Supplemental Assets – Lesson 5
The following resources are from the archives at Yad Vashem and can be used to
supplement Lesson 5, The “Final Solution,” in Echoes and Reflections.
In this lesson, you learn about the mobile killing squads, the Nazi extermination
camps, and the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Below you will find additional
information on the material you study in this lesson.
You read an excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s famous book, Night.
For more information about Elie Wiesel, click here. To read excerpts from a speech
by Elie Wiesel, click here.
You also meet Itka Zygmuntowicz. Learn about the fate of some of Itka's family
members by clicking on the pages of testimony identified with .
In this lesson, you study a painting by Zinovii Tolkatchev. For more information about
this artist and his drawings after the liberation of extermination camps in Eastern
Europe, click here.
You examine a number of photographs taken at Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944.
For more information about this photo collection and the album from where these
photographs were taken, click here.
In this lesson, you meet Judith Becker. Learn about Judith's experiences in the
extermination camps by reading the testimonies below:
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Judith Becker talks about arriving at Majdanek, click here
Judith Becker talks about surviving the gas chamber, click here.
Judith Becker talks about prohibitions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, click here.
Judith Becker talks about survival in Plaszow, click here.
Judith Becker talks about being tattooed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, click here.
Judith Becker talks about obtaining shoes during a Death March, click here.
More about the "Final Solution" is available by clicking the following links:
• Belzec
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Bergen-Belsen
Buchenwald
Community and teamwork in the camps
Concentration Camps
Chelmno
Culture, religion and education in the camps
Dachau
Drancy
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Extermination Camps
The Fate of Children in the Camps
Gross-Rosen
Mauthausen
Nazi Camps
Resistance in the camps
Sobibor
Ravensbrueck
Stutthof
Sachsenhausen
Westerbork
Key Words
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Einsatzgruppen
Extermination Camps
“Final Solution”
Euthanasia Program
Selection
Encyclopedia
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Adolf Eichmann
Babi Yar
Hermann Goering
Primo Levi
Reinhard Heydrich
Itzhak Katznelson
Historical Background
• Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Majdanek
• Treblinka
Photographs
• Lithuania, 1941, Transport of Jews to Their Deaths Next to the Seventh Fort
• Bochnia, Poland, An Execution by a German Police Firing Squad
• Lubny, Ukraine, October 1941, A Jewish Woman Sitting with Her Children
Before Their Execution
• Berlin, The Mansion in Which the Wannsee Conference Took Place in 1942
• Siedlce, Poland, Deportation - Women and Children Boarding Train Cars
• Stropkov, Slovakia, The Findeling Family and other Jews marching toward
the synagogue during the deportation, 23/05/1942
• Greece, Deportation of Jews from Northern Greece to a Concentration Camp
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in Poland
Romania, German Soldiers Deporting Jews
Deportation of Amsterdam Jews
A Woman and Child Boarding a Deportation Train, Thrace, Greece
Jewish Children Walking Single-File in the Street Before Their Deportation to
Treblinka, Warsaw, Poland
A Blueprint of the Treblinka Extermination Camp
Treblinka, Poland, Smoke Rising from the Burning of Bodies in the Camp,
1943
Treblinka, Poland, Railway Station
Treblinka, Poland, Prisoners Undergoing Inspection by a Doctor, Near a
Barrack
Treblinka, Poland, An Execution
Belzec, Poland, SS Guards
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, June 26, 1944, An Aerial Photograph of Camps
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Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, May 27, 1944, Jews Standing on the Platform
After Alighting from a Train
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Women and Children Deemed Unfit for Work on
Their Way to Gas Chamber 4
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, May 27, 1944, A Selection on the Platform
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Jews That Were Not Able to Work, Waiting
Before Their Execution in the Grove
Documents
• Extract from Written Evidence of Rudolf Hoess, Commander of the Auschwitz
Extermination Camp
• The Revolt at the Sobibor Extermination Camp
• Order by Himmler on July 19, 1942, for the Completion of the "Final Solution"
in the Generalgovernment
• Extract from the Commissar's Order for "Operation Barbarossa," June 6, 1941
• Extract from Guidelines by Heydrich for Higher SS and Police Leaders in the
Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union, July 2, 1941
• Extracts from a Report by Einsatzgruppe A in the Baltic Countries, 1941
• Evidence of Jewish Escapees from the Ninth Fort in Kovno on the Burning of
the Bodies
• From a Speech by Himmler Before Senior SS Officers in Poznan, October 4,
1943
• Hitler Bans Public Reference to the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
July 11, 1943
Artifacts
• A Violin Belonging to Yakov Halperin Who Played in Prisoners' Orchestras in
Plaszow, Mauthausen and Melk
• A Prisoner's Wooden Clog from Majdanek, from the State Museum of
Majdanek
• A Crushed Aluminium Bowl from Majdanek, from the State Museum of
Majdanek
• A Zyklon B Label from Majdanek, from the State Museum of Majdanek
Online Exhibitions
• The Auschwitz Album
• "Private Tolkatchev at the Gates of Hell": Majdanek and Auschwitz
Liberated - Testimony of an Artist
• The "Final Solution"
Diaries and Letters
• Chelmno, Poland, From the Will of Shmuel Srebnik
• Two Prisoners’ Testimonies from Chelmno, Poland
• From the Memoirs of Holocaust Survivor Edi Weinstein on Staying Alive in
Treblinka by Sorting Clothes