan.

# data[].attributes.subject
The Final Solution: Read this article about the Nazi's end plan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi Party and German government leaders gathered for an important meeting. They met in a wealthy section of Berlin at a villa by a lake known as Wannsee. Reinhard Heydrich, who was SS chief Heinrich Himmler's head deputy, held the meeting for the purpose of discussing the "final solution to the Jewish question in Europe" with key non-SS government leaders, including the secretaries of the Foreign Ministry and Justice, whose cooperation was needed.

The "Final Solution" was the Nazis' code name for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction, or genocide, of all European Jews. The Nazis used the vague term "Final Solution" to hide their policy of mass murder from the rest of the world. In fact, the men at Wannsee talked about methods of killing, about liquidation, about "extermination."

The Wannsee Conference, as it became known to history, did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "Final Solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated killing centers ("extermination" camps) in occupied Poland. Not one of the men present at Wannsee objected to the announced policy. Never before had a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people.

Key Dates

June 22, 1941
Killings accompany German invasion of the Soviet Union
German special duty units, called mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go they shoot all Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. By the spring of 1943, the mobile killing squads will have killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political commissars.

September 3, 1941
Experimental gassings begin at Auschwitz
Experimental gassings are carried out at the gas chamber in Auschwitz I, the main camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland. 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill or weak prisoners are forced into an experimental gas chamber. The Germans test the killing potential of Zyklon B gas. Zyklon B was the commercial name for crystalline hydrogen cyanide gas, normally used as an insecticide. The "success" of these experiments leads to the adoption of Zyklon B as the killing agent for the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Mass killings begin there in January 1942.

December 8, 1941
Chelmno killing center begins operation
Chelmno is located about 30 miles northwest of Lodz. It is the first Nazi camp to use poison gas for mass killings. Victims deported to the camp are forced into gas vans. A tube directs the van's exhaust into the hermetically sealed compartment, which holds between 50 and 70 people. Once the carbon monoxide kills all those locked inside, the van is driven to mass graves and emptied. Three gas vans operate at Chelmno, and at least 172,000 people will be killed there by mid-July 1944.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi Party and German government leaders gathered for an important meeting. They met in a wealthy section of Berlin at a villa by a lake known as Wannsee.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Boycott of Jewish Businesses
The "Jewish boycott" (" Judenboykott") was the first coordinated action undertaken by the Nazi regime against Germany's Jews. It took place on Saturday, April 1, 1933.

That day, Germans were not supposed to shop at stores and businesses that the Nazis identified as Jewish. They were also not supposed to visit the offices of Jewish doctors and lawyers.

Why did the Nazis call for the boycott?

According to Nazi spokesmen, the boycott was an act of revenge against two groups:

German Jews

foreigners who criticized the Nazi regime, including US and British journalists.

This, however, was probably not the main reason. There were other motivations based on Nazi antisemitic beliefs.

First, the Nazis believed and spread conspiracy theories that claimed Jews had too much influence on the economy. Second, they unfairly blamed Jews for the economic devastation caused by the Great Depression. Finally, the Nazis' eventual goal was to remove what they saw as Jewish influence from the German economy. The boycott was supposed to be a first step towards achieving this.

How was the boycott carried out?

The April 1 boycott took place throughout Nazi Germany, in big cities and small towns. It was scheduled to begin at 10 am and last until 8 pm.

In preparation for the boycott, the Nazis had created lists of businesses that they considered to be Jewish. They stationed uniformed Nazis (called Stormtroopers or SA men) and Hitler Youth members outside of these shops. The uniformed young men intimidated and threatened potential shoppers.

Antisemitic boycott propaganda appeared in business and shopping districts throughout Germany. It took various forms:

Nazis painted graffiti on store display windows. This graffiti included the Star of David and the word "Jude" (German for "Jew").

Boycotters carried and hung signs all over cities and towns. A common slogan on such signs was "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!"

Some non-Jewish business owners posted signs identifying their businesses as "German-Christian," meaning not Jewish.

Nazis drove and marched through the streets chanting anti-Jewish slogans and singing Nazi songs.

Officially, the boycott was not supposed to be violent. This did not stop some Nazis from beating up and, in a few cases, even killing Jews.

How did Germany's Jews react to the boycott?

For Germany's Jews, the boycott was a devastating and noteworthy moment in the early months of the Nazi regime. It angered many Jews, but also frightened others. This was the first time that the new Nazi government officially and publically targeted Germany's Jewish population as a group and systematically treated Jews as different from other Germans.

Jewish store owners reacted in various ways to the boycott. Many chose to close their shops for the day. They wanted to avoid violence and destruction of their property. Other Jewish store owners defiantly kept their shops open. In a few cases, Jews confronted the Nazi boycotters.

How did non-Jewish Germans react to the boycott?

Non-Jewish Germans also reacted in a variety of ways to the boycott. Some participated in the vandalism and harassment. Some enjoyed the spectacle, but did not directly join in. Others ignored the boycott and went on with their daily lives. Some chose to stay home, because they were scared of confrontation and even violence.

A notable number of Germans deliberately shopped at Jewish-owned businesses. They did so to support their Jewish neighbors, express their opposition to the regime, or show their dislike for the public disorder.

What happened to Jewish-owned businesses after the boycott?

The April 1, 1933, boycott was not the Nazi regime's last attack on Jewish-owned businesses. But, it was the last nationwide boycott.

Instead, the Nazi regime found other ways to put pressure on Jewish business owners. Local and municipal governments staged their own boycotts. Uniformed Nazis continued to harass Jewish business owners. At the national level, an increasing number of laws and regulations targeted Jewish-owned shops. The vast majority of these stores were forced out of business in the 1930s causing many Jewish families to lose their livelihoods. By the end of 1938, the Nazi regime had almost completely destroyed Jewish economic life in Germany.

Key Dates

Ruining Jewish businesses
From 1933-1938, the Nazi regime unofficially pressures Jewish business owners to close or sell their businesses. The Nazis use propaganda and threats to encourage Germans to shop at stores owned by non-Jews. Jews are increasingly isolated from the rest of German society. Jewish-owned shops lose previously loyal customers. Longstanding business relationships collapse. Some Jews sell their businesses for a greatly reduced value. Other businesses simply fail. Many non-Jewish businesses and individuals benefit from this process.

November 9-10, 1938
Vandalism during the Night of Broken Glass
On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinates a wave of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany. Organized groups of Nazis wreak havoc on Jewish life. They vandalize thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, breaking the glass in storefronts. This becomes known as Kristallnacht or the "Night of Broken Glass." It is named for the shattered glass from store windows that litter the streets after the violence. This is a direct attack on remaining Jewish-owned businesses.

November 12, 1938
Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from German Economic Life
In the aftermath of the Night of Broken Glass ( Kristallnacht), the Nazi regime increases its efforts to destroy Jewish-owned business. They do so using laws and regulations. On November 12, the regime issues a decree excluding Jews from economic life. Among other things, Jews are forbidden to operate retail stores or carry on a trade. The law also forbids Jews from selling goods or providing services at any kind of establishment.

The decree requires any remaining Jewish-owned businesses to either close or undergo "Aryanization." In cases of "Aryanization," Jewish business owners are forced to sell or even hand over their businesses to non-Jewish Germans.

Last Edited: Mar 25, 2021

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Boycott of Jewish Businesses The "Jewish boycott" (" Judenboykott") was the first coordinated action undertaken by the Nazi regime against Germany's Jews. It took place on Saturday, April 1, 1933. That day, Germans were not supposed to shop at stores and businesses that the Nazis identified as Jewish.

# data[].attributes.headline
Article: How the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow. Read about the connection between racist laws passed in Germany leading up to the Holocaust and segregation and racism in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.subject
Article: How the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow. Read about the connection between racist laws passed in Germany leading up to the Holocaust and segregation and racism in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1935, Nazi Germany passed two radically discriminatory pieces of legislation inspired by American laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together, these were known as the Nuremberg Laws, and they laid the legal groundwork for the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren't just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler's American Model, that country was the United States.

"America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world," says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. "Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law."

In particular, Nazis admired the Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against Black Americans and segregated them from white Americans, and they debated whether to introduce similar segregation in Germany.

Yet they ultimately decided that it wouldn't go far enough.

"One of the most striking Nazi views was that Jim Crow was a suitable racist program in the United States because American Blacks were already oppressed and poor," he says. "But then in Germany, by contrast, where the Jews (as the Nazis imagined it) were rich and powerful, it was necessary to take more severe measures."

Because of this, Nazis were more interested in how the U.S. had designated Native Americans, Filipinos and other groups as non-citizens even though they lived in the U.S. or its territories. These models influenced the citizenship portion of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship and classified them as "nationals."

But a component of the Jim Crow era that Nazis did think they could translate into Germany were anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages in 30 of 48 states.

"America had, by a wide margin, the harshest law of this kind," Whitman says. "In particular, some of the state laws threatened severe criminal punishment for interracial marriage. That was something radical Nazis were very eager to do in Germany as well."

The idea of banning Jewish and Aryan marriages presented the Nazis with a dilemma: How would they tell who was Jewish and who was not? After all, race and ethnic categories are socially constructed, and interracial relationships produce offspring who don't fall neatly into one box.

Again, the Nazis looked to America.

"Connected with these anti-miscegenation laws was a great deal of American jurisprudence on how to classify who belonged to which race," he says.

Controversial "one-drop" rules stipulated that anyone with any Black ancestry was legally Black and could not marry a white person. Laws also defined what made a person Asian or Native American, in order to prevent these groups from marrying whites (notably, Virginia had a "Pocahontas Exception" for prominent white families who claimed to be descended from Pocahontas).

The Nuremberg Laws, too, came up with a system of determining who belonged to what group, allowing the Nazis to criminalize marriage and sex between Jewish and Aryan people. Rather than adopting a "one-drop rule," the Nazis decreed that a Jewish person was anyone who had three or more Jewish grandparents.

Which means, as Whitman notes, "that American racial classification law was much harsher than anything the Nazis themselves were willing to introduce in Germany."

It should come as no surprise then, that the Nazis weren't uniformly condemned in the U.S. before the country entered the war. In the early 1930s, American eugenicists welcomed Nazi ideas about racial purity and republished their propaganda. American aviator Charles Lindbergh accepted a swastika medal from the Nazi Party in 1938.

Once the United States entered the war, it took a decidedly anti-Nazi stance. But Black American troops noticed the similarities between the two countries, and confronted them head-on with a "Double V Campaign." Its goal? Victory abroad against the Axis powers-and victory at home against Jim Crow.

Fact Check

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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.

# data[].attributes.headline
Article: How the Nazi's were inspired by Jim Crow. Read about the connection between racist laws passed in Germany leading up to the Holocaust and segregation and racism in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.subject
Article: How the Nazi's were inspired by Jim Crow. Read about the connection between racist laws passed in Germany leading up to the Holocaust and segregation and racism in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1935, Nazi Germany passed two radically discriminatory pieces of legislation inspired by American laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together, these were known as the Nuremberg Laws, and they laid the legal groundwork for the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren't just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler's American Model, that country was the United States.

"America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world," says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. "Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law."

In particular, Nazis admired the Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against Black Americans and segregated them from white Americans, and they debated whether to introduce similar segregation in Germany.

Yet they ultimately decided that it wouldn't go far enough.

"One of the most striking Nazi views was that Jim Crow was a suitable racist program in the United States because American Blacks were already oppressed and poor," he says. "But then in Germany, by contrast, where the Jews (as the Nazis imagined it) were rich and powerful, it was necessary to take more severe measures."

Because of this, Nazis were more interested in how the U.S. had designated Native Americans, Filipinos and other groups as non-citizens even though they lived in the U.S. or its territories. These models influenced the citizenship portion of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of their citizenship and classified them as "nationals."

But a component of the Jim Crow era that Nazis did think they could translate into Germany were anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages in 30 of 48 states.

"America had, by a wide margin, the harshest law of this kind," Whitman says. "In particular, some of the state laws threatened severe criminal punishment for interracial marriage. That was something radical Nazis were very eager to do in Germany as well."

The idea of banning Jewish and Aryan marriages presented the Nazis with a dilemma: How would they tell who was Jewish and who was not? After all, race and ethnic categories are socially constructed, and interracial relationships produce offspring who don't fall neatly into one box.

Again, the Nazis looked to America.

"Connected with these anti-miscegenation laws was a great deal of American jurisprudence on how to classify who belonged to which race," he says.

Controversial "one-drop" rules stipulated that anyone with any Black ancestry was legally Black and could not marry a white person. Laws also defined what made a person Asian or Native American, in order to prevent these groups from marrying whites (notably, Virginia had a "Pocahontas Exception" for prominent white families who claimed to be descended from Pocahontas).

The Nuremberg Laws, too, came up with a system of determining who belonged to what group, allowing the Nazis to criminalize marriage and sex between Jewish and Aryan people. Rather than adopting a "one-drop rule," the Nazis decreed that a Jewish person was anyone who had three or more Jewish grandparents.

Which means, as Whitman notes, "that American racial classification law was much harsher than anything the Nazis themselves were willing to introduce in Germany."

It should come as no surprise then, that the Nazis weren't uniformly condemned in the U.S. before the country entered the war. In the early 1930s, American eugenicists welcomed Nazi ideas about racial purity and republished their propaganda. American aviator Charles Lindbergh accepted a swastika medal from the Nazi Party in 1938.

Once the United States entered the war, it took a decidedly anti-Nazi stance. But Black American troops noticed the similarities between the two countries, and confronted them head-on with a "Double V Campaign." Its goal? Victory abroad against the Axis powers-and victory at home against Jim Crow.

Fact Check

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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Warsaw ghetto was the largest Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Europe. Established by the Germans in October 1940, and sealed that November, the ghetto housed approximately 400,000 Jews.

The "Great Action"

From July 22 until September 12, 1942, German SS and police units, assisted by auxiliaries, carried out mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. During what was described as the "Great Action," the Germans deported about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka. They killed approximately 35,000 Jews inside the ghetto during this operation. By early 1943, the surviving Jews in the Warsaw ghetto numbered approximately 70,000 to 80,000 individuals.

The Jewish Underground (ŻOB and ŻZW) in the Warsaw ghetto

The "Great Action" had been disguised as a "resettlement operation." However, by late summer 1942 it was clear to many ghetto inhabitants that deportations from the ghetto meant almost certain death.

In response to these deportations, several Jewish underground organizations banded together on July 28, 1942. They created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization ( Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa ; ŻOB). It is estimated that ŻOB had roughly 200 members at the time of its formation.

There was also a second force organized by the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement, especially its youth group, Betar. This second force was called the Jewish Military Union ( Żydowski Związek Wojskowy ; ŻZW).

Although initially there was tension between the ŻOB and the ŻZW, both groups worked together to oppose German attempts to destroy the ghetto. At the time of the uprising, the ŻOB had about 500 fighters in its ranks and the ŻZW had about 250.

During the summer of 1942, efforts to establish contact with the Polish military underground movement, called the Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ; AK), did not succeed. But in October, the ŻOB managed to establish contact with the AK. They obtained a small number of weapons, mostly pistols and explosives, from AK contacts.

The First Attempt at Resistance against the Germans

In January 1943, German SS and police units returned to the Warsaw ghetto to resume mass deportations. They planned to send thousands of the ghetto's remaining Jews to forced-labor camps in the Lublin District of the General Government.

A small group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point). At a prearranged signal, this group broke ranks and fought their German escorts. Most of the Jewish fighters died in the battle. However, the attack disoriented the Germans. As a result, the Jews who were arranged in columns at the Umschlagplatz had a chance to disperse.

Jewish resistance leaders also encouraged fellow ghetto inhabitants to defy deportation orders and hide from German authorities. Seizing only 5,000-6,500 ghetto residents, the Germans suspended further deportations on January 21.

Encouraged by the apparent success of the resistance, people in the ghetto began to construct subterranean bunkers and shelters. They were preparing for an uprising should the Germans attempt a final deportation of the remaining Jews from the ghetto.

April 19, 1943-May 16, 1943

On April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto began their final act of armed resistance against the Germans. Lasting twenty-seven days, this act of resistance came to be known as the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) had received advanced warning of a final deportation action planned by the Germans. In response, the ŻOB warned residents of the ghetto to retreat to their hiding places or bunkers.

German Preparations

Based on their experience earlier that year in January, German authorities had knowledge of the ghetto's defense organizations. On the eve of the action, they replaced the chief of the SS and Police in Warsaw, Obergruppenführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, with SS and Police Leader [ SS- und Polizeiführer ] Jürgen Stroop. Stroop had considerable experience in partisan warfare. He also had considerable forces at his disposal. These forces included around 2,000 soldiers and police, reinforced with artillery and tanks.

Jewish Resistance

Twenty-four year old ŻOB commander Mordecai Anielewicz commanded the Jewish insurgents. The ŻOB fighters were armed with only pistols, grenades (many of which were homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles. Nonetheless, they stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting. They forced German troops to retreat outside the ghetto wall. Stroop reported losing 12 men during the first assault on the ghetto. These men were either killed or wounded.

About 700 young Jewish fighters clashed with German forces, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat. These fighters were poorly equipped and lacked military training and experience. The ŻOB did have the advantage of waging a guerilla war. They would strike, and then retreat, to the safety of ghetto buildings, bunkers, and underground tunnels. The general ghetto population likewise thwarted German deportation efforts, refusing to assemble at collection points and burrowing in underground bunkers.

In the end, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground. They burned and demolished this part of Warsaw, block by block, in order to smoke out their prey.

The ghetto fighters and the civilian population who supported them held the Germans at bay for nearly a month. On May 8, 1943, German forces succeeded in seizing ŻOB headquarters at 18 Mila Street. Anielewicz and many of his staff commanders are thought to have committed suicide in order to avoid capture.

On May 16, Stroop announced in his daily report to Berlin that "The former Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more."

The entire sky of Warsaw was red. Completely red.
- Benjamin Meed (oral history)

To symbolize the German victory, Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street on May 16, 1943. The ghetto itself lay in ruins.

Casualties

The SS and police deported approximately 42,000 Warsaw ghetto survivors who were captured during the uprising. These people were sent to the forced-labor camps at Poniatowa and Trawniki, and to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. Most of them would be murdered at these camps in November 1943 in a two-day shooting operation known as Operation Harvest Festival ( Erntefest ).

At least 7,000 Jews died fighting or in hiding in the ghetto. Approximately 7,000 Jews were captured by the SS and police at the end of the fighting. These Jews were deported to the Treblinka killing center where they were murdered.

For months after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, individual Jews continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto. On occasion, they attacked German police officials on patrol. After the ghetto was liquidated, perhaps as many as 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw.

Legacy and Remembrance

The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest and, symbolically, most important Jewish uprising during World War II. It was also the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe. The Jewish resistance in Warsaw inspired uprisings in other ghettos such as in Bialystok.

Today, Days of Remembrance ceremonies to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust are linked to the dates of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Last Edited: Apr 17, 2023

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe.

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

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

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg

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

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

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

Subsequent Nuremberg Trials

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

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

Other Trials in the Allied Occupation Zones

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

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

Postwar Trials in Germany

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

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

Other Postwar Trials

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

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

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

The Eichmann Trial

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

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

The postwar prosecutions of Nazi crimes set important legal precedents.

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

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

Last Edited: Oct 26, 2020

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

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article about Life in the Ghettos

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article about Life in the Ghettos

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life in the Ghettos Life in the ghettos was usually unbearable. Overcrowding was common. One apartment might have several families living in it. Plumbing broke down, and human waste was thrown in the streets along with the garbage. Contagious diseases spread rapidly in such cramped, unsanitary housi…

# data[].attributes.headline
Read this article about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

# data[].attributes.subject
Read this article about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Warsaw ghetto was the largest Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Europe. Established by the Germans in October 1940, and sealed that November, the ghetto housed approximately 400,000 Jews.

The "Great Action"

From July 22 until September 12, 1942, German SS and police units, assisted by auxiliaries, carried out mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. During what was described as the "Great Action," the Germans deported about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka. They killed approximately 35,000 Jews inside the ghetto during this operation. By early 1943, the surviving Jews in the Warsaw ghetto numbered approximately 70,000 to 80,000 individuals.

The Jewish Underground (ŻOB and ŻZW) in the Warsaw ghetto

The "Great Action" had been disguised as a "resettlement operation." However, by late summer 1942 it was clear to many ghetto inhabitants that deportations from the ghetto meant almost certain death.

In response to these deportations, several Jewish underground organizations banded together on July 28, 1942. They created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization ( Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa ; ŻOB). It is estimated that ŻOB had roughly 200 members at the time of its formation.

There was also a second force organized by the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement, especially its youth group, Betar. This second force was called the Jewish Military Union ( Żydowski Związek Wojskowy ; ŻZW).

Although initially there was tension between the ŻOB and the ŻZW, both groups worked together to oppose German attempts to destroy the ghetto. At the time of the uprising, the ŻOB had about 500 fighters in its ranks and the ŻZW had about 250.

During the summer of 1942, efforts to establish contact with the Polish military underground movement, called the Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ; AK), did not succeed. But in October, the ŻOB managed to establish contact with the AK. They obtained a small number of weapons, mostly pistols and explosives, from AK contacts.

The First Attempt at Resistance against the Germans

In January 1943, German SS and police units returned to the Warsaw ghetto to resume mass deportations. They planned to send thousands of the ghetto's remaining Jews to forced-labor camps in the Lublin District of the General Government.

A small group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point). At a prearranged signal, this group broke ranks and fought their German escorts. Most of the Jewish fighters died in the battle. However, the attack disoriented the Germans. As a result, the Jews who were arranged in columns at the Umschlagplatz had a chance to disperse.

Jewish resistance leaders also encouraged fellow ghetto inhabitants to defy deportation orders and hide from German authorities. Seizing only 5,000-6,500 ghetto residents, the Germans suspended further deportations on January 21.

Encouraged by the apparent success of the resistance, people in the ghetto began to construct subterranean bunkers and shelters. They were preparing for an uprising should the Germans attempt a final deportation of the remaining Jews from the ghetto.

April 19, 1943-May 16, 1943

On April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday, the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto began their final act of armed resistance against the Germans. Lasting twenty-seven days, this act of resistance came to be known as the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) had received advanced warning of a final deportation action planned by the Germans. In response, the ŻOB warned residents of the ghetto to retreat to their hiding places or bunkers.

German Preparations

Based on their experience earlier that year in January, German authorities had knowledge of the ghetto's defense organizations. On the eve of the action, they replaced the chief of the SS and Police in Warsaw, Obergruppenführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, with SS and Police Leader [ SS- und Polizeiführer ] Jürgen Stroop. Stroop had considerable experience in partisan warfare. He also had considerable forces at his disposal. These forces included around 2,000 soldiers and police, reinforced with artillery and tanks.

Jewish Resistance

Twenty-four year old ŻOB commander Mordecai Anielewicz commanded the Jewish insurgents. The ŻOB fighters were armed with only pistols, grenades (many of which were homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles. Nonetheless, they stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting. They forced German troops to retreat outside the ghetto wall. Stroop reported losing 12 men during the first assault on the ghetto. These men were either killed or wounded.

About 700 young Jewish fighters clashed with German forces, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat. These fighters were poorly equipped and lacked military training and experience. The ŻOB did have the advantage of waging a guerilla war. They would strike, and then retreat, to the safety of ghetto buildings, bunkers, and underground tunnels. The general ghetto population likewise thwarted German deportation efforts, refusing to assemble at collection points and burrowing in underground bunkers.

In the end, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground. They burned and demolished this part of Warsaw, block by block, in order to smoke out their prey.

The ghetto fighters and the civilian population who supported them held the Germans at bay for nearly a month. On May 8, 1943, German forces succeeded in seizing ŻOB headquarters at 18 Mila Street. Anielewicz and many of his staff commanders are thought to have committed suicide in order to avoid capture.

On May 16, Stroop announced in his daily report to Berlin that "The former Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more."

The entire sky of Warsaw was red. Completely red.
- Benjamin Meed (oral history)

To symbolize the German victory, Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street on May 16, 1943. The ghetto itself lay in ruins.

Casualties

The SS and police deported approximately 42,000 Warsaw ghetto survivors who were captured during the uprising. These people were sent to the forced-labor camps at Poniatowa and Trawniki, and to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. Most of them would be murdered at these camps in November 1943 in a two-day shooting operation known as Operation Harvest Festival ( Erntefest ).

At least 7,000 Jews died fighting or in hiding in the ghetto. Approximately 7,000 Jews were captured by the SS and police at the end of the fighting. These Jews were deported to the Treblinka killing center where they were murdered.

For months after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, individual Jews continued to hide in the ruins of the ghetto. On occasion, they attacked German police officials on patrol. After the ghetto was liquidated, perhaps as many as 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw.

Legacy and Remembrance

The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest and, symbolically, most important Jewish uprising during World War II. It was also the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe. The Jewish resistance in Warsaw inspired uprisings in other ghettos such as in Bialystok.

Today, Days of Remembrance ceremonies to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust are linked to the dates of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Last Edited: Apr 17, 2023

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe.

# data[].attributes.headline
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

# data[].attributes.subject
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Beginning in the winter of 1942, the governments of the Allied powers announced their intent to punish Nazi war criminals.

In October 1943, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin signed the Moscow Declaration of German Atrocities. The declaration stated that at the time of an armistice, Germans deemed responsible for atrocities, massacres, or executions would be sent back to those countries where they had committed the crimes. There, they would be judged and punished according to the laws of the nation concerned. Major war criminals, whose crimes affected more than one country, would be punished by joint decision of the Allied governments.

Though some Allied political leaders advocated summary executions of Nazi Germany's leaders, the United States proposed to try them instead. In the words of US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, "a condemnation after such a proceeding will meet the judgment of history, so that the Germans will not be able to claim that an admission of war guilt was extracted from them under duress."

On August 8, 1945, the French Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America signed the London Agreement and Charter, also referred to as the Nuremberg Charter. The Charter created an International Military Tribunal to try German leaders.

The International Military Tribunal

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.
-US Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson
Opening statement before the International Military Tribunal

Each of the four countries that created the International Military Tribunal (IMT) supplied one judge, one alternate judge, and a prosecution team. The alternate judges participated in the Tribunal's deliberations but did not have a vote in its decisions.

The Nuremberg Charter charged the IMT to conduct a fair trial and to afford the defendants certain rights. These included the right to speak and present evidence and witnesses in their own defense. It also included the right to cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution.
The Judges
Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain served as the court's president. This position gave him the tie-breaking vote, even though convictions and sentences required a majority vote by the four judges who heard the case. Norman Birkett was Britain's alternate judge.

For the United States, former US Attorney General Francis Biddle served as judge. John J. Parker served as alternate judge.

France appointed Henri Donnedieu de Vabres as judge and Robert Falco as alternate judge.

Major General I.T. Nikitchenko served as the Soviet judge. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Volchkov served as his alternate.
The Prosecution Team
US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson played a decisive role in negotiating the Nuremberg Charter. He then served as chief prosecutor for the United States before the IMT. He also gave the opening and closing statements in the trial.

The chief prosecutors appointed by the other three countries that created the IMT were:

François de Menthon and then Auguste Champetier de Ribes for France;

Sir Hartley Shawcross for Great Britain;

Lieutenant General Roman Andreyevich Rudenko for the Soviet Union.

The four chief prosecutors worked as a committee to decide upon the defendants to be charged and to draw up the indictment.

The Charges

We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity's aspirations to do justice.

-US chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson
Opening statement before the International Military Tribunal

The Nuremberg Charter defined three crimes to be tried by the IMT: crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. In its definition of crimes against peace, the Charter included "participation in a common plan or conspiracy" to commit crimes against peace.

On October 18, 1945, the chief prosecutors of the IMT indicted 24 leading Nazi officials on four charges related to the three crimes originally defined in the Nuremberg Charter:

1. Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity

2. Crimes against peace

3. Crimes against humanity

The Nuremberg prosecutors decided to make conspiracy to commit crimes against peace a separate charge from commiting crimes against peace. They also expanded this conspiracy charge to include conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Following the definition of the crimes laid out in the Charter, however, the IMT rejected the prosecutors' charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The indictment used a new legal term: genocide. The word had been coined just one year earlier by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish international law expert. Under the charge of war crimes, the indictment described the "murder and ill-treatment of civilians" committed by the defendants as "deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups." The IMT prosecutors repeatedly employed the term genocide during the trial, but the judges did not adopt it in their verdict.

The Defendants

After much debate, 24 defendants were chosen to represent a cross-section of Nazi diplomatic, economic, political, and military leadership. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels could not be tried because they committed suicide at the end of the war or soon afterwards. Hermann Göring was the highest ranking Nazi official among the defendants.

In the end, only 21 defendants appeared in court. German industrialist . Head of the German Labor Front Gustav Krupp was included in the original indictment, but he was elderly and in failing health. The Tribunal decided in preliminary hearings to exclude him from the proceedings. Nazi Party secretary Martin Bormann could not be located. Borman was thus tried Robert Ley committed suicide on the eve of the trial. in absentia

The indictment also charged certain Nazi Party organizations and German state and military agencies with committing crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These were:

the Reich Cabinet;

the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party;

the Schutzstaffel (referred to as the SS, literally "protection squadron");

the SS intelligence service, called the Sicherheitsdienst (often referred to as the SD or the Security Service of the Reichsfȕhrer SS);

the Geheime Staatspolizei (known as the Gestapo or Secret State Police);

the Sturmabteilungen (referred to as the SA or Stormtroopers);

the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces.

The trial began on November 20, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany.

Over 400 visitors attended the proceedings each day. In addition, 325 correspondents representing 23 different countries were in attendance.

A team of translators provided simultaneous translations of all proceedings in four languages: English, French, German, and Russian.

Except for Martin Bormann, who could not be located, the defendants attended the proceedings. All the defendants, including Bormann and the indicted organizations, were represented by counsel.

The Evidence

The prosecutors sought to prove Nazi Germany's crimes through the Germans' own words and testimony. They based the case primarily on thousands of German documents seized by the Allies. Most of the witnesses they called to testify had been members of the Nazi Party, SS, or German state or military.

The prosecution also presented the mass murder operations at films as evidence. One film produced by the United States showed the liberation of the concentration camps. Another film produced by the Soviets showed evidence of Nazi atrocities and the liberation of Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps. The Holocaust was not the main focus of the trial, but considerable evidence was presented about the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people. This information included Auschwitz, the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, and the estimate of six million Jewish victims.

The defendants did not deny the authenticity of the documentary evidence. Most acknowledged that the crimes charged did occur. However, they denied that they bore any personal responsibility for them. Under the IMT's charter, the defendants could not claim innocence on the grounds that they had simply followed orders.

The Verdict

The trial hearings ended on September 1, 1946. On October 1, 1946, the judges delivered their verdict. They convicted 19 of the defendants and acquitted three.

The judges of the IMT sentenced twelve defendants to death, including Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann.

On October 16, 1946, ten of the condemned were hanged, cremated in Dachau, and their ashes dropped in the Isar River. Hermann Göring escaped the hangman's noose by committing suicide the night before. Martin Bormann, who was convicted in absentia , was much later proved to have died in Berlin during the final days of the war.

The IMT also declared the following Nazi party organizations to be criminal organizations:

The court concluded that the criminality of SS membership did not apply to persons whose membership ceased before the start of World War II or to persons who were drafted into the SS and did not participate in its crimes.

The Nuremberg Charter's definition of crimes against humanity specified that they included acts committed "before or during the war." The IMT judges decided, however, that they could only consider crimes against humanity committed the war. Although the judges acknowledged that Nazi Germany committed terrible crimes before the war, including the persecution of Jews, they did not judge the defendants for their role in prewar crimes.

An important legacy of the Nuremberg Charter and the IMT is that they established crimes against humanity as crimes under international law. The IMT judgment addressed the evidence proving war crimes and crimes against humanity together and did not differentiate between the two. Consequently, the judgment provided no precedent for distinguishing crimes against humanity from war crimes.

Other Trials in the Postwar Era

The IMT trial is the most famous of the war crimes trials held after World War II. During the five years that followed the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of Nazi perpetrators and their collaborators were tried by other courts in Germany and in the countries that were allied to or occupied by Nazi Germany.

The United States and the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings: On October 17, 1946, only one day after the IMT defendants were executed, President Harry Truman appointed Telford Taylor to be the new American chief war crimes prosecutor.

Between December 1946 and April 1948, Taylor oversaw the prosecution of 183 Germans in 12 separate trials in Nuremberg for the crimes set out in the Nuremberg Charter. These trials before American military tribunals are often referred to collectively as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings.

Government officials, military leaders, members of the SS and Police, as well as German doctors and industrialists were tried for their roles in crimes proved before the IMT, including the persecution and mass murder of Jews and the murder of people with physical and mental disabilities in the Euthanasia Program.

Military Court Trials in Allied Occupation Zones: In addition, military courts in the British, American, French, and Soviet zones of occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy conducted thousands of war crimes trials. The overwhelming majority of the defendants in these trials were lower-level officials, officers, and soldiers as well as civilians. They included concentration camp commandants, guards, and Kapos, and German citizens who murdered Allied flyers shot down over Germany.

Trials in other Countries: Thousands of other war criminals were tried by courts in those countries where they had committed their crimes. For example, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal tried and convicted 49 leading Nazi officials for crimes committed during the German occupation of Poland.

Fleeting Justice

Within a few years of the war's end, interest in bringing Nazi criminals to justice waned. By the late 1950s, nearly all of those who had been convicted but not executed were released. Of the convicted IMT defendants who were not hanged, only one spent the rest of his life in prison: Rudolf Hess, who had been a longstanding personal aide to Adolf Hitler and deputy party leader of the Nazi Party until 1941.

Many perpetrators of Nazi crimes were never brought to trial or punished.

Last Edited: Nov 17, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Beginning in the winter of 1942, the governments of the Allied powers announced their intent to punish Nazi war criminals. In October 1943, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin signed the Moscow Declaration of German Atrocities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.

Holocaust deniers ignore the overwhelming evidence of the event and insist that the Holocaust is a myth, invented by the Allies, the Soviet communists, and the Jews for their own ends. According to the deniers' "logic" the Allies needed the "Holocaust myth" to justify their occupation of Germany in 1945 and the "harsh" persecution of Nazi defendants. Holocaust deniers also claim that Jews needed the "Holocaust myth" to extract huge payments in restitution from Germany and to justify the establishment of the State of Israel. Holocaust deniers claim that there is a vast conspiracy involving the victorious powers of World War II, Jews, and Israel to propagate the Holocaust for their own ends.

Holocaust deniers assert that if they can discredit one fact about the Holocaust, the whole history of the event can be discredited as well. They ignore the evidence of the historical event and make arguments that they say negate the reality of the Holocaust in its entirety.

Documenting the Holocaust: Examples of Documents Some Holocaust deniers argue that, since there is neither a single document that outlines the Holocaust nor a signed document from Hitler ordering the Holocaust, the Holocaust itself is a hoax. To make this argument, they reject all the evidence submitted at Nuremberg. They denounce as fabrications the genocidal intention of the Nazi state and the thousands of orders, memos, notes, and other records that document the process of destruction. When they cannot sustain arguments that documents are forged, they argue that the language in the documents has been deliberately misinterpreted. Furthermore, some Holocaust deniers insist that the Allies tortured the perpetrators into testifying about their role in the killing process and that the survivors who testified about Nazi crimes against Jews were all lying out of self-interest.

Some Holocaust deniers claim that those "few" Jews who perished died from natural causes or were legitimately executed by the Nazi state for actual criminal offenses. They assert that Jews and the Allied powers deliberately inflated the numbers of Jews killed during the war. Holocaust historians have placed the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust between 5.1 and 6 million, based on legitimate available historical sources and demographic methods. Holocaust deniers cite uncertainty about the exact number of deaths within this accepted range as proof that the whole history of the Holocaust has been fabricated and that the number of Jewish deaths during World War II has been grossly exaggerated.

Some Holocaust deniers assert that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to kill Jews. They deny the reality of the killing centers. Deniers have focused their attention on Auschwitz and believe if they could just disprove that the Nazis used gas chambers in Auschwitz to kill Jews, the whole history of the Holocaust would also be discredited.

Holocaust deniers often mimic the forms and practices of scholars in order to deceive the public about the nature of their views. They generally footnote their writings by citing the publications of other Holocaust deniers and hold pseudo-scholarly conventions.

Holocaust denial on the Internet is especially a problem because of the ease and speed with which such misinformation can be disseminated. In the United States, where the First Amendment to the Constitution ensures freedom of speech, it is not against the law to deny the Holocaust or to propagate Nazi and antisemitic hate speech. European countries such as Germany and France have criminalized denial of the Holocaust and have banned Nazi and neo-Nazi publications. The Internet is now the chief source of Holocaust denial and the chief means of recruiting for Holocaust denial organizations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Holocaust Deniers and Public Misinformation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism. Holocaust deniers ignore the overwhelming evidence of the event and insist that the Holocaust is a myth, invented by the Allies, the Soviet communists, and the Jews for their own ends.

# data[].attributes.body
10,000 children were transported to other countries just before the start of the war. Most never saw their parents again.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Background

Kindertransport, 1938-40: Oral Histories Nazi authorities staged a violent pogrom upon Jews in Germany on November 9-10, 1938. This event is known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). After the pogrom, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees. British authorities agreed to allow an unspecified number of unaccompanied minors under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain from Germany and German-annexed territories (that is, Austria and the Czech lands). They were spurred by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refugee aid committees. Notable among the refugee aid committees were the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany.

Private citizens or organizations had to guarantee payment for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. It was understood at the time that when the "crisis was over," the children would return to their families. Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The few infants included in the program were cared for by other children on their transport.

The Transports

The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain, on December 2, 1938. It brought some 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom. Most transports left by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in central Europe. Children from smaller towns and villages traveled from their homes to these collection points in order to join the transports.

Jewish organizations within the Greater German Reich (which in 1938 included Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland) planned the transports. These organizations were the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, headquartered in Berlin; after early 1939, its successor organization the Reich Association of Jews in Germany; and the Jewish Community Organization ( Kultusgemeinde) in Vienna. They generally favored children whose emigration was urgent because their parents were in concentration camps or were no longer able to support them. They also gave priority to homeless children and orphans.

Children chosen for a Kindertransport convoy traveled by train to ports in Belgium and the Netherlands. From these ports, they sailed to Harwich. At least one of the early transports left from the port of Hamburg in Germany. Some children from Czechoslovakia (which was dismantled by Germany between September 1938 and March 1939) were flown by plane directly to Britain. The last transport from Germany left on September 1, 1939, just as World War II began. The last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain on May 14, 1940, the same day that the Dutch army surrendered to German forces.

Arrival in Harwich

After the transports arrived in Harwich, children with sponsors went to London to meet their foster families. Children without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities until individual families agreed to care for them or until hostels could be organized to care for larger groups of children.

Many organizations and individuals participated in the rescue operation. Inside Britain, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany coordinated many of the rescue efforts. Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to bring refugee children to Britain. About half of the children lived with foster families. The others stayed in hostels, schools, or on farms throughout Great Britain.

In all, the rescue operation brought about 10,000 children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain. The vast majority of these children were Jewish.

Enemy Aliens

With the outbreak of World War II, refugees from Germany residing in Great Britain were increasingly seen as a security threat. Thus they were treated as "enemy aliens"-in this context meaning citizens of a country with whom England was at war and who were currently residing on English soil. This fact, in combination with a rise in unemployment and antisemitism, had a direct impact on some of the children brought from Germany to Great Britain as refugees. In particular, teenage children who held German citizenship were considered susceptible to foreign political influence.

In 1940, British authorities interned as enemy aliens about 1,000 older children from the Kindertransport. They were held in internment camps on the Isle of Man, Canada, and Australia. Despite their classification as enemy aliens, some of the boys from the children's transport program later joined the British army and fought in the war against Germany.

After the War

Many children from the children's transport program became citizens of Great Britain, or emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most of them would never again see their parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust.

Last Edited: Sep 30, 2021

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kindertransport, 1938-40: Oral Histories Nazi authorities staged a violent pogrom upon Jews in Germany on November 9-10, 1938. This event is known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). After the pogrom, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Kindertransport children 80 years on: ‘We thought we were going on an adventure’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1938, the first of the Jewish Kindertransport children evacuated from Nazi Germany arrived in Britain. This week, we’re publishing the stories of six of those refugees, beginning here with Bob and Ann Kirk

# data[].attributes.headline
Explore information about Elie Wiesel and the Foundation he started after the war to combat "indifference, intolerance  and injustice".

# data[].attributes.subject
Explore information about Elie Wiesel and the Foundation he started after the war to combat "indifference, intolerance  and injustice".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, which is now part of Romania. He was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived. Elie and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died shortly before the camp was liberated in April 1945.

After the war, Elie Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist. During an interview with the distinguished French writer, Francois Mauriac, he was persuaded to write about his experiences in the death camps. The result was his internationally acclaimed memoir, Night (La Nuit), which has since been translated into more than thirty languages.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel as Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980, he became the Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is President of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization he and his wife created to fight indifference, intolerance and injustice. Elie Wiesel has received more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.

A devoted supporter of Israel, Elie Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, victims of famine and genocide in Africa, of apartheid in South Africa, and victims of war in the former Yugoslavia. For more than fifteen years, Elie and his wife Marion have been especially devoted to the cause of Ethiopian-born Israeli youth through the Foundation's Beit Tzipora Centers for Study and Enrichment.

Teaching has always been central to Elie Wiesel's work. Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, where he also holds the title of University Professor. He is a member of the Faculty in the Department of Religion as well as the Department of Philosophy. Previously, he served as Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York (1972-76) and the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University (1982-83).

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than sixty books of fiction and non-fiction, including A Beggar in Jerusalem (Prix Médicis winner), The Testament (Prix Livre Inter winner), The Fifth Son (winner of the Grand Prize in Literature from the City of Paris), two volumes of his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea and And the Sea is Never Full, and most recently The Sonderberg Case.

For his literary and human rights activities, he has received numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of Liberty, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor. In 1986, Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for Peace, and soon after, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Elie Wiesel died on July 2, 2016 in Manhattan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elie Wiesel - Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania, which is now part of Romania. He was fifteen years old when he and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister perished, his two older sisters survived.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fascinating story of a survivor who hid in a barn during the war. (Video)

# data[].attributes.subject
Fascinating story of a survivor who hid in a barn during the war. (Video)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kids Meet a Holocaust Survivor | Kids Meet | HiHo Kids