THE YOUNG JEWISH WOMAN WHO BLEW UP NAZIS By Dan Peleschuk

 

THE YOUNG JEWISH WOMAN WHO BLEW UP NAZIS

By Dan Peleschuk

In theory, the plan was simple: Sneak into the bakery, where thousands of loaves of bread were being prepared for German prisoners of war, and lace them all with arsenic. For the rest of the world, the war had ended. But for steely Jewish 20-something Vitka Kempner and her co-conspirators, it wouldn’t end until every last Nazi was dead.

Ultimately, the scheme failed. Sort of. Despite the fact that some 2,280 inmates fell ill, none of them died. Together, with wartime partisan leader Abba Kovner, her future husband, Kempner quickly ditched Europe for then-British Palestine, where they’d spend the rest of their lives in relative peace. And though morally questionable, the 1946 poisoning episode in Nuremberg — the final in a short but storied career packed with brazen resistance — highlighted her dedication to fighting for an oppressed people.

But how did a young woman from provincial Poland morph into one of the war’s most notable resistance fighters? Firsthand experience with the murderous regime itself: Soon after the Wehrmacht entered her hometown of Kalisz in 1939, they rounded up its Jews inside a local church to prepare them for expulsion from the city. Kempner said she witnessed the act herself: “I decided the same night that I cannot stand it — the humiliation,” she said in a 1996 interview.

jewish_woman1

         

Abba Kovner

Hearing rumors that Jews were leaving for Palestine from Vilnius, Lithuania, she escaped to the Baltic city (then a hub of Eastern European Jewish culture) through bitter cold and against her father’s recommendation. That, Kempner said, was her “first act of resistance.” But as the Soviets arrived from the east to occupy the small country, thereby ending its several-decade stretch of independence, her foreign travel plans were scrapped. Then came the Germans again, trundling toward Moscow during their invasion of the Soviet Union.

Amid the multiple occupations endured by Eastern Europeans throughout World War II, the Jews were in a particularly precarious position. Already fighting for their own survival, local Jews — who experts say weren’t likely to have close neighborly relations with Lithuanians — were largely on their own as the latter focused on their own fight to regain independence. “I’m not sure they could rely on cross-ethnic networks,” says Roger Petersen, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies ethnic conflict.

WHEN THE SOVIET ARMY FINALLY LIBERATED THE CITY IN MID-1944, SHE AND HER FELLOW COMBATANTS WERE THERE TO GREET THEM.

In early 1942, the 20-year-old Kempner joined a Zionist youth group under the United Partisan Organization (FPO) resistance movement, led by Kovner; as the city’s Jews were herded into a ghetto, they began taking action. Sneaking in and out of the neighborhood, they smuggled weapons, trained partisans and built bombs. That led to Kempner’s first real act of resistance: Ferrying out homemade explosives from the ghetto, and eventually affixing them to a Nazi train line in what’s believed to be one of the earliest acts of anti-Nazi sabotage on the eastern front. As Kempner later recalled, the explosion took her enemies — who reportedly thought the Poles had done it — by surprise: “The Germans were very astonished that in Vilnius there were partisans.”

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German soldiers surrender in Vilnius in 1944.

As the Nazis cracked down more heavily on Vilnius, eventually liquidating its ghetto, the FPO began funneling fighters out to a forest outside the capital, from where the partisans staged a broader resistance campaign. According to the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, they blew up five bridges, destroyed 40 train carriages and more than 180 miles of tracks, killing 212 enemy soldiers in the process. It was Kempner who led the final batch of fighters into the woods. When the Soviet army finally liberated the city in mid-1944, she and her fellow combatants were there to greet them. It’s said that a Yiddish folk song was dedicated to her exploits.

Then came the next phase of hers and Kovner’s activities. Now free of Nazi tyranny, but still facing heavy-handed Soviet rule, the Zionist activists began organizing an exodus of their peers from Eastern Europe — where they believed there was no future for Jews — to Palestine. But they had darker intentions: Parallel to that effort, Kovner formed a unit called “Nakam,” which aimed to exact revenge against Nazis, even long after the war had ended. Think Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but in real life. The Nuremberg bread plot was actually only set in motion when the group realized they wouldn’t quite be able to fulfill their real goal: To kill 6 million Germans by poisoning the water supply of Germany’s major cities.

But after authorities grew wise to the Nuremberg plot, Kempner and Kovner reached the end of their violent resistance. After moving to Palestine, they married and started a family, while Kempner pursued a career in child-focused special education. Upon her death in 2012, the chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, called Kempner’s story “one of struggle, courage and determination, not only to survive but to triumph.”

HANNAH SZENES ,PARATROOPER IN WW II EXECUTED BY NAZIS 1944 NOVEMBER 7

HANNAH SZENES ,PARATROOPER IN WW II EXECUTED BY NAZIS 1944 NOVEMBER 7

Hannah Szenes (often anglicized as Hannah Senesh or Chanah Senesh; Hebrew: חנה סנש‎; Hungarian: Szenes Anikó; July 17, 1921 – November 7, 1944) was a poet and Special Operations Executive (SOE) paratrooper. She was one of 37 Jewish parachutists of Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British Army into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.[1]

Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, then imprisoned and tortured, but refused to reveal details of her mission. She was eventually tried and executed by firing squad.[1] She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where her poetry is widely known and the headquarters of the Zionist youth movements Israel Hatzeira, a kibbutz and several streets are named after her.
Early life[edit source]

Hannah Szenes and her brother, Budapest, circa 1924
Szenes was born on July 17, 1921, to an assimilated Jewish family in Hungary. Her father, Béla, a journalist and playwright, died when Hannah was six years old. She continued to live with her mother, Katalin, and her brother, György.

She enrolled in a Protestant private school for girls that also accepted Catholic and Jewish pupils; most of those of the Jewish faith had to pay three times the amount Catholics paid. However, Szenes only had to pay twice the regular tuition because she was considered a "Gifted Student". This, along with the realization that the situation of the Jews in Hungary was becoming precarious, prompted Szenes to embrace Zionism, and she joined Maccabea, a Hungarian Zionist students organization.

Immigrating to Nahalal[edit source]

Hannah Senesh, circa 1939

Szenes graduated in 1939 and decided to emigrate to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine in order to study in the Girls' Agricultural School at Nahalal. In 1941, she joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam and then joined the Haganah, the paramilitary group that laid the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1943, she enlisted in the British Army in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class and began her training in Egypt as a paratrooper for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Arrest and torture[edit source]
On March 14, 1944, she and colleagues Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein[1] were parachuted into Yugoslavia and joined a partisan group. After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous.[1]

Szenes continued on and headed for the Hungarian border. At the border, she and her companions were arrested by Hungarian gendarmes, who found her British military transmitter, used to communicate with the SOE and other partisans. She was taken to a prison, stripped, tied to a chair, then whipped and clubbed for three days. She lost several teeth as a result of the beating.[2]

The guards wanted to know the code for her transmitter so they could find out who the parachutists were and trap others. Transferred to a Budapest prison, Szenes was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, but only revealed her name and refused to provide the transmitter code, even when her mother was also arrested. They threatened to kill her mother if she did not cooperate, but she refused.[1]

While in prison, Szenes used a mirror to flash signals out of the window to prisoners in other cells and communicated using large cut-out letters that she placed in her cell window one at a time and by drawing the Magen David in the dust.

Trial and execution[edit source]

She was tried for treason on October 28, 1944. There was an eight-day postponement to give the judges more time to find a verdict, followed by another postponement, this one because of the appointment of a new Judge Advocate. She was executed by a German firing squad on November 7, 1944.[3]

She kept diary entries until her last day. One of them read: "In the month of July, I shall be twenty-three/I played a number in a game/The dice have rolled. I have lost," and another: "I loved the warm sunlight."[1]

Szenes's gravestone
Her diary was published in Hebrew in 1946. Her remains were brought to Israel in 1950 and buried in the cemetery on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem. Her tombstone was brought to Israel in November 2007 and placed in Sdot Yam.[4]

During the trial of Rudolf Kastner, Hannah's mother testified that during the time her daughter was imprisoned, Kastner's people had advised her not to obtain a lawyer for her daughter. Further, she recalled a conversation with Kastner after the war, telling him, "I don't say that you could have saved my daughter Hannah, but that you didn't try – it makes it harder for me that nothing was done."[5]

After the Cold War, a Hungarian military court officially exonerated her. Her kin in Israel were informed on November 5, 1993.

Poetry, songs and plays[edit source]

A poster in memory of Hannah Szenes

Memorial to Hannah Szenes in Budapest
Szenes was a poet and playwright, writing both in Hungarian and Hebrew. The following are four of her better known poems. The best known of these is "A Walk to Caesarea", commonly known as Eli, Eli ("My God, My God"). The well-known melody was composed by David Zahavi. Many singers have sung it, including Ofra Haza, Regina Spektor, and Sophie Milman. It was used to close some versions of the film Schindler's List:

My God, My God, I pray that these things never end,
The sand and the sea,
The rustle of the waters,
Lightning of the Heavens,
The prayer of Man.[6]
אלי, אלי, שלא יגמר לעולם
החול והים
רשרוש של המים
ברק השמים
תפילת האדם
Another of her poems begins,

A voice called, and I went.
I went, for a voice called.
The following lines are from the last poem she wrote, "Ashrei Hagafrur", after she was parachuted into a partisan camp in Yugoslavia:

,אַשְׁרֵי הַגַּפְרוּר שֶׁנִּשְׂרַף וְהִצִּית לֶהָבוֹת
.אַשְׁרֵי הַלְּהָבָה שֶׁבָּעֲרָה בְּסִתְרֵי לְבָבוֹת
...אַשְׁרֵי הַלְבָבוֹת שֶׁיָדְעוּ לַחְדוֹל בְּכָבוֹד
.אַשְׁרֵי הַגַּפְרוּר שֶׁנִּשְׂרַף וְהִצִּית לֶהָבוֹת
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honour's sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.[7]
The following lines were found in Hannah's death cell after her execution:

One—two—three ... eight feet long,
Two strides across, the rest is dark ...
Life hangs over me like a question mark.
One—two—three ... maybe another week,
Or next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel, is very near.
I could have been twenty-three next July;
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast. I lost.[8]
In popular culture[edit source]

The Legend of Hannah Senesh, a play about Szenes authored by Aaron Megged, was produced and directed by Laurence Merrick at the Princess Theatre in Los Angeles in 1964. Szenes was played by Joan Huntington.
Hanna's War, a film about Szenes's life directed by Menahem Golan, was released in 1988. Szenes was portrayed by Maruschka Detmers.
Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, directed by Roberta Grossman, is a documentary film that recounts the events of Hannah's life. It was released in 2008.[9]
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IRENA SENDLER SAVED MANY CHILD JEWS DURING WW II CAMP 15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008)

IRENA SENDLER SAVED  MANY  

CHILD  JEWS  DURING WW II CAMP 

15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008)

ஐரினா செண்ட்லெர் என்ற நர்ஸ் சுமார் 2500 யூத குழந்தைகளை காப்பாற்றி புனர்வாழ்வு அளித்துள்ளார் 
இவர் ஒவ்வொரு குழந்தையையும் சின்ன பையில் போட்டு காப்பாற்றியது குறிப்பிட தக்கது

Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre "Jolanta" (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008),[1] was a Polish nurse, humanitarian, and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II, and was head of the children's section of Żegota,[2][3] the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Polish: Rada Pomocy Żydom), which was active from 1942 to 1945.

Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, saving those children from the Holocaust.[4] With the exception of diplomats who issued visas to help Jews flee Nazi-occupied Europe, Sendler saved more Jews than any other individual during the Holocaust.[5]

The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities and she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.[6] Late in life, she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, for her wartime humanitarian efforts.

Sendler moved to Warsaw prior to the outbreak of World War II, and worked for municipal Social Welfare departments.[8] She began aiding Jews soon after the German invasion in 1939,[8] by leading a group of co-workers who created more than 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families.[14] This work was done at huge risk, as — since October 1941 — giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household. Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe in which such a death penalty was applied.[15]

Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto

In August 1943, Sendler, by then known by her nom de guerre Jolanta, was nominated by Żegota, the underground organization also known as the Council to Aid Jews, to head its Jewish children's section.[14] As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the Ghetto.[16] During these visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people.[17] Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions within the Ghetto, Sendler and her co-workers smuggled out babies and small children, sometimes in ambulances and trams, sometimes hiding them in packages and suitcases, and using various other means.[18]

Jewish children were placed with Polish Christian families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate.[19] Sendler worked closely with a group of about 30 volunteers, mostly women, who included Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a resistance fighter and writer, and Matylda Getter, Mother Provincial of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary.[20] The children were given fake Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested.[21] Sendler was determined, however, to prevent the children from losing their Jewish identities. She kept careful documentation listing the children's fake Christian names, their given names, and their current location.[21]

"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory." (Irena Sendler)

According to American historian Debórah Dwork, Sendler was "the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved those 2,500 Jewish children."[22] About 400 of the children were directly smuggled out by Sendler herself.[22] She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families when the war was over.[11]
In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo and severely tortured. As they ransacked her house, Sendler tossed the lists of children to her friend, who hid the list in her loose clothing.[21] Should the Gestapo access this information, all the children would be compromised. Thankfully, her friend was never searched. The Gestapo beat Sendler brutally upon her arrest, fracturing her feet and legs in the process. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued, and was sentenced to death by firing squad. Żegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution.[17] After her escape, she hid from the Germans, but returned to Warsaw under a fake name and continued her involvement with the Żegota.[8] During the Warsaw Uprising, she worked as a nurse in a public hospital, where she hid five Jews.[8] She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.[8]

After the war, she and her co-workers gathered all of the children's records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Żegota colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing.[17][8]

Recognition and remembrance[edit]

Sendler with some people she saved as children, Warsaw, 2005
In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations[30][31] and a tree was planted in her honor at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous.[32] However, there was no further public recognition of her wartime resistance and humanitarian work until after the end of communist rule in Poland.
In 1991, Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel.[33] On 12 June 1996, she was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.[34][35] She received a higher version of this award, the Commander's Cross with Star, on 7 November 2001.[36]

Nevertheless, Irena Sendler's achievements remained largely unknown to the world until 1999, when students at a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, along with their teacher Norman Conard, produced a play based on their research into her life story, which they called Life in a Jar. It was a surprising success, staged over 200 times in the US and abroad, and significantly contributed to publicising Sendler's history worldwide.[37] In March 2002, B’nai Jehudah Temple of Kansas City presented Sendler, Conard and the students who produced the play with its annual award “for contributions made to saving the world” (Tikkun Olam Award).[38] The play was adapted for television as The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009), directed by John Kent Harrison, in which Sendler was portrayed by actress Anna Paquin.[39][40][41]

In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime efforts.[42][43] On 10 November 2003, she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration,[44] and the Polish-American award, the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart", given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C.[45]

In 2006, Polish NGOs Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej and Stowarzyszenie Dzieci Holocaustu, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Life in a Jar Foundation established the "Irena Sendler's Award: For Repairing the World" (pl:Nagroda imienia Ireny Sendlerowej „Za naprawianie świata”), awarded to Polish and American teachers.[46][47] The Life in a Jar Foundation is a foundation dedicated to promoting the attitude and message of Irena Sendler.[47]

In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.[nb 1][48][30][49][50] On 14 March 2007, Sendler was honoured by the Polish Senate,[51] and a year later, on 30 July, by the American Congress.[52] On 11 April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile; at that time she was the oldest recipient of the award.[53] In 2007 she became an honorary citizen of the cities of Warsaw and Tarczyn.[citation needed]

On the occasion of the Order of the Smile, award she mentioned that the award from children is among her favorite ones, along with the Righteous among the Nations award and the letter from the Pope.[54]

Irena Sendler in 2005

In April 2009 she was posthumously granted the Humanitarian of the Year award from The Sister Rose Thering Endowment,[55] and in May 2009, Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award.[56]
Around this time American filmmaker Mary Skinner filmed a documentary, Irena Sendler, In the Name of Their Mothers (Polish: Dzieci Ireny Sendlerowej), featuring the last interviews Sendler gave before her death. The film made its national U.S. broadcast premiere through KQED Presents on PBS in May 2011 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day[57] and went on to receive several awards, including the 2012 Gracie Award for outstanding public television documentaries.[58]
In 2013 the walkway in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw was named after Irena Sendler.[59]

In 2010 a memorial plaque commemorating Sendler was added to the wall of 2 Pawińskiego Street in Warsaw – a building in which she worked from 1932 to 1935. In 2015 she was honoured with another memorial plaque at 6 Ludwiki Street, where she lived from the 1930s to 1943.[60]
Several schools in Poland have also been named after her.[61]
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CHIUNE SUGIHARA , SAVED JEWS MAXIMUM OF 40,000

CHIUNE SUGIHARA , SAVED JEWS MAXIMUM OF 40,000


நாஜிக்களிடம் இருந்து 40 ,௦௦௦ யூதர்களை கைப்பற்றிய மனிதர் ! யூதர்களுக்கு ஜப்பான் விசா கொடுத்து யூதர்களை ஜப்பானுக்கு கடத்தியவர்
Chiune "Sempo" Sugihara (杉原 千畝 Sugihara Chiune, 1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986) was a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped between 10,000 and 40,000 Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas so that they could travel to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family's lives. The Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland or Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania. In 1985, Israel named him to the Righteous Among the Nations for his actions, the only Japanese national to be so honored.

Resignation[edit]

Sugihara was reassigned to Königsberg, East Prussia[10] before serving as a Consul General in Prague, Czechoslovakia, from March 1941 to late 1942 and in the legation in Bucharest, Romania from 1942 to 1944. When Soviet troops entered Romania, they imprisoned Sugihara and his family in a POW camp for eighteen months. They were released in 1946 and returned to Japan through the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railroad and Nakhodka port. In 1947, the Japanese foreign office asked him to resign, nominally due to downsizing. Some sources, including his wife Yukiko Sugihara, have said that the Foreign Ministry told Sugihara he was dismissed because of "that incident" in Lithuania.[10][12]

Later life[edit]

Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture with his wife and 3 sons. To support his family he took a series of menial jobs, at one point selling light bulbs door to door. He suffered a personal tragedy in 1947 when his youngest son, Haruki, died at the age of seven, shortly after their return to Japan.[6] In 1949 they had one more son, Nobuki, who is the last son alive representing the Chiune Sugihara Family, residing in Belgium. He later began to work for an export company as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Utilizing his command of the Russian language, Sugihara went on to work and live a low-key existence in the Soviet Union for sixteen years, while his family stayed in Japan.

Chiune and his son Nobuki in Israel, December, 1969

In 1968, Jehoshua Nishri, an economic attaché to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and one of the Sugihara beneficiaries, finally located and contacted him. Nishri had been a Polish teen in the 1940s. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara beneficiaries began to lobby for his inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial.

In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations (Hebrew: חסידי אומות העולם ‎‎, translit. Khasidei Umot ha-Olam) by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and youngest son Nobuki accepted the honor on his behalf. That same year, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked his reasons for issuing visas to the Jews. Sugihara explained that the refugees were human beings, and that they simply needed help.

Sep 6 1941 – All Jews over 6 years old in Nazi-occupied territories ordered to wear the yellow Star of David.

Sep 6 1941 – All Jews over 6 years old in Nazi-occupied territories ordered to wear the yellow Star of David.

Holocaust Badges

The Jews of Europe were legally compelled to wear badges or distinguishing garmets (e.g., pointed hats) at least as far back as the 13th century. 

A yellow Star of David outlined with black
with an Hebraic styled J, an
abbreviation for Jew.BELGIUM

This practice continued throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissnace, but was largely phased out during the 17th and 18th centuries.

A yellow Star of David outlined with black
 with the Dutch word for Jew written
in Hebraic style.NETHERLAND

 With the coming of the French Revolution and the emancipation of western European Jews throughout the 19th century, the wearing of Jewish badges was abolished in Western Europe.

A yellow Star of David outlined with black
 with the French word forJew written
in Hebraic style.FRANCE

The Nazis resurrected this practice as part of their persecutions during the Holocaust. 

Bulgaria A gold Star of David outlined
with black with a black and yellow button.

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, first recommended that Jews should wear identifying badges following the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938.

Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Greece,
 Lithuania and Latvia Yellow Star of David

 Shortly after the invasion of Poland in September 1939, local German authorities began introducing mandatory wearing of badges. 

Germany, Alsace, Bohemia and Moravia A yellow
Star of David outlined in black with the German word for
 Jew written in Hebraic style.

By the end of 1939, all Jews in the newly-acquired Polish territories were required to wear badges.










 Upon invading the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Germans again applied this requirement to newly-conquered lands. Throughout the rest of 1941 and 1942, Germany, 

Greece, Serbia; cities of Belgrade and Sofia Yellow armband.

its satellite states and western occupied territories adopted regulations stipulating that Jews wear identifying badges.









Only in Denmark, where King Christian X is said to have threatened to wear the badge himself if it were imposed on his country’s Jewish population, were the Germans unable to impose such a regulation.

The German government’s policy of forcing Jews to wear identifying badges was but one of many psychological tactics aimed at isolating and dehumanizing 

the Jews of Europe, directly marking them as being different (i.e., inferior) to everyone else. 










It allowed for the easier facilitation of their separation from society and subsequent ghettoization, 

Romania A yellow Star of David on a circular black background.

which ultimately led to the deportation and murder of 6 million Jews.


















 Those who failed or refused to wear the badge risked severe punishment, including death. For example, 

the Jewish Council (Judenrat) of the ghetto in Bialystok, Poland announced that “… 














the authorities have warned that severe punishment – up to and including death by shooting –

 is in store for Jews who do not wear the yellow badge on back and front.”













Nazi propaganda leaflet: "Whoever bears this sign is an enemy of our people"

The design of the badge varied from region to region. Below, find examples of badges worn in different European countries under Nazi rule.