Szymen Rozowski was the last rabbi of Eisiskes.

He was killed in September 1941 after Nazi Germany occupied the area, which is now Lithuania. And he was not the only Jew to perish in the massacre: 4,000 Jews from Eisiskes and surrounding villages were killed, ending their community’s peaceful, 250-year history.

Rabbi Rozowski’s dignified portrait is among more than 1,000 photographs from Eisiskes on display in the “Tower of Faces” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. …

Avigdor Katz might be one of the best-documented victims of the September 1941 massacres in Eisiskes, now part of Lithuania. His parents, Yitzhak and Alte Katz, owned the photography studio in the town. Most of the more than 1,000 images in the “Tower of Faces” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, were taken by the Katzes.

The photograph above was taken in 1930, when Avigdor was about four years old. Others show him held by an older sister, posing in an heirloom sled, walking proudly through the town square with a new bike. …

It can feel difficult to relate to victims and survivors of the Holocaust. It feels so distant from our lives today. But it happened just 80 years ago, to people who had a lot in common with us.

This unexpected familiarity is what makes the “Tower of Faces’’ at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, so memorable. Over three floors lit from a skylight above, the tower displays a thousand photographs from the everyday lives of one community — moments that we might see in our own family albums, or on the screens of our smartphones.

Take…

The young people posed for the photo about 80 years ago, wearing smiles or looks of grim determination. At home, Soviet-annexed Lithuania, they faced antisemitism and prohibitions on their religious and cultural activities. So they looked abroad in hopes of a better future.

Just four made it.

Of these 28 members of a Zionist youth group in Eisiskes, now part of Lithuania, four were able to escape to Palestine, which was at that time administered by Britain with immigration restrictions.

The other 24 were killed during the Holocaust, which began when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941…

We don’t know much about Sarah and Leah Michalowski.

They were part of the extended Michalowski family in Eisiskes, now part of Lithuania. We have a photo of Leah’s fourth-grade class. We have a photo of a relative who was a butcher. We have evidence of happiness, of community, of education.

Thanks to one member of the Michalowski sisters’ generation in Eisiskes, we have overwhelming evidence of their thriving Jewish community before it was destroyed.

Yaffa Eliach, granddaughter of one of the town’s photographers, spent 15 years scouring the world for photographs of her hometown, where most of the 3,500…

In a three-story tower of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, with natural light filtering and diminishing through each level, photographs of people from just one town cover the walls. Eisiskes, in present-day Lithuania, had about 3,500 Jewish residents in 1941.

That same year, Nazi Germany’s genocide of Europe’s Jews began. Germany invaded the Soviet Union with the goal to annex territory for German “Aryans,” annihilate Jews, and subjugate others based on their racial theories. The murder of six million Jews began in small towns like Eisiskes.

It didn’t look like the Holocaust we usually see portrayed…

It was very difficult to immigrate to the United States in the years before and during World War II. Congress set limits on the maximum number of immigrant visas that could be issued per year to people born in each country. These quotas were designed to limit the immigration of people considered “racially undesirable,” including southern and eastern European Jews.

Potential immigrants to the United States had to collect many types of documents, including proof of identity, police permission, medical clearances, tax documents, a ship ticket, and exit permits prior to obtaining a visa. …

Have you noticed how often people call someone they disagree with a Nazi? Or compare controversial rules and laws to the Nazi persecution of Jews? For Holocaust survivors, these comparisons are not casual references. They evoke the most traumatic moments of their lives: friends who turned on them, a cherished sibling murdered, constant fear because of their identity.

The Holocaust is human history. From it we can learn how societies fail to protect their own and the dangers of unchecked antisemitism and hate. In this digital program, hear survivors describe their personal experiences in video testimony, and explore how careless comparisons can be both painful and dangerous.