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"There has never been an idea and there is no idea that is so repugnant or so absurd that it will not find believers." - Roberta Kalechofsky, 1985 Hitler's ideology was rooted in deep anti-Semitism. However, during his election campaign, he toned down his attacks on Jews and instead stressed the need for...

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Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints

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In the course of the planning phase, hundreds of technical drawings of the different construction sites and the buildings to be erected on them were produced by the different offices and companies involved in the project. The plans were drawn up by SS draftsmen, prisoners with a technical background who were employed by the planning offices, and civilian draftsmen.

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Children of the Holocaust - Museum of Tolerance | Los Angeles, CA

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About Anne | Anne Frank - Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles

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This section of A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust contains thousands of Holocaust photographs sorted into convenient categories. Click on any thumbnail to view the full photograph.

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A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust, Timeline

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The timeline section of A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust covers events from 1918 to the present in words, photographs, and documents.

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Art from the Holocaust: The stories behind the images

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A new exhibition in Berlin explores the grim realities of life for Jews in Nazi camps and ghettoes. Thomas Rogers meets one of its curators.

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Explore the exhibition.

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Roman Vishniac Rediscovered brings together four decades of work by an extraordinarily versatile and innovative photographer for the first time. Vishniac (1897-1990) created the most widely recognized and reproduced photographic record of Jewish life in eastern Europe between the two World Wars.

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Kitty Hart-Moxon's Story of Survival, narrated by Kelsey Grammar.

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The town of Oswiecim, in Poland.

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Each year, more than 1 million tourists visit Auschwitz to remember the equal number of people who died there. But, according to a recent AP story, "Auschwitz is crumbling - the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism."

Officials have recently redoubled efforts to raise money for restoration, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum has proposed its plans for revitalizing its exhibitions.

But beyond the ghostly gates of the Auschwitz memorial is a living town - Oswiecim in Polish (Auschwitz in German) - home to some 40,000 people, living in the dark shadow of Holocaust history.

Many tourists come in buses to Auschwitz for the day and may not notice the people who live in the surrounding towns. "Those who do notice," Danny Ghitis writes on his website, "a nearby shopping mall, high school sweethearts holding hands, nicely dressed families are headed to church - are faced with an impossible question: How can life exist in the aftermath of such overwhelming evil?"

Ghitis, Brooklyn-based photographer and grandson of a holocaust survivor, was plagued by that question, and spent some time in 2010 exploring the psyche of Oswiecim - as well as his own. "I was aware of my own strong biases," he writes in an e-mail, "but as a journalist I knew the reality of this town had to be more complex than is often painted."

After invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis opened Auschwitz as a concentration camp for Poles and political prisoners; they built the neighboring death camp Birkenau when they implemented plans to exterminate prisoners. And Monowitz was later established as a work camp and chemical plant for Nazi supplies.

In the postwar communist regime, with nearly half of Oswiecim residents dead, the chemical industry became a major source of jobs for those who survived and remained in town. The scenes in Ghitis' photos, though modern, seem somehow stuck in history, or lost in time. Today, despite the constant flow of tourism, and despite Poland's flourishing EU economy, "the town's economy sees little gain," Ghitis says.

Why would anyone stay? In the photographer's words:
Although what happened on this piece of land was the worst instance of genocide humankind has ever known, the blunt truth is life goes on. It ended there brutally for more than a million innocent people, and we have much to remember and to learn. Nevertheless, for me and for the people of Oswiecim, life must go on.

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Auschwitz The Memorial, Oswiecim The Living Town

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Each year, more than 1 million tourists visit Auschwitz to remember the equal number of people who died there. But, according to a recent AP story, "Auschwitz is crumbling - the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism."

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How sandwiches saved lives.

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There's enough material in the life of Philippe Mora to warrant not just one movie, but maybe three or four. His career as the director of more than 40 films, for instance, including the Dennis Hopper outlaw flick Mad Dog Morgan. His prolific history as a visual artist - including the time the stench from his rotting-meat statue raised the hackles of Princess Margaret. His relationship with legendary French mime Marcel Marceau, who also happened to be his godfather, or with the up-and-coming musician Eric Clapton, who also happened to be his roommate.

But it is Mora's origins - complete with his dazzlingly kooky family - that take center stage in Monsieur Mayonnaise, the documentary from director Trevor Graham that premiered in February at the Berlinale Film Festival. And its star may not even be Mora himself, but a life-saving baguette, slathered in mayonnaise.

Graham's film reaches way back into Mora family history to tell the story of Philippe's mother, a visual artist born in France to Lithuanian Jewish Eastern-European immigrants, and his father, a German Jewish member of the French Resistance, both of whom later became prominent figures in the Melbourne arts scene. Mayonnaise depicts the Moras' years in hiding and their efforts to resist the forces of 20th-century European fascism.

If that sounds like a recipe for tragedy, take heart. Graham tells the Moras' story just as the Moras themselves would: vividly, optimistically and with unflagging good humor. And a love of food and art delivers this family, and the film, out of the recesses of despair.

"All kids want to know what their parents don't want them to know," Mora said after the premiere in Berlin, part of the Berlinale's annual Culinary Cinema series. He described growing up in a "historically sanitized" environment, in a family that maintained a certain joie de vivre and declined to dwell on - or even discuss - their experiences during World War II.

The desire to look deeper into his family's past, Mora said, sprung from his interest in finding answers - both about his own family history, and about the atrocities committed under the Third Reich.

"I don't know whether the answers exist or not, but you've got to ask the question," Mora said later in an interview with NPR.

Mora's friendship with Graham blossomed, as many 21st-century friendships do, over Facebook. (And in true 21st-century terms, they describe theirs as a "bromance.") Mora had begun to investigate his family history, fearful of missing the opportunity to speak with some of its aging major players, and he posted his findings publicly. Graham's interest was piqued, and he reached out to Mora about making a film.

In Mayonnaise, we meet Mora in the depths of his research, documenting in a comic book the family stories he unearths. The multi-generational, multi-continental saga comes together in a collage of archival footage, modern-day interviews with Mora and his mother, Mirka, and comic-book panels hand-painted by Mora himself.

From his family, Mora absorbed the message that the film delivers so affably to its audience: "Love the good things in life ... like art and mayonnaise."

And oh, the mayonnaise! Hellmann's this is not: Deeply, French-ly yellow, the beloved Mora condiment gets whisked up onscreen by Mirka herself - with great enthusiasm, and in seemingly industrial quantity.

Mora knew that his father, Georges, who died in 1992, had earned the curious nickname "Monsieur Mayonnaise" during the war. But it wasn't until he was an adult that he learned why - from none other than Marcel Marceau himself.

Mayonnaise, it turns out, was the key ingredient in a cunning little trick Georges devised to save the lives of Jewish children: Georges slipped resistance documents and passports (wrapped in wax paper) into baguette sandwiches and slathered them with mayonnaise. The Gestapo, he reasoned, wouldn't inspect the sandwiches too closely - they wouldn't want to get mayo on their gloved fingers.

Graham, who also hails from Australia, is a veteran of the Berlinale and of culinary cinema. His last entry in the festival, 2013's Make Hummus Not War, examined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of the popular chickpea paste, of which both nations claim ownership.

Mora, too, has made something of a career chewing over the same themes that emerge in Mayonnaise. At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Mora's documentary Swastika provoked one of the most violent responses in Cannes history. Appalled that Mora had humanized Adolf Hitler - the film features home footage of the Führer playing with children and discussing Gone With the Wind with Eva Braun - audience members began to shout and throw things at the screen.

According to Mora, the ruckus became so heated that a member of Cannes personnel had to yell into the agitated crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Cannes film festival, not a beer hall."

Mayonnaise's premiere in Berlin transpired far more peaceably. A four-course dinner orchestrated by Michelin-starred chef Christian Lohse - with the title "Mayonnaise Oils the Intelligence" - followed the screening in Berlin's red-curtained Gropius Mirror Restaurant. The atmosphere was jovial, and both Mora and Graham reviewed Lohse's (rather white) mayonnaise favorably.

But during the dessert course, when the duo fielded a question about the historic parallels between the Europe of Mayonnaise and that of today, the room fell silent.

The same question "came up the very first screening we had [in Australia]," Graham said over a glass of wine the following evening, in a joint interview with Mora. "There were 700 people, and someone right at the back said, 'Did you make this film deliberately with contemporary events, events about refugees in mind?' I said, 'No, but yes.' "

"That's a tricky answer," Mora said wryly.

"I know. But that's the reality," Graham continued. "What I wanted was for those sorts of things to resonate, but not to be sticking up a placard that's saying, 'This is what the film is about.' The film is about Philippe's family story and what they experienced."

For his part, Mora responded to the question with a quote from Mark Twain.

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mora said, "but it rhymes."
Morgan Childs is a freelance journalist based in Prague. She's on Twitter @MorganAChilds

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'Monsieur Mayonnaise': The Sandwich King Who Saved Jewish Children From Nazis

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There's enough material in the life of Philippe Mora to warrant not just one movie, but maybe three or four. His career as the director of more than 40 films, for instance, including the Dennis Hopper outlaw flick Mad Dog Morgan.

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Several different podcasts and interviews.

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Website from the film we watched.

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the silent protest

that became a rally cry

In 1998, something amazing happened in the town of Whitwell, a small rural community of fewer than 2,000 people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee.

Whitwell Middle School principal Linda Hooper asked language arts teacher Sandra Roberts and associate principal David Smith to begin a Holocaust education class that would be the basis for teaching tolerance and diversity in a voluntary after-school program. When the students, mostly white and Christian, struggled to grasp the concept and enormity of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust, they decided to collect six million paper clips - one for each soul who perished.

Why paper clips? The students' research found that Norwegians wore paper clips as a silent protest and symbol of resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II. It was this simple idea that eventually, and quite unintentionally, turned into a worldwide phenomenon, drawing international media attention and letters of support from literally every continent.

The "Paper Clips Project" extended over several years and in 2001 the school dedicated a Children's Holocaust Memorial, which includes an authentic German railcar filled with a portion of the more than 30 million paper clips they eventually collected. A moving documentary, entitled Paper Clips and originally released theatrically in 2004, captures how these students responded to lessons about the Holocaust and how a committed group of children and educators provided hope and inspiration to countless others around the globe.

To book an official tour of the Children's Holocaust Memorial at Whitwell Middle School, please email Linda Hooper directly at Lmhooper@charter.net. For more information on the Children's Holocaust Memorial, please visit the Whitwell Middle School web site.

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the silent protest that became a rally cry In 1998, something amazing happened in the town of Whitwell, a small rural community of fewer than 2,000 people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee.

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The Last Goodbye, 2017 Tribeca Film Festival 

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The Last Goodbye, 2017 Tribeca Film Festival 

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Using virtual reality technology to take listeners on a tour of Majdanek.

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Virtual reality lab LightShed, in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, MPC VR, OTOY, Inc., and HERE BE DRAGONS, proudly announce the world premiere of the first-ever Holocaust survivor testimony in room-scale VR, THE LAST GOODBYE, at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T. The experience will premiere within the Festival's cutting edge new media program, Tribeca Immersive, in the Storyscapes section, running April 21st through April 29th, 2017.

In The Last Goodbye, powerful testimony of the tragedy of the Holocaust is preserved for the first time in poignant, room-scale VR, as survivor Pinchas Gutter takes audiences with him on his final visit to Majdanek Concentration Camp where his parents and sister were murdered during World War II.

"It has been an honor to be able to help share and preserve Pinchas' testimony in virtual reality for future generations," said co-creative director Gabo Arora. "With intolerance and xenophobia on the rise again, and the worst refugee crisis since WW2, his story, and those of countless victims has never been more important or relevant."

"Today when I see suffering of genocide victims and refugees, I feel their pain. I want my testimony to speak to the world to help avoid that pain. If my interactive (VR) testimony can be a warning to the world, it would make my sharing of my own pain worthwhile." - Pinchas Gutter

The team traveled with Gutter to Poland this summer to capture tens of thousands of photos and hours of 3D video on site, to create an experience that enables viewers to virtually walk with Gutter as he tours the railway car, gas chamber, shower room and barracks of Majdanek. The groundbreaking collaboration of the industry's top talent integrated a capture pipeline created by OTOY with HERE BE DRAGONS' 3D video testimony and brought to life with dozens of photogrammetry artists and engineers from MPC.

Tim Dillon, Head of VR & Immersive Content at MPC said, "Our ambition is to push the needle on what's possible within a narrative and room scale mix, in a documentary format. We're faithfully recreating the rooms of the Majdanek camp so you can inhabit them with Pinchas, you can feel his story by being there with him, eye to eye."

"The power of VR is transportive and immersive. To achieve true presence in a place such as the Majdanek Concentration Camp, the senses must be fully engaged so one feels fully engrossed within the space they're inhabiting," said Patrick Milling Smith, president and co-founder, HERE BE DRAGONS. "It was important that we go beyond spherical 360 video for this particular piece to allow the viewer to physically walk around and experience the camp with real agency. This freedom of movement contributes to an even more powerful sense of presence while heightening the emotional impact."

The photoreal experience presents a new way of capturing truth for the future, encouraging viewers to explore the spaces it brings to life. Gutter stands inside each vivid environment recounting his heartbreaking story of suffering and loss, which ends as a testament to the strength of the human heart and the enduring twin powers of hope and perseverance.

"Just as USC Shoah Foundation forged new frontiers by amassing the world's largest searchable archive of video testimony from genocide survivors, so too are we proud to be a part of this pioneering project," said Smith, executive director of USC Shoah Foundation. "But as technologically different as the two formats are, the goal is the same: to use one person's story to inspire compassion and warn against the perils of intolerance. At its core 'The Last Goodbye' is a message in a bottle, placed in the long stream of time for future generations. The message is simple: Don't let this happen."

THE LAST GOODBYE was co-created by award-winning filmmaker Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz, produced by Arora and Stephen Smith, the executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, and co-produced by HERE BE DRAGONS, MPC VR and OTOY, in partnership with LightShed and USC Shoah Foundation. An original soundtrack is being helmed by audio director Dražen Bošnjak of Q Department. Spatial sound powered by Mach1. 3D stereo stitching by 3D paint\FX.
Go to press release Photo by Kate Wurzbacher; Courtesy of The Last Goodbye. Pinchas Gutter at Majdanek Concentration Camp-during the filming of The Last Goodbye

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First Ever Holocaust Survivor Testimony in Room-Scale Virtual Reality to World Premiere at 2017 Tribeca Film Festival

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Virtual reality lab LightShed, in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, MPC VR, OTOY, Inc., and HERE BE DRAGONS, proudly announce the world premiere of the first-ever Holocaust survivor testimony in room-scale VR, THE LAST GOODBYE, at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T.

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