Curriculum Links

"If we were caught without the Star of David, we would have been shot on the spot," recalls Morris Jacobs. Here, three Jacobs men who survived the Holocaust as teenagers, recount the abrupt changes in their lives when the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

Jack Jacobs was born in Wielun, Poland and was later taken to the Czestochowa Ghetto. "Whenever I see a good ripe tomato, I remember one thing. But you have to listen because I only can tell this once." Holocaust survivor, Jack Jacobs is transported by the taste of a juicy tomato to the time he and 13 other people hid in an attic to avoid capture by the Nazis. They were out of food, but snuck down at night to a garden where some tomatoes finally ripened.

There are thousands of personal letters in the Yad Vashem Archives, which were sent by Jews - adults and children - to their relatives from their homes, the ghettos, and the camps; while fleeing and while wandering from place to place. Some letters were sent to destinations outside Europe, and thus survived. Each reveals the inner world and fate of Jews in the Holocaust. For many recipients, these were the last greetings from home and family they had left behind. The writers of these letters were all murdered in the Holocaust.

PowerPoint created for the AHEC Teacher Cadre, featuring the story of Mira Kossowitzer Becker.

Several different clips about his experiences in Bialystok.

Includes links to many topics.

In this episode of Curators Corner, Teresa Pollin of the Museum's Art and Artifacts Branch shares the story behind a baby jacket that a Holocaust survivor kept for almost sixty-five years until her death in 2007. Her two daughters found the jacket among their mother's belongings after she passed away. Part of the Radzinowicz Family Collection.

Esther Lurie(1913-1998) was born in Liepaja, Latvia, emigrated to Palestine in 1934 and returned to the Baltic States several times for exhibitions. She was caught in Lithuania when the war between Germany and the USSR broke out in 1941 and survived the Kovno Ghetto and Stutthoff concentration camp. Many of her works survived in hidden spaces of the Ghetto.

George Kadish secretly documented life in the Kovno Ghetto. Learn more about him and view a few of his many photos.

Includes photos by George Kadish.

Includes images from before, during, and after the Holocaust as well as Holocaust testimonies and maps.

While acknowledging events that led to her own survival in her testimony, Nechama Shneorson offers a forthright perspective of the devastating loss of family in the Holocaust. The lesson’s theme, Survival and Loss, offers a glimpse of the complexity of emotions experienced by Nechama and many other Holocaust survivors. Include Video (31:27), Background on Ghetto (Nechama was in the Kovno Ghetto), and Lesson Packet.

Study Guide for the book "Light One Candle: A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem." This is the story of Solly Ganor, beginning in prewar Lithuania, through the ominous changes that took place once Hitler came to power, the brutal conditions in the Kovno Ghetto, and of the rescue efforts of Chiune Sugihara. The Study Guide includes photos by George Kadish.

Includes links to many topics.

In the spring of 1941, around two hundred fifty thousand Jews lived in Lithuania. Seventy-five years ago, on June 22, 1941, German troops swept across Soviet-occupied eastern Poland and into three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the Soviet Union. In the three years of German occupation, more than ninety-five percent of all Lithuanian Jews would be murdered—by Einsatzgruppen of the Waffen SS and by their Lithuanian accomplices. Between 2000 and 2009, Centropa interviewed twelve hundred elderly Jews still living in fifteen European countries and digitized twenty-two thousand of their family pictures. Every picture has a name, every name has a story.

Thousands of Jews from the Krakow ghetto were deported to Belzec, where they were murdered during Operation Reinhard actions in 1942. The Germans liquidated the ghetto in March 1943, shooting about 2,000 Jews in the ghetto, transferring another 2,000 to Plaszow forced labor camp, and deporting the remaining 3,000 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. About 2,450 of those deported to Auschwitz were gassed upon arrival. The majority of the Jews transferred to Plaszow were later killed in mass shooting operations carried out by the SS between September and December 1943. The survivors were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Images only, rotating.

Historical film footage. No sound.

Deportations of Jews to killing centers were described as "resettlements," indicating that a new life awaited the Jewish family at the end of the journey. Color, paper, poster from the Lodz ghetto announcing "resettlement."

Includes a 20-minute video about the Lodz Ghetto, interviews with survivors, and a discussion about photographs of Walter Genewein and Mendel Grosman.

Ross's photography enabled him to make a single moment into a poignant narrative, allowing us to reflect on this difficult history. This website contains over 4,000 images from the Henryk Ross collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It contains lesson plans and the ability to create your own collection.

The Lodz Ghetto photography of Mendel Grossman in Lodz, as compared with the ghetto photography of German "ghetto tourists."

Rumkowski's famous "Give Me Your Children" speech.

Scroll to middle of page to find the speech.

Read diary entries from a girl who lived in the Lodz Ghetto and learn the history of Jewish ghettos in Poland.

Holocaust survivors Shimon Srebrnik and Tola Walach Melzer describe their experiences in the Lodz ghetto. The video is an excerpt from the film "Life in the Lodz Ghetto" from the Holocaust History Museum in Yad Vashem.

Roman Kent was born in Lodz, Poland in 1925. He spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and in the Auschwitz, Mertzbachtal, Dornau, and Flossenburg concentration camps. In 1946, he came to the United States with his brother. Once in America, he made a life for himself. He championed the needs of Holocaust survivors and of Righteous Gentiles. Roman was appointed by President Obama to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, he became president of The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, Treasurer of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and President of the International Auschwitz Committee.

Survivor describes deportation from the Lodz Ghetto.

AUDIO ONLY: Leon Merrick's job delivering mail in the Lodz ghetto became all the more difficult over time as Nazi deportations to the extermination camps increased and he was often given the task of delivering notices for deportation.

The Third Reich confiscated the money of Jews under their control and replaced it with currencies meant to manipulate the population - and eliminate any means of escape. This article explores "currencies" in camps like Auschwitz and Dachau and in ghettos like Lodz and Theresienstadt.

Includes links to many topics.

Historical film footage. No sound.

During the Holocaust, Jewish photographer Henryk Ross used his camera as a tool of resistance against the Nazi regime by documenting the harsh realities inside the ghetto of Lodz, Poland.

In this 360° VR blend of animation and live-action video, Holocaust survivor Roman Kent shares his story of a dog in Nazi-occupied Poland who taught him a timeless lesson: that love is stronger than hate.

Short clip from the full documentary, "Lodz Ghetto," released in 1988.

In the video, "Teaching the Holocaust Using Photographs", ISHS staff member Franziska Reiniger discusses how you can explore Holocaust photography with your students. Introducing some general points to keep in mind when teaching using any photograph from the Holocaust, Ms. Reiniger then proceeds with two examples, demonstrating the remarkable differences we find in photographs taken from different points of view. The graphical elements within a photograph sometimes hint at the external circumstances surrounding the time and place when the photograph was taken, and be studying both we deepen our understanding of the Holocaust. The photographs discussed in this video are available for viewing and for downloading from our website. Franziska Reiniger is a staff member at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. Part 1: Teaching the Holocaust Using Photographs Part 2: Photographs as Propaganda Part 3: Documentation of Atrocities: The Jewish Photographer Henryk Ross

What was daily life like in the ghetto? How were the harsh living conditions endured? The Lodz ghetto was established on April 30, 1940 in Poland’s second largest city and a major industrial center. Living conditions were grim with overcrowding, no electricity and no water. Disease and starvation were rampant. Intended to be a temporary facility, the ghetto existed for more than four years -- enabling local Nazis to exploit the Jewish labor force. In this lecture, Yad Vashem expert Orit Margaliot uses archival photos and art from the Holocaust to explore the daily struggle for existence in the ghetto.

The video provides a short overview of the Lodz Ghetto: Its foundation, similarities to and differences from other ghettos; daily life, hunger and disease; the deportations; and final liquidation of the ghetto.

In this interview Judith Cohen, the Chief Photo Archivist for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum discusses two contemporary photographers of the Lodz ghetto. One was Walter Gennewein, the Nazi second-in-command of the ghetto, while the other was Mendel Grossmann, a Jew imprisoned in the ghetto. The disparity between their two styles of photography, their subject matter, and the mood of their photographs reveal how photography can shift how one sees the world depending on who is taking the picture.

Leon Weliczker Wells (born March 10, 1925 in Stojaniw near Radziechów , then Poland , now Ukraine , died December 19, 2009 in Fort Lee , New Jersey) was an American engineer. Between 1942 and 1944 he was imprisoned in the labor camp Lemberg-Janowska. In a Sonderkommando 1005 he had to burn the bodies of Nazi victims; He escaped the Holocaust by escaping .

There are thousands of personal letters in the Yad Vashem Archives, which were sent by Jews - adults and children - to their relatives from their homes, the ghettos, and the camps; while fleeing and while wandering from place to place. Some letters were sent to destinations outside Europe, and thus survived. Each reveals the inner world and fate of Jews in the Holocaust. For many recipients, these were the last greetings from home and family they had left behind. The writers of these letters were all murdered in the Holocaust.

On November 1941, a few thousand Jewish men of working age were ordered into a fenced-off section of the Riga Ghetto, leaving behind the other 25,000 inhabitants. One of the men was Elik Rivosh who recalled spending a last night with his wife Alya and his young children Dima and Lida.

Susan Taube discusses her deportation from Berlin to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, and the days immediately following. She was deported in January, 1942, along with her mother, sister, and grandmother.

Illustration by Bedřich Fritta, a prisoner at Terezín, depicting the “beautification” of the ghetto-camp undertaken by the SS before the Red Cross visit in 1944.

By reading diary entries from a survivor of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, students consider the complex emotional state of survivors in the final days of the war.

Discover how the Nazis used the ghetto-camp Terezin as a propaganda tool to hide what they were really doing to the Jews of Europe.

Traces life of Peter Ginz beginning with invasion of Czechoslovakia, his transport and life in Theresienstadt, and ultimate death at Auschwitz.

Includes links to many topics.

The Third Reich confiscated the money of Jews under their control and replaced it with currencies meant to manipulate the population - and eliminate any means of escape. This article explores "currencies" in camps like Auschwitz and Dachau and in ghettos like Lodz and Theresienstadt.

A Czech-language literary magazine that existed from 1942 to 1944 in the Terezín concentration camp, during the Holocaust. It was hand-produced by a group of boys living in the Home One barracks, led by editor-in-chief Petr Ginz. Altogether, some 700 pages of Vedem survived World War II.

Every Friday for about two years, between 1942 and 1944, a group of courageous teenage boys in the Terezín concentration camp created a remarkable secret journal they called Vedem (Czech for “In the Lead”). By learning about Vedem, students today can gain a unique perspective on the Holocaust as it was seen through the eyes of children—boys who resisted unspeakable cruelty through education and creative expression. In addition to teaching students about the boys and their secret journal, the lessons and activities suggested in this guide also emphasize the importance of recognizing and accepting the differences that make others unique, and illustrate the dangers of degrading and bullying.

One of the fascinating aspects of Terezin is that many of the Jews sent there were prominent in the fields of culture: painters, artists, musicians, educators, philosophers and others. In the video, ISHS staff member Liz Elsby presents the work "SS Dog", created in the camp by Leo Hass, and demonstrates how we may use it teach about the Holocaust. Liz Elsby is an artist, graphic designer, and guide at Yad Vashem.

In the video, ISHS staff member Liz Elsby presents the children's newspaper "Vedem", created in the camp by Petr Ginz and his friends, and demonstrates how we may use it teach about the Holocaust.

More than 150,000 Jews passed through Terezin until its liberation in 1945. Of these, over 80% were murdered, either in Terezin or after deportation to the east. One of the fascinating aspects of Terezin is that many of the Jews sent there were prominent in the fields of culture: painters, artists, musicians, educators, philosophers and others. In the video, "Artists of Terezin: Guidelines for Educators", ISHS staff member Liz Elsby presents the work "SS Dog", created in the camp by Leo Hass, and demonstrates how we may use it teach about the Holocaust. Liz Elsby is an artist, graphic designer, and guide at Yad Vashem. Part 1: Introduction "SS Dog" by Leo Hass

More than 150,000 Jews passed through Terezin until its liberation in 1945. Of these, over 80% were murdered, either in Terezin or after deportation to the east. One of the fascinating aspects of Terezin is that many of the Jews sent there were prominent in the fields of culture: painters, artists, musicians, educators, philosophers and others. In the video, "Artists of Terezin: Guidelines for Educators", ISHS staff member Liz Elsby demonstrates how we may use it teach about the Holocaust. Liz Elsby is an artist, graphic designer, and guide at Yad Vashem.

More than 150,000 Jews passed through Terezin until its liberation in 1945. Of these, over 80% were murdered, either in Terezin or after deportation to the east. One of the fascinating aspects of Terezin is that many of the Jews sent there were prominent in the fields of culture: painters, artists, musicians, educators, philosophers and others. In the video, "Artists of Terezin: Guidelines for Educators", ISHS staff member Liz Elsby presents the children's newspaper "Vedem", created in the camp by Petr Ginz and his friends, and demonstrates how we may use it teach about the Holocaust. Liz Elsby is an artist, graphic designer, and guide at Yad Vashem. Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Petr Ginz - "Vedem"

On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit by representatives from the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross in order to dispel rumors about the extermination camps. [...] To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazis deported many Jews to Auschwitz. [...] The hoax against the Red Cross was apparently so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Production of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron (a director, cabaret performer, and actor who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of the Third Reich. [...] After the shooting of the film, most of the cast and even the filmmaker himself were eventually deported to Auschwitz.

This short film is narrated by survivor Michael Gruenbaum, who spent two-and-a-half years in Terezin as a child. The film is appropriate for middle school age children and older. A teacher’s guide is available: https://www.lappinfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Teachers-Guide-1.pdf

Experience the amazing true story of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, an artist who survived two years at Auschwitz by painting portraits for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. This faithful adaptation of the six-page comic created by the David S. Wyman Institute For Holocaust Studies combines illustrations by Neal Adams, motion graphics, and music to bring the story to life. Introduction by comic book legend Stan Lee.

Read the United Partisan Organization’s call for the Jews of Vilna to take armed resistance against the Nazis.

Samuel Bak was born on August 12, 1933 in Vilna, Poland at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under first Soviet, then German occupation. Bak's artistic talent was first recognized during an exhibition of his work in the Ghetto of Vilna when he was nine. While both he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Also includes video testimonies.

Read the minutes of a Jewish Council's meeting held in the Vilna Ghetto in 1942 and consider the unthinkable choice faced by its members.

Baruch Shub was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1924, the second child in a Hassidic family of six. In 1939 the Soviets conquered Vilnius, and in June 1940 the city was annexed and Communist rule instituted. Consequently, the universities were opened to Jews, and Baruch went to study mechanical engineering. In June 1941, the Germans conquered Vilnius and began murdering Jews in Ponary. Baruch found work at a German garage repairing military vehicles. In September the Jews of Vilnius were confined to a ghetto. Baruch and his older sister, Zipporah, hid in a truck travelling to Radoszkovice, where Baruch found work again in a German garage. On 11 March 1942, the Jews were ordered to gather in the town square. From his hiding place in the garage, Baruch saw a huge line of people, including children, moving slowly towards a barn. The sound of shooting could be heard. At night, the barn caught fire and a thick stench filled the skies. Zipporah was among the 840 Jews murdered there that day. After the ghetto was set up, the Jewish youth established an underground movement in the ghetto, bought weapons and prepared to escape to the forests to join the partisans. However, the Germans threatened death should anyone be found missing from the ghetto, and their activities ceased. After hearing from his mother in Vilnius, Baruch returned to his hometown, where he worked in German manufacturing plants. He established an underground movement with his friend Yaakov (Kuba) Koshkin, and later joined the FPO (United Partisans Organization). In September 1943, the Germans carried out a number of aktionen (roundups of Jews in preparation for their deportation to concentration, forced labor or death camps). Following an armed clash with the Germans, Baruch and some friends joined a group of partisans in the Rudnicki Forest. Two weeks later, the Vilnius ghetto was liquidated. Baruch enlisted in a Russian paratrooper unit, participating in various military operations. In July 1944, the Red Army conquered Vilnius, and Baruch discovered that his entire family had been murdered. After his army discharge, he decided to emigrate to Eretz Israel, finally arriving in October 1945. He was recruited to the Haganah, serving as an airplane technician during the War of Independence. Two years later he transferred to El Al, rising through company ranks to Chief Flight Engineer. After 33 years, he retired. Hebrew with English subtitles.

Survivor describes the formation of the Vilna Ghetto.

Includes links to many topics.

For centuries, the Lithuanian city of Vilna was one of the most important Jewish centers in the world, earning the title “Jerusalem of the North” until World War II, when the Nazis murdered about 95% of its Jewish population and reduced its synagogues and cultural institutions to ruins. The Soviets finished the job, paving over the remnants of Vilna’s famous Great Synagogue so thoroughly that few today know it ever existed. Now, an international team of archaeologists is trying to rediscover this forgotten world, excavating the remains of its Great Synagogue and searching for proof of one of Vilna’s greatest secrets: a lost escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners inside a horrific Nazi execution site.

Professors David Fishman and Justin Cammy explore the heritage of prewar Vilna. Learn about the heroic efforts to save the original manuscripts and books that were the physical expressions of the heritage of the Jewish people. Delve into the fascinating attempt of one poet, Avrom Sutzkever, to eternalize the legacy of the Vilna ghetto almost immediately after the war.

In the spring of 1941, around two hundred fifty thousand Jews lived in Lithuania. Seventy-five years ago, on June 22, 1941, German troops swept across Soviet-occupied eastern Poland and into three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the Soviet Union. In the three years of German occupation, more than ninety-five percent of all Lithuanian Jews would be murdered—by Einsatzgruppen of the Waffen SS and by their Lithuanian accomplices. Between 2000 and 2009, Centropa interviewed twelve hundred elderly Jews still living in fifteen European countries and digitized twenty-two thousand of their family pictures. Every picture has a name, every name has a story.

Mrs. Sendler, code name "Jolanta," smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the last three months before its liquidation. She found a home for each child. Each was given a new name and a new identity as a Christian. Others were saving Jewish children, too, but many of those children were saved only in body; tragically, they disappeared from the Jewish people. Irena did all she could to ensure that "her children" would have a future as part of their own people.

Here are the most important facts you need to know about one of the world’s greatest monuments to human resistance and heroism in the face of ultimate evil. Site includes several videos and images from the Archive.

In the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum founded a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events taking place in German-occupied Poland while the ghetto existed. This archive came to be known as the “Oneg Shabbat” (literally “Joy of the Sabbath,” also known as the Ringelblum Archive).

The Oneg Shabbat Archives is the most significant collection of sources in the world documenting the Holocaust - sources that were created, gathered, and written by the victims themselves, in real time, at the moment when they were experiencing the horrors. The Archives is comprised of diaries and notes, memoirs, photographs, clandestine newspapers, monographs, letters and more - all of which are of inestimable value in the study of the living conditions, the creativity, the struggle and the murder of Polish Jewry.

Emanuel Ringelblum and the milk can archives of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A six-day lesson plan for middle school created by Sol A. Factor, Cleveland Heights High School.

Using a graphic novel format, explore the life of Emanuel Ringelblum.

Official report prepared by General Jürgen Stroop for the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, recounting the German suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto in the spring of 1943.

Jewish resistance to the Holocaust did not just involve fighting. Oneg Shabbat was a project organised by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum which attempted to record Jewish life in occupied Warsaw by collecting items such as diaries, newspapers, poems and even sweet wrappers. When deportations to Treblinka began in the summer of 1942, a section of the Oneg Shabbat archive was buried in metal boxes in the ghetto; two later caches were buried in 1943. One of the three men who buried the archives was David Graber, who was 19. He added this last letter.

Szmul Zygielbojm was a Jewish socialist politician who was a member of the Polish government-in-exile, which was based in London. He had played a leading role in trying to make western governments and the public opinion aware of the Holocaust when detailed reports emerged from Poland in 1942. However, he grew frustrated with what he saw as the indifference of the Allies. On 12 May 1943, during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he committed suicide in London, leaving this note.

Learn about the largest act of resistance by Jews against the Nazis, mounted by prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Seven interviewees describe their roles in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Transcript available. English.

Benjamin Meed describes the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the 1943 ghetto uprising [Interview: 1990].

Estelle Laughlin discusses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when German forces, intending to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, were stunned by an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family hid in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.

Describes clandestine cultural activities in the Warsaw Ghetto.

His parents and older sister perished in the ghetto, and his younger sister was a member of Janusz Korczak's orphanage. As a member of the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw Ghetto, Israel Gutman was wounded in the uprising. From Warsaw he was taken to Majdanek, and from there to Auschwitz. In May 1945 he was sent on the death march to Mauthausen. In total, he spent two years in the camps. After the war he helped in the rehabilitation of survivors, was active in the Bericha movement, and immigrated to Palestine in 1946.

On June 26, 1942, at 5 PM, British BBC Radio broadcast a program dedicated to the situation of Polish Jews under German occupation. It was an important day for members of the Oneg Shabbat group of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Photos of the uprising.

During World War II, the clandestine Oneg Shabbat Archive operated in the Warsaw Ghetto, founded and overseen by historian and social-political activist, Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum. For the Holocaust Education Video Toolbox project, five videos were devoted to the voices of the archive members. The videos are based on their own writings, describing the historical and human events in the first person. The six archive members featured in these videos convey different perspectives from within Oneg Shabbat, together creating a complex picture of the archive's activity, faced as it was with the impending fate of the Jews in Warsaw under Nazi rule.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who headed the Jewish Self-Help Society (Jewish relief organization) in Warsaw, asked Rachel Auerbach to organize a public kitchen. Once Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, public kitchens supplied the hungry masses with a daily meal. Auerbach heeded Ringelblum's request. She also became a member of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive. In this capacity she documented the sights she encountered in her everyday work and the starvation of the Ghetto's inhabitants (approx. 450,000 people). Auerbach was one of three of the Archive's members to survive the war. She dedicated her life to the documentation of and research into the Holocaust.

Peretz Opoczynski was a journalist, writer, and educator. During World War II Opoczynski was a member of the underground archive in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”). Opoczynski documented the sights he saw and his experiences as a mailman in the ghetto.

With the beginning of the Great Deportation of Warsaw Jewry to the Treblinka extermination camp, members of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive sought shelter for the Archive and decided that it was to be buried, despite the risks involved. Their hope was that it would one day be retrieved and serve as a testament to the murder of Polish Jewry. The archival collections included original research, testimonies and documents, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and artworks. Among those entrusted with the task of burying the Archive were two educators, Israel Lichtenstein and his wife, painter Gele Sekstein. Shortly before burying the Archives, they added their own wills, describing their lives and lamenting the fate of Europe’s Jews.

Abraham Lewin, an educator and a member of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive maintained a diary depicting the wartime events in the Warsaw ghetto. It is rare in that it covers in real time the Great Deportation of the summer 1942, during which some 265,000 Jews were deported to their deaths in Treblinka, and some 10,000 were murdered within the ghetto. Abraham Lewin survived the Great Deportation and continued documenting the tragic events of the ghetto until his capture by the Nazis.

In September 1939, Nazi Germany conquered Poland. Shortly after, historian Emanuel Ringelblum began chronicling the events overtaking the Jews of Warsaw and the surrounding areas under Nazi control. Once the Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, Ringelblum decided to found the clandestine Oyneg Shabbes (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive. He assembled a group of documenters of different backgrounds, with the intention of chronicling the events as they transpired at all levels of Jewish society. He had the archive buried under the ground of the Warsaw ghetto in metal boxes and milk cans, in three separate places. After the war, two caches of the archive were discovered in 1946 and 1950; the third cache was never found. The Oyneg Shabbes Archive remains the largest collection of Jewish documentation detailing the fate of the Jews under Nazi rule.

A brief animated overview of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the events leading up to it. The first widespread civil uprising to take place during World War 2, the uprising has become a symbol of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Part of Yad Vashem's "Key Historical Concepts in Holocaust Education" video series.

With the beginning of the Great Deportation of Warsaw Jewry to the Treblinka extermination camp, members of the clandestine Oneg Shabbat (“Joy of the Sabbath”) Archive sought shelter for the Archive and decided that it was to be buried, despite the risks involved. Their hope was that it would one day be retrieved and serve as a testament to the murder of Polish Jewry. The archival collections included original research, testimonies and documents, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and artworks. Among those entrusted with the task of burying the Archive were two educators, Israel Lichtenstein and his wife, painter Gele Sekstein. Shortly before burying the Archives, they added their own wills, describing their lives and lamenting the fate of Europe’s Jews.

An educational film about Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It begins with Jewish life in Warsaw and progresses through ghetto life and the ultimate uprising.

This educational version of the documentary tells the story of the Oyneg Shabes archive, created by a clandestine group in the Warsaw Ghetto who vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda by detailing life in the ghetto from the Jewish perspective.

Includes a downloadable Study Guide to the film "Uprising."

Reflections on life in the Warsaw ghetto written by Rachel Auerbach from the Aryan side of Warsaw, November 1943.

This unit of study focuses on one network of rescuers in Poland, Zegota, the Council for the Aid to Jews.

Israel Bernbaum was a Jew born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920,escaping Warsaw before the ghetto was sealed. He survived the war living in the Soviet Union, coming to the United States in 1957 after being repatriated to Poland from the USSR as a Polish national. While working as a dental technician, Bernbaum studied art at Queens College, graduating with a B.A. in 1973. This was the period when he produced his first large works dealing with the Holocaust experiences. In particular, Bernbaum aimed his images at young people in the hope that simplicity of image, color, and almost a cartoon-like form would help tell the story of Jewish suffering. Familiar images appear in his works such as portraits of Anne Frank, the child from the Stroop Report photos of the Warsaw Ghetto, and especially images of destruction with street names in the field of debris around Warsaw. Other images deal with the deportation of the children of the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka and the heroism of Janusz Korczak.

The Stroop Report, originally entitled The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!, which was prepared for Heinrich Himmler after the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, is a unique document in human history. The uniqueness of the report is not tarnished by the fact that, as by Professor Andrzej Zbikowski writes in the introduction to the release of the Report in 2009, it does not differ from hundreds of other German reports on the destruction of European Jews. It describes the liquidation of Jewish communities in a language of statistics, officially and in a neutral and purely technical tone. However, it reveals in an exceptional way the attitude of Germans towards the Jews as the main ideological enemy of the Third Reich. The report also shows their views on the genocide of the Jews planned in cold blood. Contrary to Stroop's intentions the Report became a posthumous tribute for the Jewish people. It shows their moral and ethical superiority. Everyone knows the picture of a little Jewish boy in a large cap standing with raised hands among terrified people at whom German soldiers point their barrels - it comes from the Report. Dozens of photographs form an integral part of the document. They are terrifying and unforgettable. The Stroop Report was meant to show the courage of the author and emphasize his contribution to the Thousand-Year Reich. For the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto,and other crimes in Europe, he was promoted and awarded by Hitler. At the end, however, the Report became a proof in lawsuits before the courts and tribunals in Nuremberg and Warsaw.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) copy of the Stroop Report's photograph Section.

The first Holocaust museum in the world but also the first of its kind to be founded by Holocaust survivors. Since its establishment in 1949, the museum tells the story of the Holocaust during World War II, emphasizing the bravery, spiritual triumph and the incredible ability of Holocaust survivors and the fighters of the revolt to rebuild their lives in a new country about which they had dreamed – the State of Israel.

There are thousands of personal letters in the Yad Vashem Archives, which were sent by Jews - adults and children - to their relatives from their homes, the ghettos, and the camps; while fleeing and while wandering from place to place. Some letters were sent to destinations outside Europe, and thus survived. Each reveals the inner world and fate of Jews in the Holocaust. For many recipients, these were the last greetings from home and family they had left behind. The writers of these letters were all murdered in the Holocaust.

Using interactive maps, the visitor is taken on a tour of Warsaw before and during the Holocaust.

In the Footsteps of Janusz Korczak: Visitors learn about the life and work of Janusz Korczak. Stories and Sketches: Visitors can explore original comics, authored by Monika Powalisz and drawn by Jacek Michalski, that tell the story of nine individuals "who greatly influenced the social and cultural life" of Warsaw. Past and Present: Reveals three virtual tours of Warsaw: Common History 1414-1939, Holocaust 1939-1945, and Our Varshe 1945-2016.

In this poem, written in August 1942 in response to deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, Władysław Szlengel encouraged readers to remember the humanity of the victims by focusing on the fate of an apparently unremarkable Jewish mother.

Poetry in Hell is a web site dedicated to the poets, both in the Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere whose poetry, under the leadership of Emanuel Ringelblum, was secretly collected by the members of the “Oneg Shabbat Society“, preserved and buried in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation.

On August 5, 1942, Janusz Korczak and the children of the Warsaw Ghetto Orphanage were marched through the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto to a waiting train, as witnessed by the writer Yehoshua Perle.

While many non-Jews exploited the Holocaust for personal gain or reacted with indifference, a courageous minority took action. One of them was Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a writer and a member of the Polish resistance movement. Kossak-Szczucka was a strong Polish nationalist and was widely regarded as an antisemite. When the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp began, she published a pamphlet entitled ‘Protest!’ in which she condemned the passivity of the world in the face of mass murder. These are some extracts from ‘Protest!’.

Learn about the Oyneg Shabbes, a group in the Warsaw Ghetto that documented Nazi crimes and the daily lives of the ghetto's residents.

Survivors describe the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto in the summer of 1942. Hebrew with English subtitles.

Survivor describes conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Describes the cultural life in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Pinchas Gutter was born in Lodz and was 7 years old when the war broke out. After his father was brutally beaten by Nazis in Lodz, he fled with his family to what they thought was safety in Warsaw. From there, Pinchas and his family were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto for three and a half years – until April 1943, the time of the ghetto uprising. The family was then deported to the Majdanek concentration camp. Pinchas was imprisoned in numerous slave labor camps and, towards the end of the war he was forced on a death march which he barely survived. He was liberated by the Russians from Theresiensdat on May 8, 1945 and was later taken to Britain with other children for rehabilitation. Sixty years later, Pinchas returns to the sites of his childhood where he tells the story of his past.

Describes starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto

Includes links to many topics.

German propaganda film. Excellent image.

Historical film footage from a German propaganda newsreel. Notice the staging.

Historical film footage. No sound.

Color propaganda film from May 1942 (?). Silent. Courtesy of Bundesarchiv.

Warsaw, Poland, 1942: Beginning in 1941, the Germans deported Jews in Germany to the occupied eastern territories. At first, they deported thousands of Jews to ghettos in Poland and the Baltic states. Those deported would share the fate of local Jews. Later, many deportation transports from Germany went directly to the killing centers in occupied Poland. In this footage, a German propaganda unit films recent arrivals from Magdeburg, Germany, in a collection center run by the Jewish council in the Warsaw ghetto. In July 1942, the Nazis began mass deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the nearby Treblinka killing center.

Marzynski tells the extraordinary story of how he as a Jewish boy escaped the Holocaust, hiding from the Nazis, and surviving the war as an altar boy in a Catholic monastery. In a deeply moving and personal film he shares the poignant, painful recollections of other child survivors, many of whom are visiting scenes of their childhood for the last time, where survival began with the directive “never forget to lie.”

FRONTLINE producer Marian Marzynski travels back in time to a family shtetl, a small village in Bransk, Poland. As a child, Marzynski escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and was raised by Christians. The remarkable film tells the homecoming story of two elderly Polish-American Jews who return to their families’ shtetl, Bransk, where 2,500 Jews lived before most were sent to Treblinka’s gas chambers. These two Americans are aided in their journey by a Polish Gentile who has restored Bransk’s Jewish cemetery and researched the lives of the Jews who once lived there. The film captures these pilgrims as they face old neighbors, some who were betrayers, others who were saviors to the Jews of Bransk.

Project Witness offers the viewer access to spellbinding documentary footage that sensitively and meaningfully transmits the pain and tragedy of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. The heroism of the ghetto's spiritual leaders is highlighted and leaves the viewer moved and inspired.

Consists of 7 video chapters: Introduction, Historical Background, Overcrowding, Everyday Life & Survival, Welfare & Mutual Aid, The "Badge of Shame" and Cultural Life, Conclusion

The practice of removing Jewish gravestones from cemeteries and using them for other purposes was common in Poland since the 1940s. The city of Warsaw has announced plans to recover 1,000 gravestones, or matzevot, that were taken from the city’s Jewish cemetery and used to build a structure in a city park. Includes a 14 minute video.

In the fall of 1940, German authorities established a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland’s largest city with the largest Jewish population. Almost 30 percent of Warsaw’s population was packed into 2.4 percent of the city's area.

Wolfgang Hergeth was born on January 21, 1946 in Silberbach, Czechoslovakia. The "Janusz Korczak Cycle" was introduced in 1998 at the Uhlberghalle in Filderstadt, Germany. Janusz Korczak, born Henryk Goldsmit in Warsaw on July 22, 1878, was a prominent, Polish Jewish pediatrician, professor, and founder of an internationally respected children's home. His personal sacrifice is beyond measure. After the fall of Poland, when the Germans proceeded to transport to the Warsaw Ghetto Jews from all over Warsaw and beyond, the orphanage was overwhelmed. Yet from beginning to end Korczak was the shield that protected all who were under his care -- his children. He resolved to go with them wherever they might be taken. As it turned out, this meant to Treblinka and to death. In the decades since the Holocaust, tales of this martyred Jewish doctor have taken on a legendary quality, especially the spectacular drama that unfolded on his last journey with the children. With the cycle, Hergeth creates eleven paintings dedicated to Korczak giving expression to Korczak's own views of the calamity unfolding in his midst, including the expected fate that awaited his condemned children.