Holocaust Museum LA

Blϋthner Piano

This Blϋthner piano belonged to Alfred Sendrey (Szendrei), a Jewish conductor born in Budapest, Hungary. He worked as a conductor and vocal coach before serving in the Austria-Hungarian army in World War I. Later on, he served as the first conductor of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. He lost this post in 1931 due to antisemitism. From 1931-1933, he led Radio Berlin. Deeply religious, the Lutheran Blϋthner family contacted all their Jewish customers and said that if they wanted to leave Germany, the family could help by picking their piano up, putting it in a crate, and shipping it to a new address. Alfred Sendrey left for Paris in 1933 and worked for French radio and later spent his war years in Paris and New York. After the war, he finally settled in Los Angeles and his piano arrived in a crate. The Blϋthner family had paid for the transport of the instrument from Europe through South America. The Blϋthner family rescued and returned close to 100 pianos for Jewish musicians.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Eva Brettler

Schloss Hartheim: The T4 Program

Tiergartenstrasse-4 Program (T4 program) was the Nazi’s first program of mass murder. It was intended to murder German and Austrian citizens with disabilities, which the Nazis cruelly labeled as “useless eaters.” Hitler started the program in 1939, and even though it was officially discontinued in 1941 due to protest by the Church and public, the program and the killings continued in secret. Family members of the victims were given false information and falsified death certificates.The T4 program carried out at Schloss Hartheim laid the foundations for later mass murders by pioneering both the systematic, industrialized murder of people because of their born or involuntary identities and the use of poison gas for efficient, impersonal mass killing. Schloss Hartheim was one of six T4 centers located in Nazi Germany where approximately 275,000 people with disabilities were murdered between 1939 and 1945. Many of the victims’ families didn’t discover what happened until after the war.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Eva Nathanson

Bergen-Belsen

Bergen-Belsen was established in April 1943 as a detention camp for prisoners who were to be exchanged for Germans imprisoned in Allied countries. In August 1944, a new section was added to serve as a women's camp for 4,000 Jewish female prisoners from Hungary and Poland. In early fall 1944, thousands of prisoners arrived from Płaszów and Auschwitz. They were put in the "star" sub-camp with almost no living facilities. Among this group were Anne Frank and her sister Margot, who both died of typhus in March 1945. The conditions at Bergen-Belsen, which were already abominable, got even worse when tens of thousands of prisoners arrived in early 1945, after horrific death marches from camps in the east that had been evacuated by the Germans. Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945. After its liberation, Bergen-Belsen became a Displaced Persons' camp until 1951.

TORAH BREASTPLATE (SHIELD)

The Torah Breastplate is a decorative object to adorn the neck of the Torah scroll in Ashkenazi communities. These items are typically decorated with Jewish symbols and the names of those who donated it to the synagogue. Since synagogues often have more than one Torah scroll in the Ark, it became customary in the late Middle Ages to use the breastplates to indicate on each scroll the occasion for which it was to be used. Breastplates can be beautiful examples of Jewish ceremonial art. This particular Torah breastplate has the Hebrew word for “Passover” on in, indicating it would have adorned the Torah scroll used on that holiday. This breastplate is one of the few items known to have survived the Holocaust from Wertheim, Germany.

Glass Family

Israel

Many survivors rallied around Zionism and a Jewish state. From 1945-1948, the Brihah movement helped more than 100,000 Jews enter the British Mandate of Palestine. By 1948, the British imprisoned over 50,000 Jewish refugees in interment camps on Cyprus.On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate over Palestine expired and Israel declared its independence. Soon after, the US Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, authorizing 200,000 DPs to enter the United States. By 1952, over 80,000 Jewish DPs had immigrated to the United States, 136,000 to Israel, and another 20,000 to other nations, including Canada, Australia, and South Africa. By the end of 1952, almost all of the DP camps were closed.

Maly Trostenets

In 1942, Jews from Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were brought to Maly Trostenets located in Belorussia. Most of the victims were lined up in front of large pits and shot. Tractors then flattened the pits out. In the fall of 1943, the Nazis began to destroy all evidence of the camp. In June 1944, the remaining prisoners were killed and the camp was completely destroyed.

Eva Wartnik Artifacts

This pillowcase belonged to Holocaust survivor Eva Wartnik, who was born in Satu Mare, Romania in 1930. Eva’s mother Paula stitched this pillowcase in the late 1930s, as a gift for her sister, Helen who lived in Chicago, Illinois. Following liberation, Eva returned to her hometown and discovered that her parents and sisters had been murdered. Eva met her husband, Leo Preisler, in a displaced persons camp and the two immigrated to the U.S. On her way to Los Angeles, Eva visited her Aunt Helen who gave her the pillowcase, a precious token of remembrance for her mother.

Survivor Testimony from Lodz

Betty Gerard with classmates in Westerbork Camp, 1942

The World That Was

The first gallery of the Museum focuses on pre-War European Jewish life, culture, religion, and history. The gallery depicts Jewish cultural, economic, family and religious life in Europe before the Holocaust. In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, comprising 1.7% of the total European population. Some Jews lived in traditional religious communities while others assimilated into the urban landscape. Jews had a variety of professions ranging from farmers to doctors, tailors, and teachers. They participated in both traditional Jewish practices as well as local European culture. During the Holocaust, 6 million Jews were murdered, and a rich civilization that existed in Europe for thousands of years was largely destroyed.

Megillah (Scroll) of Esther

This Megillah (book) Esther is from Poland circa 1786. This is the same story of Esther used today to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim. How are the characters dressed? This shows how the Polish community at that time understood what royalty would wear. This artifact is important because it speaks to the community who created it and the continuation of traditions. The depiction of Esther in this megillah shows her wearing an outfit that somebody in Poland would envision royalty wearing. The pictures are telling us about the Jewish culture in Poland. How they envisioned royalty, how they envisioned these characters looking and it’s something that all kids do today. These are the same stories that Jews have been sharing for generations.

John Glass

In the photograph on the upper right, a young John Glass plays on his father’s typewriter in their family home on Äneasstraße in Berlin. Following Paul’s termination at work and amidst an increasingly unsafe environment in Germany, including the events of Kristallnacht, the immediate family decided to leave Germany, and arrived in the U.S. in 1940. John was lucky enough to be able to bring a few of his toys along, which are displayed on this shelf, including his teddy bear, Biu, and the clothing his mother Anni hand-sewed for Biu. John later went on to become a prominent sociologist and political activist in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Holocaust Survivor Dana Schwartz

Born in Lvov, Poland, Dana was just four years old at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. When Nazi Germany occupied Lvov in July 1941, the Nazi authorities established a ghetto where the entire Jewish population, including Dana, her parents, and her grandmother, were forced to live. Understanding the danger, Dana’s father organized false papers identifying Dana and her mother as Polish Non-Jews. Using these false identities, the two escaped from the ghetto and survived the remainder of the war in various hiding places outside of Lvov. While in the Lvov ghetto, Dana’s father worked as a cigarette manufacturer and vendor. This cigarette case, which belonged to Dana’s father, contained the paper for rolling cigarettes. When Dana and her mother went into hiding, they took this case and filled it with thread and patches for sewing for Dana’s mother to mend Dana’s clothes with, and Dana recalls referring to the case as a treasure box while in hiding. Dana's father did not survive.

Rise of Nazism: Terror and Deception

The second gallery depicts the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) party through the 1930s, and the discriminatory racial policies Hitler and the Nazi party imposed through ideology, propaganda, and laws. Prominent historical events are discussed in detail including book burnings, the first concentration camps, anti-Jewish laws, the Berlin Olympics, the Annexation of Austria, the Jewish refugee crisis, Kristallnacht, and the Kindertransport.

Cattle Car

People were packed into cattle cars and left, sometimes for days, without food or water. During the winter months, people would freeze, and in summer they asphyxiated due to the heat. The trains themselves became instruments of death and were part of the dehumanization process. Historians suggested that without the mass transportation of the railways, the scale of the Final Solution would not have been possible.

Holocaust Survivor Talk Harry Davids

Last Photographs of a Mother and Father

Lisa’s mother Malka gave Lisa this picture of herself as she boarded the Kindertransport. On the back of the picture, Malka inscribed ‘So you will never forget your mother’. The picture of Lisa's father was brought to the U.K. by her sister Sonia. These were the only pictures Lisa had of her parents, and she considered them precious possessions during the Holocaust.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Steven Kovary

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Dr. Jacob Eisenbach

Eichmann Trial

Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, and France, among others, tried thousands of defendants—both Germans and local collaborators, since 1945.One of the most famous trials of German perpetrators was held in Jerusalem, Israel: the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Charged with organizing major parts of the genocidal aims of the Nazis, Eichmann facilitated the mass deportation of Jews to killing centers in Eastern Europe. Eichmann's trial before an Israeli court in 1961 captured worldwide attention and interested the postwar generation in the Holocaust.

Bernd Stevens

Paul Glass Typewriter

Warsaw Ghetto 1940-1943

The Nazis began the process of ghettoization, establishing the first ghetto in Poland in October 1939. Jews from smaller towns and villages were brought to more populated areas, allowing the Nazis more control and authority over the Jewish populations. The word "ghetto" comes from Venice in 1516. The Nazis established 40,000 camps and ghettos throughout Europe. A ghetto was a sealed confined area of a city established to segregate, dehumanize, and starve Jews.  Some ghettos existed for only a few days while others existed for years.  Daily life in the ghettos was horrid, as families were crowded together in unsanitary apartments, food was limited, and diseases ran rampant. Starvation, inadequate health care, extreme overcrowding, deadly diseases such as dysentery and typhus, and severe weather caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Synagogue

The synagogue, Beit Knesset (house of gathering) in Hebrew, is the physical and spiritual cornerstone of the Jewish community, serving numerous functions, including as a place of communal worship, gathering, celebration, and as a general community space. While the origin of the first synagogue is unknown, several scholars believe that synagogues first appeared during the second temple period as communal assembly halls. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE synagogues became the space to worship, pray, and carry out religious traditions. Thus, synagogues have remained as both spaces of worship and communal assembly to this day.

Birthday Message to Sir Nicholas Winton

Donated by Lynne & Nigel Ross

Japanese American Incarceration

Following the Japanese attack on US forces at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, bringing the United States into World War II, the US government relocated approximately 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent from their West Coast homes to “relocation centers." At these camps, people were forced to live in rudimentary barracks surrounded by barbed-wire and guarded by the US Army.

Yellow Star

Between 1939 and 1945 Nazi officials implemented the yellow star as a physical marking that distinguished Jews from the rest of society. The badge varied depending on location – often bearing the word ‘Jew’ in the local language. Intended to stigmatize, humiliate and dehumanize the Jewish population, the badge was required to be worn on the outside of one’s clothing at all times while in public. To be caught without it could mean a fine, jail, or even death. Though not a concept that originated with the Nazis, (the idea of segregating Jews by enforcing specific articles of clothing dated back to Christian and Muslim regulations during the medieval period), the star was a key element of the Nazi plan to segregate, persecute, and eventually destroy the Jewish population in Europe.

World War I Medals belonging to German Jews

Righteous Gentiles

This student-made documentary, “The Righteous Gentiles,” highlights the narrative of Holocaust Survivor Zenon Neumark and the brave individuals who risked their lives to save his.

Idele Stapholtz Artifacts

Idele was born to Polish parents in 1926 in Chemnitz, Germany. Idele’s mother died from complications during childbirth shortly after Idele was born. When Idele was 12 years old her father, along with other Polish Jews, was forcibly deported to Poland by the Nazi government. After experiencing the terrifying and violent Kristallnacht pogrom, in which her Jewish orphanage was destroyed, Idele was able to secure a place on the Kindertransport, a program to evacuate Jewish children from Nazi Europe. Idele arrived in Brussels, Belgium on 5 January 1938 and was taken in by Marie Goossens and her daughter Germaine. Filled with compassion at the plight of Jewish children fleeing Nazi brutality, the Goosens, a Catholic family, cared for Idele as if she were family and protected her throughout the war. Both the Goossens were honored by Yad Vashem in 1993 as Righteous Among the Nations.

Nazi Propaganda Book

Jacob Meller's Uniform

Jacob was born in 1913 in Lithuania. Jacob worked as a textile manufacturer till June 1941, when Germany invaded Lithuania and established a ghetto in Kaunas. Jacob and his wife Shulamit lived in the Kaunas Ghetto for 3 years till the Germans liquidated it in 1944. The remaining men were deported to Dachau and women to Stutthof. Upon arrival in Dachau, Jacob received this uniform and wore it for nearly 11 months. While in Dachau, Jacob sewed a hidden pocket on the inside of his uniform to store bread. The stitching is visible on the bottom left side of the buttons. In April 1945, Jacob was sent on a death march and ultimately liberated by U.S. troops. Jacob, 32 years old, reunited with his wife. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1951, where he opened a business and remained active in the Lithuanian Jewish community. To ensure that the horrors he endured would not be forgotten, he donated his Dachau uniform to the Museum.

Double Victory

On April 11, 1945, soldiers from the 6th Armored Division, part of the Third Army, liberated more than 21,000 people at Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Segregated units were among the liberators of Buchenwald. Sergent William A. Scott was a military photographer who documented Nazi crimes in the camp and took this photograph. Despite the overarching segregation in the military at the time, more than one million Black men fought for the US Armed Forces on the Homefront, in Europe, and the Pacific. The US 12th Armored Division was one of only ten US divisions during World War II that had integrated combat companies. After battling for freedom and defending democracy worldwide, Black soldiers returned home after the war only to find themselves faced with the existing prejudice and “Jim Crow” laws, which imposed “separate, but equal” segregation.  Many Black soldiers felt they were fighting for a double victory- one abroad and one at home.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Henry Slucki

Berlin Olympics 1936

Sir Nicholas Winton

Before the outbreak of war, some 10,000 children were aided by numerous organizations, families, and individuals in finding refuge and safety in the U.K. Nicholas Winton, a 29-year old stockbroker, was one of the individuals who fought to save Jewish children during this time. After hearing first-hand accounts of the violence against Jews, he set up his own operation to bring Jewish children to safety.Winton organized 8 transports out of Prague’s Wilson Railway Station, which all arrived safely in England. The 9th, with about 250 children, was due to leave when World War II broke out; all the borders were closed and the fate of those children is unknown. In total, Winton saved 669 children from almost certain death – most of their families ended-up interned and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.In 1983 Winton was awarded an MBE (member of the Order of the British Empire). In 2002, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and became Sir Nicholas Winton.

Death Camps

To implement the Final Solution, 6 death camps were built in Poland. These camps were designed for the sole purpose of systematic murder. The camps were: Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek. Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka had no purpose other than mass murder. Gas chambers were built in the death camps to speed the killing process. Carbon Monoxide and Zyklon B were used as poisonous gas in these facilities. Upon arrival at the camp, prisoners were ordered to leave their belongings and strip off their clothes-the deception was so detailed that there were often hooks with numbers for them to leave their belongings. They were then assembled in large numbers in the gas chambers, where they were killed within minutes.

Sefer Torah

The Torah (bible) is the first 5 books of the 24 of the TanakhThe Torah consists of the Jewish people’s origin, their call into being by God, their trials and tribulations, and their way of life embodied in a set of moral and religious obligations and civil laws.This Torah scroll was hand-written in 1830 in a town in what is now the Czech Republic. Following the Nazi invasion in 1939, the Nazis brought the surrounding populations to Prague. Among the more than 212,000 artifacts collected, were approximately 1800 Torah scrolls.The scroll displayed here was one of those scrolls. As the community was destroyed during the Holocaust, this scroll, and others like it, represent the lost communities, the people who celebrated it, and the generations who lived, worshiped, and perished. It stands as a testament to those who are no longer with us and as an example of Jewish traditions that continue despite and inspire of the Holocaust

Prior to the Rise of Nazism

From 1919 -1933, the German government was a democracy called the Weimar Republic. Democracy, arts, music, and social acceptance flourished. Following World War I, Germany was required to pay large reparations. This, and chronic political instability plagued Germany in the 1920s and led to economic and social strife throughout the country, which was furthered by the Great Depression. In 1921, the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party was founded. The party valued nationalism, “Aryanism,” and a revival of nativism and claimed that German Jews were traitors. The Nazis circulated a series of lies that scapegoated Jews for German loses. The Nazi Party secured a position in government through a coalition. On January 30, 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, the second most powerful position in the country. Those who opposed Hitler believed that von Hindenberg’s position and power would control and balance the government.

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)

The horrifying and unprecedented violence of Kristallnacht "Night of Broken Glass" was a turning point in Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jewish population. On November 9 and 10, 1938, violent and destructive anti -Jewish pogroms took place throughout Germany and Austria. During this state sponsored, violent event, Nazis and their supporters destroyed 267 synagogues, looted over 7,500 Jewish owned businesses, and murdered 91 Jews. Approximately 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and deported to Dachau, and other camps including Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Kristallnacht marked the first instance in which the Nazi regime incarcerated Jews on a massive scale. This unprecedented and wide scale violence signified the danger for Jews remaining in Nazi controlled territory. Many of the Jewish men who were able to return from the concentration camps were desperate to get their families out of the country.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Raul Artal

Betty Gerard Artifacts: Westerbork Survivor

Betty was born in Dortmund, Germany in March 1934. Betty’s childhood was an idyllic one until 1938 when everything changed. During Kristallnacht, Betty watched as the windows of her parent’s store were shattered and the synagogue the family attended set on fire. Realizing the danger they faced, Betty’s parents arranged for her to be hidden in a nearby convent. Only 4 years old at the time, Betty was taught Christian prayers and attended church. With increasing danger, members of the convent abandoned Betty at the Dutch border. Betty was allowed into Holland and taken to an orphanage with other Jewish children left at the border. She eventually ended up in the Westerbork Camp, which had been established for Dutch Jews before they were deported to the Death Camps in Poland. Here Betty was reunited with her mother and father, though she had no memory of them. The family was liberated in Westerbork by Canadian Forces on April 12, 1945.

Glass Family Collection

This collection of artifacts depicts the life of the Glass family, a prominent German Jewish family with roots in Breslau (now Wroclaw) and Berlin. Paul Glass, pictured on the left in his job at his firm Telefunken, was an electrical engineer in the suburb of Berlin-Mariendorf who worked on the cutting-edge technology of sound film, for which he was awarded the above patent from the Reich Patent Office in 1937. However, with the rise of antisemitism and Nazi racial ideology, he was fired from his job in 1938 solely on the grounds of being Jewish. Paul’s typewriter, which his son John (Joachim) enjoyed playing with, is displayed below the photographs of Joachim’s grandfathers, Sally Glass and Herman Hoff, who were both proud World War I veterans of the German Empire’s army.

Ketubah, the Netherlands, 1867

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Erika Schwartz

Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals

The Nazi regime targeted homosexuals as corrupting the “Aryan” race and carrying a “degeneracy” that weakened society and posed a threat to population growth. Women were generally not subjected to the same systematic persecution as men, though many lesbians were arrested as “asocials” or prostitutes. Under Nazi laws, approximately 50,000 men were sent to prison and between 5,000 and 15,000 sent to concentration camps. Within the camps, homosexuals were identified by a pink triangle, and these prisoners received brutal treatment from both guards and other prisoners due to the widespread prejudice at the time. Homosexual victims were not immediately recognized subsequent to WWII and some remained imprisoned after the war.

Bernd Stevens

Bernd Stevens fled Nazi Germany as a teenager in 1939, narrowly escaping to the U.S. When the U.S. entered the war, the Jewish teenager enlisted in the U.S. Army, and was quickly selected by the Army Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, for special training to go behind enemy lines on secret missions in Austria. Exhibited here are some of the items from Bernd’s mission, including the photograph given to him with his fake identity – Peter Hartley. During his time conducting espionage as a paratrooper, Bernd was captured by the Nazis but managed to negotiate his release with his captors. He was awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his courageous heroism, and later received the OSS Congressional Gold Medal. After completing his mission in Austria, Bernd returned to his hometown in search of any remaining family. It was here that he learned his father and brother had been murdered during the Holocaust.

FRAGMENT OF A PRAYER BOOK

Bernard Hohenberg discovered this burnt fragment of a prayer book amongst the remains of the Heitzinger Synagogue, in Vienna, when he returned to the site some 24 years after the Synagogue had been destroyed during Kristallnacht.

Arts & Sciences

After Jews in many European countries were given freedom from legal restrictions and persecution, and were granted basic civil rights in the 19th century, many were able to make significant contributions in arts and sciences. Some rose to be the acknowledged leaders in their respective fields. For example, before 1933, 29% of German Nobel Prize winners were Jewish.

Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1933

An article titled "Nazis Plan Boycotts: Defense of Jews Resented" printed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times on March 28, 1933. The article states that Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses were intended as retaliation against the foreign threat of boycott against German goods, which had resulted due to reports of antisemitism.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Peter Epstein

Badges of Shame

The exhibition was created by Holocaust Survivor Trudie Strobel. Born near Odessa, Ukraine, Trudy was a young girl when the Nazis came to power. Her prized possession was a beautiful doll, and she distinctly remembers the horror of her doll being torn away from her by a Nazi guard as she was transported to the camps. After liberation, she and her mother moved to the U.S. In her later years, Trudie remembered the loss of her doll and childhood and dressed a new doll with the yellow star. Trudie decided to research such badges and learned that Jews were subjected to the humiliation of having to identify themselves as Jews through their dress and badges for many centuries.

Nuremberg Laws

In reversing the previous decades of emancipation and assimilation, the Nazis worked to ostracize the Jewish population, and “ordinary Germans were invited to participate in and profit from the exclusion, expropriation, and expulsion of the unwanted Jews.”In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, forbade them from flying the national flag, and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or German-related blood.” Additional laws took away political rights, including the right to vote and hold public office. The Nuremberg Laws became the ideological cornerstone for the National Socialists, and they were intended to protect the nation and individual Germans from perceived degeneration.

Haggadah

The Haggadah, meaning “telling” in Hebrew, is a guide to the Passover Seder, that includes various prayers, blessings and information for how the seder should be performed. Published in Vienna in 1934, this Haggadah is illustrated and contains Hebrew and German text. This Haggadah belonged to Charles Susskind, who escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport to England in 1939.

Siddur

Siddur meaning “order” is a prayer book that contains a set order of daily prayers. The Neue Synagoge ("New Synagogue"), the largest one in Germany at the time, was built in 1866 and was the main synagogue for the Berlin Jewish Community. During "Kristallnacht", a mob desecrated the Torah, smashed the furniture, and set fire to the building. Police officer Otto Bellgardt, arrived and dispersed the mob as the building was a historical landmark that needed to be. Thus fire fighters were able to save most of the building. It remained intact and subsequently repaired by the German Jewish community who continued to use it as synagogue and community spac e until 1940. It wasn’t used again until 1995.

Salonika and the Holocaust

The diverse Greek Jewish community was one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, as Jews first settled in Greece in the 3rd century BCE. During the Holocaust, Greek Jews were not deported until March of 1943, when more than half of the European Jews had already been murdered. The last deportation of Greek Jews occurred in July of 1944 —the same month that the Red Army liberated the Majdanek Death Camp. In the span of a little more than a year, roughly 70,000 Greek Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, mostly in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka: approximately 96% of the Greek Jewish population was murdered. Ladino, known as Judaeo-Spanish, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish and includes elements of Hebrew and Aramaic was spoken by the Sephardic Jewish community who are decedents of those who fled Spain in the 15th century, however many native Greek Ladino speakers were murdered in the Holocaust.

Lisa Jura

Lisa Jura was born on April 21, 1924 in Vienna, Austria to Abraham and Malka Jura. She was the middle child and enjoyed a happy upbringing along with her sisters, Rosie and Sonia. Lisa grew up in a home filled with music and became a piano prodigy. Lisa’s parents secured a place for her on the Kindertransport and in August 1939, Lisa boarded a train and said goodbye to her parents, not knowing that she would never see them again. Malka’s last words were “promise me that you will hold on to your music.” In the U.K., Lisa was placed into a boarding house on Willesden Lane with 31 other children refugees. They formed their own family and adapted to life as best they could. Sonia secured a spot on the last Kindertransport and was taken in by Quakers in the English countryside. In March 1942, Lisa was accepted into the London Royal Academy of Music. After the war, Lisa learned that her parents perished in Auschwitz, but her older sister Rosie survived. The sisters later reunited.

Synagogue Judaica

Though the architecture of synagogues often reflects the local time period, culture, and geographic location, all synagogues must include a bimah, aron kodesh, and ner tamid. A bimah is a platform — usually at the front or middle of the sanctuary — where a chazzan (cantor) leads prayers. The aron kodesh is a large, ornately decorated cabinet at the front of the sanctuary that houses the Torah, which is the central text and reference of Judaism. The ner tamid is a candle that burns continuously, symbolizing God’s omnipresence in synagogues. Additionally, some synagogues include a mechitza, a separation between men and women in the synagogue sanctuary.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Betty & Louis

Objects from the Concentration Camps

Virtual Tour & Discussion with Photographer Richard Wiesel

Kindertransport (Children's Transport)

In response to the brutality of Kristallnacht, several organizations worked together to bring Jewish children under Nazi occupation to safety. Roughly 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, parts of Czechoslovakia, and parts of modern day Poland were sent on Kindertransports (children’s transports) to the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands and Belgium. The first train carrying refugee children left Berlin on December 1, 1938. The vast majority of the rescued children never saw their families again.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Renee Firestone

Displaced Persons (DP) Camps

Following liberation, most Jewish survivors were unwilling or unable to return home because of continued antisemitism and destroyed communities. Many were housed in DP camps as they waited to emigrate (the US still restricted immigration while the British did in the Mandate of Palestine). From 1945 to 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons lived in camps and centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy established by the Allied powers. Survivors searched for their families. There was an abundance of weddings and births as survivors tried to recreate and find normalcy. Schools were established. Religious holidays allowed for gatherings and celebrations, and the camps were transformed into active cultural and social centers. Despite the often-bleak conditions (many of the DP camps were former concentration camps and German military barracks), social, cultural and occupational organizations soon flourished.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Mary Bauer

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Ernest Weiss

Selection at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Jewish prisoners arriving at the Auschwitz complex went through the infamous selections, where SS officers and doctors selected some for torturous forced labor and others for immediate death. Children, elders, and women holding children were almost always sent immediately to be murdered. At the height of deportations to the camp, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed each day by the poisonous gas, Zyklon B.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony: Martha Sternbach

Tzedakah Box

A Tzedakah (charity) Box inscribed with the Hebrew text: “Charity saves one from death, giving in secret will absolve one.” It is customary to give tzedakah (charity) prior to Shabbat, holidays, and other special occasions. Giving tzedakah (deriving from the Hebrew word tzedaka, meaning justice or righteousness) is a moral obligation and religious imperative within Jewish tradition and tzedakah boxes are often found in homes, schools, and synagogues.

This Luftwaffe (German Airforce) helmet was picked up as a war trophy after WWII by Private First Class Lester Luber. The left side of this helmet features the Luftwaffe decal depicting an eagle in flight holding the swastika. PFC Luber covered the helmet with inscriptions including the military units that he belonged to, the various countries he fought in, as well as other relevant dates or slogans reflecting his experiences. “E.T.O.” (European Theater of Operation); “Belgium, Holland, Germany”; “V-Day, May 8”; and “Kaput”, with an arrow pointing at the Luftwaffe symbol. (Kaput was an adopted German word, meaning utterly finished or destroyed, and in this case referenced the collapse of the Nazi regime). As an Army medic, PFC Luber served in Company B of the 327th Medical Battalion, which was part of the 102nd Infantry Division. This battalion was attached to the 32nd General Hospital following the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944.

(Spanish) Holocaust Survivor Testimony Louise Lerner

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Eva Perlman

Liberation

As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they encountered both the horrors of the concentration camps and the resilient prisoners that miraculously survived.

Joe Alexander

On his Holocaust experience, Joe reflects "I feel that the man upstairs wanted me to survive so I can tell people what happened." Joe was born Idel Alexander in 1922 in Kowal, Poland. He and his 5 siblings enjoyed a comfortable and happy life. All of that changed in 1939 when the Nazis invaded. In 1940, Joe and his family were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto. Due to the horrific living conditions in the ghetto, Joe’s father bribed guards to let Joe and two of his siblings escape. Joe was eventually caught and sent to Auschwitz, where as part of their process of dehumanization; the Nazis tattooed him with the number 142584. With the looming military defeat of Nazi Germany, Joe was sent westward to concentration camps in Germany and eventually forced on a death march to Dachau. He was liberated by American troops in 1945 and quickly learned that his family had all perished. He changed his name to that of his brother's, as a way to honor him and immigrated to the US in 1949.

Aristides De Sousa Mendes

Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese consul to Bordeaux. He issued 30,000 visas, about 10,000 to Jews in a deliberate act of disobedience. After his actions were discovered, Sousa Mendes was stripped of all diplomatic privileges as well as his license to practice law. He died destitute in April of 1954. In 1966, Sousa Mendes received the honor of Righteous Among the Nations, however he was not officially vindicated for his actions until 1988, when the Portuguese parliament dismissed all charges against him and restored him to the country's diplomatic corps by a unanimous vote. Reflecting in his later years on the sacrifices he made during the war Sousa Mendes said, "If thousands of Jews can suffer because of one Christian demon [Hitler], then surely one Christian can suffer with so many Jews."

Death March

In January 1945, as the Nazis faced certain military defeat, and the Allies approaching on both the Western and Eastern fronts, the SS organized death marches (forced evacuations) of those imprisoned in the vast concentration camp system. The term "death march" was most likely created by camp prisoners themselves as they were forced to walk long distances under violent guard and in extremely harsh conditions. During the marches, SS guards brutally abused and killed the prisoners. With no real purpose and to almost the last day of the war, Germans marched prisoners to various locations.

Welcome to Holocaust Museum LA

Holocaust Museum LA is an artifact-rich institution founded in 1961 by Holocaust survivors who met in Los Angeles, each with their own personal experience and precious documents, photographs, and objects that connected them with their history, family, and friends. They believed in the importance of creating a space to commemorate their loved ones, house their precious artifacts, educate on the important history, and inspire future generations. The Museum is a primary source institution, that commemorates those who perished, honors those who survived, and houses the precious artifacts that miraculously weathered the Holocaust.

Rescue and Resistance: Female Fighters of the Holocaust

The story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who helped smuggle more than 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust; Hannah Szenes, the Jewish parachutist from Mandate Palestine who infiltrated German-occupied Hungary for the British Army; as well as other lesser-known "sheroes."

Sinti and Roma:

Roma originated in North India as a nomadic group setting roots in Europe in the 10 th C entury. Building on long held prejudices, the Nazis viewed Sinti and Roma both as "asocials" ("outside" society) and habitually criminal. The Nazis used pseudo-science around racial hygiene and physical characteristics to determine who was Romani . They determined that Romani people were once Aryan but had been corrupted by mingling with lesser peoples during their migration. They stated that 90 percent of all Roma in Germany were carriers of "blood and criminal characteristics. The intention was for the remaining “pure blooded” Roma to be forced onto reservations and studied further . In practice, little distinction was made and all became subject to persecution and, later, mass murder. During the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered around 25% (250,000) of the Roma Sinti population.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Ann Signett

John Glass Teddy Bear Named Biu

Dana's Treasure Box - Cigarette Case

Betty Hyatt's Parents' Wedding Photo

When speaking to students, Betty always instructs, "do not hate, the future is on you." Betty was born in 1934 in Antwerp, Belgium to Dutch parents. In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium and Betty’s parents fled with the intention of making it to Surinam, then a Dutch colony but were caught in Vichy France. After the Germans sent her father to a forced labor camp, her mother became very active in the French Resistance and took Betty with her to meetings. Even though she was a young child, Betty became a messenger for the resistance and was entrusted to alert local farmers to light bonfires designating safe landing places for Allied Special Paratrooper Forces. Betty survived in France under a false identity. After liberation, she learned that her father had perished in Auschwitz. Betty, her mother, and her brother immigrated to the United States in 1946.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Bill Harvey

Auschwitz-Birkenau Artifacts

These artifacts are on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum in Poland. The Museum displays the artifacts in a way that commemorates and honors the individuals who were lost, asking visitors to think about the person to whom each of them belonged. All of the objects in this case belonged to people who arrived at the camp and were taken to be immediately killed or into slave labor. These poignant pieces, which include a small porcelain cat, a make-up case, a toothbrush, and a Jewish traditional Kiddush cup, powerfully evoke the humanity of the concentration camp victims against the anonymity imposed upon them by the Nazi regime. There may be no way to ever know the names of every person who was murdered, as entire families, towns, and communities were destroyed, however, through ruminating on each item, those who were lost can be remembered and honored.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Edith Frankie

Holocaust Survivor: Paul Kester

Paul Kester reflects on growing up in Nazi Germany as a Jewish boy

Irena Sendler

As the head of Zegota’s children's section (the Polish underground), social worker Sendler (alias "Jolonta") organized and smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins. After smuggling them out, she organized new identities for the children and found safe hiding places in orphanages, convents, schools, hospitals, and with families.She documented their original names in a buried jar, in all it contained 2,500 names. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, Sendler was sentenced to death. Withstanding torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after Żegota bribed German officials to obtain her release. She organized a new identity and continued to work with Zegota.

Nazi "Racial Science" Poster

Nazi Propaganda

The Nazis successfully communicated their ideology through art, music, rallies, theater, films, books, radio, education, and news. The Nazis censored anything considered un-German, and attempted to purge everything that went against their ideology. Nazi propaganda targeted all ages, backgrounds, and demographics. The Nazis ensured that their ideology permeated society through intense propaganda.

Wannsee Conference

At some unknown time in 1941, Hitler authorized the scheme for mass murder of European Jews. On January 20, 1942, 15 Nazi Party and government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. During this meeting, they discussed and coordinated the implementation of the Final Solution, as the decision to murder all of the Jews in Europe was already been made. The Nazis frequently used euphemistic language to disguise the true nature of their crimes, they used “the final solution to the Jewish question” regarding murdering 11 million Jews. The mass murder of European Jews needed the coordination and cooperation of all governmental agencies in Nazi Germany and its collaborating allies.

Jewish Diaspora

For 2000 years-after the Jewish people lost their political independence in the Land of Israel, most Jews lived in diaspora as a minority group across the globe.  Jews maintained their religious and national singularity, creating a rich culture and often fusing with the customs around them. 

Symbols of Hate

The swastika, the Heil Hitler salute, the SS skull and crossbones: All of these symbols of hate were used by the Nazis to support their racist ideology, promote antisemitism, and ostracize. According to Nazi racial hierarchy, white, Nordic, “Aryan” people were superior, while Slavs, Blacks, and Arabs were considered “subhuman”, and Jews were an existential threat to the “Aryan Master race” that needed to be eliminated. When the Nazis came to power, this ideology became government practice and spread throughout society through intense propaganda posters, radio, movies, classroom curricula, laws, and newspapers. Government-sponsored racist, antisemitic propaganda was extensively disseminated, denouncing Jews as “alien,” “parasites”, “vermin,'' “diseased”, and solely responsible for cultural, political, and economic “degeneration.” This hate rhetoric impacted society enormously, creating an environment in which persecution and violence against Jews were acceptable.

People with Disabilities

Soon after coming to power, the Nazi government instituted the “Law for the prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases,” calling for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from ailments such as mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformities, epilepsy, blindness, and deafness. This edition of the Nazis’ monthly publication, Neues Volk, includes a propaganda poster emphasizing the burden placed on society by those deemed unfit to be part of the “Volksgemeinschaft” (national community). The caption reads “This hereditarily ill person will cost our national community 60,000 Reichsmarks over the course of his lifetime. Citizen, this is your money.”

Holocaust Survivor: Peter Daniels

Transport

The rail road system in Europe played a crucial role in the implementation of the Holocaust. Jews from German-occupied Europe were arrested and deported by rail to ghettos and death camps in Eastern Europe. The Germans disguised their genocidal intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlements." Jews were told they were being sent to labor camps, but in reality, after 1942, deportation almost always meant immediate death.

Gregory McKay Artifacts

Holocaust Survivor Testimony Engelina Billauer

Holocaust Survivor: Eva Trenk

Holocaust Survivor: Joshua Kaufman

General Dwight D. Eisenhower on Liberation

“The things I saw beggar description.... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were... overpowering....I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

Treblinka Death Camp

To carry out the mass murder of European Jews, the SS established killing centers devoted exclusively to use of gas chambers for industrial mass murder of humans. Treblinka was one of these camp under the Nazi plan Operation Reinhard, in which the SS planed to murder two million Jews living in German-administered area of Poland. Treblinka was established following Belzec and Sobibor. When Treblinka was dismantled in 1943, camp personnel had already murdered nearly 1 million Jews.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Gerda Seifer

Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1942

Two articles titled "Nazis Wiping Out Jews in Cold Blood" and "Half of Jews of Europe Dead" printed on the second page of the Los Angeles Times on November 25, 1942. The first article describes, in detail, the methods used by the Nazis and authorities in German occupied areas to murder thousands of Jews, sparing only the able-bodied for slave labor. The second article reports that Dr. Stephens S. Wise, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, claimed that 4,000,000 Jews had been murdered in Nazi occupied countries.

Joe Alexander's Artifacts

Nuremberg Trials

The International Military Tribunal, made up of Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, was a milestone of contemporary international law. It was instrumental in establishing the legal precedent and historical legacy of holding individual war criminals responsible not just for their crimes, but also the crimes committed at their command. Beginning October 18, 1945 with the indictment of 24 individuals, the trials were the first act of legal justice for victims of the Holocaust. Fundamentally important in setting legal precedent, the first Nuremberg trial indicted on four charges: participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace, planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which was introduced at Nuremberg for the first time in history as a direct response to the brutal violence and mass murder carried out in the name of Nazi ideology.

Anschluss

After economic stagnation, political upheaval, and intense Nazi propaganda, German troops entered Austria on March 12, 1938. Approximately a quarter of a million people welcomed Hitler and heard him speak at the Hofburg. Following the Anschluss, the Germans quickly extended anti-Jewish legislation to Austria. Adolf Eichmann supervised The Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna.

(Hebrew) Holocaust Survivor Testimony Jerry Weiser

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In April-May 1943, Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose in armed revolt after rumors of a final liquidation to Treblinka. As German soldiers entered the ghetto, members of the Jewish Fighting Organization, led by Mordecai Anielewicz, and other Jewish groups attacked the Germans with Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and small weapons. Fighters held off the German forces for nearly a month, after which the Nazis burned the ghetto to the ground and deported the remaining Jews. About 7,000 were killed during the uprising, including Anielewicz. Approximately 70 people escaped through the sewer system.

Klezmer Violin

Klezmer is an Ashkenazi Jewish traditional music genre performed at weddings and other joyous religious celebrations. It evolved over many centuries throughout various parts of Eastern Europe and similar to folk songs, this instrumental music moved along purely Jewish networks of transmission, disregarding the shifting national boundaries of the period. When Jews were finally permitted to attend professional music schools, scions of klezmer families such as the early 20th-century violinist Mischa Elman moved into, and eventually dominated, the world of the classical music virtuoso. This Klezmer violin represents Jewish musical culture of Eastern Europe and ensures the memory continues to survive. The music that these violins produced brought people together in moments of celebration, reflection, and community. The instrument symbolizes the Nazis’ failure in their hateful attempt to destroy Jewish culture.

Museum Founder Jona Goldrich

Jona was born in Turka, Poland in 1927 to Sender and Elza Goldreich. He was raised with a deep connection to his Jewish heritage, believed in the importance of education, and grew up speaking Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish, studying mathematics and science, and reading extensively. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, Jona’s father tried to smuggle the family to Hungary. Jona and his younger brother made the trip first and successfully arrived in Hungary. His parents and older brother were denounced, caught, and eventually perished during the Holocaust. In Hungary, Jona worked tirelessly to organize forged papers for him and his brother to immigrate to Palestine and they arrived there in 1943. After a decade in Israel, he immigrated to the U.S. Here in Los Angeles, as founder and lifetime supporter of Holocaust Museum LA, Jona created a home for education and memory and championed the space you are entering today.

Holocaust Survivor Testimony, Paul Kester

Emigration

In the wake of Kristallnacht in 1938, thousands of Jews tried to emigrate from Germany and Austria. Those who wanted to emigrate were forced to relinquish their titles to homes and businesses and were subject to increasingly heavy emigration taxes. Those who tried to leave faced steep fees and bribes for documents. Most of the those who managed to emigrate were completely impoverished by the time they were able to leave. Many nations imposed significant obstacles to immigration, and in the US, the process for obtaining permission to enter was so restrictive that actual immigration quotas were not even filled. Widespread prejudices—including antisemitic sentiment held by U.S. State Department officials—impacted the U.S. government’s failure to admit Jewish refugees.

Identifying Badges: 1939-1945

When Nazi officials implemented the Jewish badge, they did so in an intensified, systematic manner, as in preparation of deporting Jews to ghettos and killing centers in eastern Europe.

Sobibór Model

Holocaust Survivor Thomas Blatt built this scale model replica of the Sobibór death camp from memory. The SS soldiers overseeing the camp relied on a group of about 250 slave-prisoners, whom they chose at random from amongst the many hundreds of people arriving at the camp each day. Thomas was one of those men chosen. Thomas was part of a revolt amongst the prisoners. After overtaking several Nazi commanders, the prisoners escaped into the forest. However, these men had few resources they could use to survive. They wore the striped concentration camp uniform, their heads were shaved, and they were emaciated from forced starvation. Anyone finding them would know immediately they were escaped prisoners. The Nazis would kill anyone trying to help them. This is why only about 50 of the men who escaped survived to the end of the war.

Happy New Year Card from DP Camp

Dachau ID for Jacob Meller

Soup Ladle

After liberation and returning home to Lvov, Dana and her mother found that their neighbors stole all of their possessions and another family was living in their home. In an effort to retrieve small keepsakes from their old life, Dana’s mother knocked on the doors of a neighbors and was only able to retrieve this ladle. Shortly after, Dana’s mother received extra food rations and Dana asked her mother to cook them a fancy dinner, like the family dinners they enjoyed before the war. Her mother took her to the window and pointed to the hungry German children on the street, explaining that it would be unfair. Dana’s mother then made a large soup and used the ladle to share it with the starving children, teaching Dana a lesson she never forgot.