We remember Josephine Baker as a singer and dancer, who had to leave her native country to find freedom and fame. What fewer know is that when Nazism threatened that freedom she so treasured, Baker also turned her talents toward defending it — as a spy.

Born in East St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Baker began her career as a teenage vaudeville performer, but rose to fame after she joined an all-Black troupe traveling to Paris in 1925. Baker marveled at the freedoms she experienced in France — for example, sitting wherever she wished on a train car. …

The Nazi campaign to rid Europe of its Jews started with seizing their property and possessions. The Third Reich deprived Jewish families of the things that made their dwellings a home — clothes, books, tools, photographs, and keepsakes. Before their exile or deportation, many people buried valued items, entrusted cherished goods to neighbors, or shipped belongings abroad. Some prisoners made clothing, jewelry, spoons, and combs in the concentration camps that survivors or others carefully preserved. After the war, while most of what Jews owned was gone, some possessions were salvaged or reclaimed.

Now, as survivors age — and Holocaust denial…

In 1944, 12-year-old Steven Fenves and his family were forced into a Jewish ghetto in their hometown of Subotica, part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Neighbors awaited the family’s eviction so they could rush in and loot their belongings. Their former cook, Maris, was able to save a few treasured items. After the war, she returned those pieces — including artwork and a recipe book — to the family.

Watch Steven tell about his family’s experience

The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1940 forever changed the lives of Dutch Jews, including 17-year-old Lennie Kropveld. As persecution increased and deportations began in 1942, Lennie’s family made plans to go into hiding. Lennie planned to hide with Rabbi Yitzchak Jedwab, to whom she was engaged. Her father insisted they first marry.

Update: The Museum will temporarily close again beginning November 23 due to increasing coronavirus cases locally and nationally.

We know that the American public overwhelmingly supports and values museums. What was less clear is whether their trust in these institutions extends to this challenging time: as museums reopened their doors after unprecedented months-long closures due to the ongoing pandemic, would people come?

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum can now confirm what fellow museums have reported: Yes, the public will visit. Yes, people trust us to keep them safe. And yes, we have a role to play in these uncertain times.

During the first week our Museum was open since March, each of the 250 daily tickets was reserved — usually 2,500 people visit per day at this time of year. While most visitors were local, some visiting the nation’s capital from other regions…

Rare photographic evidence refutes denial and paves the way for new research

In an image from 1943, uniformed men relax around a table, with drinking glasses in hand, while in the presence of civilian housekeeping staff.

This scene of SS personnel at leisure is remarkable for what is just out of frame: the extermination area at the Sobibor killing center. It is only about 400 yards away from where this picture was taken and was in operation.

Johann Niemann, the deputy commandant of Sobibor, kept this photograph and 360 others with his personal possessions. Earlier this year, the Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz, a German educational nonprofit, donated them to the Museum so they…

People with physical and mental disabilities were the Nazis’ first victims of mass murder. Seeing them as a threat to “Aryan genetic purity,” the Nazis deemed these Germans “unworthy of life.” But most of these early victims of Nazism remain anonymous. Laws protecting medical records conceal the identities of many of the 250,000 people murdered by doctors and nurses in this program.

In this digital program in recognition of #DisabilityAwarenessMonth, learn the stories of some of the victims whose names a German doctor has brought to light in order to confront the past sins of his profession.

Johann Niemann joined the Nazi Party at age 18. He was not only a true believer in Nazi racist ideology, but also an opportunist seeking to rise above his humble origins. Niemann demonstrated his loyalty by becoming a guard at a concentration camp, participating in the systematic murder of people with disabilities at “euthanasia” facilities, and then facilitating the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish Jews. For this, he was rewarded with a promotion to deputy commandant of the Sobibor killing center when he was just 29.

Niemann was so proud of his “glory days” that he documented…