Jewish People and History: Stories Behind Historical Images of Jews During World War II
Every historical image tells a story. Whether happy or sad, these pictures convey emotions that are hard to describe. Take a look at 47 historical photos of Jews during World War II and discover the stories behind them.
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Anny-Yolande Horowitz (born 1933, murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942). She had blonde hair, blue eyes, a rosy complexion, was of medium height, and had very cute handwriting, like a little girl. |
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Children learn in a secret school in the Kovno ghetto. |
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Eight sweet Jewish refugee girls in the garden of the children’s home in Zuen. Rosalie Blau (now Johnson), Toni Rosenblatt, Ruth Rosenblatt, Regina Rosenblatt, Lotte Nussbaum, and Inge Jose. |
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Eva and Leana Münzer, two Jewish sisters, sit on a sofa in their house in The Hague. They were murdered in February 1944 at the ages of six and eight. |
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Eva Münzer, betrayed by the husband of the woman who had hidden her, was murdered together with her little sister Leana in Auschwitz-Birkenau. |
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Eva, Alfred and Leana Munzer in The Hague (only Alfred survived). |
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Feigele Blacher, Pessah Cofnas and his wife Rivka in Eišiškės (Feigele was murdered, Pessah and Rivka survived in Siberia). |
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French-Jewish Resistance couple. |
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Genia Gross, beauty from Chelm, Poland, who was killed in the Holocaust. |
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Girls sew French flags in the DP camp Hagenow. |
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A group photo of Jewish orphans who survived Terezín with the wife of Czech President Edvard Beneš and the wife of American Ambassador Laurence Steinhart. Each child holds a new toy. |
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Hannah Kastan, who was hidden during the Holocaust and survived with her non-Jewish paternal grandparents, stands outside in Berlin holding a teddy bear. |
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Helen Verblunsky in the Kovno ghetto, she survived and emigrated to Canada. |
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Henia Wisgardisky in the Kovno ghetto with a doll. She and her family lived in the Zeilsheim displaced persons camp for several years before emigrating to Palestine. The family later moved to Canada. |
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Hildegard Wolff, German-Jewish survivor, reads at home. |
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Jewish girls from Germany in a children’s camp (summer camp for children) in Horserod, Denmark. |
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Jewish girls in Purim costumes in the Ulm DP camp. |
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Jewish girls of the Zionist movement in Lodz (only five of the girls pictured survived the war). |
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Jewish children in the Zeilsheim DP camp. |
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Jewish refugee father and daughter in Vilnius, once part of Poland, now part of Lithuania. |
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Jewish refugee girls from Germany, including Anne and Margot Frank, hold a tea party with their dolls in a private home in Amsterdam. |
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Jewish refugee students in Nairobi, Kenya. |
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Jewish youth sing at the Youth Aliyah School in Berlin. |
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Pretty girl from the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. |
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Man with a young member of the Zionist Betar group. |
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Portrait of a young girl who was one of the hundreds of thousands of children murdered in the Holocaust. |
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Jewish refugee children on Tongshan Road, Hong Kong. |
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Selma Schwarzwald, a Polish Catholic living underground during the war, dressed for her First Communion. She survived the war and became a doctor. She died in New York City in 2002. |
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Selma Schwarzwald, a Jewish child who lived in hiding as a Polish Catholic during the war, poses with a novice nun at a summer camp for orphans at a monastery in Rabka, Poland. |
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Cute Jewish refugee children on the family farm, Kenya. |
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Teenagers and girls in the Warsaw Ghetto. |
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Three Jewish siblings in Cologne. |
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Two young girls stand with bread and bowls full of food in front of a house in the Kovno ghetto. |
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Young German-Jewish teenagers wearing party hats gather for a birthday party in a room decorated with streamers. |
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Young girl sits on the bench “Only for Aryans”. |
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Young girls from Eišiškės, 1941. On September 21, 1941, a unit of the Einsatzgruppe marched into Eišiškės and killed the approximately 4,000 Jewish residents; sadly, they were among those killed. |
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Young survivor sings in the Ulm DP camp. |
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Young survivors celebrate Hanukkah at the Displaced Persons Camp Landsberg, 1945. |
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Young Zionists gather in the Lodz ghetto. |
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A Jewish couple in the Kovno ghetto. |
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A touching photo of two teenage sisters, survivors of the Holocaust, in a camp for displaced persons. |
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Adorable young children perform a Purim play at the DP camp in Cremona, Italy. |