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Nuremberg Race Laws: Defining the Nation
2015 marks the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany, where the state determined who you were and how you were treated.
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The Armenian Genocide
April 24, 2015, marks one hundred years since the start of the Armenian genocide, sometimes called the first genocide of the twentieth century. Of approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire, at least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million were massacred or died as a result of systematic abuse from Ottoman authorities.
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Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of Liberation
In 2015, the world marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces. Explore unique items in the Museum's collection that shed light on the experiences of liberators and survivors, and consider what this watershed moment means for us today.
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The Holocaust in Ukraine
Conflict in Ukraine during the year 2014 has demonstrated the importance of World War II and Holocaust history to the country.
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World War I
2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, one of the most destructive wars in modern history. This massive conflict and its divisive peace would echo in the decades to come, giving rise to a second world war and genocide committed under its cover.
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Alerting the World: Jan Karski
2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jan Karski, one of the first to deliver eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to Allied leaders during World War II.
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The Holocaust in Hungary
Spring 2014 marked the 70th anniversary of the mass deportations of Hungarian Jews, a seminal event in Holocaust history that continues to impact our world today. Explore the Museum’s resources and initiatives dedicated to this subject.
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The Alfred Rosenberg Diary
After a nearly 17-year search, the diary of Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg became part of the Museum’s collection. Available online for the first time, it can help shed light on the mind-set of a Holocaust perpetrator.
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Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust in Arab Lands
Did any Arabs save Jews during the Holocaust? That’s the question author Robert Satloff had in mind when he set out to discover the lost, true stories of survival, courage and betrayal in Arab lands during World War II.
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International Holocaust Remembrance Day
The UN General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
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The Liberation of Auschwitz
January 2015 marked seventy years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration camp, killing center, and forced-labor camp.
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Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pogroms
On November 9–10, 1938, the Nazis staged vicious pogroms—state sanctioned, anti-Jewish riots—against the Jewish community of Germany. These came to be known as Kristallnacht (now commonly translated as “Night of Broken Glass”).
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Rescue of the Jews of Denmark
The autumn of 2013 marked the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the Jews of Denmark. The Danish resistance movement, assisted by many ordinary citizens, coordinated the flight of some 7,200 Jews to safety in nearby neutral Sweden.
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Nazi Book Burning
In this short film, a Holocaust survivor, an Iranian author, an American literary critic, and two Museum historians discuss the Nazi book burnings and why totalitarian regimes often target culture, particularly literature.
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Choosing to Act: Raoul Wallenberg
The year 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, whose courage during the Holocaust saved tens of thousands of lives.
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The Nuremberg Trials and Their Legacy
The Holocaust was an unprecedented crime—a crime composed of millions of murders, wrongful imprisonments, and tortures, of rape, theft, and destruction. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the world was faced with a challenge—how to seek justice for an almost unimaginable scale of criminal behavior. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) held at Nuremberg, Germany, attempted to broach this immense challenge on a legal basis.
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Remembering the German Invasion of Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, initiating World War II. Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. Within a month, Poland was defeated by a combination of German and Soviet forces.
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Theresienstadt: Spiritual Resistance and Historical Context
The “camp-ghetto” of Theresienstadt, located about 35 miles northwest of the Czech city of Prague, offered perhaps the most favorable environment for spiritual resistance in the Nazi camp system.
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US Justice Department Transfers Copies of Proceedings to the Museum
The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) has donated to the Museum more than 50,000 pages of trial transcripts and decisions from litigation against US citizens or residents who were alleged to have participated in persecution on behalf of the Nazis or their allies.
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Holocaust by Bullets
Working closely with Museum staff and using the Museum’s archives to aid his search, Father Desbois and his team have crisscrossed the countryside in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, and Romania in an effort to locate every mass grave and site at which Jews, Roma, and other victims were killed during the Holocaust.
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Liberation
As Allied and Soviet troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they encountered concentration camps, mass graves, and numerous other sites of Nazi crimes. Learn more about liberation and the end of World War II.
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A Changed World: The Continuing Impact of the Holocaust
The Holocaust was a watershed event in human history. In the aftermath of World War II, the world—from individual nations to the United Nations; from religious leaders to professionals in fields as diverse as law, medicine, and science; from presidents and prime ministers to private citizens—confronted its legacy.
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American Responses to the Holocaust
Explore the links on this page to find out more about American responses to some of the events described in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition, The Holocaust.
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Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals
After taking power in 1933, the Nazis persecuted homosexuals as part of their so-called moral crusade to racially and culturally purify Germany.
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Nazi Persecution of the Disabled: Murder of the “Unfit”
The Nazi persecution of persons with disabilities in Germany was one component of radical public health policies aimed at excluding hereditarily “unfit” Germans from the national community. These strategies began with forced sterilization and escalated toward mass murder. The most extreme measure, the Euthanasia Program, was in itself a rehearsal for Nazi Germany’s broader genocidal policies.
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Memories of Courage
Despite the indifference of many and outright collaboration of others in the murder of Jews, thousands of individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, took a stand against the persecution and killing of innocent people.
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Szpilman’s Warsaw: The History behind The Pianist
The movie The Pianist is set in Holocaust-era Warsaw and tells the remarkable story of Polish-Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman. Hunger and hiding, resistance both spiritual and violent, conscious choices and sheer luck—all of these played a role in the unlikely survival of Szpilman and the fate of hundreds of thousands of other Jews under Nazi control in Warsaw.
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Black History Month
The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder. The number of black people living in Nazi-occupied Europe was relatively small and there was no systematic program for their elimination.
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Oskar Schindler: An Unlikely Hero
Oskar Schindler’s actions to protect Jews during the Holocaust have earned him a special place among honored rescuers.
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Women’s History Month
The Nazis subjected women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to unique and brutal persecution. Individual camps and certain areas within concentration camps were designated specifically for women. Often, women, especially those with small children, were the first to be “selected” for gassing at killing centers.
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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The NBC miniseries Uprising raised awareness of the Warsaw ghetto and its resistance movement. Based on historical events, the film presented a fictionalized version of these acts of defiance. Collected here are some of the resources available on the Museum’s website to explore the history that inspired this miniseries.
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Voyage of the St. Louis
On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. The German annexation of Austria in March 1938, the increase in personal assaults on Jews during the spring and summer, the nationwide Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom in November, and the subsequent seizure of Jewish-owned property had caused a flood of visa applications. The plight of German-Jewish refugees, persecuted at home and unwanted abroad, is illustrated by the voyage of the St. Louis.
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The Holocaust in Greece
The Germans defeated the Greek army in the spring of 1941 and occupied Greece until October 1944. The country was divided into three zones of occupation. Where Jews resided determined not only their subsequent fate but also their ultimate possibility of escape.
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The Doctors Trial: The Medical Case of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings
On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings in Nuremberg against 23 leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Read transcripts from the trial and learn the verdict.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few church leaders who stood in opposition to Adolf Hitler and his policies. Read an essay by Victoria Barnett about Bonhoeffer, spanning the years from the rise of Nazism until his death in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1945.
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Offenbach Archival Depot: Antithesis to Nazi Plunder
During the Holocaust much of Jewish cultural heritage was destroyed, but at war’s end Allied forces uncovered huge stores of looted books, often lying strewn in makeshift depots. Learn about the identification and restitution efforts that followed.
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