The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking
New York Times, March 1, 2013
Thirteen years ago, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe. What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The Ever-Changing Face of Holocaust Studies
NewStatesman, February 14, 2013
At meetings across the country on Holocaust Memorial Day, worthies intoned the "lessons of the Holocaust" and warned that we must "learn form the past." But ask most historians and they will blanche at the thought of anything as static or as simple as "lessons." Over the past five decades, "Holocaust studies" have altered almost beyond recognition and explanations for what occurred have changed significantly.
Statement by the President on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27, 2013
On January 27th, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the memories of the 6 million Jews and millions of other innocent victims whose lives were tragically taken during the Holocaust over sixty years ago.
Foundations of Holocaust: American Eugenics and the Nazi Connection:
Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2012
If America's response to the unfolding Holocaust is characterized as passive, its role in promoting the science behind Nazi racism, justification for the Holocaust, was active, even aggressive.
Norway's Police Apologize for Deporting Jews
Reuter's, November 26, 2012
Norwegian police apologized for the first time on Monday for their complicity in the deportation and murder of over 700 Jews during the Nazi occupation in World War II, just months after the prime minister made a formal apology.
The Photographer at Auschwitz: Man Forced to Take Chilling Images of Inmates and their Nazi Guards was Haunted Until His Death at 94
Daily Mail Online, October 27, 2012
These chilling images of a young Jewish girl at Auschwitz are among thousands that have haunted a Nazi photographer all his life.
German Roma Holocaust Victims Memorialized, But Discrimination Persists
International Business Times, October 25, 2012
In the Tiergarten Park near the German parliament building in central Berlin, a new fresh flower will be laid every morning to commemorate the suffering of the Roma people during the Holocaust
Pregnant in Auschwitz: Toronto Holocaust Survivor Recalls Split-Second decision that Saved Her and Unborn Son
National Post, August 25, 2012
Miriam Rosenthal was four-months pregnant, starving, bone-tired, cold, filthy and afriad when an SS officer in big black boots and a crisp uniform appeared before the barracks in Auschwitz with a loudspeaker in hand.
The Man Who Saved 900 Jewish Boys Inside a Death Camp
The Times of Israel, August 11, 2012
Last month, 67 years after the end of the Holocaust and over 20 years since his death, Yad Vashem granted the honor of Righteous Among the Nations to Antonin Kalina, a Czech communist who saved over 900 boys in Buchenwald.
Poland Confronts its Role in Jewish Deaths
NBC World News, August 2, 2012
In 1941, six Poles allegedly beat 20 Jewish women to death with metal-tipped clubs outside the hamlet of Bzury, in northeastern Poland. Now, government prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew hopes to charge the killers, if they are still alive.
Out of the Darkness
San Diego Jewish Journal, August 2012
...In short, comparing Holocaust education today to what existed just a generation ago is similar to comparing the engineering behind laptop computers and the iPhone to the technology that led to black-and-white television.
Holocaust in France: Exhibition Documents Deportation
Time World, July 27, 2012
One of the most extraordinary documents on show is Memo 173-42. It is dated 13 July 1942 and marked "secret." "The occupying authorities," it reads, "have decided upon the arrest and grouping together of a certain number of foreign Jews."
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Unveils New Poll: American Believe that Genocide is Preventable and that U.S. has Major Role in Prevention
Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2012
A new poll commissioned by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum finds that 67 years after the Holocaust, American believe genocide is still very possible, yet preventable, and they would like to see the U.S. government play a major role in stopping it from happening around the world. Americans expressed support for a range of strategies...especially education about the Holocaust and other past atrocities.
A Muted Anniversary: Are Europeans Forgetting the Holocaust?
Time World, July 17, 2012
Limited public and media reaction to the news events rooted in world War II atrocities raises concerns that societies may be starting to forget the dark, hard lessons of the Holocaust.
Cecile Widerman Kaufer, Holocaust Survivor, Recounts 1942 Vel d'Hiv Roundup in Paris Stadium
Huffington Post Online, July 17, 2012
This weeks marks the 70th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup. Cecile Widerman Kaufer and her younger sister escaped from the Paris stadium and subsequently went into hiding in Normandy, France. The two Widerman sisters are believed to be among the few children to have survived the Vel d'Hiv roundup.
French Holocaust Records Exhibited for the First Time
ABC News, July 17, 2012
They are among France's darkest days: Police dragged over 13,000 Jews from their homes, confined them in a Paris cycling stadium with little food or water, and then deported them to their deaths in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. But even in France, one of the most brazen collaborations between authorities and the Nazis during World War II is unknown to many in the younger generation.
Museum of Polish Jews Wins Major New Donations
Associated Press, July 4, 2012
A museum on the history of Polish Jews has made huge strides toward its planned opening next year thanks to several million dollars in new donations announced this week. The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, going up in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, will narrate the 1,000-year history of the Jews in Poland.
The Vatican Archive
The New York Times, July 4, 2012
While it's commendable that after new research Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, "changed the wording of an exhibit on Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II to soften its criticism of the pope," the controversy over what precisely those actions entailed still simmers.
Hitler Protected Jewish Vet, Newly Discovered Nazi-era Letter Suggests
International Business Times, July 6, 2012
Adolf Hitler protected a Jewish veteran from extermination during the Holocaust because the World War I vet served in the same unit as the leader of Nazi Germany, according to a Nazi-era letter unearthed by an historian.
Israel's Holocaust Museum Softens Its Criticism of Pope Pius XII
The New York Times, July 1, 2012
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, on Sunday changed the wording of an exhibit on Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II to soften its criticism of the pope over a subject that has long divided Jews and the Vatican.
Shoah Foundation Completes Preservation of Holocaust Testimonies
Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2012
It's a wrap for the Shoah Foundation Institute's ambitious, 18-year project to gather and preserve testimonies from more than 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
Nazi Collaborators or Victims? With a reference to 'Polish death camps,' Barack Obama stumbled into a debate about World War II.
Tablet, May 31, 2012
During Tuesday's awards ceremony for this year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President Barack Obama honored Polish resistance hero Jan Karski as a man who was "smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself" the savagery of Nazi anti-Semitism. What appeared to most American political observers as a minor gaffe, quickly metastasized into a diplomatic incident between the U.S. and Poland.
The Treblinka Gold Rush
Tablet Magazine, May 21, 2012
Rachela Auerbach visited Treblinka on November 7, 1945, as part of an official delegation organized by the Main Commission for the Investigation of HItlerite Crimes. She called one of the chapters of a small book she subsequently wrote about the Treblinka extermination camp "The Polish Colorado or About the Gold Rush in Treblinka."
Life Inside the Camps
Tablet, March 28, 2012
Dutch Jews David Koker's extraordinary diary, a clear-eyed and sensitive account of life inside a concentration camp, is finally available in English.
IBM's Role in the Holocaust - What the New Documents Reveal
Huffington Post, March 9, 2012
Newly-released documents expose more explicitly the details of IBM's pivotal role in the Holocaust - all six phases: identification, expulsion from society, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination.
Poland, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Tussle Over Auschwitz Barracks
Huffington Post, March 9, 2012
Polish and U.S. officials are engaged in intense talks to determine the fate of a sensitive object: a barrack that once housed doomed prisoners at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp and is now on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Nazi Persecution Saw Jews Flee Abroad as Servants
BBC News, March 7, 2012
As the Nazis tightened their grip on power in the late 1930s, Jews in Germany and Austria began to fear for their safety. Many fled abroad using well-documented methods such as the Kindertransport. But less well known is the story of thousands of Jewish women who fled to the UK by getting jobs as domestic servants.
AP Exclusive: Researchers Push to Open UN Archive
Associated Press, February 25, 2012
Locked inside U.N. headquarters is a huge but largely unknown archive documenting 10,000 cases against accused World War II criminals, from Belgian charges against Adolf Hitler to the trial of a Japanese commander for inciting rape.
Holocaust Museum in Negotiations to Maintain Loaned Exhibitions
Washington Post, February 16, 2012
In the late 1980s, when organizers of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum were searching for Nazi-era artifacts, they sought to tell a story that was industrial in its magnitude and horrifying in its detail. The results, a widely acclaimed permanent exhibition that broke new ground in museum design, may be in jeopardy as the museum deals with demands to return one of its most powerful and haunting objects.
Treblinka: Revealing the Hidden Graves of the Holocaust
BBC News Magazine, January 22, 2012
Any doubt about the existence of mass graves at the Treblinka death camp in Poland are being laid to rest by the first survey of the site using tools that see below the ground, writes forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls.
Remembering Wannsee
The Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2012
On January 20, 1942, the Nazi leadership gathered in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin and adopted the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." The Wannsee Conference, as this became known, from the suburb where the meeting was held, formalized the process that exterminated so much of European Jewry.
Sweden Launches Probe into Fate of Holocaust Hero
Reuters, January 18, 2012
Sweden has commissioned a new inquiry into the fate of Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War Two but disappeared after being arrested by advancing Soviet troops in 1945.
Mass Graves at Nazi Death Camp Treblinka Proves Holocaust Deniers Wrong
Huffington Post, January 17, 2012
A British forensic archaeologist has unearthed fresh evidence to prove the existence of mass graves at the Nazi death camp Treblinka.
Search Begins for Holocaust Refugees Rescued by "Unsung Hero"
The Gazette, January 16, 2012
A global search has been launched for Holocaust refugees saved by a little-known Portuguese diplomat stationed in France during the Second World War - a man described as "one of the great unsung heroes" of the era by renowned Canadian writer Peter C. Newman, who credits the maverick consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes with helping his own family escape the Nazi death chambers.
Holocaust Orphan Find New Relatives
Jewish World, January 16, 2012
The phone at the Hecht home in Rehovot hasn't stopped ringing. The family has been receiving exciting reactions from all across the globe ever since Ynet published Martin Hecht's story as part of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Remember Me" project, which aims to locate 1,100 orphaned children who survived the Holocaust.
Search is Launched for Families Who Escaped the Holocaust Through Portugal
Market Watch, January 9, 2012
The Sousa Mendes Foundation is seeking to identify and locate Holocaust refugees who were given life-saving visas by Aristides de Soussa Mendes in the Spring of 1940. Sousa Mendes, the Portugese consul stationed in Bordeaux, France, rescued an estimated 30,000 people from the Holocaust.
In Poland, Unburying a Nation's Jewish Past
NBC News World Blog, January 6, 2012
Zuzanna Radzik wants Polish children to know that almost every Polish town and village was part of the Holocaust. There were about 3.5 million Jews in Poland before World War II, making up 10 percent of the overall Polish population. And in some pre-war Polish towns, Jews comprised as much as 70 percent of the residents.
The First Killings of the Holocaust
New York Times, January 3, 2012
On the brisk winter Tuesday of January 20, 1942, 15 Nazi officials assembled at a lakeside villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to deliberate on the "final solution." This month, the world marks the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, one of the pivotal moments in Holocaust history.
A Disquieting Book from Hitler's Library
New York Times, December 7, 2011
On Thursday, a Manhattan auction house will be accepting bids on one of the more disturbing books to come onto the U.S. antiquarian book market in some time: Adolf Hitler's personal copy of a city-by-city, state-by-state guide to the location of the America's Jewish population.
Hans Litten: The Man Who Annoyed Adolf Hitler
BBC News Magazine, August 19, 2011
A new drama tells the story of a Jewish lawyer who confronted Hitler 80 years ago - earning the dictator's life-long hatred. So who was Hans Litten?
At Auschwitz, Future U.S. Military Leaders Learn What Not to Do
NBC News World Blog, August 5, 2011
In an upstairs room at the only remaining synagogue in Oswiecim, 37 miles west of Krakow, 13 future American military officers, clad in jeans and T-shirts, were wrestling with ethical questions in the shadow of Auschwitz.
Bill Would Boost Holocaust Survivors Seeking Aging Services
JTA, August 3, 2011
U.S. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida sponsored a bill that would give Holocaust survivors preference in obtaining aging services.
Book Prompts Questions in Wallenberg Case
UPI, August 2, 2011
Researchers say Russia intentionally withheld information about a Swedish diplomat credited with saving the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
Poland Earmarks Funds for Auschwitz Memorial
boston.com, August 2, 2011
Poland's government has earmarked funds to improve accessibility to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
From Mussolini's Estate to Shoah Memorial
The Jewish Daily Forward, July 29, 2011
In August, the city of Rome is expected to give its final approval to plans for Italy's new Holocaust museum, the Museo Nazionale della Shoah.
Project HEART's Comprehensive Archive o Jewish Holocaust Victims' Assets Now Contains 1.5 Million Records
PRNewswire, July 25, 2011
Project HEART announced today that its searchable database of Holocaust era property records now contains 1.5 million records, making the database the largest, publically available single-source database of lost Jewish property assets from the Holocaust era.
Filmmakers Still Find Stories to Tell About the Holocaust
Washington Post, July 22, 2011
It's called "Holocaust exhaustion" - the feeling that there have been so many films about the destruction of European Jewry that it's time to say "enough already." Or is it?
Connecticut Auction House Says it has Sold Journals of Nazi Doctor Josef Mengele, Sparking Criticism
Washington Post, July 22, 2011
A Connecticut auction house says it has sold the journals written by Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele.
"Sarah's Key" Looks at Holocaust's Lasting Impact
Reuters, July 22, 2011
Seven decades have passed since French police arrested thousands of Parisian Jews and sent them to death camps in an incident know as the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, but for some, the guilt still lingers.
New Angle on an Oft-Visited Nightmare
New York Times, July 15, 2011
The French filmmaker Gilles Paquet-Brenner was aware he was taking on a subject that was daunting, unpopular and overworked. ... Mr. Paquet-Brenner was suggesting that his latest, "Sarah's Key," might be the Holocaust movie for this moment.
Plaques in Prague Commemorate Holocaust Victims
New York Times, July 11, 2011
The small bronze cobblestones can be easy to miss, but they are scattered, in plain sight, all over the streets of Prague and numerous other cities across Europe.
Auschwitz - a Derbyshire Student's Plea
Derbyshire Times, July 7, 2011
When Chesterfield student Nick Baskerville, 17, visited Auschwitz with a group of A-Level students, the experience left him profoundly moved. This resulting article is an account of what he saw and carries a plea from the heart to all of us to learn the lessons from the past.
Ukraine's Vanished Jews, A Series of Articles
Kyiv Post, June 24, 2011
• Ukraine's Vanquished Jews from World War II. June 24, 2011
• Ukraine's Vanquished Jews: 'Their Fate was Clear to Them'. June 30, 2011
• Surviving the Holocaust in Lviv. (Coming Soon)
Israel Ambassador Salutes Pope Pius XII for Sheltering Jews from Holocaust
CatholicCulture.org, June 24, 2011
Israel's ambassador to the Holy See has confirmed that Pope Pius XII was responsible for protecting many Jews from the Holocaust.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Remember Me? Project
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, June 9, 2011
This past April, Jean-Claude Goldbrenner typed his name into Google. To his amazement, the first search result was a photo of himself taken in the 1940s at the end of World War II. Jean-Claude is a Holocaust survivor. The photo he found is part of Remember Me?, the Museum's innovative effort to identify more than 1,100 photos of children who were separated from their families during the Holocaust. Jean-Clause shares his story.
A Fight Over Anne Frank's Fallen Tree
The New York Times, June 8, 2011
From the window in the attic of her family's hiding place in Amsterdam, Anne Frank could see the crown of an old chestnut tree growing in a neighbor's garden. For two years, it was her only contact with nature. The tree is gone now, having fallen during a storm in August, but its memory lives on - not in the diary, but in a nasty dispute over its remains.
Hitler's First Anit-Semitic Writing Finds a Buyer
The New York Times, June 7, 2011
In 1919, a soldier in Munich discovered that he could galvanize small groups of fellow trench warfare veterans with virulently anti-Semitic diatribes. A superior officer, impressed with the soldier's oratorical skills, asked him to commit his ideas to paper. Out of that came the first written record of Adolf Hitler's obsessive hostility toward Jews, an embryonic form of the worldview that would later lead to the Holocaust and millions of deaths.
Sobibor Museum Closes Due to Lack of Funds
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, June 2, 2011
The museum in Poland on the grounds of the death camp, Sobibor, announced Thursday that it closed because the regional government did not provide enough funding to keep it open, the German press agency dpa reported.
New Memorial to Gay Holocaust Victims to be Built in Munich
Pink News, May 31, 2011
The German city of Munich, where the Nazis raided gay bars in the early days of the Third Reich, is to have a new memorial dedicated to the gay and lesbian victims of the Holocaust.
Mass Graves Database to go Online
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 16, 2011
Information gleaned from Father Patrick Desbois' years-long search for mass Jewish graves in Eastern Europe will be made available on a database. Desbois' organization, Yahad-In Unum, has joined with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish Committee to set up an online database of his finding since 2004 of mass graves in more than 600 towns and villages in Belarus, Ukraine, Russian and Poland.
Justice Breyer Recalls Legal Lessons of the Holocaust
Washington Wire, May 17, 2011
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Tuesday capped the National Days of Remembrance, the congressionally man dated commemoration of the Holocaust, by focusing on a legal legacy stretching from the Nuremberg Tribunal to present-day efforts to hold war criminals accountable, such as the International Criminal Court.
Demjanjuk in Munich
The New York Times, May 16, 2011
Last week a German court in Munich found John Demjanjuk guilty of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, one for each of the Jews exterminated during the six months that he worked as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
7 Decades After Hitler's Fall, German Grandchildren of Nazis Delve into Family Past
Associated Press, May 13, 2011
Rainer Hoess was 12 when he found out his grandfather was one of the worst mass murderers in history.
Demjanjuk Conviction Shows Holocaust Criminals are Held Accountable
Haaretz.com, May 13, 2011
John Demjanjuk was handed a five-year sentence by a Munich court for his involvement in the murders at the Sobibor Camp in German-occupied Poland.
New Web Sites Help Track Nazi Plunder. The Timing Couldn't Be More Urgent
Forbes, May 8, 2011
New online databases, along with recently-discovered photographs, may help resolve one of the most controversial unresolved legacies of the Holocaust - locating and returning the art, jewels, and other assets stolen and seized by the Nazis from European Jews.
500,000 Holocaust Era Names Online
J-Wire, May 5, 2011
For the first time in its history, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is making a collection of its historic records and photographs from the Holocaust period available online. The new site enables the public, especially Holocaust survivors and their families, to perform searches for themselves or others.
Eyewitness to Genocide: He Was the First to Warn of the Holocaust, But No One Believed Him
Daily Mail / UK , May 4, 2011
Jan Karski nervously crawled through the dank, underground tunnel in wartime Warsaw, not to freedom, but to become an eyewitness to the "world of the dead" known as the Warsaw Ghetto.
Trove of Historic Records of Holocaust Goes Online
Associated Press, May 2, 2011
A trove of papers and photographs documenting the lives of Holocaust victims and survivors includes notable names like Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. With over 500,000 names and more than 1,000 photographs, the searchable collection documents the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's vast efforts during World War Ii and the postwar era
Holocaust Survivor Preserves Treblinka in Art
BBC News, May 1, 2011
Samuel Willenberg, now 87, is one of the last two known survivors of the Treblinka extermination camp. His two sisters were killed there. Now living in Israel, he hopes that one day his statues can be a part of a museum at Treblinka.
Irreverence Now Shoah Teaching Tool
The Jewish Week, April 27, 2011
After years of Holocaust farces, observers debate the uses of irony or graphic novels when it comes to Holocaust remembrance.
Page last updated: March 2, 2013