120-734: USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah ) a compelling voice for education and action. It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List . In January 2006,
240-580: A German colonial empire overseas, leading to the Herero and Nama genocide and subsequent racial apartheid regime in South West Africa . World War I (1914–1918) intensified nationalist and racist sentiments in Germany and other European countries. Jews in eastern Europe were targeted by widespread pogroms . Germany had two million war dead and lost a substantial territory ; opposition to
360-527: A Jewish National Library in Jerusalem was the brainchild of Joseph Chazanovitz [ he ] (1844–1919). His idea was creating a "home for all works in all languages and literatures which have Jewish authors, even though they create in foreign cultures." Chazanovitz collected some 15,000 volumes which later became the core of the library. The B'nai Brith library, founded in Jerusalem in 1892,
480-401: A belief it was hopeless. National Library of Israel The National Library of Israel ( NLI ; Hebrew : הספרייה הלאומית , romanized : HaSifria HaLeumit ; Arabic : المكتبة الوطنية في إسرائيل ), formerly Jewish National and University Library ( JNUL ; Hebrew : בית הספרים הלאומי והאוניברסיטאי , romanized : Beit Ha-Sfarim Ha-Le'umi ve-Ha-Universita'i ), is
600-536: A concentration camp. Despite many deaths, as many as 200,000 Jews survived the war inside the concentration camps. Although most Holocaust victims were never imprisoned in a concentration camp, the image of these camps is a popular symbol of the Holocaust. Including the Soviet prisoners of war, 13 million people were brought to Germany for forced labor. The largest nationalities were Soviet and Polish and they were
720-599: A digital collections management technology used by clients to preserve their ageing media. Among them are the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and Warner Bros. Pictures . Also under the Access umbrella is the institute's collections unit, which works to expand the Visual History Archive by conducting additional interviews, integrating testimony taken by other institutions, and providing training on
840-463: A few kilometers from a town. Victims were rounded up and marched to the execution site, forced to undress, and shot into previously dug pits. The favored technique was a shot in the back of the neck with a single bullet. In the chaos, many victims were not killed by the gunfire but instead buried alive . Typically, the pits would be guarded after the execution but sometimes a few victims managed to escape afterwards. Executions were public spectacles and
960-553: A food shortfall and planned the mass starvation of Soviet cities and some rural areas. Although the starvation policy was less successful than planners hoped, the residents of some cities, particularly in Ukraine, and besieged Leningrad , as well as the Jewish ghettos, endured human-made famine, during which millions of people died of starvation. By mid-June 1941, about 30,000 Jews had died, 20,000 of whom had starved to death in
1080-555: A higher chance of survival. Although conditions varied widely between camps, Jewish forced laborers were typically treated worse than non-Jewish prisoners and suffered much higher mortality rates. In mid-1943, Himmler sought to bring surviving Jewish forced laborers under the control of the SS in the concentration camp system. Some of the forced-labor camps for Jews and some ghettos, such as Kovno, were designated concentration camps, while others were dissolved and surviving prisoners sent to
1200-624: A legitimate academic environment. In 2014, the Shoah Foundation established the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research to expand its documentation efforts to other genocides, such as the Rwandan genocide , Armenian genocide , and Cambodian genocide . By 2016, the foundation's archive included nearly 52,000 recordings and was the largest collection of audiovisual testimonies of any kind. In
1320-820: A nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union , 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators. Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe . Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived
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#17327722632411440-659: A result of local and popular pressure, many small towns became entirely free of Jews and as many as a third of Jewish businesses may have been forced to close. Anti-Jewish violence was even worse in areas annexed by Nazi Germany . On 9–10 November 1938, the Nazis organized Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a nationwide pogrom . Over 7,500 Jewish shops (out of 9,000) were looted, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged or destroyed, at least 90 Jews were murdered, and as many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested , although many were released within weeks. German Jews were levied
1560-525: A significant number of other European countries abandoned democracy for some kind of authoritarian or fascist rule. Many countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, passed antisemitic legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In October 1938, Germany deported many Polish Jews in response to a Polish law that enabled the revocation of citizenship for Polish Jews living abroad. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, triggering declarations of war from
1680-438: A similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups . The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of "living space" , and seized power in early 1933. Meant to force all German Jews to emigrate , regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated
1800-551: A slight increase in rations to non-Jewish Poles, and combat the black market . In March 1942, killings began in Belzec, targeting Jews from Lublin who were not capable of work. This action reportedly reduced the black market and was deemed a success to be replicated elsewhere. By mid-1942, Nazi leaders decided to allow only 300,000 Jews to survive in the General Governorate by the end of the year for forced labor; for
1920-691: A special tax that raised more than 1 billion Reichsmarks (RM). The Nazi government wanted to force all Jews to leave Germany . By the end of 1939, most Jews who could emigrate had already done so; those who remained behind were disproportionately elderly, poor, or female and could not obtain a visa. The plurality, around 110,000, left for the United States, while smaller numbers emigrated to South America, Shanghai , Mandatory Palestine , and South Africa. Germany collected emigration taxes of nearly 1 billion RM, mostly from Jews. The policy of forced emigration continued into 1940. Besides Germany,
2040-511: A symbol of the ultimate human evil. The term Holocaust , derived from a Greek word meaning ' burnt offering ', has become the most common word used to describe the Nazi extermination of Jews in English and many other languages. The term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of other groups that the Nazis targeted, especially those targeted on a biological basis, in particular
2160-455: A variety of measures, including imprisonment in concentration camps . The Nazis forcibly sterilized 400,000 people and subjected others to forced abortions for real or supposed hereditary illnesses. Although the Nazis sought to control every aspect of public and private life, Nazi repression was directed almost entirely against groups perceived as outside the national community. Most Germans had little to fear provided they did not oppose
2280-587: A view to their ultimate disappearance from the country. Jewish students were gradually forced out of the school system. Some municipalities enacted restrictions governing where Jews were allowed to live or conduct business. In 1938 and 1939, Jews were barred from additional occupations, and their businesses were expropriated to force them out of the economy. Anti-Jewish violence, largely locally organized by members of Nazi Party institutions, took primarily non-lethal forms from 1933 to 1939. Jewish stores, especially in rural areas, were often boycotted or vandalized. As
2400-539: A yearly series of academic events that brings scholars to USC to present lectures, film screenings and panel discussions. The Visual History Archive is fully viewable at 51 subscribing institutions in 13 countries around the world, mainly universities and museums. The institute also offers a subscription for partial access to the Archive. About 211 institutions in 34 countries have contracted for these smaller collections. About 1,200 testimonies are available to any member of
2520-485: Is available at 49 institutions around the world, while smaller collections are available at 199 sites in 33 countries. The institute will continue to develop digital technologies to preserve and enhance the Visual History Archive, while building access pathways for students, educators, scholars and the general public. Approximately 1.6 million people view the testimonies every year. The Visual History Archive features more than 1,200 testimonies accessible worldwide. In 2015,
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#17327722632412640-731: Is controversial. Romanian soldiers killed tens of thousands of Jews from Odessa by April 1942. Prior to the invasion, the Einsatzgruppen were reorganized in preparation for mass killings and instructed to shoot Soviet officials and Jewish state and party employees. The shootings were justified on the basis of Jews' supposed central role in supporting the communist system, but it was not initially envisioned to kill all Soviet Jews. The occupiers relied on locals to identify Jews to be targeted. The first German mass killings targeted adult male Jews who had worked as civil servants or in jobs requiring education. Tens of thousands were shot by
2760-630: Is here; the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence." It took the Nazis several months after this to organize a continent-wide genocide. Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), convened the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This high-level meeting was intended to coordinate anti-Jewish policy. The majority of Holocaust killings were carried out in 1942, with it being
2880-461: Is unclear whether the books were being kept and protected or if they were looted from the abandoned houses of their owners. About 6,000 of these books are in the library today indexed with the label AP – "Abandoned Property". The books are cataloged, can be viewed from the Library's general catalog and are regularly consulted by the public. The National Library of Israel completed its collection of
3000-631: The German occupation of Italy in September 1943, there were no serious attempt to deport Italian Jews, and Italy refused to allow the deportation of Jews in many Italian-occupied areas . Nazi Germany did not attempt the destruction of the Finnish Jews and the North African Jews living under French or Italian rule . An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Germans were directly involved in killing Jews, and if one includes all those involved in
3120-497: The German–Soviet pact . The Soviet Union deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the Soviet interior, including as many as 260,000 Jews who largely survived the war. Although most Jews were not communists, some accepted positions in the Soviet administration, contributing to a pre-existing perception among many non-Jews that Soviet rule was a Jewish conspiracy. In 1940, Germany invaded much of western Europe including
3240-815: The Lublin District of the General Governorate. 45,000 Jews were deported by November and left to fend for themselves, causing many deaths. Deportations stopped in early 1940 due to the opposition of Hans Frank , the leader of the General Governorate, who did not want his fiefdom to become a dumping ground for unwanted Jews. After the conquest of France, the Nazis considered deporting Jews to French Madagascar , but this proved impossible. The Nazis planned that harsh conditions in these areas would kill many Jews. In September 1939, around 7,000 Jews were killed, alongside thousands of Poles, however, they were not systematically targeted as they would be later, and open mass killings would subside until June of 1941. During
3360-750: The Max Brod archive in August 2019. Indeed, the Israel Supreme Court in a highly controversial decision ordered the papers including the Franz Kafka papers to be deposited here although Max Brod had expressly left the ultimate decision to the daughters of his secretary and heir Ester Hoffe providing that they were to hand them over to the "Bibliothek der Hebräischen Universität Jerusalem oder der Städtischen Bibliothek Tel Aviv oder einem anderen öffentlichen Archiv im Inland oder Ausland" [library of
3480-492: The Roma and Sinti , as well as Soviet prisoners of war and Polish and Soviet civilians . All of these groups, however, were targeted for different reasons. By the 1970s, the adjective Jewish was dropped as redundant and Holocaust, now capitalized, became the default term for the destruction of European Jews. The Hebrew word Shoah ('catastrophic destruction') exclusively refers to Jewish victims. The perpetrators used
3600-532: The Rwandan genocide , the Nanjing Massacre , Armenian genocide , Guatemalan genocide , Cambodian genocide , Rohingya genocide and the Bosnian genocide , as well as a collection of contemporary Antisemitism. In December 2023, the foundation launched a collection of testimonies from the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in cooperation with Tablet Studios . Its collections include: The Survivors of
3720-576: The Soviet threat. Hitler believed that Jews controlled the Soviet Union , as well as the Western powers, and were plotting to destroy Germany . Amidst a worldwide economic depression and political fragmentation , the Nazi Party rapidly increased its support, reaching a high of 37 percent in mid-1932 elections , by campaigning on issues such as anticommunism and economic recovery. Hitler
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3840-571: The Wola Massacre , or deported to extermination camps for fear of additional Jewish resistance developing. Nevertheless, in early 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were performing forced labor in the General Governorate. Unlike the killing areas in the east, the deportation from elsewhere in Europe was centrally organized from Berlin, although it depended on the outcome of negotiations with allied governments and popular responses to deportation. Beginning in late 1941, local administrators responded to
3960-606: The ghettos . Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Army were intended to die in large numbers. Sixty percent—3.3 million people—died, primarily of starvation, making them the second largest group of victims of Nazi mass killing after European Jews. Jewish prisoners of war and commissars were systematically executed. About a million civilians were killed by the Nazis during anti-partisan warfare , including more than 300,000 in Belarus. From 1942 onwards,
4080-399: The postwar settlement united Germans across the political spectrum. The military promoted the untrue but compelling idea that, rather than being defeated on the battlefield, Germany had been stabbed in the back by socialists and Jews. The Nazi Party was founded in the wake of the war, and its ideology is often cited as the main factor explaining the Holocaust. From the beginning,
4200-404: The rise of nationalism in Europe and industrialization that increased economic conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. Some scientists began to categorize humans into different races and argued that there was a life or death struggle between them . Many racists argued that Jews were a separate racial group alien to Europe . The turn of the twentieth century saw a major effort to establish
4320-504: The 2020s, the foundation expanded its mission from the Holocaust to focus on antisemitism since 1945, as there were fewer Holocaust survivors to interview. The foundation planned to gather testimonies on the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries after 1948 and Ethiopian Jews . Eight days after the October 7 attacks on Israel , researchers from the Shoah Foundation were in southern Israel to gather survivor testimonies after recognizing
4440-653: The German Jews out of public life by the end of 1934, the regime passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. The laws reserved full citizenship rights for those of "German or related blood", restricted Jews' economic activity, and criminalized new marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans . Jews were defined as those with three or four Jewish grandparents; many of those with partial Jewish descent were classified as Mischlinge , with varying rights. The regime also sought to segregate Jews with
4560-587: The German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews' losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials , and culture . It has become central to Western historical consciousness as
4680-547: The Germans and their allies targeted villages suspected of supporting the partisans, burning them and killing or expelling their inhabitants. During these operations, nearby small ghettos were liquidated and their inhabitants shot. By 1943, anti-partisan operations aimed for the depopulation of large areas of Belarus. Jews and those unfit for work were typically shot on the spot with others deported. Although most of those killed were not Jews, anti-partisan warfare often led to
4800-591: The Hebrew University (25%) and other organizations. In 2014, the project for a new home of the Library in Jerusalem was unveiled. The 34,000 square meters building, was designed by the Basel -based architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron . The cornerstone laying ceremony took place in 2016. The completion date was postponed a number of times and the old library building at Givat Ram continued to be used till September 2023. The grand opening events planned for
4920-850: The Holocaust, as well as profiting from unclaimed deposits made by Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1938—especially in Germany and its annexed territories—many Jews were drafted into forced-labor camps and segregated work details. These camps were often of a temporary nature and typically overseen by civilian authorities. Initially, mortality did not increase dramatically. After mid-1941, conditions for Jewish forced laborers drastically worsened and death rates increased; even private companies deliberately subjected workers to murderous conditions. Beginning in 1941 and increasingly as time went on, Jews capable of employment were separated from others—who were usually killed. They were typically employed in non-skilled jobs and could be replaced easily if non-Jewish workers were available, but those in skilled positions had
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5040-432: The Jews killed in the Holocaust died by poison gas. Thousands of Romani people were also murdered in the extermination camps. Prisoner uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor meant that these camps were shut down earlier than envisioned. Plans to kill most of the Jews in the General Governorate were affected by various goals of the SS, military, and civil administration to reduce the amount of food consumed by Jews, enable
5160-827: The Nazis—not unlike other nation-states in Europe—dreamed of a world without Jews , whom they identified as "the embodiment of everything that was wrong with modernity ". The Nazis defined the German nation as a racial community unbounded by Germany's physical borders and sought to purge it of racially foreign and socially deficient elements. The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler , were also obsessed with reversing Germany's territorial losses and acquiring additional Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe for colonization. These ideas appealed to many Germans. The Nazis promised to protect European civilization from
5280-631: The Netherlands , Belgium , Luxembourg , France , and Denmark and Norway . In 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece . Some of these new holdings were fully or partially annexed into Germany while others were placed under civilian or military rule . The war provided cover for " Aktion T4 ", the murder of around 70,000 institutionalized Germans with mental or physical disabilities at specialized killing centers using poison gas. The victims included all 4,000 to 5,000 institutionalized Jews. Despite efforts to maintain secrecy, knowledge of
5400-528: The Netherlands was higher than neighboring countries, which scholars have attributed to difficulty in hiding or increased collaboration of the Dutch police. The German government sought the deportation of Jews from allied countries. The first to hand over its Jewish population was Slovakia , which arrested and deported about 58,000 Jews to Poland from March to October 1942. The Independent State of Croatia had already shot or killed in concentration camps
5520-478: The Shoah Visual History Foundation were founded by director Steven Spielberg in 1994 after the release of his critically-acclaimed film Schindler's List the previous year. Spielberg's goal was to collect 50,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors while meeting the standards of rigorous scholarship. The foundation consulted with Holocaust scholars and oral histories in order to ground its work in legitimate historical scholarship. The Shoah Foundation followed
5640-976: The USC Shoah Foundation annually receives Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service volunteers from the Gedenkdienst program of the Austrian Service Abroad . Holocaust The Holocaust ( / ˈ h ɑː l ə k ɔː ˈ s t / , HAW -lə-kawst ) was the genocide of European Jews during World War II . Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe , around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps , chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau , Treblinka , Belzec , Sobibor , and Chełmno in occupied Poland . Separate Nazi persecutions killed
5760-509: The United Kingdom and France . During the five weeks of fighting, as many as 16,000 civilians, hostages, and prisoners of war may have been shot by the German invaders; there was also a great deal of looting. Special units known as Einsatzgruppen followed the army to eliminate any possible resistance. Around 50,000 Polish and Polish Jewish leaders and intellectuals were arrested or executed . The Auschwitz concentration camp
5880-600: The Wartheland and General Governorate in 1939 and 1940 on the initiative of local German administrators. The largest ghettos, such as Warsaw and Łódź , were established in existing residential neighborhoods and closed by fences or walls. In many smaller ghettos, Jews were forced into poor neighborhoods but with no fence. Forced labor programs provided subsistence to many ghetto inhabitants, and in some cases protected them from deportation. Workshops and factories were operated inside some ghettos, while in other cases Jews left
6000-510: The assistance of local collaborators and rewards offered for their denunciation. The death penalty was sometimes enforced on people hiding them, especially in eastern Europe. Rescuers' motivations varied on a spectrum from altruism to expecting sex or material gain; it was not uncommon for helpers to betray or murder Jews if their money ran out. Gerlach argues that hundreds of thousands of Jews may have died because of rumors or denunciations, and many others never attempted to escape because of
6120-625: The attack as a "mass act of violence against Jews." Within a year, the foundation had recorded 400 testimonies of survivors, first responders, and eyewitnesses, with 370 online. The foundation also advised the National Library of Israel about how to create a collection of records. The foundation claims to aspire to be the world's academic authority on the study of genocide and personal testimony. It continues to incorporate new collections of genocide eyewitness testimonies while also fostering scholarly activities that confront real-world problems
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#17327722632416240-523: The basis for a university library. The books were moved to Mount Scopus when the university opened five years later. In 1948, when access to the university campus on Mount Scopus was blocked, most of the books were moved to the university's temporary quarters in the Terra Sancta building in Rehavia . By that time, the university collection included over one million books. For lack of space, some of
6360-554: The beginning of September, all German Jews were required to wear a yellow star, and in October, Hitler decided to deport them to the east and ban emigration. Between mid-October and the end of 1941, 42,000 Jews from Germany and its annexed territories and 5,000 Romani people from Austria were deported to Łódź, Kovno, Riga, and Minsk . In late November, 5,000 German Jews were shot outside of Kovno and another 1,000 near Riga, but Himmler ordered an end to such massacres and some in
6480-558: The books were placed in storerooms around the city. In 1960, they were moved to the new JNUL building in Givat Ram. In the late 1970s, when the new university complex on Mount Scopus was inaugurated and the faculties of Law, Humanities and Social Science returned there, departmental libraries opened on that campus and the number of visitors to the Givat Ram library dropped. In the 1990s, the building suffered from maintenance problems such as rainwater leaks and insect infestation. In 2007
6600-611: The building but most of the employees either worked from home or took partial or full paid leave. The library, mainly the reference, education and culture departments provided online services during this period. The library's mission is to secure copies of all material published in Israel, in any language; all publications on the subject of Israel, the Land of Israel , Judaism and the Jewish people , published in any language, in any country in
6720-409: The country's population in 1933. They were wealthier on average than other Germans and largely assimilated, although a minority were recent immigrants from eastern Europe. Various German government agencies, Nazi Party organizations, and local authorities instituted about 1,500 anti-Jewish laws . In 1933, Jews were banned or restricted from several professions and the civil service . After hounding
6840-653: The deaths of Jews. The systematic murder of Jews began in the Soviet Union in 1941. During the invasion, many Jews were conscripted into the Red Army . Out of 10 or 15 million Soviet civilians who fled eastwards to the Soviet interior , 1.6 million were Jews. Local inhabitants killed as many as 50,000 Jews in pogroms in Latvia, Lithuania , eastern Poland , Ukraine, and the Romanian borderlands. Although German forces tried to incite pogroms, their role in causing violence
6960-491: The decision to switch to other methods of killing. Most historians agree that Hitler issued an explicit order to kill all Jews across Europe, but there is disagreement as to when. Some historians cite inflammatory statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as the concurrent mass shootings of Serbian Jews , plans for extermination camps in Poland, and the beginning of the deportation of German Jews as indicative of
7080-694: The deportation of Jews to their area by massacring local Jews in order to free up space in ghettos for the deportees. If the deported Jews did not die of harsh conditions, they were killed later in extermination camps. Jews deported to Auschwitz were initially entered into the camp; the practice of conducting selections and murdering many prisoners upon arrival began in July 1942. In May and June, German and Slovak Jews deported to Lublin began to be sent directly to extermination camps. In Western Europe, almost all Jewish deaths occurred after deportation. The occupiers often relied on local policemen to arrest Jews, limiting
7200-440: The early twentieth century, most Jews in central and western Europe were well integrated into society, while in eastern Europe, where emancipation had arrived later, many Jews continued to live in small towns , spoke Yiddish , and practiced Orthodox Judaism . Political antisemitism positing the existence of a Jewish question and usually an international Jewish conspiracy emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century due to
7320-404: The end of 1941, more than 80 percent of the Jews in central Ukraine, eastern Belarus, Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been shot, but less than 25 percent of those living farther west where 900,000 remained alive. By the end of the war, around 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot and as many as 225,000 Roma. The murderers found the executions distressing and logistically inconvenient, which influenced
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#17327722632417440-598: The end of July. The vast majority of civilian victims were Jews. In July and August Heinrich Himmler , the leader of the SS ( Schutzstaffel ), made several visits to the death squads ' zones of operation, relaying orders to kill more Jews. At this time, the killers began to murder Jewish women and children too. Executions peaked at 40,000 a month in Lithuania in August and September and in October and November reached their height in Belarus . The executions often took place
7560-650: The end of days and the appearance of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. It also contains maps that Newton sketched about mythical events to assist him in his end of days calculations. The library houses the personal archives of Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem . Additionally the library houses the Gershom Scholem Collection for the Research of Kabbalah and Hasidism, including Scholem's personal library and items added since his death in 1982. Following
7680-438: The entire Archive took five years to complete, from 2008 to 2012. During the digitization project, it was discovered that about 5 percent of the 235,005 tapes had audio or visual problems, some to the point of being unwatchable. Finding there were few existing options for restoring tape-based material, the institute's ITS team created new software programs to help them recover both audio and visual problems. The institute has created
7800-417: The extermination camps later dug up human remains in search of valuables. The property of deported Jews was also appropriated by Germany's allies and collaborating governments. Even puppet states such as Vichy France and Norway were able to successfully lay claim to Jewish property. In the decades after the war, Swiss banks became notorious for harboring gold deposited by Nazis who had stolen it during
7920-454: The final decision having been made before December 1941. Others argue that these policies were initiatives by local leaders and that the final decision was made later. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet Union launched its first major counteroffensive . On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor . The next day, he told leading Nazi party officials , referring to his 1939 prophecy , "The world war
8040-574: The foundation added Global Outreach as its fourth organizational pillar. In one year — between 2013–2014 and 2014–15 – the number of people reached by its testimony nearly doubled, from 3.6 million to 6.5 million. The number increases to 15 million when including media exposure, TV broadcasts, museum exhibits, presentations at conferences and workshops, and social media. Global outreach is conducted through websites, documentaries, and exhibits, as well as national and international press coverage about its programs; and shared media on social platforms. Since 1999
8160-676: The foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus. The foundation's testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive. The archive is digitized, fully searchable via indexed keywords, and hyperlinked. With more than 112,000 hours of testimony, indexing allows students, teachers, professors, researchers and others around
8280-470: The ghetto after a final selection, and around 20,000 or 25,000 managed to hide in the ghetto. Misdirection efforts convinced many Jews that they could avoid deportation until it was too late. During a six-week period beginning in August, 300,000 Jews from the Radom District were sent to Treblinka. At the same time as the mass killing of Jews in the General Governorate, Jews who were in ghettos to
8400-550: The ghetto to work outside it. Because the ghettos were not segregated by sex some family life continued. A Jewish community leadership ( Judenrat ) exercised some authority and tried to sustain the Jewish community while following German demands. As a survival strategy, many tried to make the ghettos useful to the occupiers as a labor reserve. Jews in western Europe were not forced into ghettos but faced discriminatory laws and confiscation of property. Rape and sexual exploitation of Jewish and non-Jewish women in eastern Europe
8520-604: The ghetto would be raided without warning, usually in the early morning, and the extent of the operation would be concealed as long as possible. Trawniki men would cordon off the ghetto while the Order Police and Security Police carried out the action. In addition to local non-Jewish collaborators, the Jewish councils and Jewish ghetto police were often ordered to assist with liquidation actions, although these Jews were in most cases murdered later. Chaotic, capriciously executed selections determined who would be loaded onto
8640-603: The ghetto, and set it on fire. These ghetto uprisings were only undertaken when the inhabitants began to believe that their death was certain. In 1943, larger uprisings in Warsaw , Białystok , and Glubokoje necessitated the use of heavy weapons. The uprising in Warsaw prompted the Nazi leadership to liquidate additional ghettos and labor camps in German-occupied Poland with their inhabitants massacred, such as
8760-502: The institute's preferred methodology for gathering testimony. Using testimony from the Archive, the foundation develops teaching tools for educators across the disciplinary spectrum, such as social studies, English Language Arts, government, foreign language, world history, American history, and character education. The institute also provides professional development to prepare educators worldwide to use testimony in relevant and engaging ways—providing an experience that takes students beyond
8880-518: The international conference "Singing in the Lion's Mouth: Music as Resistance to Violence", including two days of programming that highlighted the use of music as a tool to resist oppression and spread awareness. Digital Genocide Studies examines how big data and large datasets, including the 53,000 testimonies in the foundation's Visual History Archive, can be used to find patterns in the field of mass violence and its resistance. The institute also organizes
9000-535: The invasion, synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews fled or were expelled into the Soviet occupation zone. Various anti-Jewish regulations were soon issued. In October 1939, adult Jews in the General Governorate were required to perform forced labor. In November 1939 they were ordered to wear white armbands. Laws decreed the seizure of most Jewish property and the takeover of Jewish-owned businesses. When Jews were forced into ghettos, they lost their homes and belongings. The first Nazi ghettos were established in
9120-457: The journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments . Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to
9240-431: The killings leaked out and Hitler ordered a halt to the centralized killing program in August 1941. Decentralized killings via denial of medical care, starvation, and poisoning caused an additional 120,000 deaths by the end of the war. Many of the same personnel and technologies were later used for the mass murder of Jews. Germany gained control of 1.7 million Jews in Poland. The Nazis tried to concentrate Jews in
9360-461: The largest number of Jews . Romania deported about 154,000–170,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to ghettos in Transnistria from 1941 to 1943. Jews from Transnistria were also imprisoned in these ghettos, where the total death toll may have reached 160,000. Hungary expelled thousands of Carpathian Ruthenian and foreign Jews in 1941, who were shortly thereafter shot in Ukraine . At
9480-530: The library dedicated to collecting the cultural treasures of Israel and of Jewish heritage . The library holds more than 5 million books, and is located in the Government complex (Kiryat HaMemshala) near the Knesset . The National Library owns the world's largest collections of Hebraica and Judaica , and is the repository of many rare and unique manuscripts, books and artifacts. The establishment of
9600-669: The library was officially recognized as The National Library of the State of Israel after the passage of the National Library Law. The law, which came into effect on 23 July 2008, changed the library's name to "National Library of Israel" and turned it temporarily to a subsidiary company of the University, later to become a fully independent community interest company , jointly owned by the Government of Israel (50%),
9720-439: The majority of its Jewish population (along with a larger number of Serbs ), and later deported several thousand Jews in 1942 and 1943. Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia , who were murdered at Treblinka, but declined to allow the deportation of Jews from its prewar territory . Romania and Hungary did not send any Jews, which were the largest surviving populations after 1942. Prior to
9840-437: The most part, only those working in armaments production were spared. The majority of ghettos were liquidated in mass executions nearby, especially if they were not near a train station. Larger ghettos were more commonly liquidated during multiple deportations to extermination camps. During this campaign, 1.5 million Polish Jews were murdered in the largest killing operation of the Holocaust. In order to reduce resistance,
9960-571: The nature of genocide and mass violence and how they impact emotional, social, psychological, historical and physical behavior. The foundation, in conjunction with its Center for Advanced Genocide Research, held an international conference in November 2014 at USC "Memory, Media and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler's List". In 2015, in collaboration with the Thornton School of Music and USC Visions and Voices, it hosted
10080-457: The new regime. The new regime built popular support through economic growth, which partly occurred through state-led measures such as rearmament . The annexations of Austria (1938), Sudetenland (1938), and Bohemia and Moravia (1939) also increased the Nazis' popular support. Germans were inundated with propaganda both against Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis. The roughly 500,000 German Jews made up less than 1 percent of
10200-541: The number who were deported. In 1942, nearly 100,000 Jews were deported from Belgium , France , and the Netherlands . Only 25 percent of the Jews in France were killed; most of them were either non-citizens or recent immigrants. Si Kaddour Benghabrit and Abdelkader Mesli saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in the basements of the Grand Mosque of Paris and other resistance efforts in France. The death rate in
10320-670: The occupation of West Jerusalem by Haganah forces in May 1948, the libraries of a number Palestinians who fled the country as well as of other well-to-do Palestinians were transferred to the National Library. These collections included those of Henry Cattan , Khalil Beidas , Khalil al-Sakakini and Aref Hikmet Nashashibi . About 30,000 books were removed from homes in West Jerusalem, with another 40,000 taken from other cities in Mandatory Palestine. It
10440-442: The organization of extermination, the number rises to 500,000. Genocide required the active and tacit consent of millions of Germans and non-Germans. The motivation of Holocaust perpetrators varied and has led to historiographical debate. Studies of the SS officials who organized the Holocaust have found that most had strong ideological commitment to Nazism. In addition to ideological factors, many perpetrators were motivated by
10560-704: The origins of genocide and how to intervene in the cycle that leads to mass violence. It holds international conferences and workshops and hosts fellows and scholars in residence to conduct research using the resources available at the University of Southern California. Institute fellows, staff and student interns participate in more than a dozen academic events on the USC campus annually. it focusses on interdisciplinary study organized around three themes: "Resistance to Genocide and Mass Violence" focuses on acts of resistance and elements of defiance that slow down or stop genocidal processes. "Violence, Emotion and Behavioral Change" studies
10680-426: The peak of the genocide, as over 3 million Jews were murdered, with 20 or 25 percent of Holocaust victims dying before early 1942 and the same number surviving by the end of the year. Gas vans developed from those used to kill mental patients since 1939 were assigned to the Einsatzgruppen and first used in November 1941; victims were forced into the van and killed with engine exhaust. The first extermination camp
10800-733: The personal papers of hundreds of outstanding Jewish figures, the National Sound Archives, the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, The Sidney Edelstein Collection (for the history of science) and numerous other collections of Hebraica and Judaica. The library also possesses some of Isaac Newton 's manuscripts dealing with theological subjects. The collection, donated by the family of the collector Abraham Yahuda , includes many works by Newton about mysticism, analyses of holy books, predictions about
10920-480: The phrase " Final Solution " as a euphemism for their genocide of Jews. Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, Jews were subjected to antisemitism based on Christian theology , which blamed them for killing Jesus . In the nineteenth century many European countries granted full citizenship rights to Jews in hopes that they would assimilate . By
11040-547: The pioneering work of the Fortunoff Archive , founded in 1979 partly in response to the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust . In 2006, the foundation, moved from its home in a set of trailers at Universal Studios to the libraries of the University of Southern California . It was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education in order to emphasize its place in
11160-406: The possibility of better treatment from the occupiers, or ideological motivations such as nationalism and anti-communism. According to historian Christian Gerlach , non-Germans "not under German command" caused 5 to 6 percent of the Jewish deaths, and their involvement was crucial in other ways. Millions of Germans and others benefited from the genocide. Corruption was rampant in the SS despite
11280-832: The previous Aktion T4 programme —amid increasing talk among German administrators in Poland of large-scale murder of Jews in the General Governorate. In late 1941 in East Upper Silesia , Jews in forced-labor camps operated by the Schmelt Organization deemed "unfit for work" began to be sent in groups to Auschwitz where they were murdered. In early 1942, Zyklon B became the preferred killing method in extermination camps after gassing experiments were conducted on Russian POWs in late August 1941. The camps were located on rail lines to make it easier to transport Jews to their deaths, but in remote places to avoid notice. The stench caused by mass killing operations
11400-440: The proceeds of the Holocaust being designated as state property. Different German state agencies vied to receive property stolen from Jews murdered at the death camps. Many workers were able to obtain better jobs vacated by murdered Jews. Businessmen benefitted from eliminating their Jewish competitors or taking over Jewish-owned businesses. Others took over housing and possessions that had belonged to Jews. Some Poles living near
11520-439: The prohibition of relationships, including fraternization, between German and foreign workers, which imposed the penalty of imprisonment and death. Gerlach estimates that 200,000 Jews survived in hiding across Europe. Knowledge of German intentions was essential to take action, but many struggled to believe the news. Many attempted to jump from trains or flee ghettos and camps, but successfully escaping and living in hiding
11640-542: The prospect of material gain and social advancement. German SS, police, and regular army units rarely had trouble finding enough men to shoot Jewish civilians, even though punishment for refusal was absent or light. Non-German perpetrators and collaborators included Dutch, French, and Polish policemen , Romanian soldiers, foreign SS and police auxiliaries , Ukrainian Insurgent Army partisans, and some civilians. Some were coerced into committing violence against Jews, but others killed for entertainment, material rewards,
11760-501: The public with an Internet connection who registers to access the Visual History Archive Online. The institute dedicates attention to maintaining each testimony's audio-visual quality, to protect it from degrading over time. With contributions from technology companies, the institute devised a preservation system where the original videos were digitized into a variety of commonly used formats. The digitization of
11880-498: The senior Nazi leadership voiced doubts about killing German Jews. Executions of German Jews in the Baltics resumed in early 1942. After the expansion of killings to target the entire Soviet Jewish population, the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen proved insufficient and Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police to assist them. In addition, Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen-SS brigades, and local auxiliaries shot many Jews. By
12000-417: The testimonies address. Scholars in many fields have utilized the resources of the Visual History Archive to teach more than 400 university courses across four continents, including 112 courses at USC. The Center for Advanced Genocide Research is the research and scholarship unit of the foundation. Founded in 2014, the center engages in interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and genocide, more specifically
12120-432: The textbook. IWitness, the institute's flagship educational website, provides students access to 1,600 testimonies for guided exploration. They can engage with the testimonies and bring them into their own multimedia projects via a built-in video editor. Approximately 17,000 high school students and over 5,000 educators in 57 countries and all 50 U.S. states have used the site. It has trained more than 39,000 educators around
12240-461: The thirteenth century Worms Mahzor , have been scanned and are available on the library's website. Due to be completed in 2023, the National Library of Israel is digitizing over 2,500 rare manuscripts and books which will be available online for free. The works are written in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu and date from the ninth to twentieth centuries. Among the library's special collections are
12360-428: The trains. Many Jews were shot during the action, often leaving ghettos strewn with corpses. Jewish forced laborers had to clean it up and collect any valuables from the victims. The Warsaw Ghetto was cleared between 22 July and 12 September. Of the original population of 350,000 Jews, 250,000 were killed at Treblinka, 11,000 were deported to labor camps, 10,000 were shot in the ghetto, 35,000 were allowed to remain in
12480-401: The victims were robbed of their remaining possessions, forced to undress, had their hair cut, and were chased into the gas chamber. Death from the gas was agonizing and could take as long as 30 minutes. The gas chambers were primitive and sometimes malfunctioned. Some prisoners were shot because the gas chambers were not functioning. At other extermination camps, nearly everyone on a transport
12600-454: The victims' property was looted both by the occupiers and local inhabitants. Around 200 ghettos were established in the occupied Soviet Union, with many existing only briefly before their inhabitants were executed. A few large ghettos such as Vilna, Kovno , Riga , Białystok , and Lwów lasted into 1943 because they became centers of production. Victims of mass shootings included Jews deported from elsewhere. Besides Germany, Romania killed
12720-459: The week of 22 October were cancelled due to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war and the new building opened its doors to the public on 29 October 2023, with service and capacity limited due to war related limitations. In August, 2020, the National Library announced its immediately forthcoming closure "until further notice" due to the ongoing financial and government crisis. The closure lasted for a number of weeks. A small skeleton staff continued coming to
12840-683: The west and east were targeted. Tens of thousands of Jews were deported from ghettos in the Warthegau and East Upper Silesia to Chełmno and Auschwitz. 300,000 Jews—largely skilled laborers—were shot in Volhynia , Podolia , and southwestern Belarus. Deportations and mass executions in the Bialystok District and Galicia killed many Jews. Although there was practically no resistance in the General Governorate in 1942, some Soviet Jews improvised weapons, attacked those attempting to liquidate
12960-531: The world to incorporate testimony into classroom lessons. More than 200 educators have participated in advanced training and the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century programs in the U.S., Ukraine, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The foundation's other education programs include: In addition to the foundation's Visual History Archive and IWitness, the institute's has a YouTube channel , and Web portals in 12 languages. The complete Visual History Archive
13080-436: The world to retrieve entire testimonies or search for specific sections within testimonies. Each testimony is indexed by a native speaker and each minute of video is timecoded in English. They average a little over two hours each in length and were conducted in 65 countries and 44 languages. Since its inception, the archive has expanded its collection to include testimony from survivors and witnesses of other genocides, including
13200-475: The world; and all material published in Hebrew or any of the languages spoken in the Jewish Diaspora (such as Yiddish and Ladino ). By law, two copies of all printed matter published in Israel must be deposited in the National Library. In 2001, the law was amended to include audio and video recordings, and other non-print media. Many manuscripts, including some of the library's unique volumes such
13320-576: The worst-treated groups except for Roma and Jews. Soviet and Polish forced laborers endured inadequate food and medical treatment, long hours, and abuse by employers. Hundreds of thousands died. Many others were forced to work for the occupiers without leaving their country of residence. Some of Germany's allies, including Slovakia and Hungary, agreed to deport Jews to protect non-Jews from German demands for forced labor. East European women were also kidnapped, via lapanka , to serve as sex slaves of German soldiers in military and camp brothels despite
13440-529: Was Chełmno in the Wartheland, established on the initiative of the local civil administrator Arthur Greiser with Himmler's approval; it began operations in December 1941 using gas vans. In October 1941, Higher SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik began work planning Belzec —the first purpose-built extermination camp to feature stationary gas chambers using carbon monoxide based on
13560-540: Was appointed chancellor in January 1933 in a backroom deal supported by right-wing politicians. Within months, all other political parties were banned, the regime seized control of the media, tens of thousands of political opponents—especially communists—were arrested, and a system of camps for extrajudicial imprisonment was set up. The Nazi regime cracked down on crime and social outsiders—such as Roma and Sinti , homosexual men , and those perceived as workshy—through
13680-411: Was common . Germany and its allies Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Although the war was launched more for strategic than ideological reasons, what Hitler saw as an apocalyptic battle against the forces of Jewish Bolshevism was to be carried out as a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war . A quick victory
13800-606: Was established to hold those members of the Polish intelligentsia not killed in the purges. Around 400,000 Poles were expelled from the Wartheland in western Poland to the General Governorate occupation zone from 1939 to 1941, and the area was resettled by ethnic Germans from eastern Europe . The rest of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union , which invaded Poland from the east on 17 September pursuant to
13920-403: Was expected and was planned to be followed by a massive demographic engineering project to remove 31 million people and replace them with German settlers . To increase the speed of conquest the Germans planned to feed their army by looting, exporting additional food to Germany, and to terrorize the local inhabitants with preventative killings. The Germans foresaw that the invasion would cause
14040-460: Was extremely difficult and often unsuccessful. The support, or at least absence of active opposition, of the local population was essential but often lacking in Eastern Europe. Those in hiding depended on the assistance of non-Jews. Having money, social connections with non-Jews, a non-Jewish appearance, perfect command of the local language, determination, and luck played a major role in determining survival. Jews in hiding were hunted down with
14160-535: Was killed on arrival, but at Auschwitz around 20–25 percent were separated out for labor, although many of these prisoners died later on through starvation, mass shooting, torture, and medical experiments. Belzec, Sobibor , and Treblinka reported a combined revenue of RM 178.7 million from belongings stolen from their victims, far exceeding costs. Combined, the camps required the labor of less than 3,000 Jewish prisoners, 1,000 Trawniki men (largely Ukrainian auxiliaries), and very few German guards. About half of
14280-419: Was noticeable to anyone nearby. Except in the deportations from western and central Europe, people were typically deported to the camps in overcrowded cattle cars . As many as 150 people were forced into a single boxcar . Many died en route , partly because of the low priority accorded to these transports. Shortage of rail transport sometimes led to postponement or cancellation of deportations. Upon arrival,
14400-601: Was the first public library in the region of Palestine to serve the Jewish community. The library was located on B'nai Brith street, between the Meah Shearim neighborhood and the Russian Compound . Ten years later, the Bet Midrash Abrabanel library, as it was then known, moved to Ethiopia Street. In 1920, when plans were drawn up for the Hebrew University, the B'nai Brith collection became
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