United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

05/25/2026

They weren't just fighting a war; they were trying to destroy an ideology that had targeted them.

Thousands of young men who had fled N**i persecution, including many Jews, joined a secret US military intelligence program that helped defeat the Germans during World War II.

Using their language skills and knowledge of local culture and geography, the soldiers interrogated thousands of civilians and N**i war criminals. They discovered German tactics and contributed information to counter them.

Starting with D-Day, these American refugees were involved in every major battle the US Army fought in Europe. Some even lost their lives while helping their new country to victory. 📸 US Army

“Ritchie Boys” is a term used for American soldiers who trained at Camp Ritchie during World War II. Several thousand were Jewish refugees from Europe.

05/16/2026

This 23-year-old helped change the course of history.

During the Holocaust, the N**is trapped about half a million Jews inside the Warsaw ghetto, where they lived and died in terrible conditions.

Believing he and others left in the ghetto would soon be sent to their deaths, Mordecai Anielewicz made a plan to fight back. In spring 1943, about 700 resistance fighters—mostly young adults—armed themselves with whatever they could use or find and held off N**i forces for 27 days.

The N**is were taken by surprise. They burned the ghetto block by block to crush the uprising. Thousands of Jews were killed. Those captured were murdered in a killing center or imprisoned in N**i camps.

The ghetto fighters' determination inspired Jews to fight back across N**i-occupied Europe.

Before he died in a bunker, Mordecai wrote: “Jewish self-defense in the Warsaw ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and revenge have become a reality.”

Click the link to learn more.

Photo 1: USHMM, courtesy of Louis Gonda
Photo 2: Yad Vashem

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=otd&utm_content=warsawghettouprisingends20260516

05/15/2026

These photos were never meant to be found.

05/12/2026

She packed a camera not knowing what she filmed would one day be evidence.

05/10/2026

Two months pregnant, Priska Löwenbein clung to her husband inside the railcar. In a last act of hope, they named their baby before arriving at Auschwitz. Priska hid her growing body and was transferred to a labor camp. Less than a month before liberation, she gave birth to Hana.

📸 Courtesy of Hana Berger Moran

05/09/2026

Guy Stern was one of the Ritchie Boys during World War II.

05/05/2026

“I remember that there were piles and piles of corpses.” —Charles Torluccio, veteran of the 11th Armored Division�
in 1945, the US Army liberated Mauthausen concentration camp. At least 95,000 prisoners, 12,000 of them Jewish, died in that camp system between 1938 and 1945.
📷: USHMM, courtesy of Peggy Meharry

05/04/2026

"I finally knew what I was fighting for, what the war was all about," wrote Captain J.D. Pletcher.

In early May 1945, Capt. Pletcher and his fellow soldiers with the 71st Infantry Division helped to liberate Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. There, they found approximately 15,000 prisoners in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions with little to no food.

Horrified by what they saw, and realizing that the N**i atrocities should be documented, the unit’s commander, Major General Willard G. Wyman, ordered a booklet be made to record the scene.

"The living and dead, evidence of horror and brutality beyond one’s imagination was there ... " wrote one soldier.

Understanding that someday, some might try to downplay or deny N**i crimes, Wyman wrote, "A permanent, honest record of the crimes committed there will serve to remind all of us in future years that the freedom and privileges we enjoy in a democratic nation must be jealously guarded and protected."

Photo: National Archives

05/02/2026

When Native American soldier Jesse Oxendine liberated the Wöbbelin camp, he witnessed the extent of N**i cruelty for the first time.

04/30/2026

This photo was taken secretly inside the Ravensbrück concentration camp. A group of prisoners documented the medical experimentations that German doctors were performing on them.

Joanna Szydłowska traded her bread to another prisoner for a camera. She was one of 74 Polish women subjected to cruel experiments, including unnecessary surgeries.

Doctors cut open some women's legs and intentionally infected them to try to simulate battlefield wounds. Some of the women were given no medication when they became desperately ill.

Ravensbrück was liberated in 1945 after most prisoners had been evacuated from the camp. Some of the experimentation victims testified at trials after the war. The photos they took were part of the evidence.

📷: USHMM, courtesy of Anna Hassa Jarosky and Peter Hassa

04/29/2026

Because of Bud and so many liberators like him, this family is here today. Their story didn't end at Dachau.