United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

05/01/2021

My Mothers -- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

“My birth mother truly believed family takes care of one another, and she also believed in the goodness of others,” Holocaust survivor Esther Starobin wrote. “I know throughout my life, I have followed her beliefs in helping my family in times of difficulty as they have helped me. I must say, my belief in God comes not only from my birth mother but also from my foster mother. Through Dorothy, I came to appreciate the value of being part of a congregation and the community that comes with it … . Through both of these mothers, I came to understand family is not only made up of the people born into it, but also of others who serve as family.”

Esther was brought to England in 1939 at the age of two on the Kindertransport—the informal name of a series of rescue efforts that brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. Esther lived with her foster parents, Dorothy and Harry Harrison, and foster brother, Alan, in Thorpe, England, for eight years and five months. They took her in after Harry responded to a flyer on his factory bulletin board advertising a need for foster families to take in refugee children. She became very much a part of the Harrison family. She remembers, “That was really the happiest time of my childhood. I was very happy there.”

Esther later learned that her birth parents, Katie and Adolf Rosenfeld, were murdered at Auschwitz in 1942. They managed to save all five of their children. Her three sisters, who were also rescued via the Kindertransport, lived in different parts of Great Britain and visited Esther at the Harrisons' home whenever possible. In 1947, Esther and her sisters joined their brother in the United States. From her new country, she wrote letters to the Harrisons and remained in touch with them over the years. #FosterCareMonth

Photo: Esther Starobin

October 22, 2020 By Esther R. Starobin I have been an orphan since August 14, 1942, but I have never thought of myself that way. At the May 14, 2019, meeting for Echoes of Memory, the survivor memoir writing group, I listened to two people read their wr...

05/01/2021

Clarence Matsumura was born in Wyoming to Japanese immigrant parents. Two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the government to take every possible protection against espionage and sabotage. Under this order, Clarence and his family, along with 120,000 people of Japanese descent, were forcibly relocated to designated camps. In 1943, Clarence volunteered for the US Air Force, but he was instead assigned to a segregated army unit composed of second-generation Japanese Americans or "Nisei."

While serving in the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion in Germany in May 1945, Clarence remembered, “We started finding people along the roadside. Almost all of them were wearing black and white striped uniforms. I don’t know how any of them could stand on their feet. They were nothing but skin and bones. They couldn’t speak. Most of them were lying on the ground, many of them unconscious. We were supposed to be chasing down the SS, but these people were starving. They were lying out on the cold ground. We said, 'Let’s get them into someplace warm, get them some food.'”

Lithuanian Holocaust survivor, Solly Ganor, also remembered this moment, writing, “I stared at them, unable to grasp the situation. Japanese? ... One of the men came up and knelt in front of me. He gently touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘You are free, boy. You’re free now,’ he said and then smiled. That smile has been with me ever since.”

Solly and Clarence would meet again 47 years later in Jerusalem at a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Dachau. Describing their reunion, Solly wrote, “We stared at each other, and then he smiled. I knew immediately that it was him.” The two remained friends until Clarence’s death in 1995. #AAPIHM

Photos: Eric Saul

05/01/2021

At Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was liberated #OTD in 1945, a group of Polish women clandestinely documented medical experimentation at the camp.

In fall 1944, Joanna Szydłowska traded a piece of bread for a camera. Joanna was one of 74 “rabbits,” Polish women who were subjected to medical experimentation at the camp. She risked her life to secretly take photos of the other “rabbits” behind the barracks, documenting their mutilated legs. She then discarded the camera and kept the film hidden.

The Swedish Red Cross evacuated some of the Ravensbrück prisoners in the weeks before the entire camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. One of the evacuees brought Joanna’s film to Paris and had it developed after the war. Several of the doctors who performed the experiments were prosecuted during the 1946–47 Doctors Trial at Nuremberg.

Here is a group of Ravensbrück survivors of medical experimentation at a clinic in Warsaw, where they underwent examinations by Polish and American doctors.

At Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was liberated #OTD in 1945, a group of Polish women clandestinely documented medical experimentation at the camp.

In fall 1944, Joanna Szydłowska traded a piece of bread for a camera. Joanna was one of 74 “rabbits,” Polish women who were subjected to medical experimentation at the camp. She risked her life to secretly take photos of the other “rabbits” behind the barracks, documenting their mutilated legs. She then discarded the camera and kept the film hidden.

The Swedish Red Cross evacuated some of the Ravensbrück prisoners in the weeks before the entire camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. One of the evacuees brought Joanna’s film to Paris and had it developed after the war. Several of the doctors who performed the experiments were prosecuted during the 1946–47 Doctors Trial at Nuremberg.

Here is a group of Ravensbrück survivors of medical experimentation at a clinic in Warsaw, where they underwent examinations by Polish and American doctors.

04/30/2021

Freddy Johnson

African American horn and piano player Freddy Johnson was living and touring in Europe when he was arrested by the Nazis in December 1941. Faced with racism in the United States, he and many other African American jazz musicians had moved to Europe where they initially found greater acceptance among European audiences. Throughout the early 1920s, Black jazz musicians performed with ever-growing popularity.

However, the cultural movement of this music threatened the expansion of Nazi ideology, which considered jazz music “degenerate.” By the mid-1930s, Nazi authorities banned jazz and all foreign, "non-Aryan" music in Germany. Despite the campaign to rid the country of jazz, American artists continued to travel abroad to share their art.

After the United States entered the World War II in December 1941, hundreds of Americans living in Nazi-occupied Europe, such as Freddy, were arrested by the Nazis. Freddy was interned at the Tittmoning POW camp in Germany for more than two years.

In spite of its suppression, jazz music could be heard in camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. For many prisoners, music helped them survive another day. In February 1944, Freddy was released from the camp in a prisoner exchange. #InternationalJazzDay

Jazz musician Freddy Johnson in the Tittmoning POW camp in Germany in 1943.

04/29/2021

Florence Waren Hid From the Nazis by Dancing for Them

Sadie Rigal was born in 1917 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a Jewish family. She moved to Paris in 1938 at age 21 to follow her dream of becoming a dancer in a famous ballet company.

A year later, she created a new identity—Florence—and went on to perform in Nazi-occupied France, hiding in the spotlight. She worked with the resistance by transporting weapons, hiding Jews in her own apartment, and helping them find safe houses.

After surviving the war, Florence continued her career with roles on stage and on television.

“She led a rather adventurous life,” her husband, Stanley, told the New York Times in an interview after her death in 2012. “Wherever she went, she somehow became part of the scene, and people helped her and she helped them.” #InternationalDanceDay

Florence Waren was a dancer celebrated in both France and Germany during World War II. She performed in dance competitions and to cheer up…

04/29/2021

Liberation of Dachau

The Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp the Nazis established in 1933. About twelve years later, on April 29, 1945, US armed forces liberated the camp. There were some 30,000 starving prisoners in the camp at that time.

Dallas Peyton of Tucson, Arizona, served in a USArmy division that liberated Dachau. More than 60 years later, he recalled vividly an encounter between two survivors in the camp—a moment of shared humanity: “They got within a few yards of each other, stopped, stared at each other, and then they tried to run, and embraced. They were either related or very close friends, and until that moment neither knew the other was still alive. And yet they'd been in that same prison for who knows how long.”

Watch Peyton’s testimony and film footage from the liberation:
📷 courtesy of US National Archives

Dachau opened in March 1933 and was the first regular concentration camp to be established by the Nazi regime. The camp was liberated by American forces on April 29, 1945. As they approached the camp, troops encountered horrific evidence of Nazi atr...

04/28/2021

Combatants and Protectors: 12 Years That Shook the World Podcast

After the Germans killed several of their family members in December 1941, three surviving brothers of the Bielski family—Tuvia, Asael, and Zus—formed a partisan group in the dense Belorussian forest. They vowed to never be captured.

“We cannot simply hide ourselves … . We must do something for our people. We cannot sit in the bushes and wait until the wolf comes for us. We must send people to the ghetto to save Jews,” said Tuvia Bielski. Under his leadership, the Bielski partisans fought German soldiers and collaborators, rescued fellow Jews, and rebuilt the very life and community that the Nazis were trying to destroy. Their community, however, was under the constant threat of attack.

Hear the Bielski brothers’ story in the fifth episode of our podcast, 12 Years That Shook the World. Find us on your favorite podcast app or listen on our website.

When the Germans invade the Soviet Union in 1941, three Jewish brothers prepare to fight back. Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski hide in a dense forest and form a group of resistance fighters.

04/27/2021

USHMM Welcomes Armenian Genocide Determination

Recognizing the full magnitude of the crimes of the Armenian genocide, even a century after its events, is important not only for the victims and their descendants, said USHMM Director Sara J. Bloomfield. Holocaust history teaches that an honest reckoning with the past is a prerequisite to understanding the present and to building a better future.

“Holocaust history teaches that an honest reckoning with the past is a prerequisite to understanding the present and building a better future,” said Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield.

04/27/2021

Writers and Poets in the Ghettos

"The first to perish were the children, abandoned orphans,
The world’s best, the bleak earth’s brightest.
These children from the orphanages might have been our comfort.
From these sad, mute, bleak faces our new dawn might have risen."

Throughout the Holocaust, many Jews, including Hebrew and Yiddish author Itzhak Katzenelson, sought to preserve their humanity and their culture through song and verse.

In the Warsaw ghetto, Itzhak wrote poems, plays, and essays that interpreted the situation in the ghetto in light of Jewish history. In 1943, Itzhak and his son obtained Honduran passports. As a result, they were sent to the Vittel camp in France, which held Jews with foreign papers.

The passage above is from his poem, "The Song of the Murdered Jewish People," which he wrote while in the Vittel camp. The Katzenelsons remained there for a year. In April 1944, both were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed.

Itzhak is on the right, circa 1943–44, in France.

Under terrible living conditions in the ghettos and facing the constant threat of deportation, Jews sought to preserve their humanity and their culture through song and verse.

04/26/2021

He Led Hitler’s Secret Police in Austria. Then He Spied for the West.

As leader of the Gestapo office in Nazi-controlled Vienna, Franz Josef Huber oversaw the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews from the city to their deaths.

The Gestapo, which was established #OnThisDay in 1933, was Nazi Germany's political police force, also known as the secret police. Over time, the Gestapo gained enormous power. Its decisions were not subject to legal or administrative oversight. This meant that no other institution within Nazi Germany (including the courts) could overrule the Gestapo’s decisions. The Gestapo had the final word.

While some Gestapo leaders stood trial after the war, the vast majority were never held accountable for their crimes—including Huber.

Franz Josef Huber, responsible for deporting tens of thousands of Jews, escaped punishment with U.S. backing and went on to work for West German intelligence, newly disclosed records reveal.

04/25/2021

Among these school girls is Lilli Eckstein. This picture was taken six months before she was expelled from school for being Jewish.

A new German law, enacted 88 years ago today, limited the number of Jewish students in public schools to a maximum of five percent of the population. The April 1933 law, given the intentionally misleading title "The Law against Overcrowding in German Public Schools and Universities," was just the first step limiting access to education for Jewish children in Nazi Germany.

Over the course of the 1930s, the Nazi regime implemented a growing number of restrictions—eventually in November 1938 barring Jews entirely from all public schools.

Lilli's family fled Germany and survived the Holocaust.

Among these school girls is Lilli Eckstein. This picture was taken six months before she was expelled from school for being Jewish.

A new German law, enacted 88 years ago today, limited the number of Jewish students in public schools to a maximum of five percent of the population. The April 1933 law, given the intentionally misleading title "The Law against Overcrowding in German Public Schools and Universities," was just the first step limiting access to education for Jewish children in Nazi Germany.

Over the course of the 1930s, the Nazi regime implemented a growing number of restrictions—eventually in November 1938 barring Jews entirely from all public schools.

Lilli's family fled Germany and survived the Holocaust.

04/24/2021

The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): In Depth

The Armenian genocide was the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire between spring 1915 and autumn 1916.

At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.

Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics

04/23/2021

Flossenbürg

“That was the first time that I knew of anything about a concentration camp,” recalled Private First Class Charles Press of Harrisburg, PA. He was describing what he encountered at Flossenbürg when he rejoined the 90th Infantry Unit stationed there. The unit had liberated the camp #OnThisDay in 1945. “We were so flabbergasted and angry that anything like this could have happened,” he added.

Just over 1,500 prisoners remained in the main camp at the time of liberation, out of some 14,500 at its largest. As US forces were approaching the camp, the SS began the forced evacuation of prisoners who were still able to walk, sending them in the direction of Dachau. Some 200 people died in Flossenbürg following its liberation.

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these locations for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people dee...

04/23/2021

Visitor Guidelines and Safety Measures

Our Museum will reopen to the public on May 17. To enhance safety for our visitors, you will notice changes to how you visit the Museum, such as required face coverings. Free timed-entry tickets with a $1 transaction fee per person will be available starting May 1.

To help reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 (coronavirus), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is reopening on a limited basis with new visitor requirements and safety measures in place.