Daring Teachers Who Made a Difference
Surrounded by starvation and death, children in the Łódź ghetto had a hard time imagining their future. But Jewish headmistress Stella Rein fostered an atmosphere for students to learn and grow. Stella’s devotion never wavered—even after the school closed.
As American students return to school, join us to honor teachers who nurtured the minds and spirits of Jewish children during the Holocaust—some at great personal risk.
2023 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Nat Shaffir
Five-year-old Nat Shaffir stood in shock as the local priest his family had known for years led Romanian soldiers to their doorstep in November 1942. The priest pointed to the family and made plain his betrayal: “These are Jews.” Hear Nat share his story.
2023 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Rae Goldfarb
Rae Goldfarb was ten years old when the Germans occupied her Polish hometown. Learn about Rae’s experiences as a Jewish girl under Nazi occupation and how her mother’s quick thinking helped them escape from two ghettos and led them to join a group of partisan resistance fighters.
Majdanek
When the Soviet army liberated the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp on July 22, 1944, few prisoners remained. The SS had already evacuated most of them to other camps. However, Soviet troops found mounds of clothing and other items that had been stolen from murdered Jews.
As one of the largest concentration camps, Majdanek also served as a storage facility for personal items taken from prisoners. Conditions in the camp were brutal. Between 1941—when it was established—and 1944, tens of thousands of prisoners died there from exhaustion, starvation, and overwork. Others were murdered in gas chambers or mass shootings.
"Sometimes they took you out to work and a half of them never came back," remembered Holocaust survivor Abraham Lewent.
Captured virtually intact, Majdanek provided early evidence of the full extent of Nazi crimes. The personal belongings found there during liberation are some of the few surviving artifacts that attest to the mass murder of thousands of victims, symbolizing both the magnitude of these crimes and the personhood of those killed.
Footage: National Archives
2022 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Frank Cohn
When Frank Cohn escaped Nazi Germany at the age of 13, he could never have foreseen his return to Europe nearly six years later, as an American soldier. Hear Frank share his story.
Helga Gross
Helga Gross was among 400,000 Germans forcibly sterilized under a Nazi law targeting people with disabilities. Born to a hearing family in 1923 in Hamburg, Germany, Helga was sterilized at age 16.
"They explained to the deaf children that they didn’t want deaf children—that they had to be sterilized because they didn’t want deaf children to have children who would grow up and be deaf as well," Helga recalled.
Helga didn't realize the significance of being sterilized until almost 20 years later when she met her younger sister's baby.
"The baby was so beautiful, I got to hold the baby. And that morning, my sister was feeding the baby, and then I realized what I felt, when I realized I couldn’t have any children. I started to cry, and I—I ran into the bathroom, and just cried and cried," Helga recalled. "When I came back out, my sister said, 'What’s wrong, what’s the matter?' I said, 'Oh, I’m just crying because I’m happy for you because you have a beautiful child.' Then the next day I saw other people … with babies, and I cried. And as I got older, I tried to forget about it."
The forced sterilization law was only the first step in the Nazi eugenics program. Just six years later, the regime began murdering people with perceived physical and mental disabilities in a systematic program that killed approximately 250,000 adults and children.
Watch Helga describe the moment her mother told her she was going to have to be sterilized and Helga's surprising reaction.
Video: USHMM, gift of Simon Carmel
Nazi Book Burnings
#OnThisDay in 1933, university students across Germany tossed thousands of books into bonfires. Materials deemed “un-German” or “degenerate” were thrown into the flames.
The students targeted books that went against Nazi political ideology such as those authored by prominent socialists and communists. Helen Keller’s essay "How I Became a Socialist" was among the books torched.
Jewish authors were targeted as well—including the writings of 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine whose family was Jewish. His play "Almansor" contained the line, "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people."
In Berlin, Nazi students and stormtroopers raided Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and collected research, clinical files, and books from the library and archives. The German Jewish doctor’s groundbreaking research about gender and sexuality went up in flames the night of the Berlin book burning.
In attendance that night was Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. "You do well at this late hour to entrust to the flames the intellectual garbage of the past," he told the crowd.
A Mother’s Love: Sacrifices in Times of War
For as long as there has been war, mothers have risked their lives to protect their children. In Nazi-occupied Poland, Olga Litman did everything she could to save her daughters as they were hunted by the Germans. They moved between towns, hid with farmers, and took on false identities. “I don't know anybody who was as brave as my mother when it came to her children,” recalled Olga's daughter, Halina Peabody. Discover stories of mothers’ devotion during the Holocaust and sacrifices mothers are making today in Ukraine.
2022 Days of Remembrance Commemoration
To remember victims of the Holocaust, we keep their stories alive. Watch live as the Museum leads the nation in observing Days of Remembrance, established by the US Congress as the country’s annual Holocaust commemoration. Together we remember the six million Jews who were murdered and honor the survivors.
2022 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Peter Gorog
Enduring antisemitism, occupation, and arrest, Peter Gorog’s brave, resourceful mother managed to find safe haven for herself and her son.
Watch live to learn how Peter and his mother survived.
#WeRemember: Vilma Grunwald
Vilma Grunwald wrote a letter to her husband and son just before she was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In December 1943, Vilma and Kurt Grunwald and their two sons, Jan and Frank, were deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, they lived with thousands of other Czech Jews of all ages in the so-called Czech family camp.
In July 1944, the SS chose to liquidate the family camp. While a few were selected for labor, Jan, then 16 and walking with a limp, was among the thousands selected for death.
In an unimaginable state of mind, Vilma made the choice to voluntarily accompany him to the gas chambers so that he would not go through the ordeal alone.
Before she was sent to the gas chambers, Vilma managed to smuggle a note to her husband. She understood her impending fate: “You—my only and dearest one—do not blame yourself for what happened. It was our destiny. … Take care of the golden boy and don’t spoil him too much with your love.”
Kurt and Frank survived, as does Vilma's memory.
Watch actor Daniela Ruah read the note Vilma smuggled to her husband and younger son.
Artifacts Unpacked: The Star Badge
Born in Berlin in 1927 to a Christian mother and a Jewish father, Fritz Gluckstein was raised within the Jewish faith.
Under the Nazi regime, his family was subjected to the discriminatory laws imposed on the Jews of Germany. His father, a prominent judge, was dismissed from his position.
In 1941, Fritz and other Jews in Berlin were compelled to wear a yellow star badge, meant to mark and humiliate Jews—a prelude to deporting them to ghettos, killing sites, and killing centers.
Watch to learn about Fritz’s experiences and the badge he was forced to wear, which he donated to our Museum in 1991.
Artifacts Unpacked: The Girl Scout Sash
Ruth Hendel got a second chance at childhood when she and her family arrived in the United States in 1944.
She recalls the joys of attending school, joining the Girl Scouts, baking Girl Scout cookies, ice skating, and swimming, while housed by the US government at Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York.
“It was a great relief not to be hiding anymore ... to be stable … to have a life,” said Ruth, now known as Tamar Hendel-Fishman.
She donated a memento of that time, her Girl Scout sash and pin, to the Museum. Watch to learn more about her experience.
How the War in Ukraine is Shaped by Its Past
Today, the Ukrainian people are under attack. The story of their nation is forever linked to the 1.5 million Jews who were killed in the region during the Holocaust and millions of other Ukrainian civilians who died in the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has twisted that history to justify an invasion, falsely claiming to be waging war against Nazism and genocide. Join us to learn the history of this land and people, including Holocaust survivors who are under threat once again.