There are five categories of photographs in this Gallery: Survivors portraits. Family photographs from the survivors themselves. Historical photographs from archives. Location photographs taken specially for this project. Special Interest collections will be featured from time to time. The sources of the photographs are indicated by the photo credits at the bottom of the page. All photographs are copyrighted and the reproduction rights are reserved.
Frieda Radasky holds the arm of her husband, Solomon Radasky, next to the tattoo of his Auschwitz registration number, 128232. The numerals add up to 18 which forms the word “life” in Hebrew. Mr. Radasky worked near the crematoria hauling sand to spread over the ashes of the dead.
The Auschwitz numbers ran from 1 to over 202,000. Those selected for death were not registered in the camp and did not receive numbers.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
After over 50 years of marriage and two children, Frieda Radasky passed away in 1999. Frieda, like her husband, was from Warsaw. She lived at Mila 20 next door to Mila 18, made famous as the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) and the site of the suicide of its leader, Mordecai Anielewicz, who chose death over captivity. Frieda played with Mordecai Anielewicz as a child.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
A block of housing on fire as a result of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in April and May 1943. This photo is one of 54 included in “The Stroop Report,” a leather-bound volume summarizing the accomplishments of General Jurgen Stroop and his troops in puting down the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
For 4 weeks a group of young Jewish men and women with a few ineffectual weapons resisted a heavily armed German force. Unable to capture the Jewish fighters, the Germans determined to burn them out; they burned the ghetto down building by building. The fighters in the bunkers put up a stubborn resistance, but the cause was hopless from the start. The losses inflicted on the Germans were small. On May 8 the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization, the ZOB, fell and its leader, Mordecai Anielewicz, (1919-1943), with other fighters, committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Germans.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a rebellion against continued deportations from the ghetto. It was the first instance of an uprising by an urban population in German-occupied Europe. The heroism of the defenders in the bunkers was an inspiration to Jews elsewhere under German domination.
For Samuel Artur Zygelbojm, (1895-1943), member of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, the defeat of the uprising meant the death of his wife, Manya, and son, Tuvia. When word of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto reached him, he wrote a farewell letter to the world placing indirect responsibliy on the Allied governments who had done nothing to protest the mass murder. He committed suicide in an attempt to draw world attention to the cause of the murdered Jews of Poland.
Yom Hashoah, the day of commemoration of the HolocaustHolocaust: is derived from the Greek word "holokauston" which originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. In the 1950’s the term came to be applied to the destruction of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi German state.
"Holocaust" is also used to describe the annihilation of other groups during World War II.
The Hebrew word "Shoah" meaning catastrophe or destruction also denotes the attempt to destroy European Jewry during WWII. "Shoah" first appeared in this context in a booklet concerned with aid for the Jews of Poland published in Jerusalem in 1940.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. , occurs on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
This striped prisoner’s jacket originally belonged to a German CapoCapo: (Kapo), trustee, an SS appointed prisoner who was the head of a labor squad. He or she retained this privileged position by terrorizing subordinate prisoners.
The Capos were an instrument of the camp regime of humiliation and cruelty, and their role was to break the spirits of the prisoners.
The Capos had warm clothing, enough to eat and lived in a reserved section to the prison barracks. In many instances Capos who mistreated prisoners were put on trial after the war. Source: Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust; various survivor memoirs (see Bibliography). (trustee). Harry Liwerant took it when he was on a death march that passed through Blechhammer, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. The uniforms of ordinary prisoners were not lined and not tailored and often little more than rags.
Photo Credit: Jewish Community Center of New Orleans
From “The Auschwitz Album”, the only photographic documentation of the entire extermination process at Auschwitz. An SS has just sent the woman with the infant to join those being sent to the crematoria; her hair is covered in the tradition of the Orthodox Jewish wife. A man is standing between the columns missing his pants and one shoe; this was a common occurrence in the overcrowded boxcars. On the left stand inmates in striped camp clothing. The main gate to Birkenau camp under which the trains pass is ar the rear left of the photograph.
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem, courtesy USHMM
This is an original document from the archives of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau which lists the name of prisoner Solomon Radasky (Slama Radosinski) Auschwitz No. 128232. It documents Mr. Radasky’s arrival at Auschwitz and his quarantine prior to starting work at Auschwitz-Buna. Buna or Auschwitz III was a vast labor camp dedicated to the manufactuing of synthetic rubber. Despite a monumental effort, deliberate cruelty and the murder of thousands of slave laborers no industrial quantity of synthetic rubber was ever produced at Buna.
Photo Credit: National Musuem of Auschwitz-Birkenau
From “The Auschwitz Album”, the only photographic documentation of the entire extermination process at Auschwitz, the photographer has climbed on top of a boxcar to show the people with their bundles. On the left of the train tracks is the Lagerstrasse, the main camp street at Birkenau. Further to the left is the wooden hut which stands beside the gate which led to the main camp through which those selected to live would pass. In the background are the chimneys of Crematoria II and III to the left and right of the tracks. In the foreground a newly arrived prisoner converses with an inmate in striped camp clothing.
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem, courtesy USHMM
This is an original document from the archives of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau which lists the name of prisoner Solomon Radasky (Slama Radosinski) Auschwitz No. 128232. It is dated November 20, 1943 and concerns Auschwitz-Buna or Auschwitz III, a vast labor camp for the production of synthetic rubber. It documents Mr. Radasky’s arrival at Auschwitz.
Photo Credit: National Museum of Auschwitz Birkenau
This is an original document from the archives of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau which lists the name of prisoner Solomon Radasky (Slama Radosinski) Auschwitz No. 128232.
Photo Credit: National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Solomon Radasky was fortunate to be housed in Barracks No. 6 in Auschwitz I, the original Polish labor exchange and Polish Army Barracks. Conditions in Auschwitz I were superior to the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Many of the brick barracks of Auschwitz I were originally single-story buildings, and they were given a second story and a spacious attic to accomodate an early expansion of the camp. The appearance of Auschwitz I is rows of neat brick buildings surrounded by the ever-present electrified barbed wire.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
The 13-foot-high electified barbed wire fence on the east side of Birkenau camp surrounds an enclosed space of enormous dimension. A guard tower looms nearby. One is impressed with scale of this installation, which matches the ambition of its designers.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
The Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, was hung just outside of this crematorium on April 16, 1947. The building was originaly an ammunition depot. It was adapted for use as a crematorium, but only to burn the bodies of prisoners who had died in confinement. Later it was re-adapted into a gas chamber and crematorium combination.
The victims would enter this door, which would be hermetically sealed. The victims would then be in the gas chamber. There was no undressing room, and the victims had to be paraded in sight of the whole camp, which had a demoralizing effect. These defects would be corrected in crematoria II, III, IV and V, which were located in remote areas of Birkenau camp.
After the war this building was partially reconstruted--including rebuilding the chimney and installing 3 ovens that were built for another camp. The SSSS: (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad), originally Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard, it became the elite guard of the Nazi state and its main tool of terror. The SS maintained control over the concentration camp system and was instrumental in the mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen.
Led by Heinrich Himmler, its members had to submit with complete obedience to the authority of the supreme master, Hitler and himself. SS officers had to prove their own and their wives’ racial purity back to the year 1700, and membership was conditional on Aryan appearance.
In the charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (commonly known as the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials) the SS was held to be a criminal organization. Its members were considered war criminals involved in brutalities and killings in the concentration camps, mass shootings in the occupied countries, involvement in the slave labor program and the murder of prisoners-of-war. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. headquarters building can be seen to the left.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
This malevolent room is where the prototype for mass murder was tested. Formerly a room where the condemned to death by GestapoGestapo: (Geheime Staatspolizei; Secret State Police), a police force, often members of the SS, who were responsible for state security and the consignment of people to concentration camps.
The Gestapo’s main tool was the protective custody procedure which allowed it to take actions against “enemies of the Reich.” With Jews and Gypsies the Gestapo simply rounded them up; it was not necessary to give even the appearance of legality to their actions.
By 1934, Heinrich Himmler became head of the Gestapo throughout Germany. Under Himmler’s leadership the Gestapo grew enormously. The Gestapo was a bureaucratic organization with many sections and branches. In 1939 the Gestapo was consolidated with other police forces to form the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office). The RSHA, including the Gestapo and the SS, assumed the task of enslaving the “inferior races” and carried out a major role in the “Final Solution”.
Besides Himmler, other notables in the organization were Reinhard Heydrich the architect of the Final Solution until his assassination by Czech and British agents, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was tried and hung at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of Jewish deportations to the death camps and later tried in Israel, and Heinrich Muller.Source: USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust. courts were shot, it was transformed into a gas chamber in September 1941. It could hold 900 people at a time. The bodies were burned in an adjoining room.
Even today, in the gloom and dampness, there is a sense of the terrible history of this place. One can stand under the square perforations cut into the flat roof through which the SS dropped the gas crystals. One crosses a drain in the floor through which the excreta and the bodily fluids were washed.
Next door three ovens were installed. A kind of iron turntable with tracks was installed in the floor, and the bodies could be rolled, turned and shoved into the ovens with efficiency.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
When the Germans destroyed crematorium I in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the walls blew out, leaving the roof to fall onto the foundation. The victims selected for death approached from the east, having walked from their train down a long street known at the lagerstrasse. Although the smell of burning flesh permeated the camp and flames could often be seen rising from the chimneys of the crematoria, the Nazis were usually succesful in deceiving the victims as to their immediate peril. Crematorium II stood next to Crematorium III, two brick buildings with squat, square chimneys. The victims were told to descend by stairway into the cellar which served as the undressing room. Signs in several languages said “To the Baths and Disinfecting Rooms,” “Cleanliness brings freedom.” and “One louse may kill you.” Clothes were put on numbered hooks. The victims were then were sent to small vestibules where someone pointed to to the doors of a white-washed room resembling the one they had just left--in this room the showerheads were fake and several of the pillars were hollow with perforations to let out the gas.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were ash pools near crematoria II,III,IV,and V which were used to dispose of the human ashes.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau was based on a design by Architect Georg Werkmann as modified by Walter Dejaco. The central part of the building contained furnaces with a capacity of 1440 corpses per day. The gas chambers and undressing rooms were underground; the bodies were brought up by elevator. On Saturday, March 13, 1943, 1,492 women, children and elderly people from the CracowCracow: (Krakow), one of the oldest and largest cities in Poland, and the location of one of the most important Jewish communities in Europe.
On March 20, 1941 the ghetto was sealed off. It was confined to a small area and heavily overcrowded. By the end of October 1942 after the second deportation (Aktion)the ghetto was split into two parts. On March 13, 1943 the residents of part “A” were sent to the Plaszow labor camp and on March 14 the residents of part “B” were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed there.
There was a resistance movement in the ghetto. Their most famous operation was an attack on the Cygeneria cafe in which 11 Germans were killed and 13 wounded. Attempts were made to join in partisan activities in the surrounding area but the resistance encountered problems because of their isolation and because of the hostile attitude of units of the AK (Armia Krajowa Polish Home Army) which did not take kindly to Jewish partisan operations. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. ghetto were gassed and burned here in its inagural run. It was blown up by the Germans as they prepared to evacuate the camp in January 1945. The 4 crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau are examples of the application of industrial technology to the problem of mass murder.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
This is the electic fencepost at the north-east corner of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Members of the SonderkommandoSonderkommando: (Special Commando), 1. a prisoner slave labor group assigned to work in the killing area of an extermination camp. Few Sonderkommando survived as they were usually killed and replaced at periodic intervals. There were several Sonderkommando revolts. The group at Auschwitz-Birkenau staged an uprising in 1944 and set off an explosion that destroyed Crematorium IV.
2. A German unit that worked along with the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet territories. Their task was to obliterate the traces of mass slaughter by burning bodies. Sources: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust; Historical Atlas of the Holocaust. at Auschwitz-Birkenau burn corpses in open pits during the summer of 1944. When the crematoria ovens were not functioning properly, or were insufficient to dispose of the huge volume of corpses, the bodies were burned and then buried in ditches. These photographs from Birkenau were made secretly by members of the Polish resistance, and several of them were smuggled to England.
Photo Credit: National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau; courtesy of USHMM
This is a page of an original document from the archives of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau which lists the name of Solomon Radasky. It concerns a transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz to Dachau. Solomon Radasky (Slama Radosinski) had Auschwitz No. 128232 and is the 1043rd person on the list. His profession is listed as Schneider (Tailor). Page 1 of this document can be viewed in the Photo Gallery.
Photo Credit: National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau
This is an original document from the archives of the National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau which lists the name of prisoner Solomon Radasky (Slama Radosinski) Auschwitz No. 128232. It is dated January 28, 1945 and concerns the transfer of prisoners from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Each prisoner is listed with a Dachau number and a Auschwitz number. Mr. Radasky is listed as captured Polish Jew (SchP J) and given Dachau number 140265. His date of birth is May 17, 1910 and his profession is Schneider (Tailor). Page 1 of this document is available in the Photo Gallery. Of interest, 3 entries above the Radasky entry there is a listing on this same page for an Alter Abram captured Jew from the United States of America (SchUSA J), Dachau number 140262, Auschwitz number 77247, date of birth March (or May?) 13, 1902.
Photo Credit: National Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Shep Zitler holds a picture of his family taken in 1936 in Vilna, Poland, now Vilnius, Lithuania. “This is my HolocaustHolocaust: is derived from the Greek word "holokauston" which originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. In the 1950’s the term came to be applied to the destruction of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi German state.
"Holocaust" is also used to describe the annihilation of other groups during World War II.
The Hebrew word "Shoah" meaning catastrophe or destruction also denotes the attempt to destroy European Jewry during WWII. "Shoah" first appeared in this context in a booklet concerned with aid for the Jews of Poland published in Jerusalem in 1940.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. ,” he says of this photograph because all those portrayed in it except one sister and himself perished at the hands of the Nazis.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Lithuanian Jews from the City of Vilna in the Polish Army as Prisoners-of-War, in Germany at GoerlitzGoerlitz:one of about 60 sub-camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in Lower Silesia. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. or LudwigsdorfLudwigsdorf: one of about 60 sub-camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in Lower Silesia. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. in 1941. Shep Zitler is sitting in the second row on the far right.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Identification tag issued to Szebsel Zitler. MOJ stands for Mojzeszowa (followers of Moses), the Polish designation for the Jewish religion.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Execution of Polish POW’s near Ciepielow in September 1939. Here some of the 300 Polish prisoners-of-war who were executed by firing squad are visible. In the background is a WehrmachtWehrmacht: the armed forces of Germany during the period from 1935 to 1945; the former name of the armed forces had been Reichswehr.
The victories of 1939 against Poland and 1940 against France were spectacular successes. In June 1941 Hitler opened up a 2 front war by invading the Soviet Union. Nazi atrocities in the wake of this invasion were largely tolerated without protest by the Wehrmacht officers.
Within the Wehrmacht opposition to what was seen as Hitler’s destructive leadership culminated in the abortive July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life. The participants in this plot were executed or forced to commit suicide, most notably Erwin Rommel.
In the beginning of World War II the Wehrmacht numbered 2,700,000 men by 1943 it totaled 13,555,000 men. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. soldier who participated in the killing.
Photo Credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes in Poland, courtesy USHMM
Jews in the Polish Army after demobilization were returned to their families. Here in April 1940, returned soldiers sit down to a Passover meal in the Warsaw Ghetto at 34 Swietojarska Street.
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archives; courtesy USHMM
German Identification Tag No. 3025 from Stalag VII/A.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Zitler family, Vilna, 1936. Left to right: Doba Zitler Lewin, Shep’s youngest sister; Sonia Zitler Morgenstern, Shep’s oldest sister; Professor Michael (Micha) Morgenstern, Sonia’s husband; Tzerna Morgenstern, their daughter; Rivka Zitler Podolski, Shep’s sister; Asher Zitler,Shep’s father; Hershel Morgenstern, son of Sonia and Michael; Mr. Podolski, Rivka’s husband; Rachel Zitler, Shep’s sister who was going to Palestine, providing the occasion for the taking of this photograph; Motele Podolski, son of Rivka; Bertha Cohen Zitler, Shep’s mother; Meyer (Meier), Shep’s cousin; Leib, Meyer’s son; Shep Zitler at age 19 years. Not shown: Benjamin Zitler, Shep’s oldest brother already in Palestine.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Postcards Shep Zitler received as a Prisoner-of-War at Stalag VIII B from his sister Doba. The bottom postcard, dated September 16, 1942, reads: “Mother and Father are no more. Meer is in Lidris. Doba and little child are in GhettoGhetto: an enclosed district where Jews were forced to live separate from the rest of society.
The concentration of Jews in ghettos was a policy implemented by Germany in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The establishment of ghettos was often the first stage in a process which was followed by deportation to concentration camps and selection for extermination or for forced labor. Forcing Jews into ghettos required their ingathering from surrounding areas and their segregation from local populations. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . There is no one else. If you want to write ‘Doba Lewin address: Blok Kalis’Kalis: a small labor camp located outside of the Vilna ghetto. It housed about 1250 workers and their families.
The camp resembled a ghetto more than a concentration camp in that families were not separated and the clothing was ordinary. The workers were engaged in making fur garments for the German army. This involved re-manufacturing confiscated civilian fur coats into winter uniforms.
On March 27, 1944, a deportation (Aktion; action) involving the children took place. It was said that the children were to be taken to a clinic near the camp to receive anti-typhoid shots. Some of the mothers went with their children to the “vaccinations.” Martin Weiss arrived at the clinic, grabbed the children and loaded them onto trucks. The mothers resisted and several of them were put on the trucks also. One woman who shouted “Murderer” to Weiss was shot on the spot. The children were sent to death camps. With the Soviet army near and the German front collapsing, the inmates of Kalis were taken to Ponary and murdered or sent to other camps further west. Sources: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust; Arad, Ghetto in Flames. Street Mindaugievis 15 m 24 Vilnius.”
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Mr. Zitler and his sister in 1935 prior to her departure for Palestine to study medicine. Opportunities in Poland to study medicine were limited by anti-Semitism. The Zitlers were Zionists; they had contemplated moving to Palestine as a family, but decided it would not be feasible. Rachel and Shep’s brother, Benjamin, moved there before World War II started.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Shep Zitler’s Polish Resettlement Corps registration book.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Chaim Berlin’s Wedding. Shep Zitler is kneeling at left.
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Shep Zitler’s Polish Resettlement Corps registration book. The second entry on the page reads “Reports departure for U.S.A. via Southampton on 14.12.48.”
Photo Credit: Shep Zitler
Joseph Sher sits in his front room with his family photographs spread out on a card table. He is one of the minority of HolocaustHolocaust: is derived from the Greek word "holokauston" which originally meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. In the 1950’s the term came to be applied to the destruction of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi German state.
"Holocaust" is also used to describe the annihilation of other groups during World War II.
The Hebrew word "Shoah" meaning catastrophe or destruction also denotes the attempt to destroy European Jewry during WWII. "Shoah" first appeared in this context in a booklet concerned with aid for the Jews of Poland published in Jerusalem in 1940.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. survivors who have family photographs from before the war. He recovered these photographs from the courtyard of his apartment house, where they had been thrown in a trash heap. Mr. Sher said that he would not be able to remember what his family members looked like without these photographs.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Manya, Feigele and Frieda Sher had this portrait taken at a studio.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
On a Saturday, Manya and Simon Sher go for a walk on the main street of Czestochowa. On ShabbosShabbos: the Sabbath, the weekly holiday that commemorates the day of rest that God took after creating the world in six days. Shabbos begins at sundown on Friday night with the lighting of candles, the blessing of wine and the saying of prayers. Afterwards a festive meal is eaten. Shabbos ends with nightfall on Saturday. No work can be performed, and the day is to be spent in rest and prayer. Source: Binyomin Kaplan. the Sher’s would dress in their best clothes to go to synagogue and go walking afterwards. Street photographers would take portraits of the passersby on speculation and attempt to sell them later.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Stefa and Manya Sher pose for their photograph in Czestchowa. Stefa was Polish, and Manya was Jewish. After the war Joseph Sher was dismayed by Stefa’s dismissive attitude toward him.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Rachel Sher’s uncles wear the traditional apparel of Chassidic Jews. Their heads are covered in order to show respect for God’s presence. They wear long black coats because the Chassidic movement adapted a conservative style of dress. (The color black is chosen because it show an avoidance of ostentation.) They have long beards because there is a biblical prohibition against trimming certain parts of the facial hair. Also, in Jewish mysticism the beard corresponds to God’s mercy. Under their clothes they were a tallis katan. This undergarment fulfills a biblical requirement to wear fringes, tzitsis, on a four cornered garment. The Chassidic movement began in the 17th century and eventually became prevalent in most of eastern Europe. It emphasized the mystical teachings of the Torah and their accessibility to the common man. Chassidism adopted certain customs and ethics which distinguished it from other kinds of Jewish practice.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Czestochowa was celebrated as a center of Catholic pilgrimage, the home of the shrine of the Jasna Gora, the Black MadonnaBlack Madonna: the popular shrine of great national and religious significance to Poland. It is located in the city of Czestochowa in the monastery of Jasna Gora (Bright Mountain). The Black Madonna is a painting on wood that depicts the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. Its origins are ancient and obscure.
The monastery was founded on the mountain in 1382, and the painting came there soon afterwards. The icon was damaged in 1430 by Hussites who slashed the face of the portrait. The painting is credited with the miracle of having protected the monastery from the invading Swedish army in 1655-56. The shrine continues to be the focus of pilgrimages and a site for confirmations and marriages. Source: Dydynski, Poland, Lonely Planet Travel Survival Guide. . Yet Jews played an important role in its commercial and cultural life. In 1939 there were 28,500 Jews living there. The German army entered the city on the third day of WWII, September 3, 1939. The next day a bloody pogromPogrom: (Yiddish from Russian “devastation” or “destruction” from the roots po “like” and from gram “thunder”), the killing and looting of innocent people usually with official sanction, most often applied to Jews. Source: Webster’s Third International Dictionary Unabridged., later called “ Bloody MondayBloody Monday: a infamous pogrom. The German army entered Czestochowa, Poland on September 3, 1939. The next day, later called “Bloody Monday,” a pogrom was organized in which a few hundred Jews were murdered. On December 25, 1939 a second pogrom took place and the Great Synagogue was set on fire. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. ,” took place. On December 25, 1939 a second pogrom took place, and the Great Synagogue was set on fire. After the war in June 1946, 2,167 Jews had returned to Czestochowa to rebuild their community. Almost all Jews left Poland after the anti-Semitic campain of 1968.
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem, courtesy USHMM
Before the war young couples went out walking together on the weekends. Photographers made a living taking pictures of people on the street. In Czestochowa, the more modern houses had running water, but many people still depended on wells. Left to right: Isaac Blitz, Rachel Israelovicz Sher, Joseph Sher, Sara Blitz. Sara Blitz, no relation to Isaac, was sent to Treblinka. Isak, Rachel and Joseph survived.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Rachel’s brother, Lipman was in the Polish army. In September 1939, when the Polish army was decimatedPoland’s Defeat: On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. Polish defenses crumbled before the German onslaught of tanks, motorized vehicles and attacks by dive-bombers on the civilian population. The German theory of Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) involved massive concentrated attack.
After two weeks Germany controlled western Poland except for Warsaw, which held out for two more weeks. Meanwhile, on September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east according to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939, which divided Poland into spheres of interest for each country. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. , Lipman came home. He burned his uniform, said goodbye to his fiancee and family, and escaped to Russia. At first the family received letters that he was doing well. Then he dissapeared. Perhaps, he was sent to Siberia. He was never heard from again.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
After Lipman Israelovicz, Rachel’s brother, disappeared inside of Russia, his girlfriend smuggled herself across the Russian border to find him. She never found him, and she came back to Czestochowa and eventually went to Treblinka.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
It is traditional to go on a picnic in the country to celebrate the holiday of Lag B’Omer. Lag B’Omer occurs in the spring and in part is the commemoration of the lifting of a plague. In 1947, Joseph and Rachel were living in a Displaced Person’sDisplaced Person: (DP), one of approximately 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons who had been uprooted by the war and who by the end of 1945 had refused to or could not return to their prewar homes.
When the war ended, most Jewish DP’s were housed in camps behind barbed wire in poor conditions. Until the State of Israel was established in 1948, legal immigration to Palestine was blocked by official British policy. Immigration to the United States in meaningful numbers was also severely restricted until the passage of the Displaced Persons’ Act in 1948. Between 1945 and 1952 approximately 400,000 DP’s immigrated to the United States, of whom approximately 20 percent, or 80,000, were Jewish. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including more than 2/3 of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe.
Displaced Persons camps were set up at the end of WWII to house the millions of uprooted persons who were unwilling or unable to return to their homes. By the end of 1946, the number of Jewish DP’s was 250,000, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria and 20,000 in Italy.
The Jewish survivors languished in camps primarily in the Allied zones of occupation in Germany. At first the DPs lived behind barbed wire fences under guard in camps that included former concentration camps. For example, in the British zone the survivors were held at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Some DP’s were housed in better conditions in residential facilities. Eventually, the Jews gained recognition as a special group with their own needs and put into separate facilities. Sources: USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. camp in Germany with other Jewish survivors in the little town of Neunburg vorm Wald which is near Regensburg. The Shers were happily married for 56 years. Rachel died in 1997.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Joseph Sher’s 92-year-old grandmotherwas known by her nickname of Szandle the Bagel Baker. She was shot for resisting deportation.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Leo, Freida, Simon, Manya and Joseph out for a walk on the main street of Czestochowa.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Leah holds her child Berele. During deportation from the Czestochowa ghettoCzestochowa Ghetto: established on April 9, 1941, it was sealed off on August 23, 1941. The ghetto population suffered from overcrowding, hunger and epidemics. On September 23, 1942 a large scale deportation (Aktion) began. By October 5, 1942, about 39,000 people had been deported to Treblinka extermination camp, while 2,000 had been executed on the spot.
The now diminished ghetto within new borders was called the “small ghetto.” A Jewish Fighting Organization was set up in December 1942. On January 4, 1943 it rose in armed resistance to the Nazis. The next day the Nazis shot 250 children and old people.
On June 26, 1943, the Germans began liquidating the “small ghetto.” The remaining 4,000 Jews were transferred to two slave labor camps organized at the city’s HASAG factories. Before leaving the city on January 17, 1945, the Germans managed to deport almost 6,000 inmates from the HASAG factories to concentration camps inside Germany. The 5,200 inmates who succeeded in hiding were liberated by the Soviet army.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. the Sher women had a last minute decision to make: Who would hold Berele? If Leah would have given her child to her mother to hold, her own chances of being chosen for work would have improved. Her mother’s chances would then have been nil. The younger sisters were afraid for the mother. It was decided to let the mother go with the younger sisters and Leah would take Berele. As it happened none were chosen for work and all perished. Afterwards, it was suggested that if the mother had taken Berele, maybe Leah would have survived.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Joseph and Rachel Sher stand in front of a Star of David at the Jewish Community Center in the DP campDisplaced Person: (DP), one of approximately 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons who had been uprooted by the war and who by the end of 1945 had refused to or could not return to their prewar homes.
When the war ended, most Jewish DP’s were housed in camps behind barbed wire in poor conditions. Until the State of Israel was established in 1948, legal immigration to Palestine was blocked by official British policy. Immigration to the United States in meaningful numbers was also severely restricted until the passage of the Displaced Persons’ Act in 1948. Between 1945 and 1952 approximately 400,000 DP’s immigrated to the United States, of whom approximately 20 percent, or 80,000, were Jewish. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including more than 2/3 of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe.
Displaced Persons camps were set up at the end of WWII to house the millions of uprooted persons who were unwilling or unable to return to their homes. By the end of 1946, the number of Jewish DP’s was 250,000, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria and 20,000 in Italy.
The Jewish survivors languished in camps primarily in the Allied zones of occupation in Germany. At first the DPs lived behind barbed wire fences under guard in camps that included former concentration camps. For example, in the British zone the survivors were held at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Some DP’s were housed in better conditions in residential facilities. Eventually, the Jews gained recognition as a special group with their own needs and put into separate facilities. Sources: USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. at Neunburg vorm Wald. The Star of David is also called the Magen David or Shield of David. The symbol was associated with Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism in the 13th century. In the 17th century it was adopted as the symbol of the Jewish community of Prague. In the late 19th century it was used by Zionist groups, and in 1949 it was placed on the flag of Israel.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
These were 7 of Rachel Sher’s young friends. This photograph was taken in the big Czestochowa ghettoCzestochowa Ghetto: established on April 9, 1941, it was sealed off on August 23, 1941. The ghetto population suffered from overcrowding, hunger and epidemics. On September 23, 1942 a large scale deportation (Aktion) began. By October 5, 1942, about 39,000 people had been deported to Treblinka extermination camp, while 2,000 had been executed on the spot.
The now diminished ghetto within new borders was called the “small ghetto.” A Jewish Fighting Organization was set up in December 1942. On January 4, 1943 it rose in armed resistance to the Nazis. The next day the Nazis shot 250 children and old people.
On June 26, 1943, the Germans began liquidating the “small ghetto.” The remaining 4,000 Jews were transferred to two slave labor camps organized at the city’s HASAG factories. Before leaving the city on January 17, 1945, the Germans managed to deport almost 6,000 inmates from the HASAG factories to concentration camps inside Germany. The 5,200 inmates who succeeded in hiding were liberated by the Soviet army.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . They are wearing blue and white Star of David armbands to identify them as Jews. All of them perished.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Among the crosses in a corner of the cemetary, victims found in a mass grave near Neunburg vorm Wald, Germany were given a proper Jewish burial attended by a Rabbi. Joseph Sher and wife, Rachel, are standing at the center right. The photograph was taken in 1945 or 1946.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Joseph and Rachel Sher stand next to a cross in the cemetery of Neunburg vorm Wald, Germany. Two boys and a dog walking in the woods discovered the mass grave of approximately 50 Holocaust victims.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Joseph Sher was employed by ORTORT: (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training), an international organization for developing skilled trades and agriculture among Jews. ORT established a vocational training network for Jewish Displaced Persons. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. to teach other survivors the trade of sewing. Rachel Sher is sitting in the second row in the center of the photograph. On the wall is a drawing of Theodor Herzl, the father of the modern State of Israel.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Joseph Sher and his family lived at this address on the third floor, left side. The ground floor front of the apartment house was a shop that faced the main street of Czestochowa. The street follows the pilgrimage route to the Church of the Jasna Gora, the Black MadonnaBlack Madonna: the popular shrine of great national and religious significance to Poland. It is located in the city of Czestochowa in the monastery of Jasna Gora (Bright Mountain). The Black Madonna is a painting on wood that depicts the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. Its origins are ancient and obscure.
The monastery was founded on the mountain in 1382, and the painting came there soon afterwards. The icon was damaged in 1430 by Hussites who slashed the face of the portrait. The painting is credited with the miracle of having protected the monastery from the invading Swedish army in 1655-56. The shrine continues to be the focus of pilgrimages and a site for confirmations and marriages. Source: Dydynski, Poland, Lonely Planet Travel Survival Guide. . When the Jews were forced into the Czestochowa ghettoCzestochowa Ghetto: established on April 9, 1941, it was sealed off on August 23, 1941. The ghetto population suffered from overcrowding, hunger and epidemics. On September 23, 1942 a large scale deportation (Aktion) began. By October 5, 1942, about 39,000 people had been deported to Treblinka extermination camp, while 2,000 had been executed on the spot.
The now diminished ghetto within new borders was called the “small ghetto.” A Jewish Fighting Organization was set up in December 1942. On January 4, 1943 it rose in armed resistance to the Nazis. The next day the Nazis shot 250 children and old people.
On June 26, 1943, the Germans began liquidating the “small ghetto.” The remaining 4,000 Jews were transferred to two slave labor camps organized at the city’s HASAG factories. Before leaving the city on January 17, 1945, the Germans managed to deport almost 6,000 inmates from the HASAG factories to concentration camps inside Germany. The 5,200 inmates who succeeded in hiding were liberated by the Soviet army.Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. , other families moved into the vacated apartments. Discarded items, including family photographs, were thrown down in a heap in the center of the courtyard. After the war ended Joseph Sher dug with his hands through the rotting heap of garbage. Several layers down, untouched by water or mildew, were his treasured family photographs.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
This Certificate states that Joseph Sher has been found to have a working knowledge of Mens’s tailoring and that the Certificate was issued to the proper immigration authorities. ORTORT: (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training), an international organization for developing skilled trades and agriculture among Jews. ORT established a vocational training network for Jewish Displaced Persons. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. was an acronym for Organization for Rehabilitation through Training.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
Rachel, Martin and Joseph Sher stand outside of their new home, a furnished apartment on Milan Street in New Orleans. The Shers left DP campDisplaced Person: (DP), one of approximately 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons who had been uprooted by the war and who by the end of 1945 had refused to or could not return to their prewar homes.
When the war ended, most Jewish DP’s were housed in camps behind barbed wire in poor conditions. Until the State of Israel was established in 1948, legal immigration to Palestine was blocked by official British policy. Immigration to the United States in meaningful numbers was also severely restricted until the passage of the Displaced Persons’ Act in 1948. Between 1945 and 1952 approximately 400,000 DP’s immigrated to the United States, of whom approximately 20 percent, or 80,000, were Jewish. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including more than 2/3 of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe.
Displaced Persons camps were set up at the end of WWII to house the millions of uprooted persons who were unwilling or unable to return to their homes. By the end of 1946, the number of Jewish DP’s was 250,000, of whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria and 20,000 in Italy.
The Jewish survivors languished in camps primarily in the Allied zones of occupation in Germany. At first the DPs lived behind barbed wire fences under guard in camps that included former concentration camps. For example, in the British zone the survivors were held at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Some DP’s were housed in better conditions in residential facilities. Eventually, the Jews gained recognition as a special group with their own needs and put into separate facilities. Sources: USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. in Germany and settled in New Orleans, where Rachel had a aunt. The Shers were one of the first survivor families to settle in New Orleans. Mr. Sher took a job at Harry Hyman Tailors and remained there for 34 years. Martin soon was joined by a brother, Leopold.
Photo Credit: Joseph Sher
It was news when the Sher family became one of the first survivor families to settle in New Orleans. The Shers had languished in Displaced Persons camps in Germany since 1945. Immigration restrictions made it difficult to settle in the United States until President Harry Truman and Congress reversed national policy. New Orleans was one of several officially designated ports of entry for survivors. Between 1949 and 1952, 36 ships arrived in New Orleans carrying over 6,000 Jewish DP’s. The new immigrants were met at the gangplank by members of the Port and Dock Committee of the Service to the Foreigh Born program. This program was sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women. The immediate needs of the travellers were addressed and there were provisions for long term socialization. Most survivors went on to other destinations. Approximately 50 families remained in New Orleans and made it their permanent home.
Read the March 15, 1949 Times-Picayune article “Can’t Believe Dream Is True, Says Family Settling Here.”
Photo Credit: Permission granted by The Times-Picayune Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
In 1952 the Holocaust survivors who had settled in New Orleans pose on the steps of the Jewish Community Center facing St. Charles Avenue. They are going on a tour of the city sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women Service to the Foreign Born Program.
While not everyone has been identified, the following are included: 1st row: Jack Lasocki, David Radasky, Adam Skorecki, Eva Liberman, Martin Sher. 2nd row: Mr Langer, Mr&Mrs Liberman, Joseph Sher 3rd row: Mr. Weiser, Mr&Mrs Gutermann & Stewart, Dora Niederman, Sam Radasky, Ellen Lasocki, Henry Lasocki, Mrs Goldfarb, Rachel Sher 4th row: Isaac Niederman, Mr&Mrs Melnick & son, Mrs Weiser, Isak Borenstein, Mr&Mrs Bibelkraut, Lila Skorecki, Anne Skorecki, Ruth Skorecki, Mark Skorecki, Pola Borenstein.
Read the news release accompanying this photograph which was produced for the New Orleans States Newspaper.
Photo Credit: The Special Collection of the Howard and Tilton Memorial Tulane University Library
Eva Galler explains how the persecution of Jews began as a step-by- step process with measures of increasing severity. The Jews did not foresee that it would end in mass extermination. Next to her is a letter written by her father on March 3, 1938, during the Anschluss of Austria with Germany: “By now you have heard that Vienna has been occupied by the Germans. Unfortuantely, we are dancing at the same wedding. I am very nervous.”
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Reb Aharon (center) was the son of the Belzer RebbeRebbe: the chief rabbi of a Chassidic group. He is treated with veneration and often consulted in a wide variety of matters, including business, marriage, and religious concerns. The position is often inherited, and many dynasties were named for the cities in Poland and Russia in which Chassidim resided. Source: Binyomin Kaplan. who blessed Eva Galler, Reb Yissochor Dov. The Chasidic line is dynastic. At the right of the photograph is Eva Galler’s 2nd cousin, Shalom Vogel, who was Gabbi, or assistant, to the rabbi.
Photo Credit: P. Wyschogrod
Malka, Hannah and Divorah were sisters to Eva Galler. Malka and Divorah used to entertain guests by singing popular songs. Hannah jumped with Eva Galler from the death train but did not survive. The sisters were standing outside of the Vogel house in Oleszyce, Poland.
Photo Credit: Eva Galler
Eva Galler and her mother, Ita Vogel.
Photo Credit: Eva Galler
Isak Borenstein displays the pictures of his family as he tells his story of survival. Only Isak and his brother Abe (the middle picture)survived the war. His brother’s health was ruined by his experience in the concentration camps and he died young.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
The family name Borenstein had been spelled “Borensztajn” in Poland. The Borenstein family consisted of six children: three boys and three girls. After the war Isak went back to the house, which was now occupied by another family. Inside he saw his parent’s furniture, and when he asked the occupants to return his family’s photographs, they told him that they had all been burned. Isak then went to the RadomRadom: a city in central Poland of about 100,000 population before World War II, approximately one-third Jewish.
After Radom was seized by the German army on September 8, 1939 it was incorporated within the Generalgouvernement. The Generalgouvernement was a German administrative unit which was organized in occupied central and southern Poland but not directly incorporated into the German Reich.
Anti-Jewish persecutions and abductions to forced labor preceded the establishment in March, 1941 of the Radom ghetto. Allotted rations in the ghetto were 100 grams (3.5 oz) of bread daily per person. Hundreds were shot attempting to smuggle food in from the outside. Eventually, most of the ghetto residents were deported to Treblinka extermination camp. A few hundred Jewish survivors returned after the war to settle in Radom, but soon left the city. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. city archives and removed the photographs shown here, which had been taken for identity cards. The portrait of Samuel was taken in 1939 when Isak’s father was 49. The portraits of his sisters, Hannah and Lola, were taken in 1942.
Photo Credit: Isak Borenstein
Isak Borenstien (holding the pole on the right) participates in a memorial service and parade to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and promote migration to Israel. The event was held in 1947, in Germany near Munich.
Photo Credit: Isak Borenstein
A Soviet honor guard stands before the Todesstiege, “Stairs of Death.” MauthausenMauthausen: the main concentration camp for Austria located near an abandoned stone quarry.
It was created shortly after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 to handle criminal and “asocial elements.” It later became a penal camp and was known for its harsh treatment of prisoners. Inmates were forced as punishment to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. This stairway became known as the “Stairway of Death.” Mauthausen had over 60 sub-camps. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. was designated a category III or penal camp. Inmates in punishment details were forced to carry heavy stone blocks up the 186 steps leading from the camp quarry. Mauthausen was located 12.5 miles southeast of Linz near an abandoned stone quarry on the Danube River in Upper Austria.
Photo Credit: National Archives, courtesy USHMM
In the MauthausenMauthausen: the main concentration camp for Austria located near an abandoned stone quarry.
It was created shortly after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 to handle criminal and “asocial elements.” It later became a penal camp and was known for its harsh treatment of prisoners. Inmates were forced as punishment to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. This stairway became known as the “Stairway of Death.” Mauthausen had over 60 sub-camps. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Krankenlager, the camp for the sick, hungry inmates fight for a slice of bread.
Photo Credit: Mauthausen Museum Archives, courtesy USHMM
Units of the 80th Division overran the large Nazi prison camp in Ebensee, Austria, a sub-camp of MauthausenMauthausen: the main concentration camp for Austria located near an abandoned stone quarry.
It was created shortly after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 to handle criminal and “asocial elements.” It later became a penal camp and was known for its harsh treatment of prisoners. Inmates were forced as punishment to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. This stairway became known as the “Stairway of Death.” Mauthausen had over 60 sub-camps. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. . They liberated about 60,000 prisoners of 25 different nationalities, all in various stages of starvation. Here, some of the prisoners prepare a meal over an open fire in the camp.
Photo Credit: Public Domain, courtesy USHMM
Women and children survivors of MauthausenMauthausen: the main concentration camp for Austria located near an abandoned stone quarry.
It was created shortly after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 to handle criminal and “asocial elements.” It later became a penal camp and was known for its harsh treatment of prisoners. Inmates were forced as punishment to carry heavy stone blocks up 186 steps from the camp quarry. This stairway became known as the “Stairway of Death.” Mauthausen had over 60 sub-camps. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. speak to an American liberator through the barbed wire. Taken in May 1945.
Photo Credit: United States Holocuast Memorial Museum
Isak (left) and Abe (right) Borenstein posed at Abe’s sanitorium near Munich. Due to the harsh teatment Abe experienced in the concentration camp, his health was broken.
Photo Credit: Isak Borenstein
Jeannine Burk remembers her mother, Sarah Bluman Rafalowicz, whose portrait is on the table. Ms. Rafalowicz saved her three children by hiding them from the NazisNazi Party: (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP) National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the party led by Adolf Hitler and the only legal party in Germany from 1934 to 1945. The party was based on the so called leadership principle (Fuhrerprinzip). At its head stood the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The party’s structure was authoritarian and centralist.
Its political power grew steadily during the 1930’s when the catastrophe of hyper-inflation wrecked the German economy. However, it never achieved an absolute majority in a free election, achieving 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections of March 5, 1933. The Nazi party was extinguished for all practical purposes with the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945.
Two basic elements of its ideology were antisemitism and pan-German nationalism. Only a person of German blood could be a citizen of the state. This excluded Jews and foreigners. The Germans were considered to be a master race entitled by right to conquer areas in the east. The humiliating defeat of Germany in World War I was blamed on Jewish leftists through invoking the stab-in-the-back myth. For Adolf Hitler, the war he unleashed with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 was a means of realizing the Nazi dream of a German master race’s empire in eastern Europe. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.. She died of cancer at age 45, in 1950, shortly after this picture was taken.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Jeannine Burk was a hidden child. The Hidden Child Foundation/ADL publishes a newsletter for and about hidden children. It has a page, “Looking For…,” where hidden children advertize to locate missing family members. Other articles are memoirs by hidden children. The newsletter is available by calling 1-212-885-7900, writing The Hidden Child Foundation/ADL at 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, or by contacting its website at www.adl.org.
Photo Credit: Jeannine Burk
Nazi partyNazi Party: (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP) National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the party led by Adolf Hitler and the only legal party in Germany from 1934 to 1945. The party was based on the so called leadership principle (Fuhrerprinzip). At its head stood the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The party’s structure was authoritarian and centralist.
Its political power grew steadily during the 1930’s when the catastrophe of hyper-inflation wrecked the German economy. However, it never achieved an absolute majority in a free election, achieving 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections of March 5, 1933. The Nazi party was extinguished for all practical purposes with the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945.
Two basic elements of its ideology were antisemitism and pan-German nationalism. Only a person of German blood could be a citizen of the state. This excluded Jews and foreigners. The Germans were considered to be a master race entitled by right to conquer areas in the east. The humiliating defeat of Germany in World War I was blamed on Jewish leftists through invoking the stab-in-the-back myth. For Adolf Hitler, the war he unleashed with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 was a means of realizing the Nazi dream of a German master race’s empire in eastern Europe. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. holds mass meeting in Buckeberg in 1934. Other Nazi officials walk behind Hitler.
This was one of the cigarette coupon photographs. Cigarette coupons could be redeemed for a series of photographs of Adolf Hitler taken by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
Jeannine with her older sister, Augusta, and her mother in Belgium soon after the war ended. Not pictured is her brother Max.
Photo Credit: Jeannine Burk
The 13-foot-high electified barbed wire fence on the east side of Birkenau camp surrounds an enclosed space of enormous dimension. A guard tower looms nearby. One is impressed with scale of this installation, which matches the ambition of its designers.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
When the Germans destroyed crematorium I in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the walls blew out, leaving the roof to fall onto the foundation. The victims selected for death approached from the east, having walked from their train down a long street known at the lagerstrasse. Although the smell of burning flesh permeated the camp and flames could often be seen rising from the chimneys of the crematoria, the Nazis were usually succesful in deceiving the victims as to their immediate peril. Crematorium II stood next to Crematorium III, two brick buildings with squat, square chimneys. The victims were told to descend by stairway into the cellar which served as the undressing room. Signs in several languages said “To the Baths and Disinfecting Rooms,” “Cleanliness brings freedom” and “One louse may kill you.” Clothes were put on numbered hooks. The victims were then were sent to small vestibules where someone pointed to to the doors of a white-washed room resembling the one they had just left--in this room the showerheads were fake and several of the pillars were hollow with perforations to let out the gas.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Sarah Bluman Rafalowicz defied the Gestapo, saving her daughter Augusta and herself from deportation to a concentration camp. She and her three children survived the Holocaust in hiding. In 1950, at age 45 she died of breast cancer. She was already ill when this portrait was taken.
Photo Credit: Jeannine Burk
David DubinskyDubinsky, David: (1892-1982), labor leader and president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) in New York from 1932 to 1966.
He started as a fabric cutter. Under his leadership the ILGWU became one of the most successful unions in America. In 1934, the ILGWU joined with other organizations in forming the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), which was involved in anti-Nazi work in Europe and in post-war relief for child survivors. Sources: www.biography.com; Lebowitz, “Jewish Labor Committee,” www.remember.org/educate/labor.html. , president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ UnionILGWU: the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.
The Union was formed in 1909 in response to a strike in New York when 20,000 women shirtwaist makers protested sweatshop conditions. In 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory killed 146 workers, many of them young girls. An inquiry revealed that the fire exits had been locked to prevent the girls from taking long work breaks. The tragedy gave an impetus to the movement for laws to protect workers.
In 1931, because of the Great Depression Union membership fell. David Dubinsky, who was elected president in 1932, boosted Union membership from a low of 24,000 to 217,000 in just three years.
Just before America’s entry into World War II the ILGWU and its president, David Dubinsky,was instrumental in creating the Jewish Labor Committee(JLC). The JLC publicized the plight of European Jewry, raised emergency funds for partisan forces and ghetto fighters, rescued over a thousand political and cultural leaders.
After the war, the Jewish Labor Committee was actively involved in relief and rehabilitation work for the survivors. A special program entailed so-called adoptions, wherein American groups such as the ILGWU, other unions, and branches of the Workmen’s Circle, a social democratic Jewish fraternal organization, sponsored the cost of sustaining child survivors in the aftermath of the war. Sources: ILGWU web site, JLC web site. , meets with Jeannine Burk, age 10. The Union sponsored Jeannine and other child Holocaust survivors on a trip to the United States. Jeannine received her first doll on this trip.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Nazi partyNazi Party: (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP) National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the party led by Adolf Hitler and the only legal party in Germany from 1934 to 1945. The party was based on the so called leadership principle (Fuhrerprinzip). At its head stood the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The party’s structure was authoritarian and centralist.
Its political power grew steadily during the 1930’s when the catastrophe of hyper-inflation wrecked the German economy. However, it never achieved an absolute majority in a free election, achieving 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections of March 5, 1933. The Nazi party was extinguished for all practical purposes with the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945.
Two basic elements of its ideology were antisemitism and pan-German nationalism. Only a person of German blood could be a citizen of the state. This excluded Jews and foreigners. The Germans were considered to be a master race entitled by right to conquer areas in the east. The humiliating defeat of Germany in World War I was blamed on Jewish leftists through invoking the stab-in-the-back myth. For Adolf Hitler, the war he unleashed with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 was a means of realizing the Nazi dream of a German master race’s empire in eastern Europe. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. holds mass meeting in Buckeberg in 1934. Other Nazi officials walk behind Hitler.
This was one of the cigarette coupon photographs. Cigarette coupons could be redeemed for a series of photographs of Adolf Hitler taken by his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
The Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, was hung just outside of this crematorium on April 16, 1947. The building was originaly an ammunition depot. It was adapted for use as a crematorium, but only to burn the bodies of prisoners who had died in confinement. Later it was re-adapted into a gas chamber and crematorium combination.
The victims would enter this door, which would be hermetically sealed. The victims would then be in the gas chamber. There was no undressing room, and the victims had to be paraded in sight of the whole camp, which had a demoralizing effect. These defects would be corrected in crematoria II, III, IV and V, which were located in remote areas of Birkenau camp.
After the war this building was partially reconstruted--including rebuilding the chimney and installing 3 ovens that were built for another camp. The SSSS: (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad), originally Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard, it became the elite guard of the Nazi state and its main tool of terror. The SS maintained control over the concentration camp system and was instrumental in the mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen.
Led by Heinrich Himmler, its members had to submit with complete obedience to the authority of the supreme master, Hitler and himself. SS officers had to prove their own and their wives’ racial purity back to the year 1700, and membership was conditional on Aryan appearance.
In the charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (commonly known as the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials) the SS was held to be a criminal organization. Its members were considered war criminals involved in brutalities and killings in the concentration camps, mass shootings in the occupied countries, involvement in the slave labor program and the murder of prisoners-of-war. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. headquarters building can be seen to the left.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
This malevolent room is where the prototype for mass murder was tested. Formerly a room where the condemned to death by GestapoGestapo: (Geheime Staatspolizei; Secret State Police), a police force, often members of the SS, who were responsible for state security and the consignment of people to concentration camps.
The Gestapo’s main tool was the protective custody procedure which allowed it to take actions against “enemies of the Reich.” With Jews and Gypsies the Gestapo simply rounded them up; it was not necessary to give even the appearance of legality to their actions.
By 1934, Heinrich Himmler became head of the Gestapo throughout Germany. Under Himmler’s leadership the Gestapo grew enormously. The Gestapo was a bureaucratic organization with many sections and branches. In 1939 the Gestapo was consolidated with other police forces to form the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office). The RSHA, including the Gestapo and the SS, assumed the task of enslaving the “inferior races” and carried out a major role in the “Final Solution”.
Besides Himmler, other notables in the organization were Reinhard Heydrich the architect of the Final Solution until his assassination by Czech and British agents, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was tried and hung at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of Jewish deportations to the death camps and later tried in Israel, and Heinrich Muller.Source: USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust. courts were shot, it was transformed into a gas chamber in September 1941. It could hold 900 people at a time. The bodies were burned in an adjoining room.
Even today, in the gloom and dampness, there is a sense of the terrible history of this place. One can stand under the square perforations cut into the flat roof through which the SS dropped the gas crystals. One crosses a drain in the floor through which the excreta and the bodily fluids were washed.
Next door three ovens were installed. A kind of iron turntable with tracks was installed in the floor, and the bodies could be rolled, turned and shoved into the ovens with efficiency.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were ash pools near crematoria II,III,IV,and V which were used to dispose of the human ashes.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Crematorium II in Auschwitz-Birkenau was based on a design by Architect Georg Werkmann as modified by Walter Dejaco. The central part of the building contained furnaces with a capacity of 1440 corpses per day. The gas chambers and undressing rooms were underground; the bodies were brought up by elevator. On Saturday, March 13, 1943, 1,492 women, children and elderly people from the CracowCracow: (Krakow), one of the oldest and largest cities in Poland, and the location of one of the most important Jewish communities in Europe.
On March 20, 1941 the ghetto was sealed off. It was confined to a small area and heavily overcrowded. By the end of October 1942 after the second deportation (Aktion)the ghetto was split into two parts. On March 13, 1943 the residents of part “A” were sent to the Plaszow labor camp and on March 14 the residents of part “B” were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed there.
There was a resistance movement in the ghetto. Their most famous operation was an attack on the Cygeneria cafe in which 11 Germans were killed and 13 wounded. Attempts were made to join in partisan activities in the surrounding area but the resistance encountered problems because of their isolation and because of the hostile attitude of units of the AK (Armia Krajowa Polish Home Army) which did not take kindly to Jewish partisan operations. Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. ghetto were gassed and burned here in its inagural run. It was blown up by the Germans as they prepared to evacuate the camp in January 1945. The 4 crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau are examples of the application of industrial technology to the problem of mass murder.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
When the Germans destroyed crematorium I in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the walls blew out, leaving the roof to fall onto the foundation. The victims selected for death approached from the east, having walked from their train down a long street known at the lagerstrasse. Although the smell of burning flesh permeated the camp and flames could often be seen rising from the chimneys of the crematoria, the Nazis were usually succesful in deceiving the victims as to their immediate peril. Crematorium II stood next to Crematorium III, two brick buildings with squat, square chimneys. The victims were told to descend by stairway into the cellar which served as the undressing room. Signs in several languages said “To the Baths and Disinfecting Rooms,” “Cleanliness brings freedom.” and “One louse may kill you.” Clothes were put on numbered hooks. The victims were then were sent to small vestibules where someone pointed to to the doors of a white-washed room resembling the one they had just left--in this room the showerheads were fake and several of the pillars were hollow with perforations to let out the gas.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
This is the electic fencepost at the north-east corner of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
The 13-foot-high electified barbed wire fence on the east side of Birkenau camp surrounds an enclosed space of enormous dimension. A guard tower looms nearby. One is impressed with scale of this installation, which matches the ambition of its designers.
Photo Credit: John Menszer
Photo Credit: John Menszer
From “The Auschwitz Album”, the only photographic documentation of the entire extermination process at Auschwitz, the photographer has climbed on top of a boxcar to show the people with their bundles. On the left of the train tracks is the Lagerstrasse, the main camp street at Birkenau. Further to the left is the wooden hut which stands beside the gate which led to the main camp through which those selected to live would pass. In the background are the chimneys of Crematoria II and III to the left and right of the tracks. In the foreground a newly arrived prisoner converses with an inmate in striped camp clothing.
Photo Credit: Yad Vashem, courtesy USHMM
