Major Crimes and True Crime

Francisco Boix, a Spanish photographer, stole photos that were used as evidence in Nuremberg. It marks the 70th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Prisoners photographed by the camp's Identification Service, where Francisco Boix worked. Some 200,000 prisoners of various nationalities passed through Mauthausen, liberated by the US Army on May 5, 1945, and other concentration camps dependent on it, such as Gusen. Half died, including 4,761 of the 7,200 Spanish Republicans who were confined there. A group of prisoners tear down the Nazi symbol installed at the entrance to the Mauthausen camp on the day of liberation. Spanish photographer Francisco Boix documented the first hours after the Nazis escaped. Francisco Boix Another moment of the demolition of the Nazi symbol installed at the entrance to the Mauthausen camp, on the very day of liberation. Francisco Boix Photograph taken on the day of the liberation of Mauthausen, showing hundreds of dead in the Nazi camp. Boix didn...

Private Hershel Wright of the United States Army distributes oranges to survivors in the Wöbbelin concentration camp, 5 May 1945 When Allied forces arrived to liberate the Wöbbelin camp in northern Germany, they encountered scenes beyond anything they could have imagined: hundreds of corpses lay scattered throughout the camp, among them emaciated, gravely ill survivors. The liberated prisoners were quickly transferred to hospitals, but even after liberation, not all survived. Many succumbed to illness and exhaustion - others, tragically, to overeating after years of starvation. This photo captures one of the first moments following liberation: a small act of giving, offered to those who had been stripped of everything. Yad Vashem Photo Archive

Private Hershel Wright of the United States Army distributes oranges to survivors in the Wöbbelin concentration camp, 5 May 1945 When Allied forces arrived to liberate the Wöbbelin camp in northern Germany, they encountered scenes beyond anything they could have imagined: hundreds of corpses lay scattered throughout the camp, among them emaciated, gravely ill survivors. The liberated prisoners were quickly transferred to hospitals, but even after liberation, not all survived. Many succumbed to illness and exhaustion - others, tragically, to overeating after years of starvation. This photo captures one of the first moments following liberation: a small act of giving, offered to those who had been stripped of everything. Yad Vashem Photo Archive

An American officer supports a Holocaust survivor from Budapest at the Penig concentration camp, April 1945. Penig Camp, located south of Leipzig, was a forced labor camp where Jewish women from Budapest were employed in the production of aircraft parts. When soldiers of the U.S. Army’s Third Army liberated the camp, they found 68 Jewish women, all in a state of extreme starvation. The American army ordered staff from a nearby German hospital to care for them.  The photograph was taken by a U.S. Army Signal Corps soldier and distributed by the American military.  Yad Vashem Photo Archives.

Michał Klepfisz was born in Warsaw on April 17, 1913. His mother was a school teacher. His family was Jewish, but not particularly religious. He went to university in Warsaw, where he studied polytechnics. In 1939, after the war started, he lived in Lviv and later in Donetsk. Eventually, Michał heard the rumors of what was happening to his friends in family in Warsaw and came back to the city. He lived outside of the ghetto under a false name: Tadeusz Mecner.  Eventually, Michał became connected with the ŻOB- the Jewish fighting organization in the ghetto. Due to his knowledge in polytechnics, Michał was able to help the resistance produce explosives. He was later caught and arrested. He was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, but jumped off the train, therefore escaping almost certain death. He was injured from his jump, but made his way back to Warsaw to continue helping the resistance.  When he returned home, Michał helped sneak food and weapons into the ghetto. On Ap...

Women and children on their way to Gas Chamber 4 at Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944. The photographs are taken from the Auschwitz Album — a unique collection of images captured by SS photographers at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the spring and summer of 1944, documenting the arrival, selection, and looting of Hungarian Jewish deportees. The Auschwitz Album was discovered after the war by Holocaust survivor Lili Jacob in an abandoned house in Nordhausen, Germany. In the 1960s, she made the album available to the prosecution at the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, and in 1983 she donated it to Yad Vashem. In 1994, the album was transferred to Yad Vashem’s conservation laboratory, and in 1999 it was fully digitized using advanced digital technology. The information accompanying the photographs was integrated into the Yad Vashem Archives database.

Joseph von Hoppen Waldhorn was the French-Jewish son of Rosa (neé Israel) Waldhorn and Michael von Hoppen Waldhorn. He was born in Paris on the 14th of November 1930. He had two sisters: Zalie (1927) and Helene (1922).  His father was a Polish Jew and his mother a Hungarian Jew. Joseph and Zalie were born in Paris while their sister was born in Czechoslovakia, in her mother's birthplace after it was annexed to Czechoslovakia from Hungary. After the German invasion of France, foreign-born Jews were deported first. In 1941, Michael was imprisoned in Drancy where he remained for 6 months. In 1942, not long after he was released, he was once again arrested and sent back to Drancy. 6 days later, he was put on a cattle train to Auschwitz where was murdered on arrival on the 24th of July 1942.  After Michael was deported, Rosa went into hiding in an attic in Paris. She was denounced by an informant and deported to Auschwitz on the 2nd of September 1943. She did not return. Helene man...

When so many other Germans remained silent, the members of the White Rose risked their lives to speak out against the Nazi regime. Composed of mostly university students, including brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friend, Christoph Probst, the White Rose wrote pleading messages and distributed them to thousands of Germans. They begged their fellow citizens to rise up against the Nazis and their persecution of Jews. “The Jews, too, are human beings,” they wrote. On February 22, 1943, the Scholls and Christoph were tried for the crime of treason, convicted, and beheaded in a matter of hours. While their voices went unheard then, today—more than 80 years later—the group serves as a symbol of righteous rebellion.  Photo: George J. Wittenstein (akg-images.co.uk) #Holocaust #History #OTD #OnThisDay

Klaus Barbie had no regrets about sending thousands to their deaths. He personally tortured members of the French resistance and was responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews from German-occupied France.  As head of a local office of the Gestapo, the Nazis' political police force, Barbie made a name for himself as the "Butcher of Lyon."  In 1944, he learned that 44 Jewish children were being sheltered in a nearby village. He had the children arrested and sent them to Auschwitz. None survived. Years after the war, and after escaping to South America, Barbie was captured and tried for crimes against humanity. Despite his conviction in 1987, Barbie remained a devoted Nazi, stating: “I am proud to have been a commanding officer of the best military outfit in the Third Reich, and if I had to be born a thousand times again, I would be a thousand times what I’ve been.” Photo: Wikimedia #Holocaust #History

Did you know that some Jews supported Mussolini before the Holocaust? Italian Jew Ettore Abenaim—pictured on the right—was a member of the Italian Blackshirts. This armed group attacked political opponents of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, such as Communist and Catholic organizations. Unlike Nazism, early Italian fascism was not overtly antisemitic. This photo was taken in 1936 in Pisa. By November 1938, Mussolini's government passed anti-Jewish race laws and excluded them from the National Fascist Party and other areas of Italian life. After the Nazis took over Italy in 1943, Ettore was deported to Auschwitz, where he died.  In total, the Nazis deported over 8,000 Jews from Italian territory, mostly sending them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only about 1,000 returned after the Holocaust. Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Emmanuele Pacifici

Julie Keefer’s constant cries put her family in danger. In the end, this may have saved her life. After escaping the Lwów ghetto, Julie, her sister, Tola, and their family hid from the Nazis in a forest hideout for several months. Over time, the girls’ crying put the Jewish family at risk. Their grandfather made the painful decision to place two-year-old Julie and baby Tola with a friend. Soon after they were removed, the Germans discovered the hiding place in the woods and murdered everyone inside. Julie’s grandfather, who was away visiting the girls, was the only survivor. Julie never saw her parents again. During the chaos of the war, Julie and Tola were separated, and Tola was sent to a Catholic orphanage. After the Holocaust, Julie and her grandfather desperately searched for Tola but they were unable to locate the baby. Julie never lost hope of finding her sister. Despite all that she lost, Julie chose to share her story with visitors at our Museum. “For many, many years I did no...

A sign on the shoe factory bulletin board prompted Harry Harrison and his wife, Dot, a Christian couple, to take in a little Jewish girl fleeing Nazi Germany.  When Esther Starobin arrived by boat in England, she was just two years old. Her desperate parents had agreed to send their youngest child to live with strangers in the hopes of saving her. What began as a good deed blossomed into bonds that lasted a lifetime. Over eight years, Esther came to see the Harrisons and their son, Alan, as a second family. “That was really the happiest time of my childhood," she remembered. Esther later learned that her parents had been murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. Alan and Esther are still close today. Photos: Esther, Esther's family, Esther's foster family Credit: USHMM, Esther Rosenfeld Starobin #Holocaust #History #Survivor #NationalFosterCareMonth

This photo was taken secretly inside the Ravensbrück concentration camp. A group of prisoners documented the medical experimentations that German doctors were performing on them. Joanna Szydłowska traded her bread to another prisoner for a camera. She was one of 74 Polish women subjected to cruel experiments, including unnecessary surgeries.  Doctors cut open some women's legs and intentionally infected them to try to simulate battlefield wounds. Some of the women were given no medication when they became desperately ill. Ravensbrück was liberated on this day in 1945 after most prisoners had been evacuated from the camp. Some of the experimentation victims testified at trials after the war. The photos they took were part of the evidence. Continue reading  #OTD #OnThisDayinHistory #Holocaust