BACK TO HOLOCAUST
BEFORE 1933
World War I (1914–1918) devastated Europe and created new countries. The years that followed saw the continent struggle to recover from the death or injury of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians, as well as catastrophic damage to property and industry. In 1933, over 9 million Jews lived in Europe (1.7% of the total population)—working and raising families in the harsh reality of the worldwide economic depression. German Jews numbered about 500,000 or less than 1% of the national population.
Studio portrait of Zeni Farbenblum and her son, Rudy, in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jaine Farbenblum Shattan
British troops in a sunken road between La Boisselle and Contalmaison, during the Battle of the Somme. France, July 1916.
Nazi Party supporters stand next to an election poster that reads: "Adolf Hitler will provide work and bread! Elect List 2!' Posted on the wall at the right are posters urging women and workers to support the Nazis. Rosenheim, Germany, 1932.
Studio portrait of Zeni Farbenblum and her son, Rudy, in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jaine Farbenblum Shattan
1933–1938
Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi state (also referred to as the Third Reich) quickly became a regime in which citizens had no guaranteed basic rights. The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, the German parliamentary democracy established after World War I. In 1933, the regime established the first concentration camps, imprisoning its political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others classified as “dangerous.” Extensive propaganda was used to spread the Nazi Party’s racist goals and ideals. During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, German Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives.
Hitler reviews an SA parade as it passes in front of the Dortmund theater.
On the day of his appointment as German chancellor, Adolf Hitler greets a crowd of enthusiastic Germans from a window in the Chancellery building. Berlin, Germany, January 30, 1933.
A member of the SA throws confiscated books into the bonfire during the public burning of "un-German" books on the Opernplatz in Berlin, May 10, 1933.
Hitler reviews an SA parade as it passes in front of the Dortmund theater.
1939–1941
The Holocaust took place in the broader context of World War II. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Over the next year, Nazi Germany and its allies conquered much of Europe. German officials confiscated Jewish property, in many places required Jews to wear identifying armbands, and established ghettos and forced-labor camps. In June 1941, Germany turned on its ally, the Soviet Union. Often drawing on local civilian and police support, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) followed the German army and carried out mass shootings as it advanced into Soviet lands. Gas vans also appeared on the eastern front in late fall 1941.
This document bears witness to the vast array of bureaucratic stamps and visas needed to emigrate from Europe in 1940–41
View of the entrance to a market that has been reduced to rubble as a result of a German aerial attack. Warsaw, Poland, September 1, 1939.
Smoke billows from US ships hit during the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor.
This document bears witness to the vast array of bureaucratic stamps and visas needed to emigrate from Europe in 1940–41
1942–1945
In a period marked by intense fighting on both the eastern and western fronts of World War II, Nazi Germany also intensified its pursuit of the “Final Solution.” These years saw systematic deportations of millions of Jews to increasingly efficient killing centers using poison gas. By the end of the war in spring 1945, as the Germans and their Axis partners were pushed back on both fronts, Allied troops uncovered the full extent of crimes committed during the Holocaust.
Album documenting the liberation of the Ohrdruf camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald (mislabeled as Dachau). Ohrdruf, Germany, April 1, 1945.
Jews from the Lodz ghetto are forced to transfer to a narrow-gauge railroad at Kolo during deportation to the Chelmno killing center. Kolo, Poland, 1942.
Japanese surrender, Tokyo Bay, Japan, September 2, 1945
Album documenting the liberation of the Ohrdruf camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald (mislabeled as Dachau). Ohrdruf, Germany, April 1, 1945.
AFTER 1945
By May 1945, the Germans and their collaborators had murdered six million European Jews as part of a systematic plan of genocide—the Holocaust. When Allied troops entered the concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes—testimony to Nazi mass murder. Soldiers also found thousands of survivors—Jews and non-Jews—suffering from starvation and disease. For survivors, the prospect of rebuilding their lives was daunting. With few possibilities for emigration, tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors were housed in displaced persons (DP) camps. In the following years, many international and domestic courts conducted trials of accused war criminals.
A group of young survivors in Buchenwald.
Mourners crowd around a narrow trench as coffins of pogrom victims are placed in a common grave, following a mass burial service. Kielce, Poland, after July 4, 1946.
Defendant Adolf Eichmann listens as the court sentences him to death. Jerusalem, December 15, 1961.
A group of young survivors in Buchenwald.