“Everyone would believe my pictures”: The Legacy of Julien Bryan
In the 1930s, the American filmmaker Julien Bryan chronicled life in Poland and Nazi Germany. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Bryan risked his life to record the ferocious siege of Warsaw, “People might not believe my story if I told it in words when I returned to America. Everyone would believe my pictures.”
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Curators’ Corner
In this monthly series, Museum staff provide a behind-the-scenes look at the artifacts, photographs, and documents in the Museum’s collections and the stories they bring to life.
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Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi leadership at the camp
In January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a donation of a photograph album. The inscription “Auschwitz 21.6.1944” on its first page signaled the uniqueness of the album--there are very few wartime photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp, even though it was the largest Nazi death camp.
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American Friends Service Committee Collection
Search the Guide to Names from the American Friends Service Committee Collection and find copies of the original documents.
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Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at USHMM
Films of Nuremberg rallies, Jewish life before World War II, or Nazi racial science. Some by amateur cinematographers and others by German propaganda companies. Locate these and many more film clips in this new online catalog which provides access to the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive the Museum’s comprehensive collection of archival film footage documenting the Holocaust and World War II.
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2007 Membership Calendar: Personalizing History
The Museum’s 2007 Membership Calendar highlights artifacts and documents from the Museum’s collections.
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Life After the Holocaust
“Life After the Holocaust” is an oral history project documenting the life experiences of six Holocaust survivors from the end of World War II to the present time.
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Portrait of David Aruti, son of Isak Aruti. He was a merchant and lived at Zvornitska 26 in Bitola.
Learn about a collection of photographs from Monastir that offers a uniquely comprehensive view of a Jewish community on the eve of its destruction, reflecting the evolution and demise of Sephardic communities throughout the Balkans.
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Sophie received a small stuffed bear as a present from her mother.
Sophie Turner-Zaretsky was born Selma Schwarzwald in Lvov (Lwow, L’viv), Poland, on September 2, 1937. After the end of World War II, Sophie received a small stuffed bear as a present from her mother. She named it “Refugee,” just like she and her mother were refugees of the war. The little bear would be by her side for decades, a silent witness to the miracle of Sophie’s rescue, rebirth, and success.
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Silent Witness: The Story of Lola Rein and her dress
In New York City, January 2002, Lola Rein met with a curator of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Lola told the story of her lonely survival during the Holocaust. At the end of the interview she reached into her bag and took out this tiny dress, handing over the only item directly linking her to her mother. Lola had spent seven months hiding in a hole in a ground, wearing only this dress sewn by her mother. It was her only possession. Learn more about this silent witness.
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Art and Survival: György Beifeld’s visual memoir from the Russian Front, 1942-1943
György Beifeld was a 40-year-old Hungarian Jew in 1942. He lived in Budapest, and was a talented artist who loved to draw and paint in his spare time. In the spring of 1942, Beifeld was one of 50,000 Jewish men who were deployed in the Hungarian Labor Service (Munkaszolgálat) in the USSR to support Hungarian troops sent to the eastern front to help the Axis to conquer the Soviet Union. Read more about Beifeld’s visual memoir of these experiences and explore pages from sections of an album he created.
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Model of the Lodz Ghetto
Leon Jakubowicz, a shoemaker by training and a native of Lodz, began constructing this model of the Lodz ghetto in the spring of 1940, after the ghetto was sealed. Jakubowicz’s model recreates, on a small scale, the physical appearance of the ghetto, creating the shape of the model to mimic the exact boundaries, streets, and buildings that had a major impact on daily life in the ghetto.
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A survivor stokes smoldering human remains in a crematorium oven that is still lit. Dachau, Germany, April 29-May 1, 1945.
Almost every day, World War II veterans and their families uncover extremely graphic photographs taken of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. These photographs provide powerful documentation of the crimes of the Nazi era. Compare your photographs to some of the most commonly reproduced photos to see if they are part of this massive documentation effort.
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Remnants and recollections: Highlighting the experience of Sephardi Jews during the Holocaust
What can an ordinary wedding photo tell you about the struggle to survive of a centuries-old culture? Or a private letter, about the ordeal faced by an entire community at a particular point in history? Or a simple dress, about the will for rebirth? The Museum’s Collections Division has gathered materials documenting the unique conditions and experiences of Sephardi Jews in southern Europe before, during, and immediately after the Holocaust.
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Dr. Lucja Frey Gottesman
In March 2002, the donation to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of a Nazi wartime questionnaire for medical personnel became part of a quest to reconstruct the life of a Holocaust victim. The document shows a slight, frail-looking Jewish woman, Dr. Lucja Frey Gottesman. This yellowed, bureaucratic form opens a window into an otherwise forgotten life and medical talent cut short by the Holocaust. Read more about the investigation into Frey’s life and fate.
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Zofia Burowska (Chorowicz) donated this doll, which dates from the 1930s, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Zofia’s parents gave her the doll before the war and she kept it with her in the Wolbrum and Krakow ghettos, in Poland. The doll and some of her family’s other belongings were left with non-Jewish friends for safekeeping. Zofia was deported to a forced-labor camp for Jews near Krakow, to the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp (also in Poland), and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where she was liberated. After the war, she returned to Krakow and retrieved her doll.
Flight and Rescue
Receipt for a package sent from Markus Novogrodsky in Japan to his mother, left behind in Warsaw. She later became a member of the ghetto underground, and perished at Treblinka. This artifact is included in a Museum special exhibition, Flight and Rescue, which chronicles the eastward escape of more than 2,100 Jews from Poland.
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Do you remember, when
What was it like to live as a young Jew in Berlin during the Nazi deportations? This exhibition details the life of Manfred Lewin, who was active in one of Berlin’s Zionist youth groups until his deportation to and murder in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Manfred recorded these turbulent times in a small, hand-made book that he gave to his Jewish friend and gay companion, Gad Beck. The exhibition centers around the 17-page artifact, which illustrates the daily life of two friends, their youth group, and the culture in which they lived...
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