Personalizing History
A Year of Milestones
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On the eve of deportation, Tola Goldblum arranged for her eight-year-old daughter, Salusia, to be smuggled out of the Dabrowa ghetto in Poland by a non-Jewish couple who protected her throughout the war. Knowing it might be their last good-bye, she gave Salusia a collection of family photos and a letter for her sister in Canada: “I can feel at this moment—the pain in your heart when you receive this letter. … Our future is lost, and it cannot be changed.” Tola and her six-year-old son were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a year and a half before the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945.
See Also
- Special focus page on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
- The invasion of Poland
- Tola Goldblum’s letter
- Tola and Moszek Broda
Pictured: Goldblum family photos, a letter written by Tola Goldblum, and the address book of Sally Wasserman (formerly Salusia Goldblum). US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Sally Wasserman. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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The Baigelmans were a musical family dedicated to keeping Jewish cultural traditions alive. After they were imprisoned in the Łódź ghetto, which was established in February 1940, David Baigelman became the conductor of the community’s symphony orchestra, which featured his brother, Henry, on the violin. When the ghetto was being dissolved, David hid the family’s instruments in a factory attic, which their brother-in-law reclaimed after liberation. Reunited with his treasured violin, Henry played it and the saxophone in his jazz and swing band, The Happy Boys, which toured displaced persons camps.
See Also
- Displaced persons
- Interview with a woman who lived in Łódź ghetto for Shoah (1985)
- Model of the Łódź ghetto
- The Happy Boys
Pictured: A violin belonging to Henry Baigelman. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of the Estate of Henry Baigelman. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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When Americans Ross and Helen Baker traveled to Vienna, they brought along a Kodak movie camera to capture their family’s experiences abroad. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, they broadened their focus and began to record the drastic political and social changes that this event, known as the Anschluss, precipitated. Together with a diary and letters, the Bakers’ extraordinary footage shows chaos in the streets, the Nazis’ use of propaganda to foment antisemitism, and the mounting distress and desperation of the family’s Jewish acquaintances as persecution against them intensified.
See Also
- Curators Corner on the Baker collection
- Ephemeral Films Project, featuring Baker family films
- Historical footage of the Anschluss
- Ross Baker family collection
Pictured: The Bakers’ 16mm Kodak movie camera, Helen Baker’s diary, toys, and magazine articles. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Stanley A. Baker. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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On April 13, 1945, over a week after he helped liberate the Ohrdruf concentration camp, Army Captain J. George Mitnick, an American Jewish soldier from Connecticut, wrote a letter to his family. In great detail, he described the conditions he encountered and urged his loved ones to believe the difficult truth of his accounts, “I’m not much of a storyteller, but if ever I wanted to tell a story vividly enough to convey my visual and mental impressions, this is IT. … I don’t believe that I will ever forget what I saw there.”
See Also
- Ohrdruf
- Liberation of Ohrdruf
- Liberating US Army units
- Letters from liberators
- J. George Mitnick collection
Pictured: A selection of Captain J. George Mitnick’s belongings and letters from World War II. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Ronne Mitnick Hess. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Before he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, 16-year-old Gustav Steiner gave a ball and cup magic set to his non-Jewish best friend, Emil Vareka, for safekeeping. Emil held on to the toy and, miraculously, returned it to Gustav’s cousin when she visited the Czech Republic five decades later. Gustav was one of the 15,000 children who passed through Theresienstadt between its establishment in 1941 and its liberation in May 1945. The toys they brought with them, or left in the care of friends, testify to the innocence lost.
See Also
- Children during the Holocaust
- Scenes from the filming of a 1942 Theresienstadt propaganda film
- Biography of Inge Auerbacher
- Gustav Steiner collection
Pictured: Gifts to the Museum (and their donors): Magic ball and cup belonging to Gustav Steiner (Maud Michal Stecklmacher Beer); teddy bear (Eva Elisabeth Kiss Herman VonAncken); doll hat (Inge Auerbacher). Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Before she embarked on a transatlantic voyage, Lilly Joseph packed a custom-made floral gown for the trip, which she planned to wear in celebration of a new life abroad. She and her family were passengers aboard the St. Louis, a Havana-bound luxury liner carrying 937 people, mostly fellow German Jews seeking safe haven in Cuba. When they arrived, almost all the refugees were refused entry and were forced to return to Europe on June 6, 1939. Fewer than 700 of the St. Louis passengers, including Lilly, would survive the Holocaust.
See Also
- Curators Corner on Morris Troper and the passengers of the St. Louis
- Oral history of a St. Louis passenger
- St. Louis in Cuban harbor
- Liesl Joseph Loeb collection
Gifts to the Museum (and their donors): Lilly Joseph’s evening dress and slip (Liesl Joseph Loeb); luggage tags (Don Altman); captain’s hat (Herbert Karliner); photographs (Henry Gallant); framed postcard (Jerome Sonosky). Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Amidst the mass deportations of Jews from Hungary, which lasted until July 1944, Dr. Bela Gondos and his wife and daughter managed to escape. The family gathered the few possessions they had in the Budapest ghetto and boarded the “Kasztner” transport, named after a lawyer who negotiated with the SS to secure safe passage for a group of Jews out of Hungary. Instead of allowing the train to travel to a neutral country, Nazis diverted it to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and the passengers were detained. After months of negotiation, the Gondos family finally made their way to Switzerland.
See Also
- Bergen-Belsen
- Historical footage of Hungarian Jews in Budapest
- Interview with Shmuel Tamir, who represented the defendant in the Kasztner libel trial for Shoah (1985)
- Bela Gondos family collection
Pictured: Suitcase, wallet, watch, and glasses belonging to Dr. Bela Gondos and taken with him on the Kasztner transport. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Judith Gondos Jacobs. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Like other elite Jewish athletes in Nazi Germany, runner Gerhard Neubeck was permitted to train for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, but only in a segregated sports facility. Just weeks before the competition began, German officials chose only one Jewish athlete for their 433-person team, confirming that the training had been a charade for the international community. Throughout the Olympics on August 1–16, 1936, the Nazis leveraged the pageantry of the games to divert attention from their antisemitic and militaristic agenda.
See Also
- Online exhibition on Nazi Olympics
- Jewish athletes
- Berlin Olympic torch holder
- Berlin street scenes during the Olympics
Running shoes and jersey, which bears the logo of a Jewish sports community, belonging to Gerhard Neubeck. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Gerhard Neubeck. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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When Irena Ehrlich vel Sluszny was liberated from a labor camp in Berlin in 1945, it had been nearly two years since she had seen any of her family, who had been confined in the Warsaw ghetto following the September 1939 invasion of Poland. Carrying her few possessions—including a delicate perfume bottle and lipstick case, personal items that reminded her of a life she once knew—Irena walked from Berlin to Warsaw, where at last she was reunited with her mother and sister.
See Also
- Special focus page on the invasion of Poland
- Julien Bryan collection
- Podcast with Holocaust survivor David Bayer about the invasion of Poland
- Irena Urdang de Tour family collection
Items used by Irena Ehrlich vel Sluszny (now Irena Urdang de Tour) in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, at a slave labor camp in Berlin, and in a displaced persons camp in Austria. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Irena Urdang de Tour. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Convened in Nuremberg, Germany, by the Allied powers, the International Military Tribunal tried and convicted Nazi defendants for heinous crimes perpetrated during the Holocaust. The first verdict came on October 1, 1946. Tickets for the public to attend the courtroom sessions, as well as sketches of the proceedings, reflect the Allies’ intent that a thorough, public trial of Nazi crimes would stand, in and of itself, as enduring evidence of the Holocaust.
See Also
- Holocaust evidence presented at Nuremberg
- Sentencing of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg
- Special focus page on Nuremberg trials and their legacy
Gifts to the Museum (and their donors): Headphones worn by Rudolf Hess (IBM Corporation); sketch of defendants Wilhelm Keitel and Rudolf Hess (Sheila C. Johnson); fountain pen used by the courtroom sketch artist Edward Vebell (Edward Vebell); tribunal passes (Mira Wallerstein and Elizabeth Durkee). Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Although they were practicing Catholics, Paul Ornstein’s family of Vienna, Austria, was persecuted under anti-Jewish Nazi law because he was born Jewish. After two members of his extended family were sent to concentration camps during Kristallnacht on November 9–10, 1938, the Ornsteins were desperate to emigrate. The children, Elisabeth and Georg, were sent to England, and the parents obtained visas and reached the United States in January 1940. Despite threats of U-boat attacks, the children completed a dangerous transatlantic crossing and were reunited with their parents nine months later.
See Also
- Voices on Antisemitism podcast, Holocaust survivor Susan Warsinger describes Kristallnacht
- Special focus page on Kristallnacht
- Elisabeth M. Orsten collection
Photographs, correspondence, notebooks, and newspaper clippings pertaining to Elisabeth Ornstein’s time in Vienna and England. Silver locket, penknife, and mother-of-pearl compass given to Ornstein (now Elisabeth Orsten) after her family was reunited in New York. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Elisabeth M. Orsten. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Lilli Schischa was only 11 years old in 1938 when Germany annexed Austria and German authorities seized her family’s clothing store in Wiener Neustadt. Fearing for their young child’s life, her parents, Wilhelm and Johanna, arranged for her to travel on a Kindertransport to England, the first of which arrived in Great Britain on December 2, 1938. A sewing kit and two boxes of thread inscribed with the words “Für Die Reisezeit” (“For the Trip”) were among their last gifts to her before they said what would be their final good-bye.
See Also
- First Kinderstransport to Great Britain
- Children during the Holocaust
- Jewish boys from Berlin arriving in France on a Kindertransport
- Lilly Schischa Tauber collection
A sewing kit that Lilli Schischa (now Lilly Schischa Tauber) brought on the Kindertransport. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Lilly Schischa Tauber. Photography: Lisa Masson for US Holocaust Memorial Museum.