Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics
Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically
Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust
Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust
The Nazis used public displays to spread their ideas of race. The chart shown here is titled "The Biology of Growth," and is labeled "Stages of Growth for Members of the Nordic Race."
Establishing racial descent by measuring an ear at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology. Germany, date uncertain.
At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, a racial hygienist measures a woman's features in an attempt to determine her racial ancestry. Berlin, Germany, date uncertain.
A Polish soldier, Samuel was wounded in action and taken by Germany as a prisoner of war. As the war continued, he and other Jewish prisoners received increasingly harsh treatment. Among the camps in which he was interned was Lublin-Lipowa, where he was among those forced to build the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1942, he escaped from the Germans, spending the rest of the war as the leader of an armed partisan group.
Zdenka was one of four children born to a Jewish family in Kolinec, a southwestern Bohemian town near the German border. Her father was a farmer and a lumber and grain merchant. Situated in the foothills of the Bohemian Forest, Kolinec was surrounded by rolling hills. Zdenka attended business school in the nearby town of Klatovy and, in 1927, moved to Prague with her uncle.
1933-39: Zdenka remembers how worried her mother was about the rise of German antisemitism in 1932. After listening to a radio broadcast about Germany she told her children, "Something terrible is going to happen to the Jewish people." Zdenka and her sister responded, "Not in Czechoslovakia; we have democracy." In the fall of 1938 the Western powers allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland, and on March 15, 1939, the Germans occupied Bohemia.
1940-44: In 1942 Zdenka was deported to Theresienstadt, the Nazis' "model ghetto" used to show their "humane" treatment of Jews. Once a German camera crew was in the ghetto and when she walked up, they shoved her out of the way; they were only filming people who were homely or had large noses--those who fit the German stereotypes of Jews. In July 1944 the Nazis let the Red Cross inspect the ghetto. Before the visit, they ordered a beautification project. Dummy parks and schools were set up. Film crews recorded the ghetto's "beauty."
In 1944 Zdenka was deported to the Oederan camp where she worked in an ammunition factory. Oederan's prisoners were later marched to Theresienstadt and liberated there in May 1945.
We would like to thank The Crown and Goodman Family and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing
work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
View the list of all donors.