Pre-War Jewish Life
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.A common component of European history was antisemitism - the opposition to and hatred of Jews. Jews, as a minority, were often blamed for problems within a community, ultimately leading to widespread acts of persecution and violence.In 1933 the largest Jewish populations were concentrated in eastern Europe, including Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. Many lived in predominantly Jewish towns or villages, called shtetls. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, which combines elements of German, Slavic languages, and Hebrew. They read Yiddish books and attended Yiddish theater and movies.Although many younger Jews in larger towns were beginning to adopt modern ways and dress, older people often dressed traditionally, the men wearing hats or caps, and the women modestly covering their hair with wigs or shawls.In comparison, the Jews in western Europe - Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium - made up much less of the population and tended to adopt the culture of their non-Jewish neighbors. Traditional religious practices and Yiddish culture played a less important part in their lives. They tended to have had more formal education than eastern European Jews and to live in towns or cities.Jews could be found in all walks of life, as farmers, tailors, dressmakers, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners. Some were wealthy; many more were poor. Many children ended their schooling early to work in a craft or trade; others looked forward to continuing their education at the university level.Germany entered World War I on 1st August 1914 when the country declared war on Russia. 11 million German soldiers were mobilized, 100,000 of whom were Jewish. A number of these Jewish soldiers, like Ernst Flatau seen here, were honored with the Iron Cross for their service.The Jewish population of Germany in January 1933 was approximately 523,000 out of a total population of 67 million, less than one percent. Yet Germany’s defeat in World War I, the establishment of the Versailles Treaty, and the Great Depression were all blamed on the Jewish community, making them the primary scapegoat for any problems facing the nation.The total Jewish population of Europe was then about 9.5 million. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and most European Jews - two out of every three - would be dead.
The Rise of the Nazi Party
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers. The treaty’s so-called “war guilt” clause forced Germany and other Central Powers to take all the blame for World War I. This meant a loss of territories, reduction in military forces, and huge reparation payments to Allied powers.In Germany, the end of the war in November 1918, had seen the creation of an untested democratic framework, known as the Weimar Republic. This quickly became unstable during the Great Depression. Over 30 political parties vied for power, all with ideas of how to rescue the nation from its current situation and restore its glory.One of the many displaced soldiers from World War I looking to rebuild his life during this political turmoil was Adolf Hitler. Employed by the German Army as a confidential informant, he spied on these political parties and reported back to his superiors. After attending a meeting in September 1919, Hitler joined what would become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazi Party, and began his climb to power.On July 18th, 1925, Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’) was published. He wrote it in prison, where he was serving a sentence for a failed coup he’d attempted in 1923. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his ideology and presented himself as the leader of the extreme right. Mein Kampf promoted the key components of Nazism: rabid antisemitism, a racist world view, an aggressive foreign policy geared to gaining Lebensraum (living space) in eastern Europe.Der Stürmer (literally, "The Striker or Stormer") was a weekly German tabloid newspaper published from 1923 to the end of World War II by Julius Streicher. It was a significant part of Nazi propaganda and was virulently antisemitic. It dehumanized Jews and made Germans perceive them as being inferior to their culture. At the bottom of the title page, there was always the motto "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" ("The Jews are our misfortune!").In the November 1932 elections, the Nazi Party won 33% of the votes and 196 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, second only to the President, Paul von Hindenburg. Soon after, the Nazis intensified their propaganda campaign to gain public support and conscript more people into their political ideology.
The Third Reich 1933-38
Dachau, the Nazis first concentration camp, began operation in March 1933, soon after Hitler’s rise to power. The first prisoners interned at the camp were known political enemies of the Nazi regime - mostly Communists and Social Democrats. On March 24th, 1933, following the burning of the Reichstag, Hitler continued to expand his power by introducing the Enabling Act, allowing him to create new laws by decree. Following the death of President von Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler claimed absolute power by declaring himself der Führer, leader and dictator of Nazi Germany.For the next 5 years Hitler would gain totalitarian control over Germany by using paramilitary groups and propaganda. Nazi ideology heavily relied on the ‘Aryan Volk’ concept, which encouraged Germans through Eugenics to ensure their dominant blood line would not be tainted by non-Germans.The Mother’s Cross medal in bronze, silver, and gold was awarded from 1939 to German women who exhibited morality, exemplary motherhood, and who conceived and raised at least four or more children. In contrast an euthanasia program was set up across Germany in 1939 to eliminate people with mental and physical disabilities. In the Nazi view, this would cleanse the Aryan race of those considered genetically defective and a financial burden on the state.In September 1935, the Nazis announced the Nuremburg Race Laws and codified discrimination against non-Aryans living in Germany. The laws sought to separate and ostracize those considered non-German. Jews lost the right to citizenship, to hold public office, to own businesses, and to attend public school.These regulations were continually added to through the early 1940’s, the most infamous occurring in September 1941 when it was decreed that all Jews in the Reich aged 6 or older were to wear a yellow Star of David badge. The goals of these laws and actions were meant to force Jewish emigration, but many German Jews believed the situation would eventually improve.In March 1938, with armed forces he was not supposed to have according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler invaded his homeland Austria, in what was called the Anschluss, German for “union”. Within days, the Austrian government aligned with Germany and began applying similar laws against Jews and other enemies of the Reich.Hitler continued his territorial gains in September 1938 when he demanded that Czechoslovakia give up the Sudetenland, an area that bordered Germany, because the residents spoke German and were of German descent.Against the wishes of Czechoslovakia, Western European governments negotiated the Munich Agreement under the leadership of Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minster of Britain, and gave the land to Hitler.Chamberlain believed this would quell Hitler’s desire to claim more territory and prevent any conflict with Germany from breaking out, declaring shortly after the agreement that he had secured “peace for our time”.
Kristallnacht
Conditions worsened for Jews throughout 1938 as the government required them to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the rest of the German population. In an August 1938 law, authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men and women bearing first names of “non-Jewish” origin had to add “Israel” and “Sara,” respectively, to their given names.All German Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their heritage, and, on October 5, 1938, after a meeting between the Head of the Swiss Police and Nazi leaders in Berlin, the Reich Ministry of the Interior invalidated all German passports held by Jews. Jews had to surrender their old passports, which would only become valid after the letter “J” has been stamped on them. Be sure to see the samples on display in the center case.In late October 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews living in Nazi Germany were arrested and expelled. These deportations, termed by the Nazis Polenaktion ("Polish Action"), were ordered by SS officer and head of the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich. The deported Jews were refused entry by Poland and were confined in makeshift camps in the no man’s land between Germany and Poland.The son of one couple, Herschel Grynspan, was studying in Paris when his parents were forced out of Germany. On November 7th, to bring international attention to the plight of his parents and others, Grynspan shot a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, who later died of his wounds. In retaliation, the Nazi Regime sought to punish the entire Jewish community in the Reich with a well-planned pogrom that lasted from the evening of November 9th all through the day of November 10th.Approximately 7,000 Jewish businesses were vandalized, roughly 90 people were killed and over 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Several hundred synagogues were set afire, including the one seen here in Eberswalde, where the family of Lorie Mayer, the museum’s first curator, worshipped. Other victims of the pogrom, bizarrely, were given receipts for items stolen by the Nazis that night.Following Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, the Nazis placed a billion Mark fine on the Jewish community to pay for the damage caused during the attacks, essentially crippling the Jewish economy in Germany.
Attempted Escape
In July 1938, President Roosevelt had called for an international conference in Evian, France to address the Jewish refugee problem. Thirty-two countries, including America, sent representatives to the conference, yet while all expressed concern, only the Dominican Republic offered help.The State Department actively blocked Jewish immigration and in the Spring of 1939, President Roosevelt refused to give entry to 907 refugees aboard the transatlantic liner St. Louis, forcing the ship to return to Europe. Some passengers were able to find safe havens, but most were sent to countries the German military would soon occupy. Consequently, just over half of the 532 refugees who returned would eventually die in the Holocaust.After the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in May 1940, most Americans feared that Nazi spies or saboteurs might be trying to enter the United States by posing as immigrants. Between 1940 and 1944, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long supervised the US State Department’s Visa Division, which regulated the issuing of visas to people who applied to immigrate to the United States - including Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. In late June 1940, ten days after France’s surrender to the Nazis, Long wrote a memo to other State Department officials suggesting that consular officers could “put every obstacle in the way and require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative advices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas”.InGreat Britain, people learned of attacks against Jews by the Nazis and pressured their government to act. In response, the British government permitted an increased number of children from the Third Reich to enter the country. The British government did not want to permit adults, believing they would compete with citizens for jobs.British organizations like the Refugee Children’s Movement worked with Jewish communities to find eligible children and transport them to Great Britain. Once in England, temporary families that would accept them for the duration of the war. Representatives for the RCM and others estimated up to 50,000 children under sixteen would find refuge in Britain, but the start of the war limited it to just 10,000.The Kindertransport program also had its difficulties. Parents made the painful choice to give up their children and possibly never see them again. Children who made it to England struggled with culture shock, a new language, feelings of abandonment, and, rarely, attempts at conversion to Christianity
Invasion of the East
You are now entering Gallery 2, and The Invasion of the East. Within a year of Kristallnacht, “peace for our time” was no longer.On September 1st, 1939, German forces invaded Poland and began World War II. The Nazis viewed Poles as a subhuman race who did not deserve the territory so needed by Germany for Lebensraum or living space.To achieve this aim, Hitler negotiated a Non-Aggression Treaty with Josef Stalin and secretly agreed that Germany and the Soviet Union would invade Poland from opposite sides. Within 3 weeks, Poland surrendered and those seen as a threat to Germany’s occupation were eliminated, including political and religious leaders, Polish soldiers, law enforcement personnel, and even teachers.Poland had the highest pre-war population of Jews in Europe, approximately 3 million compared to Germany’s 600,000. Ghettos were quickly established throughout German-occupied Poland to control this sizable Jewish population. Some were enclosed and consisted of numerous city blocks, others were open with just a road or two in a small town. Jews and Romani made up most of the people moved to these ghettos, later making it easy to transport them in large numbers to concentration camps and killing centers.As German forces moved through Eastern Europe in 1941, the military were followed by killing squadrons known as Einsatzgruppen. Supported by the German army and sometimes local communities, the 3000 men of these four special action groups targeted political and racial enemies of the Third Reich. Their actions killed at least 1,500,000 Jews, Communists, people with mental and physical disabilities, and resistors.At the ravine known as Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), outside the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, SS and German police units and members of Einsatzgruppe C, perpetrated one of the largest massacres of World War II, when nearly 34,000 Jews were murdered in September 1941.
Invasion of the West
With control of Western Poland, Hitler turned his sights to Western Europe, invading France, Belgium and Holland on May 10th, 1940. The Blitzkrieg, or lightning war that Germany unleashed, prevented any military force from acquiring enough time to organize and prepare a strong defense to halt the German army’s advance.,Belgium and Holland surrendered in less than a week; France held out until June before finally signing an armistice, dividing the country into a German-occupied zone and a free zone under the Vichy government. Over the course of the next few years, the Nazis implemented anti-Jewish measures in the occupied countries. Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars of David, Jewish property was “Germanized”, thousands were interned, and others periodically rounded up and sent via transport camps to killing centers in Poland.Many Jewish children, like Belgian Renee Fritz, survived by being hidden by people and institutions from other faiths. To disguise her Jewish heritage, some went further, and here you can see the veil she was given for a first communion at a Catholic convent.
The Wannsee Conference
On January 20th, 1942, fifteen high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee.On July 31st, 1941, Hermann Göring had given written authorization to the head of the Reich security main office, Reinhard Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control. The purpose of the Wannsee Conference was thus to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in its implementation.In preparation for the conference, Director Jewish Affairs, Adolf Eichmann drafted a list of the total numbers of Jews in the various European countries, a figure of 11 million. Estonia was listed as Judenfrei (free of Jews), since the 4,500 Jews who were there after the German occupation had already been killed by the end of 1941.Over the next 3 years, the pace of extermination increased dramatically. In August 1942, Gerhart Riegner, who worked for the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, informed the US State Department and the British Foreign Office by telegram that he had information that Nazi Germany was planning to murder millions of European Jews.You can read Riegner’s telegram on the panel.The US State Department initially tried to block Riegner’s message from reaching its intended recipient in the United States, and by the time the information eventually reached a wider public in November, over one million Jews had been killed between August and October – roughly 25% of all Holocaust victims.
Forced Labor
The Nazis created an intricate system of concentration camps throughout Europe, including Transit Camps, Prisoner of War Camps, Killing Centers, and Forced Labor Camps.Forced labor conditions were horrendous and people died from disease, starvation, overwork or were murdered by Nazi guards when they were no longer useful. Generally, rations in the camps were less than 1,000 calories a day per person. For the Nazis, unless a prisoner had a special skill, there was no need to keep them alive for any great length of time. Forced labor was so plentiful that Germany became heavily reliant on it. That reliance and access to a large pool of slave laborers meant that conditions could be inhumane.The Ostarbeiter program brought conscripted labor from the occupied east to the Reich. These young people were essentially prisoners, slave laborers - restricted to their place of residence (in some cases labor camps) and forbidden to fraternize with Germans. Most Ostarbeiters were Polish or Russian, and because they were regarded as subhuman, they were ordered to be separated from the Germans. Those who tried to escape were hanged where other workers could see their bodies.Many manufacturing companies, both German and those doing business with Germany, collaborated with the Nazi Regime and used slave labor for their own economic benefits, compensating the government rather than the people doing the work.Some industrialists did try to help forced laborers. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with protecting 1200 Jewish workers from deportation and death in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Schindler submitted lists of essential Jewish workers to Amon Göth, the notorious commandant of Plaszòw concentration camp. Schindler, who had already been using bribery to protect Jews working in his enamelware factory in Kraków, persuaded Gõth to let him transport his workforce to the Sudetenland when he moved his factory. The move saved them from almost certain death. The lists of employees he submitted became known collectively as “Schindler’s list”.
Deportation
Once the decision to create killing centers and an effective killing method were finalized, deportations began. People were given notice that they would be resettled in Eastern Europe and put to work. They were told what to pack, how to label their suitcases, and when to report to the train stations.Using the extensive railway system throughout Europe, it was easy for the Nazis to deport people to camps across the occupied territories. People were loaded into freight cars or third-class passenger trains. Journeys lasted anything from hours to several days, depending on the final destination. No food or drink was given during the journey, and usually the windows were sealed shut. For many, the process was a death sentence.On 22 July 1942, the Jewish Council of Warsaw published a Nazi notice to the Warsaw Ghetto, stating that almost all its inhabitants would be deported to camps in the east, regardless of age or gender. Mass deportations began, and by 12 September 1942 approximately 300,000 of the ghetto’s inhabitants had been deported to the Treblinka killing center or been murdered. About 50,000 people remained in the ghetto, and with many guessing what fate awaited them, preparations were made to resist the Germans should any more deportations take place.On 19 April 1943, the Nazis began their final liquidation of the ghetto. Jewish fighters retaliated, many with handmade weapons, initially forcing the German troops to retreat. The Nazis changed tactics, and slowly destroyed the ghetto building by building, forcing Jews remaining in hiding to appear or be killed. 27 days after the initial April attack, the uprising was crushed on 16 May 1943, and the ghetto destroyed. The 42,000 survivors of the uprising were deported to concentration camps and killing centers.As the map left of the panel shows, hundreds of thousands of Jews were transported to their deaths across Europe, yet most of Denmark’s Jews were saved from extermination after plans for their round-up were leaked to the Danish resistance and a remarkable rescue operation to Sweden was put into action.
Auschwitz Gallery: Killing Centers
You have now come to our newest exhibit – the Auschwitz Gallery, arranged around a central island.Killing CentersTo carry out the "Final Solution," the Nazis set up killing centers in German-annexed and occupied Poland. Chelmno, the first designed for the mass murder of Jews, was established in December 1941. In 1942, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were established with the goal of murdering all the Jews of the General Government, and Auschwitz, the largest of its kind, consisting of three camps including a killing center, opened over the course of nearly two years beginning in 1940.
Auschwitz Gallery: Arrival
After all kinds of humiliations in ghettos and transit camps, prisoners from all over occupied Europe were transported to Auschwitz in overcrowded freight cars, with no water or food. After a journey that sometimes took days and killed many, they arrived at the long platform of the camp, simply known as the ramp.
Auschwitz Gallery: Selection
At the platform, guards ordered the deportees to get out and form a line. The victims then went through a selection process. Men were separated from women and children. A Nazi, usually an SS physician, looked quickly at each person to decide if he or she was healthy and strong enough for forced labor. This SS officer then pointed to the left or the right; victims did not know that individuals were being selected to live or die. Babies and young children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with disabilities and the sick, had little chance of surviving this first selection.
Auschwitz Gallery: Lethal Medicine
SS physicians, ignoring all ethical concerns, took advantage of the opportunity to perform inhumane and often deadly medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. Josef Mengele became the most notorious of the Nazi doctors there and was nicknamed the “Angel of Death”. He is often remembered for his presence on the selection ramp where he sought out twins.
Auschwitz Gallery: Local Experiences
Southwest Florida residents who survived the Holocaust have shared their experiences with us. While many have now passed away, their recorded testimonies endure, allowing future generations to hear their personal stories of suffering and survival. Please take some time to hear directly from Abe Price, Erna Rosner, Hella Wartski and Fani Weingarten about their time in Auschwitz.
Auschwitz Gallery: The Killing Process
Those selected to die were killed with gas. Gas vans, designed to direct deadly exhaust fumes via metal pipes into the airtight cargo compartments were used, particularly at the Chełmno killing center, until gas chambers were developed as a more efficient method for murdering large numbers of people. Carbon monoxide was used in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, and Zyklon B, a highly poisonous insecticide was used at Auschwitz.To prevent panic, camp guards told the victims that they were going to take showers to rid themselves of lice. The guards instructed them to hand over their valuables and undress. Then they were forced naked into the "showers." The doors were locked and "Zyklon B" pellets were dropped down an air shaft. Within minutes everyone inside was dead from lack of oxygen. Under guard, prisoners were made to haul the corpses to a nearby room, where they removed hair, gold teeth, and fillings. The bodies were then burned in ovens in the crematoria or buried in mass graves.
Auschwitz Gallery: Kanada
The belongings of all arrivals were confiscated and sorted in the "Kanada” warehouses for use in the camp or shipment back to Germany. Canada symbolized wealth to the prisoners. The work of sorting the possessions was done by Jewish prisoners called the Kanada Kommando. The Kanada work detachment was viewed as one of the better jobs in Auschwitz, because the prisoners could “organize”, camp slang for procuring, goods for themselves and fellow inmates. By the time the sorting was completed, most of the previous owners were already dead.
Auschwitz Gallery: Life in Auschwitz
Shortly after World War II, an American intelligence officer living in Germany uncovered a personal album of photographs from Karl Hoecker, chronicling SS officers’ activities at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rare images show Nazis singing, hunting, and even trimming a Christmas tree. They provide a chilling contrast to the photographs of thousands of Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz at the same time in 1944 which appear in the well-known Auschwitz Album, which recorded the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia.
Auschwitz Gallery: Revolts
Most Jews deported to Auschwitz were murdered immediately after arrival and therefore had no chance or even any time to organize resistance. Nevertheless, there were cases in which they mutinied and put up a fight and Jewish workers launched uprisings even in the killing centers at Treblinka and Sobibor. On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to work at crematorium IV in Auschwitz-Birkenau, rebelled after learning that they were the next to be killed. The Germans crushed the revolt and murdered almost all the several hundred prisoners involved in the rebellion.
Auschwitz Gallery: Destroy and Evacuate
In January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. As Allied forces approached Nazi camps, the SS organized forced evacuation of concentration camp and killing center inmates, in part to keep large numbers of prisoners from falling into Allied hands and to cover up what the Nazis had been doing. SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners during what became known as death marches. They shot those who could not keep up, or who were too weak to disembark from the trains or ships that were sometimes used during the forced evacuations.
Martin Niemöller
As you exit the Auschwitz Gallery, you will be able to read Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous “First they came” confession. The lengthy quotation expresses his belief in his and the German people’s passivity and indifference during the Holocaust. But he is a complicated figure. Initially an antisemitic Nazi supporter, his views changed when he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for speaking out against Nazi control of churches.
Liberation
As 1945 began, the Russian Army approached Berlin from the east, liberating Killing Centers in Poland along the way. Auschwitz, the largest of all the Nazi camps, was liberated on January 27th, 1945 by the Red Army. The Allies, including the Americans, Canadians, and British, approached from the west, liberating camps throughout Germany and Austria between April and May. On April 30th, Hitler, knowing the approaching armies would soon capture and hold him accountable for his actions, decided to commit suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin with his wife, Eva Braun. His death was announced the next day by Admiral Dönitz, who then negotiated the surrender of the German Army to the Allies, becoming official on May 8th, 1945.During these last few months of the war, the Allies had discovered the depth of Nazi cruelty as they liberated concentration camps abandoned by the Nazis. In all the camps, the dead outnumbered the living, with most of those alive often weighing less than 80 pounds. Soldiers were horrified by what they found, prompting many to visit surrounding villages to demand acknowledgement and cooperation of local citizens. They were required to assist the living and bury the dead in mass graves. Most civilians were aware of the mass killings that had been occurring for years near their homes yet offered little opposition. This was also likely their first time seeing the camps with their own eyes, displaying the consequences of their silence.Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald, was the first camp to be liberated by American troops on April 4th. Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley visited the camp on April 12th. It was at this time that Eisenhower demanded everything be documented, ensuring that the legitimacy of these atrocities could not be denied later. He stated: I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda”. Many of the photographs seen here were taken by soldiers who now live in Southwest Florida. They graciously donated these items to our Museum so they could testify to the truth of what the Nazis did.
Surviving and Thriving: The Straus-Mandelbaum Story
Tragedies that befell the Jewish community before, during and after WWII left a deep and glaring scar on the families affected. However, all those attacks failed to destroy their spirit. Regardless of the countless number of family lines cut short, many who survived have been able to rebuild their lives and even regrow their families. Eleven-year-old Eda Strauss, a Holocaust survivor saw her hometown of Warsaw occupied and changed into a ghetto. During her time in the ghetto Eda witnessed German soldiers shooting civilians at random on multiple occasions, even killing one of her friends while they were walking with one another. Eda’s father died in one of the first airplane bombings that hit the city and two of her seven siblings also perished in the ghetto. Despite these tragedies Eda was able to escape with her family and went on to rebuild her family tree.
Displaced Persons
World War II had decimated the civilian landscape of Europe for nearly six years, resulting in millions of people being uprooted from their homes by the war’s end. Families returning home found their house had either been destroyed or was occupied by another family.These refugees became known as Displaced Persons or DPs and were primarily comprised of Holocaust and slave labor survivors or civilians that actively fled from battles. Temporary camps were created for them, many of on the sites of former concentration camps or military barracks.Conditions inside were often unsanitary due to severe overcrowding and a lack of supplies in the post-war period. Initially, all displaced persons were grouped together in the camps according to nationality. This meant that some Jewish survivors found themselves in camps alongside their former oppressors, simply because they both happened to be from the same country.Fearing European antisemitism, and the possibility of another Holocaust, from 1945 to 1948, the Bricha escape organization moved more than 100,000 Jews illegally into Palestine. Unable to prevent them from entering the area, Britain granted the region to the Jewish community and the state of Israel was established.The DP emigration crisis eventually came to an end with over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa. Almost all of the DP camps were closed by 1952 and the Jewish displaced persons began new lives in their new homelands around the world.
Pursuing Justice
With the fighting over, the Allies formed the International Military Tribunal to hold Nazi Germany accountable for its crimes. France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States provided lawyers and judges for the trial, at which 22 German military and civilian leaders were charged with conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Often criticized as a form of “victor’s justice”, instead of arbitrarily exacting revenge, the Allies sought to conduct a judicial proceeding in accordance with the rule of law.The Nuremberg Charter charged the International Military Tribunal to conduct a fair trial and afford the defendants certain rights. These included the right to speak and present evidence and witnesses in their own defense. It also included the right to cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution.On October 1, 1946, the Tribunal convicted 19 of the defendants and acquitted three. Of those convicted, 12 were sentenced to death. Göring made an appeal asking to be shot as a soldier instead of being hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule the night before he was due to be executed.Three defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment and four to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years.Following the initial trial, 12 others were held in Nuremberg and collectively, these 13 events are called the Nuremberg Trials. For the first time in history a sitting government, industry leaders and military leaders were held accountable for crimes against humanity.In all, 199 defendants were tried, 161 were convicted, and 37 were sentenced to death. Some of the most prominent Nazis – Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels - had committed suicide and therefore could not be tried.
Genocide and Human Rights Gallery
The Holocaust & Human Rights: Learning from AtrocityIn the aftermath of the Holocaust, world leaders felt the need to define the universal rights violated by the Nazis and their collaborators. The newly created United Nations formed a committee to develop a list of rights to be adopted around the globe, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR. The UDHR is an aspirational document, a framework for countries to strive towards in the effort to create a safer world. To learn more about the UDHR, scan the QR code to see the full list and use the flip books to read about these aspirations.Risk Factors for GenocideThe efforts to understand and characterize the Holocaust began even before WWII had ended, as prominent legal professionals and scholars worked to define the crimes that were being revealed and how they occurred. Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, became the most prominent advocate for defining the crimes of the Nazis as a crime that transcended international borders and laws. Using his knowledge of the persecution of Armenians in Turkey, Ukrainians in the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, Lemkin created a word for these extraordinary crimes; Genocide (Genos, Greek for race or tribe, -cide from the Latin for killing.)Lemkin tirelessly and successfully advocated for his new term to be recognized as an international crime, leading to the ratification of the United Nation’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December 1948. Though Lemkin provided a legal framework for what genocide is, the legal definition did not explain how or where genocide was likely to occur.Many models and theories have developed since 1948 to help examine the risks and likelihoods of a genocide occurring and how they are carried out. This led to psychologist Dr. James Waller developing a series of factors that can indicate genocide becoming more imminent in a society.On this wall you can explore these factors and see how a genocide does not happen instantaneously but is the culmination of societal stresses and division that lead people towards accepting systematic killing.World Map and InteractivesFor more in-depth information about Waller’s risk factors and genocides that have occurred, please browse our tablets in the center of the gallery. To learn about current events, such as on-going genocides and areas of risk, our interactive map is up-to-date with information around the world.Opposite the large map is the entrance to our Special Exhibits gallery. Inside, you will see different temporary exhibits from our collection and from other sources
