For centuries, Roma (labeled “Gypsies”) were scorned across Europe. Read more about Romani peoples, including the Sinti, and their lives in Europe.
Growing consciousness of the Holocaust in both academic scholarship and society in general became evident in the late 1970s and intensified in the 1980s.
PBS’s new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank is a must-see for everyone this Sunday night on PBS Masterpiece Classic at 9 PM local time. The film is powerful, how could it not be? Ellie Ke…
After seizing the Reichstag in May 1945 and raising their flag on its roof, Soviet soldiers left their marks in other ways, writing their names, feelings, thoughts, and hometowns on…
Helga Schneider was just a little girl when her mother Trudi left her during the war - but it was not until later in life that she searched for her, only to discover the woman she had lost was a Nazi war criminal
This year’s UK Holocaust Memorial Day is also the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. We take a look at a selection of Holocaust memorials from around the world.
Stanislawa Leszczyńska was instructed to murder babies, but refused. She is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic church.
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled before and during the Second World War. The first Nazi ...
'When the Americans who liberated Dachau found the women with their babies, they cried.'
During World War II, a large number of prisoners underwent medical experiments in German concentration camps. In Auschwitz and other camps, prisoners were
Meaning comes from the pursuit of more complex things than happiness.
At the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp, a survivor recalls how she came to Auschwitz in March 1942—and the terrible years that followed.
On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officia...
French women who befriended the Nazis, through coerced, forced, or voluntary relationships, were singled out for shameful retribution following the liberation of France. The woman photographed here, believed to have…
What can you expect from your visit to the Anne Frank House? It is a museum with a story. As a visitor, you experience this story through quotes, photos, videos, and original items. The atmosphere in the museum is authentic and subdued. Read more about the museum.
BREATH-TAKING retouched photos show how colour can bring historic black and white photos to life. Artist Marina Amaral, from Brazil, has redefined history as we know it by Photoshopping colourless …
January 27th is the day dedicated to all the victims of the Holocaust. It was the day that Auschwitz was liberated in 1945. After witnessing the
asks what else is possible when an ultra-Orthodox publication treats female Holocaust victims as sexual objects
If you've attended high school and/or college in the United States, you've probably read Night, Elie Wiesel's masterpiece about the horrors of experiencing the Holocaust firsthand, and you've seen photos of Elie Wiesel as an empty-eyed concentration…
Did you ever hear about the Californian high school teacher who wanted to teach his class how the German people accepted Hitler as their leader, so he created a Nazi-like movement at his school in just 5 days? While browsing through these jarring post WWII photographs of Berlin, one of my favourite
itsjohnsen: Children play with the shell of a drop bomb. Berlin, WWII. Bundesarchiv
After seizing the Reichstag in May 1945 and raising their flag on its roof, Soviet soldiers left their marks in other ways, writing their names, feelings, thoughts, and hometowns on…
In 1939, 30,000–35,000 people known as Gypsies lived in Germany and Austria, which was incorporated into Germany in March 1938. Gypsies are believed to have arrived in Europe from northern India in the 1400s. They were called Gypsies because Europeans thought they came from Egypt. This ethnic minority is made up of distinct groups called “tribes” or “nations.” Most of the Gypsies in German-occupied Europe belonged to the Sinti and Roma tribes. The Sinti generally predominated in Germany and western Europe, and the Roma in Austria, eastern Europe, and the Balkans. The Sinti and Roma spoke dialects of a common language called Romani, based in Sanskrit, the classical language of India. The research of racial scientist Dr. Robert Ritter and his associates served both as instrument and justification for the Nazi regime to isolate and eventually destroy the German Gypsy population. By studying Gypsies, Ritter, who was a psychiatrist, hoped to determine the links between heredity and criminality. With funding from the German Association for Scientific Research and access to police records, Ritter began in 1937 to systematically interview all the Gypsies residing in Germany. To do so, he traveled to Gypsy encampments and, after the deportation and internment of Gypsies began, to the concentration camps. Ritter developed detailed genealogies—family histories to distinguish "pure" Gypsies from those of "mixed blood" and to root out assimilated Gypsies from the general German population. 1938. A Roma woman and child in a camp during an investigation by the Racial Hygiene Research Center at the Reich Bureau for Health. 1938. Eva Justin interviews a Roma woman about her family and ancestry. 1938. Dr. Robert Ritter conducts an interview with a Roma woman. 1938. Dr. Ritter takes a blood sample from a Roma woman. 1938. Sophie Ehrhardt of the Racial Hygiene Research Center conducts an interview with an elderly Roma woman. 1940. A woman runs outside a Sinti encampment targeted by the Racial Hygiene Research Center. May 1940. A Roma man in Asperg, Germany, prior to deportation to a camp in Poland. May 22, 1940. Sinti are marched down the street in Asperg on their way to Hohenasperg Prison prior to their deportation to camps in Poland. May 22, 1940. Sinti in the courtyard of Hohenasperg Prison prior to their deportation to camps in Poland. May 22, 1940. Sinti are rounded up by police in Asperg, Germany. May 22, 1940. Sinti board the train that will take them to a concentration camp in Poland. (All photos by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images, via Mashable/ Retronault)
Bormann, Martin, born 17-06-1900, in Halberstadt, had two half-siblings, Else and Walter Bormann, from his father's earlier marriage to Louise Grobler
Fabian said he was taken to Auschwitz 10 months ago with 500,000 other Hungarian Jews, and that 400,000 were gassed and cremated in the first two months, and that only 1,000 remained alive.
The Ringelblum Archive was saved just one day before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
EVA BRAUN - Born in Munich, Eva Braun was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun (17 September 1879 – 22 January 1964) and Franziska "Fanny" Kronberger (12 December 1885 – 13 January 1976. She was educated at a Catholic lyceum in Munich, and then for one year at a business school in the Convent of the English Sisters in Simbach am Inn, where she had average grades and a talent for athletics.At age 17 she took a job working for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party. Initially employed as a shop assistant and sales clerk, she soon learned how to use a camera and develop photos. She met Hitler, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann's studio in Munich in October 1929. Eva's sister, Gretl, also worked for Hoffman from 1932 onward, and the women rented an apartment together for a time. Braun herself attempted suicide on 10 or 11 August 1932 by shooting herself in the chest with her father's pistol. After Braun's recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and by the end of 1932 they had become lovers. She often stayed overnight at his Munich apartment when he was in town. Braun worked as a photographer for Hoffmann from 1933 on. This position enabled her to travel—accompanied by Hoffmann—with Hitler's entourage, as a photographer for the NSDAP. Braun's second suicide attempt occurred in May 1935. She took an overdose of sleeping pills when Hitler failed to make time for her in his life. Hitler provided Eva and her sister with a three-bedroom apartment in Munich that August, and the next year the sisters were provided with a villa in Bogenhausen. By 1936, Braun was at Hitler's household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there, but she lived mostly in Munich. Braun also had her own apartment at the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, completed to a design by Albert Speer. Braun continued to work for Hoffmann after commencing her relationship with Hitler. She took many photographs and movies of members of the inner circle, and some of these were sold to Hoffmann for extremely high prices. She received money from Hoffmann's company as late as 1943, and also held the position of private secretary to Hitler. This guise meant she could enter and leave the Chancellery unremarked, though she used a side entrance and a rear staircase. On 3 June 1944, Braun's sister Gretl married SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, who served as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff. Hitler used the marriage as an excuse to allow Braun to appear at official functions, as she could then be introduced as Fegelein's sister-in-law. When Fegelein was caught in the closing days of the war trying to escape to Sweden or Switzerland, Hitler ordered his execution. He was shot for desertion in the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 28 April 1945. In early April 1945, Braun travelled from Munich to Berlin to be with Hitler at the Führerbunker. She refused to leave as the Red Army closed in on the capital. After midnight on the night of 28–29 April, Hitler and Braun were married in a small civil ceremony within the Führerbunker. The event was witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. With Braun's marriage, her legal name changed to Eva Hitler. After 1:00 pm on the afternoon of 30 April 1945, Braun and Hitler said their farewells to staff and members of the inner circle. Later that afternoon, at approximately 3:30 pm, several witnesses reported hearing a loud gunshot After waiting a few minutes, Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, and Hitler's SS adjutant, Otto Günsche, entered the small study and found the lifeless bodies of Hitler and Braun on a small sofa. Braun had bitten into a cyanide capsule and Hitler had shot himself in the right temple with his pistol. The corpses were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were burned. Braun was 33 years old when she died.
The poll was commissioned by the city's Jewish leaders to mark the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising (above), where hundreds of armed ghetto dwellers rose up against Nazi forces.
The female guards are less well known than their male counterparts