.
@AOC
Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of "extermination through labor."
Learn about concentration camps
#Holocaust
#History
Righteous Among the Nations Maria Kotarba worked as a courier with the Polish resistance before she was caught and deported to Auschwitz
#OTD
6 January 1943; there she risked her life to smuggle medicines & food to Jewish prisoners
Learn more:
"Dear Daddy – we are well – goodbye"
Sisters Suzan and Lili wrote these words in the last postcard that they sent to their father, Hugó Klein
They were deported to Auschwitz
#OTD
24 May 1944
Karel & Amalia Hamerslag were murdered in Sobibor
#OTD
28 May 1943
Their children – Mirjam and Henri – were rescued by the Dutch underground
Read the rescue story:
#OTD
16 October 1941
A mother and her children before their execution in Lubny, Ukraine; 4,500 Jews from the area were murdered that day
Learn more about the beginning of the Final Solution:
Judith and the rest of her family were sent to Bergen-Belsen. For hours, they stood in formation, day after day, in the snow and the bitter cold.
Judith Sohlberg survived the Holocaust. Next week she will light a torch at Yad Vashem.
Read her story:
"In another week it will be your birthday. How I long to be with you, to kiss you and play with you…"
These were Léo Cohn's last words to his 4-year-old son Ariel
#OTD
31 July 1944, Léo Cohn was deported on the last transport leaving Drancy for Auschwitz
The Jewish holiday of
#Hanukkah
starts tonight
Explore our online exhibit "Hanukkah: The Festival of Lights Before, During & After the Holocaust", which shares ways this holiday was observed throughout Europe through photos, artifacts & personal testimony
#OTD
9 September 1943, German forces landed in Zakinthos
Refusing Nazi orders to prepare a list of local Jews, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Dimitrios Chrysostomos wrote his own name down and said: "Here is the list of Jews you require"
Learn more here:
Righteous Among the Nations Karolina Juszczykowska was executed
#OTD
9 January 1945 for hiding two Jews in her home.
The story of her life and of her hiding Jews was found in the police and trial records – no one survived to testify.
This is her story:
Irena Sendler risked her life to rescue Jewish children; she was arrested
#OTD
20 October 1943
The exact number of children saved by
#IrenaSendler
and her partners is unknown
Learn more:
Benjamin Blankenstein was a Dutch village teacher who hid a Jewish family and paid with his life
He was arrested
#OTD
5 June 1944 and later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations
This is his story:
Efim hid in a bunker for 9 months. He sat in almost complete darkness, distinguishing between day & night only by the faint light from a small airhole.
Efim Gimelshtein survived the Holocaust. Tomorrow he will light a torch at Yad Vashem.
Read his story:
#OTD
20 May 1944, David and Perla Urbach and their two daughters, Rosa and Regine, were deported on transport no. 74 from Drancy to Auschwitz
Perla and Rosa survived
Regine’s fate is unknown
David was murdered on a death march
This is their story:
#OTD
15 February 1939, Karolina Daniel & Lazar-Eliezer Kasorla married in Thessaloniki, Greece, surrounded by family and friends
Less than 5 years after the wedding, the bride, groom, and most of the wedding guests were murdered in Auschwitz
Learn more:
Esther Frenkel and her two-year-old son, Richard, were arrested in Paris
#OTD
17 July 1942, the 2nd day of the Vel d'Hiv round-up
After a few days of confinement, they were sent to the Pithiviers transit camp and later to Auschwitz
This is their story:
Dr. Otto Herschmann was the first sportsman in history to win
#Olympic
medals in two different sports – swimming and fencing
He was among 1,000 Jews deported from Vienna to Sobibor
#OTD
14 June 1942; all were murdered upon arrival
More here >>
As a member of the Dutch underground, Samuel Horwitz arranged hiding places for Jew; he was arrested
#OTD
28 December 1943 and was later murdered during a death march from Auschwitz
This is his story:
#SelfPortrait
, Samuel Horwitz, 1934
"If, per chance, I should be killed, would I not thereby bequeath to my students an example worth far more than all the teaching I could give?"
#OTD
3 February 1944 the 3 Jewish boys that Father Jacques had hidden in his school were deported to Auschwitz
YV mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor Marta Weiss, z"l, who passed away today. It was important to Marta to tell her story so people would know about the atrocities she experienced during the Holocaust.
Click here to learn about her story
“Klara shared everything with us and did everything to save us.”
Paul (8) and Mirko (11) Deneberg were smuggled out of the Subotica ghetto
#OTD
16 June 1944, Klara Baić took them into her home and hid them despite the danger
Learn more:
“Klara shared everything with us and did everything to save us.”
Paul (8) and Mirko (11) Deneberg were smuggled out of the Subotica ghetto
#OTD
16 June 1944, Klara Baić took them into her home and hid them despite the danger
Learn more:
#OTD
9 September 1943, German forces landed in Zakinthos
Refusing Nazi orders to prepare a list of local Jews, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Dimitrios Chrysostomos wrote his own name down and said: "Here is the list of Jews you require"
Learn more here:
#OTD
20 May 1944, David and Perla Urbach and their two daughters, Rosa and Regine, were deported on transport no. 74 from Drancy to Auschwitz
Perla and Rosa survived
Regine’s fate is unknown
David was murdered on a death march
This is their story:
#OTD
"Lots of kisses from your mother"
28 July 1943, Będzin
These words are from Berta Joschkowitz's
#LastLetter
to her daughter Rosi >>
Berta, her husband Schlomo & their son Elieser were murdered in Auschwitz; Rosi and her sister Ruth survived
#BringThemHome
#StandWithAlex
Yad Vashem employee Liat Atzili and our friend Alex Dancyg, both members of Kibbutz Nir Oz, have been kidnapped and are being held by Hamas in Gaza
We are concerned for their welfare, and are praying for their safe return home
"I believe that we have no right to deport our fellow citizens and that any Frenchman who becomes an accomplice to this infamy is a traitor"
Toulouse Police Chief Jean Phillipe refused to submit a list of Jews to the Germans; he resigned
#OTD
15 Jan 1943
#PhotoFriday
The children pictured were among the 44 children arrested during a Nazi raid & murdered in
#Auschwitz
in April 1944 (75 years ago tomorrow).
More
#photos
are available here, in addition to the history, video testimony, and personal stories
"I am writing this letter before my death, but I don't know the exact day that I and all my relatives will be killed, just because we are Jews..."
#OTD
16 June 1942
Read Fanya Barbakow's
#LastLetter
; she wrote it while in hiding in a bunker
Alfred Nakache was an Olympic Swimmer & French national swimming record holder.
#OTD
26 Dec. 1943, Alfred, his wife Paule & daughter Annie, were taken from Toulouse to Drancy: a month later they were deported to Auschwitz. Only Alfred survived.
More:
Surrounded by dozens of relatives and friends, Zalman Jershow and Luba Pilschik got married
#OTD
26 December 1937 in Zilupe, Latvia
Less than four years later, the bride, the groom & many of the wedding guests were murdered in the killing pits in Latvia
Rosa Feier & her son Fritz, 9, were deported from Vienna to Terezin
#OTD
24 September 1942
2 years later, Rosa hurriedly wrote these words down on a scrap of paper before she and Fritz were sent onward to Auschwitz
"I am leaving today. Wait for mail"
#SaturdayNightArt
Artist Georges Horan depicted the arrival of a transport from the French camp of Pithiviers to Drancy in August 1942
The transport included many unaccompanied & terrified children whose parents had already been sent to
#Auschwitz
Willy Tal received this
#Hanukkah
menorah as a Bar Mitzvah gift in Amsterdam in 1935
During the war, Willy worked as a nurse in the Jewish Hospital for the mentally ill
He refused to abandon his patients & was sent with them to Auschwitz and murdered
#HolocaustMemorialDay
Red army artist Zinovii Tolkatchev was among the liberators of
#Auschwitz
He felt compelled to bear witness to both the joy of liberation and the horrors of the camp by drawing these scenes on the official Auschwitz camp stationary
"Love life, and don’t be afraid of death.
Believe in God and a better future."
16-year-old Bella Lassore was deported to Auschwitz
#OTD
12 January 1943
Discover the album in which she wrote this dedication:
#SaturdayNightArt
David Friedmann drew this portrait of athlete and youth leader Fredy Hirsh in Prague in 1941.
Hirsh, who was born 11 February 1916, instilled human values & inspired Jewish pride in the children imprisoned in Terezin and Auschwitz.
#HMD2021
Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was a prisoner in Auschwitz who treated fellow inmates and refused to assist in the medical experiments.
Discover her story:
YV mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor Haim Roet, z"l. Haim initiated the name reading project, “Unto Every Person There is a Name” & championed the important topic of
#JewsRescuingJews
during the Shoah. May his memory be blessed.
To learn more,
"The Last Goodbye, 1939" depicts Ernest Meyer's separation from his family during the
#Kindertransport
#OTD
12 July 1942, his parents, Gustav and Johanna Meyer, were deported to
#Auschwitz
where they were murdered
Learn more:
Jews gathered on the west bank of the Dniester River before their deportation to Transnistria
#OTD
10 June 1942
Over 400,000 Jews in concentration camps & ghettos in Transnistria were shot to death, or perished there from starvation, hypothermia & disease
“I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger.”
– David, in his last letter, Vilna 1941.
Mark
#HMD2022
and remember the millions of Holocaust victims like David, by joining our
#IRemember
Wall:
Esther Frenkel and her two-year-old son, Richard, were arrested in Paris
#OTD
17 July 1942, the 2nd day of the Vel d'Hiv round-up
After a few days of confinement, they were sent to the Pithiviers transit camp and later to Auschwitz
This is their story:
#JewsRescuingJews
The children pictured below survived the Holocaust thanks to the efforts of Jewish resistance fighters Marianne Cohn & Mila Racine
The photo was taken
#OTD
18 August 1944 in Annemasse, France
Learn more about Jews rescuing Jews here:
These photos are of Anny Grossmann (nee Fishel) who was born in in Vienna, Austria, in 1899
Anny was deported in 1942 to the Terezin ghetto, and from there to the Sobibor death camp on 13 June 1942, where she was murdered
Learn more here:
#ArtifactOfTheWeek
Discover the story behind the iconic photograph of a
#Hanukkah
#menorah
with Nazi flags flying in the background in 1932:
"Death to Judah"
So the flag says
"Judah will live forever"
So the light answers
#OTD
11 September 1942
5 weeks after having been torn from his mother’s arms, 2 year old Richard Frenkel was deported to
#Auschwitz
, on a wagon full of strangers
His parents had already been murdered in Auschwitz
Learn more about his family here:
#PhotoFriday
The Jewish community of Szydłowiec ceased to exist
#OTD
13 January 1943 when 5,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka
Learn about the history of the Szydłowiec community:
These photos are of Jews who lived in Szydłowiec before the Holocaust
Paul Grueninger, a Swiss border police commander, disobeyed orders issued
#OTD
7 September 1938
He allowed Jewish refugees fleeing war-torn Europe to enter Switzerland and even bought winter clothes for needy refugees with his own money
Learn more:
#OTD
11 September 1942
Five weeks after having been torn from his mother’s arms, two-year-old Richard Frenkel was deported to
#Auschwitz
, on a wagon full of strangers; his parents had already been murdered
Learn more about his family here:
Isabella Fodor, of Romania, desperately searched for a way to save her daughter, Gita, from the Nazis
#OTD
3 May 1944, she wrote a letter to Mrs. Szomor, pleading with her to adopt Gita. Isabella was murdered in Auschwitz
Gita survived
Read more:
#OTD
19 April 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began
"The will to resist has been sparked among thousands of men and women, elderly people and children..."
Learn about the events leading up to and culminating in the uprising & its aftermath, here:
At dawn
#OTD
16 July 1942, some 4,500 French policemen, acting for the German authorities, arrested over 11,000 foreign Jews living in Paris, imprisoning them in appalling conditions in the Vel’ d’Hiv
Most were later murdered in Auschwitz
Learn more:
#OTD
June 10, 1943 Rosette Bomblat was a 19-year-old activist in the "Amelot" organization, where she helped rescue Jewish children
She was arrested in 1943, & wrote this last letter to her family shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz
See more:
Father Jacques risked his life to hide 3 Jewish boys in his boarding school in Avon, France.
The boys were discovered, and
#OTD
3 February 1944 deported to Auschwitz and murdered.
Father Jacques was sent to Mauthausen, and died shortly after liberation.
"Love life, and don’t be afraid of death.
Believe in God and a better future."
Thus wrote 16-year-old Bella Lassore in her friend Ester Goldstein's album.
#OTD
12 January 1943, Bella was deported to Auschwitz, where she was later murdered.
Learn more:
#PhotoFriday
Pessi Fried of Munkács hid this photograph of her siblings Tsipi, Etty and Moshe Aharon between 2 slices of bread all throughout her time in Auschwitz & the camps
All 3 children in this photo were murdered in Auschwitz
Read the story here:
#OTD
3 August 1944, approximately 2,500 Jews were deported from Athens on cattle cars, most of them from the island of Rhodes; this transport was the last deportation of Greek Jews
Sylvia Hasson and her family were among the deportees
#OTD
6 December 1943 the Jewish women that Mother Sandra Busnelli had hidden in her convent were deported to
#Auschwitz
Learn about the underground Florence Network to save Jews:
#ArtifactOfTheWeek
“… it was terribly cold ... when the German soldier looked the other way, I saw a sweater, I took it, and I was not shot."
András Brichta took this sweater from the clothing storehouse in Auschwitz-Birkenau after the Germans fled.
#PhotoFriday
Sisters Donia (right) & Esther Sorger of Obertyn, Poland, hold a
#lulav
&
#etrog
and fruit from the Land of Israel during
#Sukkot
in the 1930s
Their toddler sister, Sonia, stands in between them, holding a miniature Torah scroll
See more:
Today marks 78 years since the liberation of
#Auschwitz
-Birkenau.
Explore our many resources related to the camp, including online exhibitions, artifacts, educational materials, video testimonies, and more >>
#HolocaustMemorialDay
|
#HMD2023
#ArtifactOfTheWeek
In Auschwitz, the Germans forced Meyer Hack to prepare the clothing of murdered Jews for distribution to new prisoners.
When Meyer discovered personal items sewn into the clothes, he hid them as a memorial to their original owners.
“On Sunday, we awoke early in the morning to the sound of tremendous chaos in the streets. Screams, shots in the air, cries of: "Jews, get outside!"…”
Haim Grinberg and his sons were murdered in the
#Ia
și Pogrom of June 1941.
Read the full story here:
"My dear Rózsi, please take care and make sure that nothing happens to any of you"
Jenő Rosenfeld wrote these words in his last postcard
#OTD
10 July 1944
His wife Rózsi and their daughter Agnes survived in Budapest; Jenő perished
"What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice from the ghetto"
Mordechai Anielewicz
The theme for
#YomHashoah
2023 is "Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Marking 80 Years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising"
Learn more here:
These photos are of Anny Grossmann (nee Fishel) who was born in in Vienna, Austria, in 1899.
Anny was deported in 1942 to the Terezin ghetto, and from there to the Sobibor death camp on 13 June 1942, where she was murdered.
Learn more here:
"Sometimes I can't believe I went through all this. Then I roll up my sleeve and look at the number on my arm, which proves to me that it did happen".
Malka Rendel survived the Holocaust. Next week she will light a torch at Yad Vashem.
Read her story:
The Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations was dedicated on Holocaust Remembrance day, May 1, 1962.
The first 11 trees were planted by rescuers from different countries & their Israeli hosts – the Jews they had rescued.
Explore the fully story:
#OTD
29-30 September 1941, the Germans and their local collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women, and children at the
#BabiYar
ravine in Kiev.
Explore Yad Vashem's new online exhibit "Marking 80 years to the Murder of the Jews at Babi Yar".
#OTD
In the course of the "Sperre", from 1-12 September 1942 some 15,000 Jews from the Lodz ghetto were deported to the Chelmno extermination camp, about one third of them children under the age of 15
Learn more:
"Dear Daddy – we are well – goodbye"
Sisters Suzan and Lili wrote these words in the last postcard that they sent to their father, Hugó Klein
They were deported to Auschwitz
#OTD
24 May 1944
#OTD
9 August 1942
200 Jews escaped the Ghetto in Mir Belarus; they fled to the forests days before the planned liquidation of the ghetto
They had been warned by Oswald Rufeisen, a Jew with forged papers who was working for the Belarus police
Learn more:
Jews at prayer on
#YomKippur
in Krakow, 1940
This photograph was taken during the prayer services of Yom Kippur, (11-12 October 1940), when the deportation of the Jews of Krakow to the surrounding towns was taking place
Learn more:
#SaturdayNightArt
In June 1942, the Nazis transported Pavel Fantl, his mother, wife, & son to the Terezin ghetto
Fantl created over 80 works of art in Terezin, including this satirical portrait of a defeated, clownish Hitler
Learn more:
Esther Frenkel and her two-year-old son, Richard, were arrested in Paris
#OTD
17 July 1942, the 2nd day of the Vel d'Hiv round-up
After a few days of confinement, they were sent to the Pithiviers transit camp and later to Auschwitz
This is their story:
Wöbbelin concentration camp was liberated by the
@USArmy
#OTD
2 May 1945
Wöbbelin was established in February 1945 to hold prisoners evacuated from other camps in order to prevent their liberation by the approaching Allied forces
Learn more:
Heinz Finke left Germany for England, alone on a
#Kindertransport
,
#OTD
27 June 1939
Everything he owned was packed into two small suitcases, after mid-1942, he never heard from his family again
Discover his story here:
Most of the Jews deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt
#OTD
5 June 1942 were members of the Gruppe Baum - a resistence group that had attacked an antisemitic & anti-Communist propaganda exhibition curated by Goebbels
Memorial for the Gruppe Baum, Berlin
#WHF2020JLM
US
@VP
Michael R. Pence is addressing the distinguished delegations from countries across Europe, North America and beyond at the
#WorldHolocaustForum
Watch it live:
The names of 4.8 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust have been found; every name has been printed in the
#BookOfNames
The Book of Names will be inaugurated at the
@UN
tomorrow
Watch it here:
#ArtifactoftheWeek
15-year-old Heinz Finke left Germany for England, alone on a
#Kindertransport
, in June 1939. Everything he owned was packed into two small suitcases
After mid-1942, he never heard from his family again
Discover his story here:
#OTD
"Lots of kisses from your mother"
28 July 1943, Będzin
These words are from Berta Joschkowitz's
#LastLetter
to her daughter Rosi >>
Berta, her husband Schlomo & their son Elieser were murdered in Auschwitz; Rosi and her sister Ruth survived
#OTD
14 May 1941 the first major roundup of Parisian Jews of foreign nationality took place
Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 40 were summoned using a green postcard, for which this wave of arrests became known as the “billet vert”
Learn more:
View this
#photo
of a
#Hanukkah
#Menorah
from the Posner home in Kiel, Germany, 1932.
It is pictured against the backdrop of the
#Nazi
flags flying from the building across the street.
See more Hanukkah artifacts from the
#Holocaust
here
Until his arrest
#OTD
23 October 1941 Bernhard Lichtenberg prayed daily for the Jews, from his pulpit in St Hedwig's Cathedral
Learn more about his anti-Nazi stance and his continued protests against the persecution of the Jews:
Yad Vashem mourns the loss of Holocaust survivor Rabbi Efraim Mol, Z"l
Rabbi Mol was scheduled to recite the El Maleh Rahamim, the Jewish prayer for the souls of the martyrs, at the
#YomHashoah
ceremony last week
#OTD
7 June 1942, the last Jews remaining in Trzebinia were deported to Auschwitz
Learn more about the Jewish community of Trzebinia before, during, and, after the Holocaust in our online exhibition "19 km from Auschwitz: the Story of Trzebinia" >>
"At about 8 o'clock, the trucks with the Jews arrived at a quarry ... the Jews were divided into groups of about 15 people & ordered to dig their own graves."
#OTD
11 July 1941, Einzatgruppe D began its murderous operations in Bălţi, Romania
Learn more:
Righteous Among Nations Raoul
#Wallenberg
provided about 4,500 Jews with papers that protected them from forced labor and exempted them from wearing the yellow star
#OTD
17 January 1945 he disappeared after being taken away by Soviet soldiers
Learn more
#PhotoFriday
Stefa Wilczynska, who worked with Janusz Korzcak in his Warsaw orphanage, completely devoted herself to the love & care of her young charges
#OTD
5 August 1942, she was deported to Treblinka & murdered, along with Korczak &the children
More:
#NursesDay
#IND2023
Learn about Righteous Among the Nations Ludwig Wörl
He was sent to Auschwitz together with 17 other male nurses to deal with a typhus outbreak
"Sometimes I can't believe I went through all this. Then I roll up my sleeve and look at the number on my arm, which proves to me that it did happen".
Raisa Brodsky survived the Holocaust. She will light a torch at Yad Vashem tonight.
Read her story: