Maps, information:
• Holocaust testimonies

• Death, concentration and labor camps
• Ghettoes established by Nazis in Poland
• The Warsaw Ghetto
• The Lodz Ghetto

• Jewish life in Europe by 1933
• Jewish Communities on the eve of the war
• Jews murdered between 1939-1945
• Survivors and those who returned, 1945

• Route of 800 km Death March by Jewish Women from Slawa
to Volary/Prachatice (20 Jan - 5 May 1945) - a map and photos of survivors and SS guards on the Death March from
Helmbrechts to Volary/Prachatice
• Schmelt Organization as experienced by affected individuals - part one
• Schmelt Organization as experienced by affected individuals - part two

• info about selected Polish Jewish writers (Holocaust)


Books and video:
• please go to services for more books

• book: "Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust - visit site: http://www.powerfulbook.com "
• video: Bedzin, Polish Jews - "Diamonds in the snow"



he majority of the Polish Jews lost their lives in the Nazi genocide. According to the records of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (Centralny Komitet Zydow w Polsce, CKZP), the main Jewish organization in postwar Poland, 74,000 people had registered by June 1945. From this number, 5,500 had returned from concentration camps in Germany and 10,000 from camps in Poland; 13,000 had served in the pro - Communist Polish army and about 30,000 had made their way back from the Soviet Union. These statistics suggest that fewer than 20,000 had survived on the "Aryan" side. This figure is certainly too low, since it does not include those who did not register with the CKZP, whether because they wished to stay away from Jewish organizations or because they had assimilated or converted to Christianity. But even if the figure is doubled, no more than 40,000 Jews survived in hiding. In the next two years 137,000 Polish Jews returned from the Soviet Union, mostly people who had been deported or evacuated to the interior of that country. In 1956 several thousand more returned to Poland, although between 100,000 and 150,000 remained in the Soviet Union. Thus, more than 90 percent of Polish Jewry perished in the Holocaust.

uring the war Poland lost 19.6 percent of its population, including 3 million Jews but also 2 million other Poles. Of Polish doctors, 45 percent did not survive the occupation; neither did 40 percent of Polish professors, 45 percent of lawyers, 30 percent of engineers, 20 percent of priests, and most journalists. In the last years of the war more than 100,000 Poles were incarcerated in German concentration camps and prisons. In 1941 mobile SS units called Einsatzgruppen (the Einsatzgruppen action squads), advanced behind the Wehrmacht (German army), executing Soviet officials and Jewish adult men first and Jewish women and children later. At least 1 million Jews were killed, most of them shot, between July and December 1941. In addition to the Einsatzgruppen, there were other SS and police units commissioned to shoot Jews who were to be assembled in front of mass graves dug by the Jews themselves. The Einsatzgruppen provided Hitler with reports on the numbers of Jews and others who had been killed. These documents represent the primary source of knowledge about the mass shootings in eastern Europe up to the spring of 1942. This method of murder was abandoned because of its deleterious effect on the morale of those who had to carry it out. In the second stage it was replaced by death camps, where assembly - line techniques of mass murder were developed, first using carbon monoxide gas and then Zyklon B (Cyklon B - hydrogen cyanide gas: hydrogen cyanide released as a gas from pellets, used originally as an insecticide and later as a deadly gas by the Nazis during the World War II).

nformations we got from historical documents have shown that the Allied governments were informed of the Nazi extermination policy. As early as November 1941 coded reports sent to Berlin on the mass murders by the Einsatzgruppen in the USSR were intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. In August 1942 reports on the deportation and extermination of Jews in countries occupied by the Nazis were sent from Jewish organizations in Switzerland to top government officials in Britain and the United States. In mid-1944 two Slovak Jews who had escaped from Auschwitz gave accounts of the systematic extermination of Jews at Auschwitz. However, the Allied governments were reluctant to rescue Jews. After the war British government officials said they had not wanted to reveal that their agents were successfully decoding German communications.

Year: 1942 - one example from one small district

bout 7900 Jews from Czortkow district were sent to Belzec death camp. From Tarnopol 6200 people (on 31 August 1942). In September 1942 another 4800 people were sent from Tarnopol. From Brody 5000 people. On 7 September 1942, 4769 Jews were taken from Kolomyja (300 old people, the sick, and unable to transport were killed). On September 8 and September 10 this year there were deported 8205 Jews to Belzec death camp from one part of the region (from the towns: Kuty, Kosowo, Horodenka, Zablotow and Sniatyn).



Sniatyn town before 1939 - a small town (very old, mentioned in historical documents in 1148, located near Ukraine-Moldova border)


Please visit also photos section to see Nazi concentration camps photos