Displaying: 151 175 of 30,496 matches for “ushmm”
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151. Otto Frank
Otto Frank escaped Nazi Germany with his wife and two daughters soon after Hitler came to power in 1933. They lived a peaceful life in Amsterdam until May 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Otto, determined to leave Europe with his family, contacted an old college friend in the United States for help.
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152. Herta Griffel
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Beila Griffel made the painful decision to send her only child, seven-year-old Herta, to the United States. Herta was never reunited with her mother—she died after being deported to Nazi-occupied Poland—and was one of the only children in her Jewish elementary school class in Vienna to survive the Holocaust.
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153. Franz Goldberger
Professor Franz Goldberger hoped to immigrate to the United States, but before he could obtain an immigration visa, he needed to prove that he had financial support in the United States. He did not know any Americans, so he wrote to total strangers begging for help. One letter reached Helen Roseland, a postal employee in rural Iowa, who agreed to sponsor him. Ultimately, her efforts to bring Goldberger to safety were unsuccessful—he was deported to a concentration camp and murdered in the Holocaust.
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154. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States for twelve years, longer than any other woman in American history. During her husband’s presidency, she used her social and political influence to bring domestic and international crises to the attention of the American people by strongly advocating for racial and social justice.
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155. Breckinridge Long
Between 1940 and 1944, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long supervised the US State Department’s Visa Division, which regulated the issuance of visas to people who applied to immigrate to the United States—including Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Long and his staff implemented new immigration rules and restrictions in response to national security threats, and often showed little sympathy for humanitarian concerns. Long fought any attempt to make immigration easier, and resented any criticism of the State Department, particularly by Jewish organizations.
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156. Anthony Acevedo
Anthony Acevedo was a Mexican American who served as a US Army medic during World War II. He was captured by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge and held as a prisoner of war (POW) in the Berga forced labor camp, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. While there, he kept a secret diary of his experiences, including a record of his fellow American soldiers’ deaths.
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157. Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins (1880–1965) was the secretary of labor under President Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945. The first female cabinet secretary, Perkins was the longest serving secretary of labor and one of the architects of Roosevelt’s New Deal economic policies designed to combat the Great Depression. During her tenure as labor secretary, Perkins advocated on behalf of German Jewish refugees seeking to immigrate to the United States—often in opposition to the prevailing public sentiments.
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158. Charles Coughlin
Reverend Charles E. Coughlin (1891–1979) was a Canadian-born Roman Catholic priest and radio celebrity based in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan. His sermons, aired on Sundays, often featured populist, anti-Communist, and antisemitic claims. At the peak of his popularity, Coughlin had as many as forty million devoted weekly listeners. By 1942, his anti-Roosevelt and antisemitic screeds had ended his radio career, but Coughlin remained a parish priest until his retirement in 1966.
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159. Henry Morgenthau Jr.
Henry Morgenthau Jr., President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury and close friend, was the only Jewish member of the cabinet. Protective of his friendship with the president, Morgenthau hesitated to alert Roosevelt to what the Treasury staff uncovered in late 1943. Not only had State Department officials delayed aid intended for European Jews, they had also secretly forbidden US diplomats in Switzerland from sending information about the Nazi regime’s mass murder of Jews to the United States. In January 1944, Morgenthau finally decided to go to the White House and demand, as one of his colleagues called it, “a new deal.”
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160. Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) was a prominent American reporter, columnist, and radio personality. Throughout the 1930s and ‘40s, she urged her fellow Americans to pay attention to the threat that Nazi Germany posed to democracy and to Europe’s Jews. In 1939, Time magazine called Thompson and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt “undoubtedly the most influential women in America.”
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161. Varian Fry Emergency Escape
After France surrendered to Nazi Germany in June 1940, the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization, sent American journalist Varian Fry to Marseilles. In France, Fry aided anti-Nazi refugees who were in danger of being arrested and turned over to authorities in Nazi Germany. Fry used legal and illegal techniques to help some 2,000 people, including a number of prominent writers and artists, escape France and emigrate to the United States. He was expelled from France in August 1941.
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162. Kurt Maier
Kurt Maier was one of 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany deported to France in October 1940, as part of a large ethnic cleansing drive by the Nazis. Like many of the deportees, his family was already on the waiting list for American immigration visas. Some, like Kurt and his family, succeeded in their quest and made it to the United States. Others ended up in Auschwitz.
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163. Max and Fanny Valfer
Max and Fanny Valfer were among the 6,504 Jews from Southwest Germany deported to France in October 1940, as part of a large ethnic cleansing drive by the Nazis. Interned in Gurs, in southwestern France, they spent much of the next 20 months trying to acquire visas for the United States.
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164. Hiram Bingham IV
American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV risked his career to assist refugees in Nazi-occupied France. He told a supervisor that his main aim in life was to “help people.” Bingham resigned from the Foreign Service in 1946 and went largely unrecognized until after his death.
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165. Raymond Geist
As the senior US consular official in Berlin during the years leading up to World War II, Raymond Geist was responsible for issuing tens of thousands of visas to German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. He became convinced that Nazi officials were pursuing a goal of “annihilation of the Jews,” but his warnings were largely ignored in Washington.
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166. Teacher Resources
educators when teaching about this exhibition. Learn more about Burma and the Rohingya at www.ushmm
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167. Artifacts
These artifacts—objects, printed materials, and artwork—show how the Nazi regime used propaganda to support its radical policies.
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168. Timeline
This guide to key historical events during the Holocaust and World War II offers background and context for the stories in this exhibition.
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169. Nazi Artwork
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170. Teacher Resources
Explore resources for teachers and students online.
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171. Eugenics Poster
The Nazis firmly believed in eugenics or “race hygiene,” as the belief was commonly called in Germany at the time. The term refers to the idea that selective breeding could improve a nation or race.
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172. “Euthanasia” Propaganda
German “race hygienists,” physicians, and Nazi propagandists referred to people with disabilities as “life unworthy of life.” Such language served to justify radical measures that were taken against people with disabilities.
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173. What Americans Knew
Information about Nazi persecution of Jews wasn't hard to find.
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174. Installation of the railcar at the construction site of the U.S.
ARTIFACT TRANSFER N; ARTIFACTS N; BUILDING SITE/CONSTRUCTION (USHMM) N; PERMANENT EXHIBITION (USHMM ... N; RAILCAR (USHMM) N
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175. Visitors sit on benches in Thorn Alley, near the 15th Street entrance to the U.S.
ALLEYS (USHMM) N; BUILDING (USHMM) N; ENTRANCES (15TH ST.)/EISENHOWER PLAZA N; EXTERIORS (USHMM) N