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12 Jews survived.

12 JEWS SURVIVED the Holocaust hidden by a maid in a Nazi officer’s basement, tells the true story of faith and humanity that led a young Polish woman to risk her life to save the lives of others.

16 JULY 1942

16 JULY 1942. By order of the Nazis, the French police arrests more than 13,000 foreign Jews, among whom are 4,000 children. Most of them die in Auschwitz. Collection and rights: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. 1495/9

100-year-old Holocaust survivor Joseph Alexander

100-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR JOSEPH ALEXANDER at the Holocaust Museum LA on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Joseph is a speaker in LAUSD’s speaker series and alongside other Holocaust survivors, shares his stories with students via Zoom. Joseph Alexander holds a book about his life and experience in the concentration camps. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

100-year-old Holocaust survivor Ruth Sherman

100-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RUTH SHERMAN this week shared the story of how Shanghai saved her and her family’s life.

1939, A Polish mother and child

1939, A POLISH MOTHER AND CHILD amid the rubble on a street in Warsaw, Poland. It had been bombed during the German invasion, marking the start of World War II.

A BROTHER AND SISTERS

A BROTHER AND SISTERS, members of a Jewish family. One of the sisters pictured here, along with other family members, did not survive the Holocaust. Nove Zamky, Czechoslovakia, May 1944.

A CONCERT

A CONCERT, BRONZE 2002: "The Image of Treblinka in the Eyes of Samuel Willenberg"

A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO

A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO, in 1942, a group of Jewish doctors carried out a secret investigation into hunger and starvation in the Warsaw ghetto, in which they were both scholars and victims of the consequences of food deprivation imposed by the Nazi regime.

A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO 2

A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO 2, in 1942, a group of Jewish doctors carried out a secret investigation into hunger and starvation in the Warsaw ghetto, in which they were both scholars and victims of the consequences of food deprivation imposed by the Nazi regime.

A DUTCH POLICEMAN

A DUTCH POLICEMAN looks out the hatch of a small bunker that served as a hiding place for Dutch Jews in the Eibergen region in 1942-1943. The bunker was discovered by the Germans one day before this photograph was taken.

A JEWISH CHILD, JACKY BORZYKOWSKI

A JEWISH CHILD, JACKY BORZYKOWSKI, with the priest who placed him in hiding on a farm. Belgium, 1943.

Alfréd Israel Wetzler

ALFRÉD ISRAEL WETZLER, who wrote under the alias Jozef Lánik, was a Slovak Jewish writer. He is known for escaping from Auschwitz concentration camp and co-writing the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which helped halt the deportation of Jews from Hungary, saving up to 200,000 lives.

ALICE SCHIFFERBELGIUM

ALICE SCHIFFER BELGIUM Anzegem, Belgium…June 1942 – Stefka and Hubert Kollmann and their two daughters, Inge and Lydia, lived in Brussels during the war. They were good friends with their neighbor, Lydia Wegielski. In 1942, it became very dangerous for the Jews of Belgium. The Germans required them to wear the yellow star of David, rounded up many for forced labor, and deported them to Auschwitz. Lydia Wegielski’s cousin, Alice Schiffer, came to visit from the countryside. During the visit, Lydia suggested to Alice that she take Inge and Lydia Kollmann with her when she returned home. Despite the danger, Alice agreed to take the children to her small village of Anzegem. Alice cared for the children from June 1942 until the end of the year. Alice adopted the children and had them baptized, enabling them to be placed in a convent where they would be safe. Alice continued to look after the girls for the entire time they were in the convent. Inge and Lydia’s parents remained in Brussels. During a raid of the apartment, Hubert Kollmann was captured by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz, where he died in 1942. Stefka Kollmann was hidden by Lydia Wegielski. Inge and Lydia survived the war. Alice Schiffer died in September 1996. Copyright © Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

ANGELA OROSZ

ANGELA OROSZ holds a photo of her parents while attending the trial of former Nazi SS guard Reinhold Hanning in Detmold, Germany. Photograph: Friso Gentsch/AFP/Getty Images. It was at the age of seven, when asked at school to write down her name and place of birth, that Angela Orosz was first made aware she had been born in Auschwitz. “I really had a hard time with that word,” she said. “I was begging my mother, ‘can we change it?’ She said ‘no, I’m not going to change it, this is what you have to know.” Orosz said she had no idea then what Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp, actually meant. “It wasn’t that I struggled with having been born there. That only struck me later,” she explained. “It was just because it was so awfully difficult to spell.” It would take her more than a further half century before she felt able to recount the story of her and her mother, who died in 1992. At the age of 60 she finally broke her silence to tell a local journalist at her home in Montreal how her mother, Vera Bein, had given birth on the top bunk in the barracks of camp C at Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1944. She had weighed just 1kg and was too weak to cry. “That’s what saved me,” she said. Today she only stands at 5ft – a direct consequence of malnutrition during pregnancy and her first five weeks of life.

ANTON SUKHINSKI

ANTON SUKHINSKI was a loner and an outcast. Some even described him as the village idiot. He never married and lived – always on the verge of poverty – in a small modest house in Zborow. His neighbors often made fun of him because of his gentle nature and his love of all living creatures. But at the time of total moral collapse, when the great majority either participated in the murder of the Jews or indifferently turned their backs on their neighbors, it was Anton Sukhinski – the village idiot – who stood up for his beliefs and in stark contrast to his surroundings preserved human values. Without any help or support he was responsible for the survival of six people.

ARMIN T. WEGNER

ARMIN T. WEGNER, the only writer in Nazi Germany ever to raise his voice in public against the persecution of the Jews, was born on October 16, 1886 in the town of Elberfeld/Rhineland (today part of Wuppertal). He was the scion of an old aristocratic Prussian family, with roots reaching back to the time of the Crusades. After receiving his doctorate in law, the young Wegner tried his hand successively at being (in his own words) a “farmer, dock-worker, student of drama (with Max Reinhardt), private tutor, editor, public speaker, lover and idler, filled with a deep desire for unraveling the mystery of things.” Already at sixteen, he published his first book of poetry, I Have Never Been Older than as a Sixteen-year-old. Between 1909 and 1913, he wrote his cycle of poems, divided into five, Face of the Cities (Antlitz der Städte), which established his reputation as one of the promising pre-expressionist poets. However, the real driving force of his life was a burning moral passion, an unfailing commitment to the causes of justice and humanity, which made him raise his voice whenever he saw these values betrayed or traduced. The history of the twentieth century provided Wegner with plenty of opportunity to speak out against evil and injustice. On the road to Baghdad in the spring of 1915, serving as an ensign on the staff of German Fieldmarshal von der Golz, he could observe first hand some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the Turkish army against the Armenian people. The horrendous scenes of dead and emaciated people that he had witnessed in the Armenian refugee camps - visible proof of the first systematic genocide of the twentieth century - continued to haunt him long after. He protested against them in his Road of No Return: a Martyrdom in Letters and in an open letter, which was submitted to American President Woodrow Wilson at the peace conference of 1919. In the 1920s Wegner reached the height of his success as a writer. He became a celebrity with his Russian book, Five Fingers Over You, which foresaw the advent of Stalinism; his travel book, At the Crossroads of the World, sold over 200,000 copies. In April 1933, he sacrificed it all - his German home, his well-being, his liberty - because he could not bear to be party to the complicity of silence that surrounded the persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich. Wegner’s open letter (“Sendschreiben”) to Hitler was written a few days after April 1, 1933, the date of the general, state-organized boycott against the Jews of Germany. Since no German paper would publish it, Wegner sent the “letter” to the “Brown House” (the headquarters of the Nazi party) in Munich, with the request that it be forwarded to Hitler. The six-page letter - originally titled “For Germany” - constituted an eloquent panegyric on the historical greatness of the Jewish people and their immeasurable contribution to human civilization at large and to Germany in particular. It warned that a continuation of the antisemitic campaign was bound to bring disgrace upon the German people. The receipt of the letter was acknowledged by the head of the chancellery, Martin Bormann, with the remark that it “would be laid before the Führer shortly.” Instead of an answer, Wegner was arrested a few days later by Gestapo thugs in Berlin and thrown into the dungeons of the infamous Columbia House, where he was tortured and brutalized until he lost consciousness. He would suffer incarceration in seven Nazi concentration camps and prisons before he could make his escape to Italy. After that, he could never again bear to live in Germany and remained in exile for the rest of his long life. He died in Rome in 1978, virtually forgotten by his own people. His obituary gravestone carries the following Latin lines: Amavi iustitiam odi iniquitatem Propterea morior in exsilio (“I loved justice and hated injustice Therefore I die in exile” - lines attributed to Pope Gregory VII as he lay on his deathbed in 1085 A.D.) On May 23, 1967, Yad Vashem decided to recognize Armin Wegner as Righteous Among the Nations.

At 106

AT 106, She’s One of the Oldest Holocaust Survivors on Record. Risa Igelfeld experienced unimaginable terror during the Holocaust. Her unwavering positive attitude has kept her alive and strong for over a century.

Auschwitz survivor Alina Dabrowska

AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR ALINA DABROWSKA, 96, shows her Auschwitz prisoner number tattoo at her home in Warsaw. She was sent to Auschwitz after she was caught by the Nazis helping the Allied forces in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Rob Schmitz/NPR

AWAITING DEATH IN BORYSLAV

AWAITING DEATH IN BORYSLAV, the historic facts are these: the Germans occupied Drohobycz in September 1939 and then left about a month later as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression pact. Their place was immediately occupied by the Soviets. The Soviet occupation marked significant changes for the Jewish population. Community institutions were closed, activity of the various political parties was prohibited, the refineries and Jewish oil companies were nationalized or closed. Jews were ordered to leave their private homes and large apartments. The community, Zionist, business and industrial leaders were forced out and exiled into Russia.

BAKING MATZAH

BEDRICH FRITTA

BEDRICH FRITTA, (Friedrich Taussig) (1906–1944) Rear Entrance, Theresienstadt Ghetto, 1941–1944. Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem.

BELA HAZAN

BELA HAZAN, top right, with her mother, brother and four sisters. Hazan's family all perished during the Holocaust. Photo is dated circa 1936. (credit: YOEL YAARI)

BESIM AND AISHE KADIU

BESIM AND AISHE KADIU. We lived in the village of Kavajë. In 1940, for a short time, our family sheltered two Greek Jews from the Italian fascists. Their names were Jakov and Sandra Batino, and they were brother and sister. They came to us from Tirana. Their father had been interned in a camp by the Italians. Later, in 1944, both Jakov and Sandra again sought shelter with us, fearful of the Nazis. Another family took their parents into hiding. Sandra, Jakov and I were close friends. We all lived in the same bedroom. I remember we cut a hole in the bars of our rear bedroom window so they could escape if the Germans discovered that they were hiding with us. We were constantly watching for German patrols. When the Germans began house-to-house searches, looking for Jews, my father took Jakov and Sandra to a remote village. We then supplied them with all their needs until the liberation. There was a great celebration in Kavajë. I remember the telegram we received from Jakov and Sandra and the joy of liberation. Soon they left for Tirana and then for Israel. I have so many wonderful letters and pictures from Israel. In 1992, I was invited there to receive the Righteous Among the Nations award on behalf of my family, and for a time I was the head of the Albanian-Israeli Friendship Association. Those years were fearful, but friendship overcame all fear. Story as told by Merushe Kadiu (daughter of Besim and Aishe Kadiu). On July 21, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Besim Kadiu and his wife, Aishe Kadiu, as Righteous Among the Nations.

Born Naftali Saleschutz

BORN NAFTALI SALESCHUTZ, Norman was the youngest of nine children in a devout Hasidic Jewish family. They lived in Kolbuszowa, Poland. In the Hasidic tradition, he wore a long black coat and shoulder-length earlocks. He first faced antisemitism in the second grade when his teacher cut one earlock off each Jewish boy.

BROTHERS HAMID AND XHEMAL VESELI

BROTHERS HAMID AND XHEMAL VESELI. Our deceased brother Refik was the first to be honored in Albania as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Now we both have been given the same honor for sheltering the family of Joseph Ben Joseph as well as the Mandil family. Under the Italian occupation Joseph worked for me [Hamid] in my clothing shop and Moshe Mandil worked in our brother Refik's photography studio. Both families were refugees from Yugoslavia. With the coming of the German occupation in 1943 both Jewish families were moved to our family home in Krujë. Xhemal walked the parents night and day for 36 hours to our family home. We dressed them as villagers. Two days later we transported the children to Krujë. During the day we hid the adults in a cave in the mountains near our village. The children played with other children in the village. The entire neighborhood knew we were sheltering Jews. There were other Jewish families that were being sheltered. One day the Germans were conducting a house-to-house search looking for a lost gun. They never found the gun and executed the soldier who lost it. We sheltered the Jews for nine months, until liberation. We lost all contact with the Ben Joseph family. They left for Yugoslavia too early and we fear that the retreating Germans may have killed them. The Mandil family also left for their home in Yugoslavia. Our brother Refik visited them, after the war, and studied photography with Moshe. The Mandil family subsequently immigrated to Israel. Four times we Albanians opened our doors. First to the Greeks during the famine of the World War I, then to the Italian soldiers stranded in our country after their surrender to the Allies, then the Jews during the German occupation and most recently to the Albanian refugees from Kosovo fleeing the Serbs. Only the Jews showed their gratitude. Story as told by Hamid Veseli and Xhemal Veseli. On May 23, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized the brothers Hamid and Xhemal Veseli as Righteous Among the Nations.

JEWISH SURVIVORS OF BARANOVICHI

JEWISH SURVIVORS OF BARANOVICHI, group portrait of Jewish survivors from Baranovichi at a ceremony commemorating the three thousand Jews murdered in Baranovichi on Purim, March 4, 1942. On the eve of the Holocaust, 12,000 Jews lived in Baranovichi. Under Soviet rule (1939–41), Jewish community organizations were disbanded and any kind of political or youth activity was forbidden. Some youth groups organized flight to Vilna, which was then part of Lithuania, and from there reached Palestine. The Hebrew Tarbut school became a Russian institution. A Jewish high school did continue to function, however. In the summer of 1940 Jewish refugees from western Poland who had found refuge in Baranovichi after September 1939 were deported to the Soviet interior. When Germans captured the city on June 27, 1941, 400 Jews were kidnapped, leaving no trace. A *Judenrat was set up, headed by Joshua Izikzon. The community was forced to pay a fine of five kg. of gold, ten kg. of silver, and 1,000,000 rubles. The ghetto was fenced off from the outside on Dec. 12, 1941. The ghetto inhabitants suffered great hardship that winter, although efforts were made to alleviate the hunger. The Jewish doctors and their assistants fought to contain the epidemics. On March 4, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded. In a Selektion carried out by the Nazis to separate the "productive" from the "nonproductive", over 3,000 elderly persons, widows, orphans, etc., were taken to trenches prepared in advance and murdered. Resistance groups, organized in the ghetto as early as the spring of 1942, collected arms and sabotaged their places of work. Plans for rebellion were laid, but the uprising never came to pass, partly due to German subterfuge. In the second German Aktion on Sept. 22, 1942, about 3,000 persons were murdered. On Dec. 17, 1942, another Aktion was carried out, in which more than 3,000 persons were killed near Grabowce. Baranovichi was now declared *judenrein . At the end of 1942 Jews were already fighting in groups among the partisans. A few survivors from the ghetto were still in some of the forced labor camps in the district, but most of them were liquidated in 1943. On July 8, 1944, when the city was taken by the Soviet forces, about 150 Jews reappeared from hiding in the forests. Later a few score more returned from the U.S.S.R.

JEWISH VIEW OF UPRISING

JEWISH VIEW of uprising.

JEWS BEING ROUNDED UP

JEWS BEING ROUNDED UP in Belgrade in 1941. Photo: German National Archives.

JEWS DEEMED UNWORTHY OF LIFE

JEWS DEEMED UNWORTHY OF LIFE, Jewish orphanage in Antopol. The Germans occupied Antopol on June 25, 1941. They confiscated Jewish valuables, banned all contacts of Jews with the Christian population, required the Jewish inhabitants to wear a yellow badge, and conscripted Jews as forced laborers. On German orders a five-member Judenrat and a five-member Jewish order service were organized. On August 28, 1941, in Antopol the Third Regiment of the SS Order Police murdered 257 people, evidently including a large (but unknown) number of Jews. In early October about 150 Jewish men were murdered, while the rest of the Jews were concentrated in a ghetto that was not totally closed. Several weeks later Jews from nearby villages and from Horodec, Szereszow, and Żabinka were taken to the Antopol ghetto, raising its population to 2,500. Later the ghetto was divided into two parts. Ghetto A was fenced in with boards and barbed wire and was designated for skilled workers and members of their families; all of them were issued certificates. Most of the town's Jews were imprisoned in Ghetto B. Both ghettos were liquidated in a number of murder operations that were carried out in July, August, and mid-October 1942. Antopol was liberated by the Red Army on July 10, 1944.

JEWS DIGGING UP CANAL

JEWS DIGGING UP CANALS. After the Jews were shot, these canals were used for their burial.
Punar, Lithuania. Yad Vashem photo archive. The Jew in the white shirt turned to the photographer was identified as Shimon Levin who survived the ghetto and three camps.
Identified by his daughter, the member of the group Shoshi Lieberman.

JOHN HAJDU

JOHN HAJDU, 85, pictured with his teddy bear that he brought into the Budapest ghetto aged seven (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust)

KITTY HART-MOXON

KITTY HART-MOXON. Kitty was born in 1926 in Bielsko Poland. She had a brother, Robert, who was 5 years older than her, and she had a happy life with her family prior to the Nazi invasion. Kitty’s family fled to Lublin after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, however the Germans soon reached Lublin and imposed strict anti-Jewish laws. Before long, all Jewish citizens had to live in the ghetto, which quickly became overcrowded and disease-ridden. Kitty sometimes was able to enter the Aryan part of the city through to sewers in order to barter for food. Her mother also used the sewers to meet with a Catholic priest, who gave her food in exchange for English lessons. However, life in the ghetto was still brutal. Kitty remembers seeing an SS guard shooting her friend on the spot for not stepping off the pavement and bowing as the guard walked past them. Kitty’s family attempted to escape the ghetto, however they were caught and returned. Their second attempt was more successful, and they reached a nearby village where the Jewish population did not live in a ghetto, although still led miserable lives. Kitty’s father was convinced that they were soon to be deported to the nearby camp of Belzec, so they fled the village. Kitty’s father turned out to be correct, and Kitty can remember watching on with horror as soldiers rounded up all the Jews in the village and loaded them into lorries, where they were sent to Belzec and killed. Kitty’s family returned to Belzec, where the Catholic priest her mother knew had secured them false papers. They decided to split up, with Kitty’s father going to Tarnow to work at a Sawmill, whilst Kitty and her mother travelled with non-Jewish Poles to work in Bitterfeld, Germany at a munitions factory. Kitty’s father would not survive the Holocaust. Kitty was able to work in the office thanks to her fluency in German, however this was not to last. Kitty and her mother were betrayed, and in March 1943 they were charged and sentenced to death. However, on the day of their execution the firing squad fired into the air – it was a mock execution to show what would happen if they did not comply. Instead, they were sentenced to hard labor at Auschwitz. Kitty and her mother arrived in Auschwitz shortly after, where they were put to work; Kitty’s mother in the hospital compound, and Kitty doing hard manual labor. After a short while, Kitty came down with typhus, which was usually a death sentence as there was no treatment provided. However, Kitty’s mother was able to take care of her, and hide her from the daily gas chamber selections. Eventually Kitty recovered and was transferred to a new job in Kanada, this was the warehouse that contained all of the possessions of those who arrived in Auschwitz. This job meant that Kitty was to bear witness to the many thousands of people who arrived each day and were murdered in the gas chambers. She found it almost impossible to comprehend what was happening, despite being able to hear the screams of the victims.
As the Russian army got closer, Auschwitz was evacuated and Kitty and her mother were loaded onto cattle trucks. They were sent to work in an electronics factory for a short while, before being evacuated once again. All the women in the factory and the surrounding area were forced to march through the mountains, on what became known as a Death March. They were forced to march barefoot through snow, and slept on the ground with no cover. They were occasionally able to scavenge for food whilst the guards were asleep, however if anyone lagged behind they would be shot by the guards. Many women did not survive the ordeal.
They eventually reached their destination – another electronics factory – however this was short lived, and they were evacuated again to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, packed inside cattle carts. However, there was no room at Bergen-Belsen, so many of the carts filled with Jews were simply left. As the carts were airtight, the people inside died from suffocation. Kitty and her mother only survived after Kitty managed to create a small hole in the bottom of the cart, which her and her mother took turns to breathe through. Their cart was eventually opened by German soldiers, who sent them to another nearby camp. It was here where the Americans saved Kitty from certain death by liberating the camp. They were transported to British territory; however it was a year and a half before they were allowed to go to Britain and meet Kitty’s uncle there. Kitty found upon arrival that no one in Britain wished to hear of her ordeal, and some were even hostile towards her. It was 40 years later when people finally realised the importance of listening to and learning from survivors. As well as being a friend and supporter of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum for many decades, Kitty has devoted much of her life to telling her story, tirelessly striving to educate people so that they might learn from the past and oppose hatred in the future. Her contributions to the center have been greatly appreciated and will continue to provide resonance with audiences for years to come.

Leaving My Family

"LEAVING MY FAMILY" is a painting by artist Toby Knobel Fluek. Her art was inspired by her experience as a Holocaust survivor and was recently donated to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. [Courtesy of Florida Holocaust Museum]

LEO BREUER

LEO BREUER, Path between the Barracks, 1941 © Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem.

LISA WEBRICH

LISA WEBRICH, Righteous Among the Nations, Miami Valley Career Technology Center

LITHUANIA

LITHUANIA, Emanuel and Avraham Rosenthal from Lithuania wearing the yellow star on their clothes.

MARKET DAY

MARKET DAY, at a shtetl in Poland.

MUSLIM ALBANIANS WHO RESCUED JEWS

MUSLIM ALBANIANS WHO RESCUED JEWS during the Holocaust. Destan and Lime Balla
I was born in 1910. In 1943, at the time of Ramadan, seventeen people from Tirana came to our village of Shengjergji. They were all escaping from the Germans. At first I didn't know they were Jews. We divided them amongst the villagers. We took in three brothers by the name of Lazar. We were poor - we didn't even have a dining table - but we never allowed them to pay for the food or shelter. I went into the forest to chop wood and haul water. We grew vegetables in our garden so we all had plenty to eat. The Jews were sheltered in our village for fifteen months. We dressed them all as farmers, like us. Even the local police knew that the villagers were sheltering Jews. I remember they spoke many different languages. In December of 1944 the Jews left for Priština, where a nephew of ours, who was a partisan, helped them. After that we lost all contact with the Lazar brothers. It was not until 1990, forty-five years later, that Sollomon and Mordehaj Lazar made contact with us from Israel. Story as told by Lime Balla. On October 4, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Destan Balla and his wife, Lime Balla, as Righteous Among the Nations.

MY NAME IS REGINA SLUSZNY

MY NAME IS REGINA SLUSZNY, and I was a little older than a year when the war started in Belgium. I lived in Antwerp with my mother Jenta, my father Jacob, and two brothers, Marcel and Eli; born into a Jewish family who emigrated from Poland in 1930. We lived quite peacefully in Antwerp until May of 1940, when German soldiers invaded Belgium. Their main goal was to eliminate the entire Jewish population, to exterminate them. Even the children. Soon after the occupation began, they introduced new laws, specifically targeted towards the Jewish population. The first law, which came into effect in 1941, stated that all Jews had to be registered in the town hall on a separate list called the Joodselijst: the Jewish List. A copy of this list was given to the German officers in charge so that they could go and pick up all of the Jewish families and assemble them in Mechelen at the Kazerne Dossin – a detention and processing center. From there, they were sent to the extermination camps in 27 trains between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,000 mothers, fathers, and children, including babies, were sent to be killed, and only around 1,200 came back.

Oldest Holocaust survivor

OLDEST HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR turns 112. Rose Girone and her daughter, Reha Bennicasa.Courtesy of Reha Bennicasa.

Olga Perlmutter

OLGA PERLMUTTER celebrates 100th birthday in Côte Saint-Luc with friends and family. She refuses to forgive the Nazis for what they did to her family in the 1940s, but she doesn't let those sad memories keep her down. (Isaac Olson/CBC)

ONE LAST JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT

ONE LAST JOURNEY INTO THE NIGHT, Israel Arbeiter had to go back — to Auschwitz where he barely survived, and Treblinka, where his parents were murdered. He went seeking peace but found little of it.

PASSAGE OVER THE PYRENEES

PASSAGE OVER THE PYRENEES 2, Fed Manasse (third from left) eating lunch at a French chateau with other refugees. Photo from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Courtesy of Sebastian Steiger.

PASSAGE OVER THE PYRENEES

PASSAGE OVER THE PYRENEES 1, from the early 1940s until the end of the war, thousands of Jewish refugees escaped by foot over the Pyrenees, a mountain range that forms a natural 305-mile border between France and Spain. Jews were not the only ones using the remote mountain passes. Frenchmen hiked the mountain passes trying to reach Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces, and British and American pilots shot down in enemy territory fled over them into Spain. The Pyrenees had dangerous, unpredictable weather and rugged, snowy terrain. But there was an equally perilous threat: immediate death or deportation to labor or extermination camps if discovered by the Nazis or French Vichy police.

Pavla Beckmann

PAVLA BECKMANN was born on 27.8.1880. On 3.8.1942 she was deported from Prague to Theresienstadt, together with around 1,000 other Jews. On 20.8.1942 she was deported to Vidzeme, Latvia. All the deportees were murdered by shooting and gas trucks in the forests near the city; Their clothes and bags were brought to the Riga ghetto after the murder. This Stolpersteine - ‘Stumbling Stones’ - one of the largest and most important commemoration projects in the world, in her memory, is in Prague and was cleaned by @Stolpersteine Prague. Unfortunately, Pavla's stone is no longer there. The house was demolished, and the stone is missing.

PINSK JEWISH YOUTH MOVEMENT

PINSK, JEWISH YOUTH MOVEMENT, a Chanukah party organized by the "Brenner" circle of the Freiheityouth movement in Pinsk. On the eve of the Second World War, there were 30,000 Jews residing in Pinsk and they represented 75% of the general population. (In 1999, there were an estimated 130,000 citizens living in Pinsk and from this number only 500 are Jews.) 7 months of the Soviet occupation (17.9.39 – 21.6.41) was a period marked by cultural oppression and anti-zionist sentiments, and many of the “Jewish-bourgeoisi” were sent to Siberia (This by the way is what saved their lives). However, most of the youths integrated into work and studies under the new regime. Hundreds of them were saved as a result of being sent to distant places in the interior of Russia thereby avoiding the war between Russia and Germany.

POLISH FAMILY WHO HID A JEWISH GIRL

POLISH FAMILY WHO HID A JEWISH GIRL. Members of a Polish family who hid a Jewish girl on their farm. Zyrardow, Poland, 1941-1942.

POLISH HOLE THAT HID 14 JEWS

POLISH HOLE THAT HID 14 JEWS during Holocaust. Hideout in the southern village of Stankowa is a dank, stone-lined hole measuring 5 by 2.5 meters (16 by 8 foot)

POLISH JEWS

POLISH JEWS, August 22, 1942, Jews from Siedlce, Poland, before deportation. In November 1940, the Judenrat received a new order for a "contribution" of 100,000 zlotys. In December 1940 the number of Jews living in the town amounted to 13,000. During 1940, Jews from the Warthegau were forced to move to Siedlce, and from that year many Jews had to work in forced labor camps within the city. At the end of December 1940, the occupation authorities issued a decree requiring Jews to wear armbands with the Star of David and the inscription Jude. It was also decreed that Jewish shops must be marked.

POLISH SHTETL

POLISH SHTETL, Polish shtetl in the winter.