Subject Guide: Holidays

The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.

"Soviet Forces Liberate Auschwitz," Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Museum

Archival Materials

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, I-413

This collection consists of material chronicling the planning, creation, and activities of the USHMM in Washington, D.C. It contains Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust publications, material pertaining to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, newsletters, photographs, press releases, conference material, teaching guides and educational curricula, and fundraising and membership material.

Concentration Camps Collection, AR 971 [Digitized and available online]

This collection contains traces of several concentration camps established and run by the Nazis between 1933-1945. The materials do not share provenance; the collection was constructed over several decades from donated items relating to concentration camps in some way.

The concentration camps covered in this collection include the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz as well as the concentration and forced labor camps Buchenwald, Buna-Monowitz (alternatively Auschwitz III), Dachau, Schatzlar, and Stutthof. Materials on the ghetto at Łódź (alternatively Litzmannstadt) are included. Other concentration camps may be mentioned in folders containing items that relate to several camps at once.

Concentration Camps Clippings Collection, AR 971 C

This clippings collection contains newspaper clippings covering history and memorials of concentration camps. Also included are brochures, programs, and a poster for events held in memory of victims of concentration camps.

American Memorial to Six Million Jews of Europe Records, RG 1206

Correspondence, brochures, photographs, clippings, speeches, proclamations and other materials concerning efforts of the Committee to erect a monument in Riverside Park, 1947-1953. Photograph of Fiorello La Guardia, Rabbi Isaac Rubinstein, Julian Tuwim, Shalom Asch and others at Warsaw Ghetto memorial, New York, 1944. 

Holocaust Memorials; Germany Collection, AR 6923 [Digitized and available online]

The following Holocaust memorial sites in Germany are mentioned in this collection: Bergen-Belsen ; Bonn; Breitenau.; Buchenwald; Cologne; Dachau; Dortmund; Emslandlager; Essen; Gelsenkirchen; Hadamar; Krefeld; Neuengamme; Oberhausen; Ravensbrück; Sachsenhausen; Sandbostel; Wewelsburg.

Ernst Loew Collection 1918-1978 (AR 7200) and the Ernst Loew Clippings Collection 1975-1979 (AR 7200 C)

Born Ernst Loewensberg circa 1900-1905 in Ingelheim am Rhein, Loew emigrated to United States with family in the early 1930s. He served in the United States Army during World War II, and he collected material during his time in Europe. His collection also has camp money from Theresienstadt, antisemitic propaganda flyers from France and Germany, and a shoulder patch from the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group in World War II. Photographs related to this collection can be viewed here. 

Books & Periodicals:

To Bear Witness: Holocaust Remembrance at Yad Vashem / Editors Bella Gutterman and Avner Shalev. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005.

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors' Stories and New Media Practices / Jeffrey Shandler. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. 2017.

Remembering the Holocaust in Germany, Austria, Italy and Israel: "vergangenheitsbewältigung" as a Historical Quest / Edited by Vincenzo Pinto. Studies in Jewish History and Culture v. 70. 2022.

Stories and Faces of Holocaust Survivors: Final Volume, Book 1-15 / [editors, Ivan Lefkovits, Daniel Gerson ; Summaries of Books 1-15, François Wisard, Caterina Abbati]. First ed. Memoiren Von Holocaust-Überlebenden. 2014.

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum newsletter. [2003-2006]

Online Resources:

Research Guide for Displaced Person Camps

Genealogy Guide for Holocaust Research

Genealogy Guide for Yizkor Books

YIVO Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe

For more general information, see entries on Auschwitz Protocols and Killing Centers.