May 19, 1945:
- May 11: Josef Terboven, the Reich commissioner for Norway who deported many Norwegian Jews to Germany, commits suicide with dynamite.
- May 19: "Philip Bouhler, Hitler's assistant and supervisor (1939-1941) of 'mercy killings' of the hopelessly ill and insane, commits suicide with his wife as American troops attempt to arrest him."
"It was impossible to have a normal childhood in a concentration camp, but parents and other adults often sought to provide some sense of normality for the children imprisoned in the camps.
This little girl, photographed in Prague, Czechoslovakia, wears her camp uniform while holding a stuffed animal and a ball, toys she undoubtedly held dear."
"The Nazis, as part of their effort to give their crimes an aura of legality, were fanatics about paperwork.
These deportation notices, discovered in Prague, sent thousands of Czechs to their deaths.
These papers also helped convince victims that they were indeed going to be resettled in the East rather than shipped to extermination camps."
- Aliya Bet
"Aliya Bet refers to the illegal migration of Jews to Palestine before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Approximately 25 percent of the 530,000 Jewish immigrants who entered Palestine before 1948 did so by way of Aliya Bet.
"While some Jews who illegally entered Palestine took the trip on their own initiative, many journeys were arranged by Zionist organizations.
The majority of immigrants traveled by boat, although some took an overland route from Eastern Europe.
Some Jews simply remained in Palestine after entering as tourists. Regardless of the method employed, illegal Jewish immigration was challenged by the British (who governed Palestine) at every juncture.
More than 50,000 people were caught (above) and deported to detention camps in Cyprus.
"After the war, Zionists worked feverishly to relocate survivors of the Holocaust from Europe's displaced-persons camps to Palestine.
The high visibility of Aliya Bet and the international pressure it brought to bear were instrumental in the creation of a Jewish state."
"Nazi doctors took unconscionable advantage of the human guinea pigs at their disposal.
This woman, a concentration-camp survivor, was the victim of horrific 'experimental' operations upon her breasts.
Possibly, the doctors were testing a new treatment for cancer or were interested in various aspects of the woman's reproductive system."
"The chief rabbi of Rome, Dr. David Prato (left), discusses the problems of displaced European Jews in Italy with the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herman Herzog, and a representative of the European headquarters of the American Joint Distribution Committee, Arthur Greenleigh.
Although only 40 percent of the displaced persons who migrated to the U.S. after the war were Jews, Americans assumed that Jews comprised the vast majority and, in general, opposed this immigration.
But once it became clear that most Jewish displaced persons wanted to go to Israel, American opinion began to favor Jewish emigration from Europe.
A blunt analysis of this situation was made by postwar British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin:
The Americans were enthusiastic about opening Palestine to the Jews because they didn't want to have many of them in New York."