Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
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)