Download Holocaust Resources Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center

Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center
Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs
30 West Mifflin Street; Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Phone (608) 267-1790 FAX (608) 264-7615
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.wisvetsmuseum.com/
Holocaust Resources
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum holds a variety of resources relating to the
Holocaust in Europe and the liberation of concentration camps during World
War II. Some of the materials are broad overviews of the topic while others are
very specific to the experiences of Wisconsin veterans. Please read about the
resources below and contact the Reference Archivist if you have any questions.
Books
Bauer, Yehuda. A history of the Holocaust.
Bauer presents a comprehensive history of the events leading up to the
Holocaust and those that ensued.
Birenbaum, Halina. Hope is the last to die; a personal documentation of Nazi
terror.
Originally written in Polish, this text chronicles Halina Birenbaum survival in
the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz and the labor camps from 1939 to 1945.
Botwinick, Rita S. A history of the Holocaust: from ideology to annihilation.
A study of ideologies and forces the led to the inception of the Holocaust and
Nazi policies. Botwinick discusses aspects of German and Jewish life that
mixed with a nature of prejudice and anti-Semitism.
Dam, Sam, ed. Dachau 29 April 1945: The rainbow liberation memoirs.
Members of the 42nd Infantry Division, chaplains, people living near by, and
some prisoners from within the camp detail their memories of the liberation of
the Dachau concentration camp.
Des Pres, Terrence. The survivor: an anatomy of life in the death camps.
Des Pres outlines life in the Nazi concentration camps, detailing horrors but
also noting the power of the human will. He uses behavioral and
psychoanalytic approaches to interpret how prisoners retained their humanity
while surviving such extreme situations.
Eisner, Jack. The survivor.
In this first person narrative, Jack Eisner details his life in the Warsaw Ghetto
in Poland and survival in the concentration camps. He recounts being
liberated by American troops at the end of World War II.
Hirsch, Michael. The liberators: America’s witnesses to the Holocaust.
Reminisces from Americans who were some of the first to see the horrors of
the Holocaust and concentration camps in World War II.
Holliday, Laurel. Children in the Holocaust and World War II: their secret
diaries.
Twenty-three young people, ages ten through eighteen, share their experiences
of the war, including Nazi concentration camps, the Warsaw ghetto, bombings,
the Nazi blitzkrieg, and betrayal.
Selzer, Michael. Deliverance day: the last hours at Dachau.
Michael Selzer’s book writes about the liberation of Dachau by American
troops in April of 1945. Twelve years after it was first opened, 30,000
prisoners were freed from the terrors of that concentration camp. Selzer
outlines military orders and actions leading up to, during and just after the
liberation of the Dachau.
Manuscript Collections
John P. Maertz Papers, Mss 901
More than a dozen photographs depict the German concentration camp
Buchenwald after its liberation by Allied soldiers. Shots show torture victims,
emaciated corpses, and some survivors.
Stanley M. Nowinski Papers, Mss 28
Nowinski discusses his memories of the liberation of the Dachau
concentration camp with the 42nd Division. He later worked as a Displaced
Persons Officer helping Jewish Holocaust survivors get into Israel. A large part
of this collection consists of Nowinski’s military papers from his twenty years
of service.
Oral History Interviews
Paul Argiewicz – OH 291
Argiewicz details his childhood, growing up as a Jew in Poland during the
height of Hitler’s power in Europe. He lived in the Sosnowiec ghetto as a child
and later escaped in order to find food, but was captured by SS troops and
sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for processing before being sent to
Blechhammer work camp on the Czechoslovakian border. During the war,
when the Russian troops approached the work camp, Argiewicz and the other
prisoners were forced to march to Buchenwald in Germany. Argiewicz goes on
to describe the conditions of the camp and he discusses people that he met in
the camp. After the war, Argiewicz moved into the American Zone in Germany
and worked with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
John C. Wozniak – OH 255
As a member of the 437th Military Police Escort Guard Company, Wozniak was
at Buchenwald concentration camp a week after its liberation. He spends
significant time discussing the liberation of Buchenwald. He concludes talking
about American reactions to the concentration camps. Wozniak describes an
emotional meeting with a group of Polish-speaking inmates and tells of
translating for a Polish lieutenant who gave him a tour of the barracks, ovens,
and mass graves. He also graphically describes the medical condition of the
prisoners, many of whom were about to die. Wozniak questions how the
Germans in Weimar could claim ignorance of the camp.
Donald M. Murphy – OH 567
Murphy presents vivid descriptions of the town of Flossenburg and coming
upon a Nazi death camp that the Allies had not yet discovered. He discusses
the camp liberation with great detail, the layout, the prisoners and parts of the
camp. Murphy discusses the living conditions and physical states of the
prisoners. He also comments on how "the people in the town purposely never
went beyond a certain border...they didn't want to admit they knew about [the
death camp]."
James R. Underkofler – OH 312
Underkofler was a part of the 104th Infantry Division in Holland and Germany
during World War II. He recalls being at the liberation of Norhausen
concentration camp, where he saw thousands of bodies of prisoners that had
starved in their bunks.
Rev. 02/2012 (kirmer)