Holocaust

Slides from Gregg's 2023 presentation on the 1939 New York World's Fair

Slides from Gregg's 2023 presentation on American cartoonists' contributions to the war effort.

Slides from Gregg's 2023 presentation on anti-Jewish propaganda before and during the Holocaust.

The slides from Gregg's 85th anniversary presentation on Kristallnacht, which took place November 9 and 10, 1938.

Two photos of children in Nazi-occupied Poland. One features a Nazi officer who appears to be giving the kids some good-natured advice. But look closely: You can see the image was doctored and the avuncular officer was "photoshopped" in as part of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts.

Profiling Jewish Holocaust hero Janusz Korczak, champion of children, who supported the children in his care to the very end.

Excerpts from a scrapbook created by a Jewish American soldier named Alex Sesonske. His uncensored scrapbook, which includes everything from training camp photos to letters from his relatives to a poem his mom wrote, mocking his mustache, is one of the most complete accounts available of the GI experience during WWII. Though Sesonske doesn’t name the camp where these photos are taken, we can infer from his caption, “…taken at a Concentration Camp near Landsberg, Germany…” that they were of Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau. He affixed them to his scrapbook in overlapping fashion, presumably to avoid shocking himself or anyone else with the gruesome images he’d saved.

Gregg's Father, Bernard Philipson and some of the men from the 8th Armored Division at the Arc de Triomphe, 1945.

Gregg’s father, Bernard Philipson (right), with his tank the “Blue Monday” serving with the 8th Armored Division.

Gregg’s father, Bernard Philipson, with his tank the “Blue Monday” serving with the 8th Armored Division.

On May 1, 1945, just one week before VE Day, The Stars and Stripes, the US Armed Forces’ daily newspaper, celebrates the US seizure of Dachau, along with the capture of Munich by the US Army, Soviet attacks on Berlin, and the promise of an impending offer of surrender from Heinrich Himmler.

The 11th Armored Division, nicknamed “Thunderbolt,” liberated Austria’s Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps in May of 1945, freeing thousands of prisoners. This thirty-two page softcover book tells the story of the rescue — and it also sheds additional light on the unspeakable atrocities the troops witnessed in the camps.

An American Nazi Party propaganda newsletter printed in the United States, April 10, 1941. This issue features an article by Nazi Germany’s minister of foreign affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who would be hanged at Nuremburg after the war.

In May of 1945, the SS was holding more than 7,000 prisoners from Neuengamme, Germany, on two ships: a Kraft durch Freude luxury cruise ship (designed to hold just 800 or so passengers) called the Cap Arcona and a cargo ship called the Thielbeck. With no food or water on board (except, presumably, for the guards and crew), there was little chance for survival. Tragically, on May 3, British troops, assuming the Cap Arcona and the Thielbeck carried German troops, bombed both ships. Both capsized, killing all but about 7,000 of the prisoners aboard.

Liberation of the Concentration Camps

Baltimore, 1939, a 14-year-old Jewish boy, Melvin Bridge, had an H (for “Hebrew”) carved into his neck by a group of students who had apparently created a “Junior Bund” patterned after Fritz Kuhn’s pro-Nazi group.

The German Bund was a pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish organization of Germans in the United States. Seen here is their leader, Fritz Kuhn, speaking in Milford, New Jersey. It is estimated that the Bund had 25,000 members, and they were active in spreading anti-Jewish propaganda through rallies, publications, and Hitler Youth-style camps for children, one of which, Camp Siegfried, was on Long Island.

This weekly tabloid founded in Detroit by anti-Jewish isolationist Father Charles Coughlin in 1936, churned out primarily anti-Jewish propaganda and hatred.

Charles Coughlin was a Catholic priest based in a suburb of Detroit. He was also vocally anti-Roosevelt (joining other leaders who nicknamed him “President Rosenfeld”), isolationist, and anti-Jewish. "Am I an Anti-Semite" is a collection of nine anti-Jewish addresses Coughlin had broadcast on his radio show between November 1938 and January 1939.

This “Boycott the Jew” sign could be found on a store window in Portland, Oregon in 1938, shortly before Kristallnacht. Referred to in English as “Night of the Broken Glass,” Kristallnacht took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 when the Nazis called for a series of pogroms (waves of organized violence) against the Jewish people throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. The name, “Kristallnacht,” refers to the shattered glass lining the streets in the wake of the massacres, which targeted synagogues, Jewish homes, and Jewish-owned businesses, killing scores of German and Austrian Jews.

Kamptegnet (“Battle Journal”) was a Danish weekly tabloid, essentially a carbon copy of Der Stürmer from design and format down to the tagline. Many editions feature the Danish version of Der Stürmer’s tagline, which translates to “The Jews are our misfortune.” The issue pictured here is tagged, “Vote anti-Jewish,” and the publication rotated through several similarly hateful slogans. Like Der Stürmer, Kamptegnet had nothing to do with actual news — its only content was hate.

On October 1, 1938, the Sudetenland (part of former Czechoslovakia inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans) celebrated the German takeover of the Czech border district of Asch, hometown of Sudeten party leader Konrad Erns Eduard Henlein.

This postal label, or "Cinderella," similar to the ones produced in Germany, is from Hungary. It reads, “Not a penny for these people,” referring, of course, to the Jews portrayed in caricature on its face.

A weekly German tabloid published by Julius Streicher, a Nazi and member of the Reichstag. The paper was a significant element of German anti-Jewish propaganda and, like tabloids today, it really had nothing to do with news.

This intricately designed and carved children’s toy was produced in Czechoslovakia c. the 1930s. Czechs were known for their puppetry, and this example came from the country’s premier puppet manufacturer, highlighting the commercialization of anti-Jewish ideology.

Even in Denmark, where one might suspect Jewish people would be safe, anti-Jewish sentiment led to propaganda items like these national socialist party labels.