Museum Entrance

1. Concentration Camps Museum Entrance Chelmno Room Three Cattle Cars Bergen-Belsen Room Five Curator’s Offices

2. Curator’s Office Jenni Whitbeck Hi, my name is Jenni Whitbeck and I am an eighth grader at Depoali Middle School. I wanted to make our museum about Concentration Camps because I think that more people should have more extensive knowledge on this topic. Most people know what the Holocaust is, but don’t know many details on what really happened so my team and I are here to change that. Place your picture here. Contact me at jennimwhitbeck@gmail.com Return to Entry Note: Virtual museums were first introduced by educators at Keith Valley Middle School in Horsham, Pennsylvania. This template was designed by Dr. Christy Keeler. View the Educational Virtual Museums website for more information on this instructional technique.

3. Cattle Cars Room 1 Return to Entry

4. Auschwitz Room 2 Artifact 8 Return to Entry

5. Chelmno Room 3 Return to Entry

6. Bergen-Belsen Room 4 Return to Entry

7. Survivors Room 5 Artifact 21 Return to Entry

8. Loading Into Cattle Cars Deportation and transportation often took days. Multiple individuals and families were cramped into cars and left with little food and water for days on end. These people had no information whatsoever as to where they were going, or even what they would be doing when they got to this mystery destination. Eventually, after days of traveling, they came to a stop and the doors were pulled open only for them to see a place that was completely unfamiliar. http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-camps/daily-life/journeys/#.VWihyc9VhBc Return to Exhibit

9. Freight Car This authentic 15-ton freight car is one of several types that were used to deport Jews. Its cramped interior would have held 80 to 100 people. Deportation trains usually carried between 1,000 and 2,000 people whose crushing weight slowed the speed of travel to about 30 mph, greatly prolonging the ordeal. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/boxcar.html Return to Exhibit

10. Survivor Story Jack, 15 years old, from Greece, talks of his experience at the start of what must have been a very long journey:“Some 20 railway cars were waiting for us... There were 70 to 80 people in a car... After a while, there was a muffled sound of closing latches... the whistle blew and the train started moving slowly. It was April 7, 1943. Penned in and cramped, we departed from our homeland, without being able to see it.” http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-camps/daily-life/journeys/#.VW84KM9VhBe Return to Exhibit

11. Lost Luggage Many Jews tried to take what little they had left with them when they were put on cattle cars. This picture shows some of the bags of luggage that were taken from the Jews when they were being transported to concentration camps. Many families lost everything and anything that was important to them on these long, horrifying trips. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_da.php?ModuleId=10005445&MediaId=8443 Return to Exhibit

12. Arrival These Jewish prisoners have just arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the end of their journey from Hungary. They disembark from the train not knowing where they are. Very soon they will be subjected to the selection process. This selection process is the process of the separating the weak, woman, and strong men and boys in to separate areas to ether be killed or worked to death. Return to Exhibit

13. Barracks Men in a barracks (where they sleep) after their concentration camp was liberated. Some of these barracks that where found with men and woman on the verge of dying and there were very few. When the soviet army came in to the camp there where dying people wandering and begging to be saved. Linked citation goes here Return to Exhibit

14. Entrance to Auschwitz This gate is the entrance into the largest concentration camps. The words on the gate says “Work Makes You Free” encouraging the incoming inmates and prisoners that the work that they will be put to do will make them free which is not true. Linked citation goes here Return to Exhibit

15. Artifact 8 Text goes here. Linked citation goes here Return to Exhibit

16. Artifact 9 These prisoners are being packed into open trains for their journey to Chelmno; little do they know that it will be their final journey. The first group of people to arrive at the camp arrived on December 7th 1941. The following day the first exterminations took place. The killings continued for another year but by March 1943 the camp was dismantled because all the Jews in the area had been murdered except Jews in Lodz. http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-final-solution/the-death-camps/chelmno/#.VWij_hFOWUk Return to Exhibit

17. About This Camp The Chelmno concentration camp was the first Nazi camp where gassing was used to murder Jews on a large a large scale. A total of 320,000 people were murdered at Chelmno. These included Jews from the Lodz ghetto and throughout in the area on arrival of the camp the Jews were that they needed to shower. They were led to the undressing room where they gave up their valuables and clothes. When they got into the “showers” the doors were locked and gas bombs were sent into the “showers” . http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-final-solution/the-death-camps/chelmno/#.VWij_hFOWUk Return to Exhibit

18. Artifact 11 Shimon Srebnik, the last survivor of the Chelmno extermination camp, recalls his harrowing experiences. Shimon says ‘when we got the Chelmno the older people said ‘what a beautiful place’ ‘well be happy here’. I remained in house commando” said Shimon “I was in a barrack with WalerBonmeister. We sorted peoples gold and possessions, things people left behind, suitcases.” Later the Germans decided to liquidate the camp, and opened fire on the last 48 Jewish prisoners shooting them in the back of the neck. Shimon was seriously wounded by Nazi gunfire but, along with two other camp inmates, managed to escape during the last-minute fight. http://www.jpost.com/Features/The-last-survivor Return to Exhibit

19. Artifact 12 One of the three survivors of the Chelmno murder camp testified in the trial of 12 former SS guards at the camp. The defendants are charged with the murder of 180,000 Jews in the camp in Nazi-held Poland during the war. The survivor said he survived because, in spite of chains on his feet, he was able to flee from the camp and hide the night before Russian troops arrived in January 1945. When he returned to the burning camp, he said, he found Simon Srebnik, then a 14-year old boy, badly injured. http://www.jta.org/1963/01/22/archive/jewish-survivors-of-chelmno-camp-testify-at-trial-of-guards Return to Exhibit

20. Liberation The liberation of Bergen-Belsen was astonishing. People were just sitting there in the stench of death some not able to walk on their arms as thin as paper. Some they found that among the stench and decay there was something worse than hunger they were to ill to eat. All of there survivors were stricken that there was still kindness in the world. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_da.php?MediaId=101 Return to Exhibit

21. Women Bergen-Belsen was a Concentration camp used mainly as a holding Jewish prisoner. there was three main categories of the camp's complex: The POW camp, the "residents camp"(Aufenthaltslager), and the prisoners of war camp. The conditions were pretty good for the standards of most concentration camps in the beginning years, but in the spring of 1944 the conditions worsened rapidly. There was an outbreak of typhus during those years killing Anne Frank and her sister. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 Return to Exhibit

22. Gypsy Skirt This Gypsy woman who owned this skirt was moved to many camp and one of them was Bergen-Belsen. Her husband and Children were killed during the journey to the multiple camps. She originally lived in Germany before being arrested by the Nazis. This happed too many of the Roma that lived in Europe. They would all be transported to the different camps and worked to death like so many others. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 Return to Exhibit

23. Housing In Bergen-Belsen history it has housed Jews, POWs, political prisoners, gypsies, criminals, homosexuals and more. These statistics are straight from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "At the end of July 1944 there were around 7,300 prisoners interned in the Bergen-Belsen camp complex. At the beginning of December 1944, this number had increased to around 15,000, and in February 1945 the number of prisoners was 22,000. As prisoners evacuated from the east continued to arrive, the camp population soared to over 60,000 by April 15, 1945. From late 1944, food rations throughout Bergen-Belsen continued to shrink. By early 1945, prisoners would sometimes go without food for days; fresh water was also in short supply... The British found around sixty thousand prisoners in the camp, most of them seriously ill. Thousands of corpses lay unburied on the camp grounds." These statistics are unbelievably high. How some people survived these horrid conditions is a miracle. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 Return to Exhibit

24. Manya Friedman This picture shows survivor Manya Friedman in her first civilian dress after the war, speaking to a security officer at a school in Sweden. She was an inmate at the Ravensbureck slave labor camp. Only days before the war ended Sweden allowed people from this camp to come into their county where Manya would be taken to shower and be disinfected so she could stay in a school until the war was over. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/benjamin-and-vladka-meed-registry-of-holocaust-survivors/behind-every-name-a-story/manya-friedman Return to Exhibit

25. Joseph Moses Lang This picture shows Joseph Moses Lang a few months after liberation from Auschwitz. When traveling to Auschwitz he was with his mother, brother and little sister. As soon as they arrived at the camp Joseph and his brother were separated from their mother and sister and that was the last time they ever saw them. Soon after they were transported to Allach, another work camp. Josephs bother contracted the disease typhus shortly before Allach was liberated. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/benjamin-and-vladka-meed-registry-of-holocaust-survivors/behind-every-name-a-story/joseph-moses-lang Return to Exhibit

26. Jacob Blankitny Jacob Blankitny is a holocaust survivor lived in a town called Maków Mazowiecki, about 80 km from Warsaw. In two days, the Germans were in his hometown, using the synagogue as a stable, destroying every Jewish symbol that was in their way and demanding that Jews be identified by a Star of David with the inscription, Jew, in the center that would always be easily visible. Upon our arrival at the camp they were separated by women and men. They took the women directly to the gas chambers and afterward to the crematoria after a few years of death marches and torture civilian guards arrived to take care of us and, finally, the next morning, American soldiers and tanks arrived and liberated us. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/benjamin-and-vladka-meed-registry-of-holocaust-survivors/behind-every-name-a-story Return to Exhibit

27. Miriam Eshel Miriam Eshel was part of a strictly orthodox family, in the best of Jewish tradition. Germans took his family to the ghetto, to Munkacs where they stayed for another 4-5 weeks, in an old brick factory building. One day, they were gathered and loaded on a train in cattle cars, with tiny windows. They arrived in Auschwitz the day before Shavuot. They were there until July. After many months the Soviet Union liberated them. http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/benjamin-and-vladka-meed-registry-of-holocaust-survivors/behind-every-name-a-story/miriam-rot-eshel Return to Exhibit

28. Guided Question How did the United States action and inaction change the world we live in today? The United States action and inaction changed the world in many ways. One way its inaction changed the world is the fact that if they were to join the war earlier instead of sticking to the isolationism policy, more Jews could have been saved and Pearl Harbor could have been prevented. Their action affected the world we live in today because without the United States, the Allies might not have liberated as many camps as quickly as they did and they might have even lost the war Linked citation goes here Return to Exhibit

29. Artifact 22 Toys and children’s artifacts were all taken away for the children when they entered the concentration camps from the cattle cars. No object was kept from the ghettos to the camps. These toys were donated to the museum to help show the life the Jews and other prisoners had to endure. Return to Entrance

30. Possessions and Belongings The possessions and precious belongings of the Jews transported to Auschwitz-Bureau were left in the train carriages and on the ramp as their owners were quickly put through the selection process. When the selection process was complete, a work group of prisoners called the ‘KanadaKommando’ collected the belongings of victims and took them to the ‘Kanada’ warehouse facility for sorting and transporting back to Germany. To prisoners Canada was a country that symbolized wealth. They, therefore, gave the ironic name Kanada (the German spelling of Canada) to the warehouse area as it was full of possessions, clothing and jewelry. http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-final-solution/auschwitz-birkenau/work/#.VXCVVRFOWUk Return to Entrance

31. Lost Shoes When Jews were taken to concentration camps, they had almost everything taken away from them including their shoes. This is a picure showing how many people were sent to concentration camps and how many people had anything and everything taken away from them just because of their religion or moral views. http://voiceseducation.org/content/personal-effects Return to Exhibit