United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

12/01/2023

They dressed their children—some just babies—in their best clothing, lovingly packed toys and family photos, and prepared to say goodbye—maybe forever. Eighty-five years ago, thousands of Jewish mothers and fathers saw the escalating violence and discrimination against Jews in N**i Germany and made an almost inconceivable decision. Though they wanted to hold their children closer, they sent them away instead.

Strangers in Great Britain took many of these children into their homes. About 10,000 were saved from the N**i threat through a rescue mission known as the Kindertransport. Many of their parents were murdered in the Holocaust. Join us to learn more about the Kindertransport program that saved these children’s lives.

11/30/2023

Norbert Wollheim helped thousands of Jewish children flee N**i Germany but he could not save his own son.

A young married man, Norbert postponed his plans to immigrate with his wife when Jewish leaders asked him to help organize the Kindertransport, one of the largest international efforts to rescue children from the N**i threat.

British citizens and refugee aid organizations had seen news coverage of a N**i-orchestrated wave of violence targeting Jews nationwide in Germany in November 1938. They convinced the British government to take in refugee children under age 17 on a temporary basis, creating the Kindertransport.

Norbert’s wife gave birth to their son as he was handling the logistics of other children’s escapes—arranging their records, reserving seats on trains, and selecting adults to es**rt them to Great Britain. Norbert was assured his own family would be able to leave when the work was done.

Organizers of the Kindertransport feared that German officials would end the mission if parents attracted too much attention with emotional goodbyes in public. Norbert had the task of counseling parents to keep their emotions under control.

“Very often after that I have asked myself the question: ‘Where did I take the courage from to tell these people to say goodbye?’ And the answer to that is that none of us … could foresee even at this moment that for most of the children and most of the parents, it would be the last goodbye,” Norbert said.

Watch live on Facebook on Dec. 1 at 1 p.m. ET to learn why Norbert wasn't able to save his son or wife.

Photos: USHMM, gift of Charlotte Wollheim
Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek

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11/28/2023

"No matter how painful it is, I share the truth of what I experienced during the Holocaust. ... I do it because the world needs my voice."—Ruth Cohen

Ruth was deported with her family to Auschwitz in 1944, when she was 14. After several months there, she was sent to another concentration camp. Despite becoming very sick and being subjected to forced labor, Ruth managed to survive until her liberation in spring 1945.

After the war, Ruth learned that her mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz's gas chambers almost immediately upon their arrival.

Ruth immigrated to the United States in 1948 and is now a dedicated volunteer at our Museum, where she shares her Holocaust experience with visitors and remembers the loved ones she lost. When asked why she volunteers, Ruth said: "The world must learn the unthinkable consequences of unchecked antisemitism and hate."

This , help share stories like Ruth's. Donate today.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Ruth Cohen

11/27/2023

“I became a split personality—a N**i by day and a Jew by night."

Solly Perel, a German Jewish teenager, survived the Holocaust in the unlikeliest of places: as a student at a Hi**er Youth boarding school.

In the 1930s, Solly and his family left N**i Germany for Poland. After the German invasion in 1939, Solly fled to Soviet-occupied Poland, but was caught following the N**i occupation.

Solly, 16, told German soldiers his name was Josef "Jupp" Perjell and that he was a Christian German whose papers had been destroyed in the war. While he was at first taken in as an unofficial member of a German Army unit, he was eventually sent to an elite Hi**er Youth school.

At the school, coincidentally just 12 miles from his hometown, the N**is attempted to instill their hateful and discriminatory ideas about Jews into the younger generation.

"The young N**is were full of ideology. The lectures in race theory were torture for me," Solly recalled. "Week after week, we would study how to recognize a Jew.”

At the heart of these ideas was racial antisemitism, the prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on the discriminatory and false claim that Jews are a separate and inferior race. Solly experienced firsthand both the danger and the absurdity of N**i racial theories when a "race science" teacher singled out Solly as a model of a typical eastern Baltic, ethnic German.

“He (the teacher) pulled me out as a case study and I trembled as he measured my skull. Then he said, ‘Look at this boy. He is the perfect example of a Baltic A***n.’ I could not say thank you, neither could I tell him that if he knew the truth, his theory would crumble."

Later after the war, Solly ran into the teacher who identified him as a perfect A***n.

“When I told him his theory was wrong—that I was a pure Jew—he was stunned.”

Solly immigrated to Israel to be with an older brother. His sister and parents did not survive.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Shlomo (Solly) Perel

11/24/2023

A secret code helped Kurt Gutfreund and his mother, Hildegard, survive in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

In June 1942, Kurt's father, Heinrich, was deported to and murdered at the Maly Trostenets killing site near Minsk. Frightened, Hildegard and Kurt tried to go into hiding in Vienna, but they were eventually caught and deported to Theresienstadt.

The Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt were permitted to send letters. Kurt and his mother wrote to her sister, Renée, who was allowed to stay in Vienna because she was considered a "Mischlinge" or "mixed race" by the N**i regime. To supplement their meager rations, Hildegard used a code to ask her sister for additional food.

Addressing Renée as "My Dear Onion" or "My Dear Sausage" signaled what kinds of food Kurt and Hildegard needed. Because the requests sounded like pet names for her sister, Hildegard's letters made it past the N**i censors. Hildegard also managed to make other requests, including covertly asking for children's books for her young son.

Kurt was one of the very few child survivors of Theresienstadt. About 35,000 Jewish people died there. Tens of thousands more were deported from Theresienstadt to ghettos, killing sites, and killing centers in German-occupied eastern Europe.

Photos: USHMM, gift of Kurt Gutfreund

11/23/2023

Rae Goldfarb and her mother, Dina, celebrated their first Thanksgiving a week after arriving in the United States.

The two women had escaped two ghettos, evaded a mass shooting operation, endured the murder of Rae’s younger brother, Shlomo, and survived with a group of partisans until they were liberated in late summer 1944.

Even with the sponsorship of Rae’s aunt, Rae and Dina had to wait two and a half years before immigrating to the United States. They finally arrived on November 17, 1947.

“We attended our first Thanksgiving celebration with my aunt, uncle, and cousins,” recalled Rae. “It is very memorable to me because it was a dual celebration for us. We were grateful to finally join my aunt and find a permanent home.”

Photo: USHMM, gift of Rachel Goldfarb

11/22/2023

Frank Liebermann did not remember the doctor's name, but he could not forget what the man did for him. The Catholic doctor took a risk in 1938 to set the nine-year-old's arm after Frank broke it playing tag.

Frank's father, himself a doctor, had left Germany for America, and was not yet able to bring over his son and wife. When Frank pedaled home one-handed from the park with a shattered arm, Frank's mother called a colleague who had worked with her husband at the local hospital and who had attended dinners with the couple. He told her, "I don't treat Jews."

"My mother started calling frantically," Frank remembered. She finally found a doctor about 20 miles away. He met Frank and his mother at the back door of a Catholic orphanage, where he set Frank's arm in a cast.

While there was no law forbidding non-Jewish doctors from treating Jewish patients, the N**is and their supporters ostracized Germans who socialized or did business with their Jewish neighbors. By helping Frank, this doctor risked marking himself as an opponent of the regime.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Frank Liebermann

11/20/2023

On November 20, 1945, the world’s attention turned to Nuremberg, Germany, where N**i leaders faced judgment before the International Military Tribunal.

The Allied powers went to great lengths to ensure a fair trial as they sought to bring to justice to some of the individuals responsible for the Holocaust and other atrocities committed during World War II.

Discover the groundbreaking technology—and the people behind the scenes—that paved the way for this unprecedented trial.

11/17/2023

George Pick experienced antisemitism in his native Hungary before the Germans occupied the country. When he was nine, George and his mother came upon a group of uniformed Hungarian men chanting “death to the Jews.” Hear George describe his family’s several narrow escapes during the Holocaust.

11/16/2023

Manny Mandel was seven years old when he begged his father for a bike. The Jewish star on Manny's clothes marked him and made his father fear for his son, who only wanted to pedal in the park.

Though Manny didn't understand it then, his father said no to the bicycle to protect him from those who might prey on the little boy because he was a Jew.

"It was perfectly OK for somebody to come by and whack you on the head," Manny explained. "They could take your shoes, your coat, your backpack, or anything else. But they would whack you on the head [and] because you were a kid with a star, it was OK. Those were the kinds of things that were happening."

For Manny, the bike was just one tangible loss of normalcy brought on by wearing the Jewish star. For the young boy, it was much more than a scrap of fabric.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Emanuel (Manny) Mandel

11/15/2023

George Pick made this Mother’s Day card when he was in the first grade in May 1941. The card reads, "My wish can be written in a few words, God bless you with both of his hands."

By this time, George and his parents were already being subjected to the antisemitic laws being passed by their native Hungary, which was allied with N**i Germany.

A few years later, Germany occupied the country, putting George and his family’s lives in danger. Today at 1 p.m. ET, hear George share his survival story.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of George Pick

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11/14/2023

Growing up in N**i Germany, Susan Warsinger felt the effects of antisemitism in her everyday life.

"I was there when they boycotted my father’s store. I was there when we were not allowed to walk through parks without being accosted. I was there when we were not allowed to go to public schools. I was there during Kristallnacht when our neighbors broke down our glass front door," remembers Susan.

While many of the details of her childhood are painful to remember today, Susan still recalls one memory with “tenderness.”

Four-year-old Susan and her father were walking through a park where they lived in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. “There was an ice cream cart nearby,” Susan remembers. “A middle-aged lady from behind beckoned to me to come closer.”

As Susan walked up to the cart, the woman smiled and offered her some ice cream. Though she was young, Susan knew that this was risky. “I felt a pulse in my throat and understood that this lady made a choice to sell her ice cream to a Jewish family,” Susan recalls.

“I should be distraught about remembering how the N**is slowly and gradually began their terror of the Jewish population.” Instead, Susan thinks of “this lady who chose not to follow antisemitic laws and to do what she thought was right.”

Susan and her immediate family survived the Holocaust. She immigrated to the United States in 1941 and now volunteers for our Museum.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Susan Warsinger

11/13/2023

“I found out this long after the war—long after I left,” recalled George Pick. “We were denounced.”

A few months after the Germans occupied George’s native Hungary, George and his parents went into hiding. They hid in a vacant building disguised as a uniform factory with about 170 other Jews.

But a month later, they were discovered. Their hiding spot was raided by the authorities.

“They selected out the men and the women and children. … And we thought that's it. That's the end. But it wasn't the end fortunately.”

Hear George share what happened next this coming Wednesday, November 15 at 1 p.m. ET.

Hear survivors speak at the Museum every Wednesday and Thursday from March 13 through August 8, 2019.

11/12/2023

After the N**is rose to power, they increasingly limited Jews' ability to earn a living through a series of antisemitic policies.

in 1938, the N**i regime passed the Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life, which barred Jews from operating retail stores and from selling goods or services at establishments of any kind. The goal of the decree was to impoverish Jewish people and force the handover of their businesses to non-Jewish Germans. This decree was one of more than 400 anti-Jewish regulations passed by the N**i regime prior to World War II.

Before the Holocaust, David and Janka Penner owned a store in Berlin, Germany, where they lived with their twin children, Ilona and Kurt. Following the N**i rise to power, the Penners, like many Jewish business owners, felt the effects of state-sponsored antisemitism on their livelihoods. It is unclear when exactly the Penners were forced to give up their store, but as of January 1, 1939, when the decree’s ban took effect, it was illegal for them to own and operate it.

In 1938, Ilona and Kurt were sent on a Kindertransport to England for their protection, while their parents remained behind. In 1940, David and Janka escaped Berlin. Eventually, they immigrated to the United States, where they were reunited with their children.

By the end of 1938, the N**i regime's antisemitic policies had almost completely destroyed Jewish economic life in Germany.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Ilona Penner Blech

11/11/2023

Jewish American soldier Kurt Klein posed for this photo in the Bavarian Alps while serving in Europe during World War II. It was not his first visit to this place—born in Germany, Kurt hiked these mountains with his family as a boy. (The second photo shows Kurt, his brother, Max, and their father, Ludwig, in the same spot more than a decade earlier in 1933.)

Kurt was 12 years old when the N**is came to power in Germany. In 1937, recognizing that he had no future in Germany while the N**is ruled, he immigrated to the United States, joining his older sister, Gerdi. The next year, Max also immigrated to the United States. Their parents remained in Germany.

In 1942, Kurt joined the US Army and was sent to Camp Ritchie, a secret military installation in Maryland. There, he was trained in intelligence. Kurt and other Jewish refugee soldiers trained at Camp Ritchie would return to Europe to fight the N**is.

In Europe, Kurt used his German language skills to help interrogate German POWs. His unit also liberated death march survivors near Volary (today in the Czech Republic). One of these survivors, Gerda Weissmann, would become Kurt's wife.

In serving his new country, Kurt helped the Allies defeat N**i Germany. But victory came too late for his parents. In August 1942, they were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

Photos: USHMM, courtesy of Gerda Weissmann Klein

11/10/2023

Fred Flatow was just ten years old when N**is burned down his synagogue in Königsberg, Germany, during the violent riot known as Kristallnacht—the "Night of Broken Glass”—in November 1938.

Kristallnacht was the culmination of anti-Jewish harassment and violence that followed Fred throughout his childhood. Just a few years before, Fred had been subjected to antisemitic bullying by his non-Jewish classmates at a German public school. The synagogue became a refuge for Fred after he transferred to a Jewish school there.

After Kristallnacht, Fred squeezed through a hole in the fence next to the destroyed synagogue and visited the ruins.

“Why I went [back], I cannot recall,” Fred reflected. “It was maybe to say goodbye to the synagogue that had been such a home to us … . One day when I was in there, I found a small children's Torah.”

In the summer of 1939, Fred’s father, Erich, had a close call: one of his employees framed and denounced him to Gestapo.

The Gestapo officer gave Erich a deadline to organize the family’s emigration from Germany. With help from Königsberg’s Jewish community, the Flatow family arranged to immigrate to Chile.

Fred and his family left Europe in October 1939, nearly one year after Kristallnacht, and arrived in Chile six weeks later.

Despite most of his possessions being left behind in Germany, 11-year-old Fred managed to bring to Chile the small Torah scroll he had rescued. Throughout Fred's life, it served as an important reminder of his time in Königsberg.

11/09/2023

In the evening of November 9, 1938, the N**is orchestrated a wave of nationwide violence targeting Jewish communities. Rioters destroyed synagogues, attacked and looted Jewish-owned shops, and attacked people in their homes. Around 30,000 men were arrested and sent to concentration camps merely for being Jewish. Jews were left desperate to escape N**i Germany by any means possible.

After the initial outrage, world attention faded, and the N**is carried out even greater horrors. Join us on the 85th anniversary of the “Night of Broken Glass” to understand this turning point on the path to genocide.

11/08/2023

Adolf Hi**er and the N**i Party tried to seize power by force in a coup now known as the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Despite the putsch’s failure, the N**is eventually came to power and carried out their antisemitic agenda. Today—100 years later—threats of antisemitism and violent extremism persist.

Pictured here are Hi**er and his co-defendants who were tried for treason for their role in the putsch attempt.

On November 8–9, 1923, Hi**er and the N**i Party led an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup came to be called the Beer Hall Putsch.

11/06/2023

Pastor Martin Niemöller is best known for his call for solidarity, which ends: “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

When the N**i Party came to power, Niemöller originally supported its nationalist views. However, when the N**is began to interfere with church teachings, Niemöller spoke out, making himself a target. His primary concern was N**i influence over the church—not the persecution of Jews.

Niemöller was arrested repeatedly and found guilty in 1938 of treason and misusing the pulpit for political reasons. He spent the last seven years of N**i rule in concentration camps.

His full transformation came after he was liberated by the Allies in 1945 and understood the death and destruction caused by N**i policies. It was only after the war that Niemöller acknowledged his own antisemitic beliefs.

Niemöller’s famous quote, a confession of his own inaction, evolved over time. He delivered multiple versions of it. In times of turmoil, we turn to his words. The full quote can be found here:

Learn about the origins and legacy of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...”

11/03/2023

After the war, some Holocaust survivors, including Joseph Feingold, hoped to return to their homes. But when Joseph arrived in his hometown of Kielce, Poland, he found himself in the midst of an outbreak of violent antisemitism known as a pogrom.

Anti-Jewish violence had occurred in Europe for centuries due to long-standing antisemitism. Jewish men, women, and children were beaten and murdered, often by their neighbors, just for being Jewish. This culminated in the Holocaust—N**i Germany's widespread, systematic murder of Europe's Jews—but violence against Jews did not end there.

Joseph arrived in Kielce on July 4, 1946, determined to find out any information about the fate of his mother and two younger brothers. He had no idea that, in the days leading up to his arrival, a nine-year-old Polish boy from Kielce had gone missing for three days. The boy feared the punishment he might face for running away, so he made up a story. He told his parents and the police that he had been kidnapped and hidden in the basement of the local Jewish Committee building. Rumors quickly spread throughout the town.

Soon after Joseph arrived at the Jewish Committee building, an angry mob began to amass outside. They were furious about the local boy’s alleged kidnapping. Joseph was forced outside and thrust into the crowd. “Next thing I know, I feel I’m on the ground. I feel my eyes getting closed, and it’s getting wet with blood.”

Joseph awoke several days later in a hospital bed with his father sitting beside him. He was lucky to be alive. The mob, consisting of civilians, soldiers, and police, had killed 42 Jews that day in Kielce. The massacre convinced many Polish Jews—including Joseph and his father—that they had no future in Poland after the Holocaust.

Joseph and his father immigrated to the United States in 1948.

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11/02/2023

"If ever a piece of writing could produce mass hatred, it is this one ... . This book is about lies and slander."—Elie Wiesel

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is one of the most notorious works of antisemitic propaganda in modern times. It first appeared at the turn of the 20th century in the Russian empire, claiming a false Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. The N**is were among those who exploited "The Protocols" to further promote antisemitism globally.

Despite the publication being discredited, neo-N**is, white supremacists, and Holocaust deniers continue to endorse and circulate it, reinforcing long-standing and deep-seated hatred of Jews.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Berbera Editiones

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11/01/2023

Antisemitic lies and stereotypes used to dehumanize Jewish people are nothing new. N**i Germany employed a steady drumbeat of propaganda that adapted age-old anti-Jewish lies and stereotypes and reinforced the myth that Jews were dirty, deceitful, and dangerous. Some Germans became fervent believers in N**i ideas and enthusiastically participated in the regime's discriminatory policies. Most remained silent as their Jewish neighbors were persecuted. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=antisemitism&utm_content=propaganda20231101

10/31/2023

Ilse Sakheim's childhood was marked by gradually increasing antisemitism in Germany—beginning with schoolyard taunts and escalating to state-sponsored violence.

“They were starting to not let Jews go to the swimming pool, not let Jews go to the skating rink, not to allow you to sit on certain park benches,” remembered Ilse (pictured, left). “They had signs up in the stores, which said ‘A***n’ … . Pretty soon after that, the stores didn't just say ‘A***n,’ but they said ‘Jews not wanted.’”

On April 1, 1933, when she was seven years old, armed N**i Storm Troopers stood outside her father’s retail store, prohibiting customers from entering. Her father, Kurt, had to close the store shortly thereafter. In the years that followed, Ilse watched her classmates join the Hi**er Youth and the League of German Girls. They began taunting her, calling her a “bloody Jew.”

When she was 13, Ilse came home from school only to learn that her father had been arrested in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, a night of widespread violence against Jews in November 1938. He remained in the Buchenwald concentration camp for three grueling months.

Understanding the gravity of their situation, Ilse’s parents worked desperately to get Ilse out of Germany. In April 1939, Kurt and Sophie, Ilse’s mother, said goodbye to their only child as Ilse boarded a Kindertransport train bound for England. After the war, Ilse learned that her parents had been murdered at Auschwitz.

“I think people really need to be aware that … they have to take action, and that they can't just sit and allow masses of people to be tortured and slaughtered and treated in this terrible, terrible way. And I remember that my father said to me, you have to go to the world, and you have to tell people what happened. And I think that I'm really following what he said.”

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Ilse Sakheim

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10/30/2023

We are horrified by the surge in violent antisemitism—on college campuses, city streets worldwide, online—even at an airport. Holocaust history warns what can happen when hatred of Jews is met by silence. These dangerous acts of antisemitism must be confronted and universally condemned.

10/26/2023

Celia Century was 14 years old when the Norwegian police and members of N**i-aligned paramilitary formations began arresting Jewish men in 1942 in Oslo, Norway’s capital.

Prior to World War II, Celia (pictured right) reveled in her Norwegian upbringing. “We used to say that we were born with skis on,” she recollected. But in April 1940, N**i Germany invaded Norway.

“It was always the rumor saying that the Jews won't be affected. We are Norwegian citizens. Nothing will happen to us.” This, unfortunately, would not be the case.

Two days prior to the arrests, Celia’s father, David, had gone into hiding following the advice of his friends in the underground resistance.

“The Norwegian police came,” Celia remembered. “And two policemen showed papers. They had orders to arrest my father.”

A little over a week later, Celia, her parents, and her older sister, Berit (pictured left), fled Norway for neutral Sweden, where they survived the Holocaust. The majority of Norwegian Jews who remained were deported by German officials and Norwegian collaborators to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Only about 34 of the about 770 Jews deported from Norway survived.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Celia Gorlen

10/20/2023

Irena Sendler, a young Polish woman involved in aiding Jews, was arrested by the Gestapo 80 years ago this month.

Using her position as a social worker, Irena supplied food and offered financial assistance to Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto in German-occupied Poland.

But her efforts didn't end there. By early 1943, she had joined newly formed "Żegota," the Polish Council to Aid Jews, a clandestine rescue organization that was funded by the Polish government-in-exile. Irena would later become head of its children's section. Under the alias "Jolanta," she helped smuggle several hundred Jewish children out of the ghetto and found hiding places for them in orphanages, convents, and private homes.

In fall 1943, Irena was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Pawiak prison. She was later released from prison thanks to a bribe organized by her fellow rescuers. Despite the danger, she assumed a new identity and went back to working for Żegota.

In 1965, Irena was honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

Photo: Yad Vashem

10/17/2023

"The danger is not imminent, but where the danger comes in is that Hi**erism is contagious.” —Albert Einstein, 1933

in October 1933, German Jewish physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the United States after permanently fleeing N**i Germany. Einstein recognized the rise in antisemitism and was an outspoken critic of the N**i regime.

He had spoken those words during an event in New York in March 1933. Einstein’s critical remarks came the month after the Gestapo first raided his family’s apartment in Berlin, which happened repeatedly.

Einstein chose to renounce his German citizenship and eventually settled in New Jersey. He became an American citizen in 1940.

Photo: Library of Congress

10/14/2023

At the Sobibor killing center, Chaim Engel and Selma Wijnberg were among the few selected for forced labor. They met while working together in the clothes-sorting area—and attempted to pocket food and valuables, including any possible weapons, for an uprising.

On October 14, 1943, Chaim was part of a small group of prisoners that revolted.

As chaos ensued, the young Jewish couple ran into the woods. With money they had taken from separating clothing, the couple paid a farmer to allow them to hide in his barn.

While close to 300 prisoners escaped, only about 50 would survive the war—including Chaim and Selma. At least 167,000 Jews were killed at Sobibor.

First photo: Selma and Chaim are pictured here, center, with their child and two other couples in Odessa, circa May 1945. USHMM, courtesy of Selma Wijnberg Engel
Second Photo: Selma Wijnberg Engel. USHMM, courtesy of Selma Wijnberg Engel
Third Photo: Chaim Engel. USHMM, courtesy of Chaim Engel