During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and its collaborators perpetrated the murder of six million Jews in Europe and North Africa, in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. By the end of World War II, 75% of European Jewry and one third of world Jewry had been annihilated. Yet these statistics tell just part of the story. For centuries before the Shoah, thousands of Jewish communities flourished in Europe and enjoyed a vibrant cultural, social and religious life. Some of these communities were Sephardic, most were Ashkenazi and there were also some smaller, lesser-known Jewish communities such as the Romaniotes. This glorious heritage was obliterated in the Holocaust. Most of the surviving Jews immigrated to Israel, North America, South America, South Africa, Great Britain and Australia, with only a small minority of survivors (with the exception of the Soviet Union) returning to their former homes. Following the establishment of the State of Israel most Jews from North Africa were forced to flee, and immigrated primarily to Israel and France. Thus, a history spanning centuries vanished, and only a small fragment of the prewar Jewish world remains. The central theme for Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2024 is "A Lost World: The Destruction of the Jewish Communities".
This page is dedicated to telling the stories of some of those communities, symbolic of the dynamic, multi-faceted Jewish world that was, and is no more.
The History of the Chełm Jewish Community
The History of the Dąbrowa Górnicza Jewish Community
The History of the Győr Jewish Community
The History of the Ioannina Jewish Community
The History of the Liepāja Jewish Community
The History of the Nadwórna Jewish Community
The History of the Nieśwież Jewish Community
The History of the Piotrków Trybunalski Jewish Community
The History of the Regensburg Jewish Community
The History of the Šiauliai Jewish Community
The History of the Szydłowiec Jewish Community
The History of the Wiesbaden Jewish Community
Featured Videos
Educational Materials
The Shtetl - A Learning Environment
Buczacz: One of the Untold Stories… - A Learning Environment
The Jewish Community in Salonika - A Learning Environment
Prewar Jewish Life in Zagreb
Online Exhibitions
The Story of the Jewish Community of Vilna
The Story of the Jewish Community of Bălţi
The Story of Munkács - a Jewish Community in the Carpathian Mountains
Monastir - the Story of a Sephardic Community in Macedonia
Articles
The Jews of North Africa
The Holocaust of the French Jews – A Historical Review
Jews in Albania
The Jews of Libya
Related Resources
The Shtetl: Between Myth and Reality: a Yad Vashem Podcast
Books about Communities in our Online Store
