Deportations of Jews during the Holocaust

By the summer of 1944, the demise of Nazi Germany seemed inevitable.  The German Army suffered defeat after defeat, but despite this, the machinery of extermination relentlessly continued to operate at full strength.  While parts of Europe had already been liberated, the last Jews were being deported from areas still under the control of the Germans.  This exhibition tells the story of those Jews who were deported in the last months of the war - from June 1944 until April 1945 - from the Netherlands, Hungary, Greece, France, Poland, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Germany.  The Jews were loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz and to camps in Germany, sometimes just days before the liberators arrived.

The stories told here are based on material from Yad Vashem's Archives and various collections: personal documentation, testimonies, photographs, artworks, Pages of Testimony, diaries, documents, etc.  The details of the deportations and their routes can be found in the online research project, "Transports to Extinction" on the Yad Vashem website.