The tragedy of the Holocaust can only be comprehended in the context of loss, the obliteration of the vibrant community life of European Jewry prior to WW2. Indeed, the lives of six million Jews were destroyed, but as well their communities, their rich cultural heritage, their language, traditions and values handed down through many generations. Jewish communities had thrived for centuries in most every country of Europe, with the largest populations of Jews in the Eastern European countries of Poland, Soviet Union, Romania and Hungary. Several Jewish communities existed for millennia. Eastern European Jews spoke Yiddish, along with the language of their native country. They lived in townlets (shtetls) and villages, some with substantial Jewish populations, and maintained their family and religious traditions within the majority culture. Some younger Jews were attracted to the modern ways of the larger cities, often seeking better economic conditions, but as well educational opportunities, the strong pull of the traditional ways of life to the contrary notwithstanding. Jews in Western European countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands, however, constituted a minority and wore modern dress and often struggled with the values of the culture of their non-Jewish countrymen; i.e, to what degree should they sustain the family and religious traditions in which they were raised, or to what extent should they ty to assimilate. What is certain is there was not one way to be Jewish. Jews found their way into the trades and crafts. They were farmers, seamstresses, and factory workers. Others went into professions such as law, medicine, teaching, and politics. Some were wealthy, but many more lived in grinding poverty. Some endeavored to continue their education in the more secular universities in the large cities, and others studied in yeshivas. And there were Jews who excelled in the arts: literature, music, and fine arts. There was always a deep respect in Jewish tradition for open debate and a plurality of opinion, manifested not only in the Talmud and the Old Testament but in the myriad political and religious viewpoints and parties that are so much a part of Jewish civic and religious life. Finally, it is important to remember the concern Jewish custom has always placed on the physical and social welfare of others, “loving your fellow person as yourself”, enshrined in the Bible as well as in rabbinic teaching.
To the Nazis, however, all Jews were the same, all were likened to cultural pathogens, insidiously destroying the culture and political systems of the countries they lived in, and every aspect of Jewish life had to be eradicated along with the Jews themselves: men, women and children. In the end, the Nazis and their minions annihilated two out of every three Jews in Europe, along with their immense cultural heritage.
--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966
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Latvian Family
Front: Mother with two sons. Text on left side: 'Photo Ateller R. Isakson' Back: Handwriting in blue ink at bottom; black ink on left side
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Latvian Couple
Front: Man (left) with woman (right) seated at a table. Back: Four printed lines on bottom right side; two lines of handwriting in black ink on top; faint stamp in bottom right corner
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Bulgarian Family
Front: Hand colored of a group of five; three seated on floor, two in chairs. Back: 'FOTO - ARTA P. HRISTOFF SILISTRA' purple handstamp at top right
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Bulgarian Family
Front: Photograph of two women and a man, sitting on floor Bulmash Provided: Bulgarian Family
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Elder Couple from the Ukrainian Shtetl of Trochenbrod (Zofiowka in Polish)
Elder couple sitting and looking straight at camera.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Photograph of Bulmash family members--my great grandparents- posing for an itinerant photographer in the shtetl of Trochenbrod in Russia. Trochenbrod was part of Russia until World War I. During the years leading up to World War II it was part of Poland. Trochenbrod was unique in that it was an almost exclusively Jewish town before the war (save for the postmistress and her son), founded in 1835 as a farming community. It fell into Russian hands after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but when Nazi Germany attacked eastern Poland and Russia in 1942, all of the Jews in Trochenbrod (3500) and its sister village of Lozisht (1500) were murdered by the Nazis and Ukrainian auxiliaries in two separate actions in 1942. It is estimated that 33 Jews escaped into the forest. The town of Trochenbrod no longer exists. It remains an empty field with a dirt road in western Ukraine.
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Mein Kampf Promotional Broadside
Tan poster with a black and white photo of Adolf Hitler. titled, "Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: A promotional poster for Adolf HItler's work Mein Kampf, with Hitler's portrait prominently at top. The text celebrates the book, which sold for RM 2.85 at the time.
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Oswald Pohl Family Tree
Family tree on grey paper written in blue-gray ink with two names on the right circled in blue.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:Oswald Pohl (1892-1951). Pohl was the head of the Economic Office of the SS and ultimate overseer of the concentration camp system. He was responsible for turning his victims' gold teeth, eyeglasses, hair, etc. into cash for the SS, using the "Max Heliger" Swiss accounts. He was captured by British troops in 1946 and sentenced to death by an American military tribunal for crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes, mass murder, and crimes committed in the concentration camps. Despite repeated appeals, he was executed in 1951.
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American Isolationist Sentiment WWII: Pre-War Propaganda Stamps Advocating Non-Involvement in Europe
26 stamps of various sizes:
2019.2.33: “America First” in shape of shield
34: DEMOCRACY BEGINS AT HOME
35: MEMORIAL DAY 1941
36: 1ST BIRTHDAY
37: Benjamin Franklin quote
38: Abraham Lincoln in profile
39: HELP!
40: WAR? What For?
41: Birthright
42: DEMOCRACY BEGINS AT HOME (duplicate of .34)
43: Franklin D. Roosevelt quote
44: NO FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS
45: cartoon with two men
46: AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE
47: AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE (duplicate of .46)
48: NATIONAL UNITY?
49: NATIONAL UNITY? (duplicate of .48)
50: Thomas Jefferson quote
51: “Isn’t it great to be an American”
52: Make America Strong
53: Make America Strong (duplicate of .52)
54: John Q. Public
55: John Q. Public (duplicate of .55)
56: Remember You’re an American
57: America First
58: There’s No Way Like the American Way
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:The America First Committee, founding in 1940, was a non-interventionist group opposed to military involvement in a European War. It had opposed sending aid to Britain-Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program-fearing that it would lead inexorably to America’s involvement in yet another European war. Among the numerous luminaries supporting this movement were the Kennedys, Charles Lindbergh, and Father Coughlin. Indeed, Joseph P. Kennedy, America’s ambassador to the Court of St. James, urged appeasement with Hitler, fearing that a war with Germany could not be won. Father Coughlin, militant anti-Semitic priest who would hurl invective at Jews on his popular radio program, was also part of this movement. Charles Lindbergh’s speech in Iowa in 1941, however, elevated the taint of anti-Semitism in claiming that Jews were pushing for a war that was not in America’s national interest, alluding to their broad influence in the press, radio and cinema. Lindberg downplayed his own racist and anti-Semitic views, as well as his admiration and sympathy for Hitler, which undergirded his defeatist stance.