Life in the Camps
Few of those deported to the camps survived. The few artifacts in our collection from this period, while in no way representative, allow us a glimpse of life in the camps.
The network of camps established by the Nazis was large and intricate, and included many camps with different objectives operating under different conditions, from transit and labor camps, to extermination camps. Many of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau being a prime example, were actually vast complexes comprising not only the machinery of murder, but also hundreds of sub-camps, in which thousands of Jews and other prisoners were assigned to slave labor in factories that fuelled the Nazi war effort.
Artifacts that reveal the fate of the deportees and inmates in the ghettos and camps of Transnistria
Hand-held calculator designed by Curt Herzstark from Vienna and completed while imprisoned in the Buchenwald camp
Passover Haggadah included in a diary written in Gabersdorf Labor Camp
A Carbide Lamp from the Coal Mines at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Vignettes of Camp Existence