World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The war involved the many of the world's countries. Two opposing military alliances were formed: the Allies and the Axis.
While Japan was already at war with China in 1937, the Second World War began on September 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Germany conquered much of Europe, eventually forming the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Approximately six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and this event would become known as the Holocaust.
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Living in constant fear, the Diamantstein family fled from place to place—to a large Jewish community in Frankfurt; to the apartment of friends in Milan, Italy; to Como, Italy, escaping barefoot in...
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Paula Popowski was born in Poland in 1923 in a predominantly Jewish city. "I came from a very orthodox family. I didn't socialize with Gentiles. Jews and Gentiles didn't mix in public school." In the...
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In April 1945, just before the war's end, Lon Redman encountered his first concentration camp—Flossenburg. There was no organized resistance against the American soldiers. They easily evacuated the...
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Martha Bauer and her family lived in Belgium. When Hitler took over, children were taught to hate all Jews. She was careful with childhood friendships and would not even walk with non-Jewish friends...
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Born in Vienna in 1914, Felix Bauer lived with anti-Semitism even before Hitler's takeover of Austria. When the Nazis invaded, his father said, "Nobody will do anything to me." But the killings...
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Born in New York, Ethel Stafford graduated from nurses' training in 1944, went in the Army, and was transferred to Europe. She didn't know what was happening to Jews. The medical staff she was with...
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Born in Greenwood, S.C., in 1919, John Drummond joined the Air Force and went to England. He was captured by the Nazis and shipped to a prison camp in Frankfurt where Americans were interrogated. Next...
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Senator Strom Thurmond was with the 1st Army all through the war in Europe. They encountered Buchenwald near Leipzig, and he recalls "never having seen the like of what I saw there." He relays that...
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The Horry County native was sent to Fort Bragg, N.C. and then to Europe in 1945. In April 1945 at Ohrdruf Death Camp, he saw stacks of dead bodies and those left alive suffering from acute...
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Joe Engel was born near Warsaw, Poland in 1927. His father ran a luncheonette grocery. He went to public school in a small Jewish community and felt the animosity created by anti-Semitism. In 1942 all...
