As a young Christian boy growing up in Nazi Germany, Walter Meyer was required to join the Hitler Youth. At first, he didn’t mind participating. But he soon grew resentful of their authority structures and questioned Nazi propaganda. He decided to resist.

Born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Peter Stein faced antisemitic bullying during the Holocaust. When he was eight, his father was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. As a volunteer at our Museum, Peter shared his childhood experiences with visitors.

“During my first attempt to write to you … tears kept running down my cheeks onto the paper,” Holocaust survivor Harry Markowicz wrote to his rescuer, Jeanne Daman, in 2016. Harry, his brother, and his sister were among some 2,000 Jewish children saved by Jeanne in Belgium.

"We heard the amazing news," remembered Ilie Wacs. "Japan had surrendered. The war was over.” V-J Day, the day of Japan’s unofficial surrender, took place #OTD in 1945. For Jewish refugees like Ilie who lived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Japan’s surrender meant freedom.

#OTD in 1941, Germans closed off the Kovno ghetto, stationing armed guards at the gates. Jews had to remain inside the ghetto at all times, except for forced labor. The ghetto lacked enough space and sanitation to accommodate 35,000 people.

Alice Goldberger was a German Jew who fled the Nazis and lost her family in the Holocaust. After the war, Alice helped dozens of child Holocaust survivors learn to love and trust again. In August 1945, on Alice’s 48th birthday, she welcomed the first of them into her care.

When ten-year-old Robert's identification papers were issued in May 1939, they read “Robert Israel Spies.” But "Israel" was not Robert's real middle name. #OTD in 1938, Nazi officials ordered Jews with "non-Jewish" names to add the names “Israel” for men or “Sara” for women.

“There is really no way out of this,” wrote Dawid Sierakowiak in his final diary entry. He died in the Łódź ghetto in 1943, two weeks after turning 19. In summer 1944, the Germans dissolved the ghetto and sent about 72,000 Jews to killing centers. 📷: Beit Lohamei Haghetaot

Photographer Mendel Grossman took thousands of illegal photos in the Łódź ghetto. Most of the approximately 10,000 negatives he hid were retrieved by friends and his sister after the war. Mendel likely died on a death march in 1945. 📷: Yad Vashem

“If my parents hadn’t been anxious to get out of Germany … I wouldn’t be here. Quite convinced of that.” Kurt Pauly left behind his extended family in Germany after he and his parents fled to safety in the United States. Most of his relatives did not survive the Holocaust.

Friedel Reiter risked her life to help save hundreds of Jewish children like those pictured here during the Holocaust. She arranged for the transfer of about 43 people—mostly children—out of the Rivesaltes transit camp in southern France. Many of their parents did not survive.

The Nazis' "euthanasia" program, ("T-4") was one of many radical eugenic measures aimed to restore the racial "integrity" of Germany. #OTD in 1941, Hitler ordered a halt to the operation, though the killings resumed in summer 1942. The program claimed 250,000–300,000 lives.

#OTD 80 years ago Allied troops liberated Paris after more than four years of German occupation. Despite the joyous occasion, for many liberation came too late. At least 38,000 Jews had been arrested in the city and deported, most of them to Auschwitz. 📷: NARA

90 years ago #OTD, American journalist Dorothy Thompson gave this speech in France about the importance of a free press. Just days before, Hitler had ordered Thompson out of Germany as retribution for her unflattering coverage of him.

Working with the Emergency Rescue Committee, American journalist Varian Fry helped some 2,000 anti-Nazi refugees escape France and immigrate to the United States. French police arrested Fry #OTD in 1941, and he returned to the US in October 1941.

As a teenager, Estelle Laughlin survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp, and two other forced labor camps alongside her sister and mother. Later, Estelle shared her story “not to curse the darkness of the past, but to illuminate the future.”

After the Slovak National Uprising began in August 1944, Moritz and Freida Diamant fled to the countryside with their three children (pictured here) to avoid Nazi deportation. They were hidden by the Záruba family. Help from their rescuers likely saved the Diamants' lives.

#OTD in 1941, the Nazi regime announced that all Jews in Nazi Germany would be required to wear the Star of David badge on their clothing. This indicated a shift to more radical anti-Jewish policies. The next month, the Nazis began systematically deporting Jews from the Reich.

#OTD 85 years ago, Germany launched an unprovoked attack on Poland, beginning World War II. The German occupation was exceptionally brutal. By the end of the war, at least 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians and some three million Polish Jews would be killed.

#OTD in 1942 German authorities in Warsaw issued an announcement reminding Poles that the penalty for aiding Jews who fled the ghettos was death. Jan Kostański disobeyed this order by rescuing his future wife, Nacha Wierzbicka, and her family.