“Once in my lifetime I want to still have a whole loaf of bread. That was my dream.”
– Itka Zygmuntowicz (1926–2020), Survivor of Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945)
RG-50.030*0435, Oral history interview with Itka Zygmuntowicz, (1926-2020). Oral History Interviews of the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
THE HOLOCAUST WAS THE STATE-SPONSORED, ideologically-driven persecution and murder of six million Jews across Europe and half a million Roma and Sinti by Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and other racist states. Nazi ideology built upon pre-existing antisemitism and antigypsyism. Some local people collaborated willingly. Others assisted the victimized. Most were witnesses. Nazi racism demanded the forced sterilization of Germans of African descent, the murder of Germans with disabilities and Soviet prisoners of war, and the enslavement of Slavs. The Nazis criminalized all they deemed as regime opponents, including homosexuals, political dissenters, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. But in the Nazi imagination, Jews loomed as the primary threat to their new world order. The Nazi government enacted its racist antisemitic agenda and, after 1941, embarked upon murdering every Jewish child, woman, and man.
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A Public 缅北禁地 instructing Germans to protect themselves against Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses and Jewish professionals on 1 April 1933. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #14995. Courtesy of Hans Levi. Source Record ID: Collections: 1992.40.2. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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1 April 1933: a crowd of Germans gathered in front of a business owned by Jews with a window sign, “Do not Buy from Jews.” - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #78589. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Source Record ID: 306=NT-178.
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This notice states, “This beautiful city Hersbruck, on this gorgeous spot on the Earth was created only for Germans, and not for Jews. Jews are therefore not welcome here.” - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #74592. Courtesy of John Howell. Source Record ID: Collections: 2002.216.1.
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Oral history conducted by Beth B. Cohen, Providence, R.I., 7 April 1994. Courtesy of Beth B. Cohen.
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Designated space for Jews appeared in public parks. Note the “J” on the bench. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #62547. Courtesy of Ralph Harpuder. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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The Carlebachschule was opened for Jewish students in Leipzig in 1935 when they were no longer permitted to attend public school in Germany. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #26711. Courtesy of William Blye. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Record ID: Collections: 1998.A.124.
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A slide from a Nazi propaganda lecture entitled, “Race Defilement,” showing so-called “mixed” Jewish and non-Jewish couples, that warned: “Women and Girls, the Jews are your ruin!” - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #49776. Courtesy of Library of Congress and Roland Klemig. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Studio portrait of Theresia Reinhardt (b. 1921), a Sinti woman and dancer at the Würzburg State Opera in Germany, 1942. In 1942, Theresia was forcibly sterilized by the Nazis. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #33336. Courtesy of Rita Prigmore. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Record ID: Collections: 2004.226.1.
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Helene Gotthold with her children, Gisela and Gerd. Helene, a Jehovah’s Witness, was arrested for her anti-Nazi views and beheaded in the Ploetzensee prison, 8 December 1944. Her children survived. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #20499. Courtesy of Martin Tillmans. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Record: Collections:1991.204.
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Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim was arrested for being a gay man. He was humiliated and tortured by the Nazis. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives # ID5364. Courtesy of Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Joseph Muscha Mueller was born in 1932 in Germany to Roma parents. In 1942 two strangers removed him from his classroom. He was forcibly sterilized and deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Joseph was smuggled out and survived the remained of the war hiding in a garden shed. – Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ID Cards. https//encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/joseph-muscha-mueller
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The daughter of a white German woman and a Black French soldier stands among white classmates, Munich, 1936. The image was used as part of a lecture on genetics, ethnology, and “race breeding” at the State Academy for Race and Health, Dresden, Germany. - Copyright the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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Ellen Markiewicz and her brother managed to leave Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport, a rescue effort that brought thousands of children from Germany, Austria, and former Czechoslovakia to France, Netherlands, and from the United Kingdom between 1938 and 1940. – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #61853B. Courtesy of Ellen Gerber. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Badges Jews were forced to wear in Romania, Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany. - France: gift of Gershia Luxenburg; Belgium: gift of Augusta Kaplan; the Netherlands: gift of Julia Schor. All from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection.
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The Blobstein cousins (from left) Hershi, Chaya and Maylech (1928–2022) in Budapest, Hungary, 1944. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #99604. Courtesy of Michael Blain. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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RG Number: RG-50.030.0127, Oral History of Edward Lessing. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC..
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Wedding portrait of Rabbi Yitzchak Jedwab (1912–1971) and Lenny Kropveld (1922–2021). Both are wearing the Star of David that all Dutch Jews were forced by law to wear. Netherlands, 1942. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #81799. Copyright the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Records ID: Collections: 2012.242
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Felix Nussbaum (1904–1944), Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card, circa 1943. - Courtesy of Felix-Nussbaum-Haus at Museumquartier Osnabrück, loan from the Nieders?chsische Sparkassenstiftung.Foto: Museumquartier Osnabrück. Photographer: Christian Grovermann.
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A Jewish-owned business in Berlin, Germany destroyed in the November Pogrom, 1938. 10 November 1938. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #86838. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Courtesy of Yale University Press.
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The Lodz ghetto symphony orchestra. Lodz ghetto, Poland, 1942. - Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature # 4613_659, 1942. Courtesy of Moshe Shalvi. Copyright Yad Vashem.
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A portrait of students attending a clandestine school in Mielec ghetto, Poland, 1940. - Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 5187_3. Courtesy of Irena Eber. Copyright Yad Vashem.
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The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto. 18 March 1942. Courtesy of Oxford University Press.
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Child in the Lodz ghetto, Poland, circa 1940–1944. - Photograph by Mendel Grossman (1913-1945) who died on a death march, 30 April 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #24635. Courtesy of Moshe Zilbar. Source Record ID: Collections: 2005.214. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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A job was key to survival in the ghetto. A box-making workshop in the Glubokoye ghetto, Poland, where children were put to work, circa 1941–1942. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #08059. Courtesy of Karl Katz. Copyright United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum) Source Record ID: 26792.
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Forced labour: Women pressing Nazi uniforms in the laundry of the Glubokoye ghetto, Belarus. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #08057. Courtesy of Karl Katz. Copyright United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum) Source Record ID: 7007.
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Down and feathers that once belonged to Jews are stockpiled in the Assumption Church of Our Lady Mary in Lodz, Poland, in preparation for shipment to Germany, circa 1940–1944. Photograph by Mendel Grossman (1913–1945) who died on a death march, 30 April 1945. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #24641. Courtesy of Moshe Zilbar. Source Record ID: Collections: 2005.214. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Trains were key to facilitating the implementation of the Nazi plan for annihilation. Lodz ghetto deportation, Poland, April 1942. Photograph by Walter Genewein, the Nazi chief accountant in the Lodz ghetto who was also an amateur photographer. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #74534A. Courtesy of Robert Abrams. Source Record ID: Bild 101I/133/719/06. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Saying goodbye in the Lodz ghetto, Poland, before deportation, September 1942. Photograph by Mendel Grossman (1913–1945) who died on a death march, 30 April 1945. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #23698. Gift of Hana Greenbaum and Shmuel Zilbar This gift is made in memory of Rozka Grosman Zilbar and Moshe Zilbar (Zilberstein), and Mendel Grossman. Source Record ID: Collections: 2005.214. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Rounding up the children from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, for deportation to the Chelmno death camp, Poland, September 1942. None of the children survived. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #50334. Courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodwej. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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RG Number: RG-50.030.0500, Oral History Interview with Paula S. Biren, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
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Deportation of Jews in Budapest, Hungary, by the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, circa 1944. Photographer unknown. - Yad Vashem Photo Ar. Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature FA58_72. Photographer unknown.
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Nine-year-old Anna Maria “Setella” Steinbach, a young Romani girl, stares out of a cattle car used for deportation from Westerbork transit camp, Netherlands, 1944. Three months later Setella was murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940-1945). – Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 1475/30.
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Roma and Serbian men rounded up for deportation to the Jasenovac concentration camp in former Yugoslavia, circa 1942–1943. Between 8,000 and 15,000 Roma were murdered at the camp. - Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #85799. Courtesy Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije, Source Record ID: B 828/1. Copyright Jasenovac Memorial Museum.
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Deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, September 1942. Photograph by Lodz ghetto survivor Henryk Ross. - Photograph by Lodz ghetto survivor Henryk Ross. Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, Archival Signature 2631/27.
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Shoes left after a deportation from the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania, circa 1943. The photograph was taken by Kovno ghetto survivor, George Kadish. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #81082. Courtesy of George Kadish/Zvi Kadushin, photographer. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Simon Jeruchim (b.1929) painted these watercolours while in hiding, France 1944. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #97018. Courtesy of Simon Jeruchim. Source Record ID: Collections: 2001.328.4. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Group of girls in the town of Eisiskes, Lithuania before the Second World War. They were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen on 25–26 of September 1941. Out of 3,500 of Eisiskes’s Jews, only a few dozen survived the Holocaust. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #16713. Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy: Yad Vashem.
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Flora Herzberger memoir, RG-02.162. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington DC.
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Jewish women and children from Subcarpathian Rus awaiting selection after arrival at Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945), May 1944. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #77255. Courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain). Source Record ID: FA268/055. Published Source: The Auschwitz Album – Peter Hellman, Random House. Copyright of United State Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Jewish women from Subcarpathian Rus selected as slave labourers at Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945), May 1944. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #77368. Courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain). Copyright of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Source Record ID: FA 268/156.
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Glasses belonging to victims murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945), October 1945. - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives #14877, courtesy of Philip Vock. Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives. Archival Signature 10D03.
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Teri Zinger and her son, Yehonatan, in Rozsnyo, former Czechoslovakia, 1936. They were gassed in Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Death Camp (1940–1945), 15 June 1944. - Copyright Yad Vashem Photo Archives, , Archival Signature 10011/4. Courtesy of Yocheved Chapnik.
to download the map of sites of incarceration and forced labour under the Nazi regime and its allies, 1933-1945.
The link to the map is hosted on an external website and is provided for informational purposes only.
Map by Ms. Maja Kruse and Professor Anne Kelly Knowles. Copyright Professor Anne Kelly Knowles and Ms. Maja Kruse.
The World that was Aftermath
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