United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Collections

Collections

The USHMM has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Holocaust-related materials in the world, separated into eight collection divisions: Archives, Arts and Artifacts, Film and Video, Music, Oral History, Photograph, Management, and Conservation. These collections cover a wide subject area including:

• Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
• The rise of power of the Nazi movement in Germany and Austria
• The flight of European refugees from Nazi Germany and refugee communities around the world
• Nazi racial science and the propaganda campaign against Jews, Roma and Sinti, and the mentally and physically handicapped
• Nazi anti-Jewish policy in the 1930s, from the boycott through Kristallnacht
• Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war
• The invasion and occupation of eastern and western Europe
• The roundup, deportation, and resettlement of European Jews
• The mass shooting conducted by Einsatzgruppen
• Ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers
• Nazi collaborators and satellite states
• Resistance, rescue, and life in hiding during the Holocaust
• The liberation of Europe and the disclosure of Nazi concentration camps
• The war crimes trials
• The displaced persons camps
• Legal and illegal immigration to Palestine
• Postwar immigration to the Americas
• Holocaust assets and restitution
• Holocaust memorial and commemoration

The Museum’s holdings include art, books, pamphlets, advertisements, maps, film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies, music and sound recordings, furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, tools, microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records, personal effects, personal papers, photographs, photo albums, and textiles. This information can be accessed through online databases or by visiting the USHMM. Researchers from all over the world come to the USHMM Library and Archives and the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors.