Turning Points · September 1, 1939
The persecution began earlier. The scale began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and began the occupation of Europe's largest Jewish community.
This page follows two clocks through the same two days: one in Poland, one in Washington. Every figure on it is sourced, and where the historians disagree we show the disagreement.
Project Witness records and preserves Holocaust survivor testimony. This page is free to use, in classrooms and out of them.
Written for readers 14 and up. Some passages describe bombing, shootings and the deaths of civilians.
Two clocks, six hours apart
Warsaw
Friday, September 1
4:30 to 5:40 a.m.
Washington
Thursday, August 31
10:30 to 11:40 p.m.
1 of 9
Warsaw: Friday, September 1, 4:30 to 5:40 a.m. Washington: Thursday, August 31, 10:30 to 11:40 p.m.
The sources disagree on this time, so the dials show the whole span.
In Poland. Wieluń. The first bombs fall on a town with no military target. The time is disputed: as early as 4:30 in accounts collected by the historian Tadeusz Olejnik, 4:40 in those of the town’s inhabitants and Polish border guards, 5:40 in Luftwaffe documents and in the 2011 finding of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.
In Washington. It is still Thursday night. The first word will reach the President at 2:50 a.m.
Sources: ENRS, Bombing of Wieluń; Piątkowski, in Polish; National Archives, the bedside note
Warsaw: Friday, September 1, about 4:45 a.m. Washington: Thursday, August 31, about 10:45 p.m.
In Poland. Danzig. The battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens fire on the Polish garrison at the Westerplatte, the moment usually given as the opening of the Second World War.
Warsaw: Friday, September 1, 8:50 a.m. Washington: Friday, September 1, 2:50 a.m.
In Poland. The raid on Wieluń goes on until about 2 p.m.
In Washington. The telephone wakes the President. Ambassador Biddle in Poland, through Ambassador Bullitt in Paris: Germany has invaded Poland, and four cities are being bombed.
Sources: National Archives, the bedside note; ENRS, Bombing of Wieluń
Warsaw: Friday, September 1, 9:05 a.m. Washington: Friday, September 1, 3:05 a.m.
In Washington. In bed, he writes it down: the time of the call, who it came from, and his order that all Navy ships and Army commands be notified by radio at once. He signs it “In bed 3:05 a.m. Sept 1 ’39 FDR.”
Sources: National Archives, the bedside note
Warsaw: Friday, September 1, about 2:00 p.m. Washington: Friday, September 1, about 8:00 a.m.
In Poland. The raid on Wieluń ends. About 70 percent of the town is destroyed, the synagogue and the hospital among the ruins. Investigators could later confirm 127 dead; estimates run from several hundred to 2,000.
Sources: ENRS, Bombing of Wieluń; Dzieje.pl, in Polish
Warsaw: Sunday, September 3, 1:00 a.m. Washington: Saturday, September 2, 7:00 p.m.
In Poland. Meanwhile German troops are driving on Warsaw. They reach it within about a week of the invasion.
In Washington. Five guests come for the evening: cocktails the President mixes himself, dinner, then poker in his second-floor study. The White House usher logs them from 7:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
Sources: FDR Library, September 2; John Q. Barrett, The Jackson List; USHMM, Invasion of Poland
Warsaw: Sunday, September 3, about 4:00 a.m. Washington: Saturday, September 2, about 10:00 p.m.
In Poland. On the roads east, hundreds of thousands of people, Jews and non-Jews, are fleeing ahead of the German army.
In Washington. A cable from Ambassador Kennedy in London is delivered. The President reads it and tells the table, “Gentlemen, by noon tomorrow, war will have been declared.”
Sources: John Q. Barrett, The Jackson List; USHMM, Jewish refugees
Warsaw: Sunday, September 3, 5:45 a.m. Washington: Saturday, September 2, 11:45 p.m.
In Poland. Behind the front, the Einsatzgruppen have followed the army in. In these first weeks they shoot thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites.
In Washington. The game ends. His doctor had called time at 11:00; the President objected and got until 11:45.
Sources: John Q. Barrett, The Jackson List; USHMM, Einsatzgruppen
Warsaw: Monday, September 4, 3:00 a.m. Washington: Sunday, September 3, 9:00 p.m.
In Washington. Britain and France have declared war on Germany. On the radio, from 9:00 to 9:12 p.m., the President tells the country, “This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.”
Sources: FDR Library, September 3; Miller Center, Fireside Chat 14
Nine records, from the last ordinary day to the first weeks of the occupation. Move through them with the arrows, the numbered rail, or the arrow keys. Open any image to read its full caption, its source and its rights.
Turning Points · Episode 01
The invasion of Poland put Europe’s largest Jewish community, about three million people, in the path of the German state. Western and central Poland were occupied within weeks; the Soviet-occupied east followed in June 1941. This is the day the scale of the Holocaust changed, told through two clocks running at once.
On August 31, 1939, Poland was a country of thirty-five million people, and the largest Jewish community in Europe lived inside it. In Washington a secretary made a telephone call about a social evening.
Warsaw
Poland held the largest Jewish community in Europe: about three million people in 1933, roughly one in ten. Germany had about 525,000. That ratio is the whole reason this date matters.
Context: Keep the arithmetic in view. Everything that follows in this series happens to a community of this size.
Research record F004 · F005 · F006
The Jewish quarter of Warsaw before the war. Roughly three million Jews lived in Poland, about one person in ten.
Willem van de Poll · CC0 Nationaal Archief, The Hague · Public domainAugust 31, 1939. The country that existed the day before Phase The last ordinary day. Event 1 of 9.
The last ordinary day
Poland held the largest Jewish community in Europe: about three million people in 1933, roughly one in ten. Germany had about 525,000. That ratio is the whole reason this date matters.
Context: Keep the arithmetic in view. Everything that follows in this series happens to a community of this size.
Research record: F004 · F005 · F006
Image: The Jewish quarter of Warsaw before the war. Roughly three million Jews lived in Poland, about one person in ten. Willem van de Poll · CC0 Nationaal Archief, The Hague · Public domain
The last ordinary day
The President's appointments secretary telephoned Solicitor General Robert Jackson, who was visiting his mother in Jamestown, and asked him back to Washington for a social evening on the Saturday. Jackson agreed, and left Jamestown the next evening.
Context: Jackson would open the case against the major war criminals at Nuremberg six years later. In August 1939 he was a lawyer being called back from a visit to his mother.
Research record: F018
Image: Robert H. Jackson being congratulated on becoming Solicitor General. He held that office on September 1, 1939. Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection · Public domain
Two days
Some of the first bombs of the war fell on Wieluń, a town of sixteen thousand with no significant military target. They destroyed about seventy percent of it, the hospital and the synagogue among the ruins.
Context: The exact minute is disputed. Polish accounts give 4:40 in the morning. Luftwaffe documents and other testimony give 5:40, and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, in an investigation opened in 2004 and closed in 2011, also put it at 5:40. The popular claim that Wieluń was struck five minutes before the Westerplatte rests on the earlier reading, so this page does not repeat it as settled. The death toll is unsettled too: a published range runs from 700 to 2,000, while the Institute of National Remembrance could confirm only 127 dead and said the true figure could have been several hundred.
Research record: F011 · F012 · F013 · F014 · F015
Image: The synagogue of Wieluń, destroyed in that raid. The photograph is dated only to 1939 and the photographer is unknown, so we cannot say it was taken on the first morning. Photographer unknown · Public domain Wikimedia Commons, from a Polish postcard series · Public domain
Two days
The battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish garrison at the Westerplatte. This is the moment usually given as the opening of the Second World War.
Context: Many of the photographs of these weeks were taken by the invading side.
Research record: F001 · F002
Image: The Schleswig-Holstein firing, September 1939. The record gives only the month, and the photograph has been captioned both as the Westerplatte and as Gdynia. Its shelling of the Westerplatte on September 1 is usually given as the opening of the war. Photographer unknown · Public domain Reproduced in Apoloniusz Zawilski, Bitwy Polskiego Września (1972) · Public domain
Two days
Six hours behind Warsaw the telephone rang at ten to three in the morning. Roosevelt ordered the Navy and Army notified at once, then wrote down what had happened, in bed, at 3:05.
Context: Read the document itself in the evidence viewer. The times, the two ambassadors and the order to the Navy are legible in Roosevelt’s own hand. The reading of the handwriting given here is ours.
Research record: F016 · F017
Image: Roosevelt wrote this in bed fifteen minutes after being woken. It records the time the call came, who it came from, and the order he gave. Franklin Delano Roosevelt · Public domain U.S. National Archives and Records Administration · Public domain
Two days
Jackson drove alone through the night to Washington. Inside Poland, hundreds of thousands of people were moving the other way. Both journeys happened in the same twenty-four hours. One was written down.
Context: About 300,000 Jewish refugees from the German zone ended up in Soviet-held territory after the partition. More than half of those who got out of Poland altogether went to Romania and Hungary, and 15,000 to Lithuania.
Research record: F007 · F008
Image: The invasion, September 1939. Associated Press photographer · Public domain Imperial War Museum · Public domain
Two days
Five guests, cocktails mixed by the President, dinner, then poker in the second-floor study. His doctor said the cards would stop at eleven. The President overruled him and got until quarter to twelve.
Context: We know all of this because it was recorded and because a scholar went looking. The details of the evening come from John Q. Barrett’s work on Robert Jackson and from the White House Usher’s Log. For Wieluń, bombed the day before, even the hour of the first bombs is disputed.
Research record: F018 · F019
Image: Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, the President's doctor. He announced that the cards would stop at eleven, and was overruled. Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection · Public domain
What followed
Britain and France declared war. That evening Roosevelt told the country it would stay neutral, and added that he could not ask any American to be neutral in thought.
Context: The United States entered the war on December 8, 1941, twenty-seven months later. Everything this series covers next happened inside that gap.
Research record: F020 · F021
Image: Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador in London. His cable reached the White House while the game was still going. Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection · Public domain
What followed
The Einsatzgruppen followed the army in and killed from the start. Forced labor and the marking of Jews began within two months. The belief that the murder of Polish Jews began in 1941 is simply wrong.
Context: The first ghetto followed within months, which is where Episode 02 picks up. What made all of it possible was the arithmetic of the first day.
Research record: F003 · F009 · F010
Image: Jews put to forced clearing work in Warsaw. A German propaganda-company photograph, autumn 1939. Schulze · CC BY-SA 3.0 de Bundesarchiv · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
This episode covers August 31 to early October 1939. It is not a history of the whole war, and it is not the story of the ghettos or the killing centers, which come later in this series. It asks one question: what changed on the first day, and how do we know? Figures for the Jewish population of Poland are 1933 figures published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and are given here as the pre-war order of magnitude, not as a census taken on the morning of the invasion.
There is an easy and dishonest version of this story: they played cards in Washington while Poland burned. We are not making that point, because it is bad history. Nobody at that table on September 2, 1939, knew what was coming, and Roosevelt was awake and working at three in the morning.
The true point is harder and it is about the record itself. We know that the President mixed the cocktails, who won at cards, what time his doctor tried to stop the game and how late it went on. We cannot even say how many people died at Wieluń that first morning: investigators could confirm 127, and published estimates run to 2,000. One archive was kept immaculately. The other was destroyed along with the people in it, and part of the work of Holocaust education is to notice that asymmetry rather than mistake it for a difference in what mattered.
That is also why the bombing of Wieluń matters so much here. It fell on a town with no military target, and it destroyed the synagogue. The war and the destruction of Jewish Poland begin on the same day.
Five people whose testimony is in the Project Witness library were in Poland in September 1939. Each passage was checked against the recording by two independent transcriptions and the caption track. Play this moment opens the testimony at the second the passage begins.
In Radomsk, the war broke out on the 1st of September, 1939. The 1st was on a Friday. ... About five o'clock in the morning, we heard explosions. ... And we heard the radio already. The German attack crossed the border already.
Yitzchak, born in Radomsko in 1922 and home from his yeshiva in Krakow when the war began, on the first morning. Project Witness testimony. Watch the full testimony. This passage begins at 23:12: Yitzchak, Project Witness
When the war broke out, we were hiding in the basement, which had a wooden floor that swayed every time there was a bombardment, and it didn't offer too much of protection.
Isakhar Dov Lederman, who grew up in Warsaw, on the first days of the bombing. Project Witness testimony. Watch the full testimony. This passage begins at 5:55: Isakhar Dov Lederman, Project Witness
And everything has been going down. They burned, you know, the shul. I've seen the shul, how she's burning all the night. A big, nice shul. And the whole town was very, very upset, you know, because something like this, you know, we never know about it. All sky was red, red from the, from the burning.
Dov Landau, from Brzesko, east of Krakow, on the night the town's main synagogue burned, a week before Rosh Hashanah 1939. Project Witness testimony. Watch the full testimony. This passage begins at 19:50: Dov Landau, Project Witness
And then the Germans really surrounded Warsaw and Warsaw was under siege, and we were there. And for about three way- weeks, about close to three weeks, till Erev Sukkos, Warsaw was bombarded, under bombardment not only from the air, but also from artillery. And, but when the a- Erev Sukkos, the Poles really finally realized that they cannot do it anymore. They can- there was no, they were out of water, they were out of food, and so they capitulated.
Joseph Friedenson, who reached Warsaw from Lodz as the city was being surrounded, on the siege. Project Witness testimony. Watch the full testimony. This passage begins at 24:30: Joseph Friedenson, Project Witness
We packed the stuff, took a big truck, and put whatever my mother could put into the suitcases, put in the truck, and we took off to Bialystok. What I remember from Bialystok is that there was very little bit of space for people who were running away from big cities. And people who lived in Bialystok rented rooms to people who were running, and we got the bathroom, meaning we had a bathroom. That was our room. Means we had a bathtub and a sink and a toilet. That was our room.
Leah Letterman, who was five when her mother fled Warsaw with her and her brother, on the refugees in Białystok. Project Witness testimony. Watch the full testimony. This passage begins at 47:13: Leah Letterman, Project Witness
Before September 1, 1939, Nazi rule covered a Jewish population of a few hundred thousand and its declared aim was still to force them out. Poland held about three million Jews, the largest Jewish community in Europe and roughly one person in ten. Occupying it did not change Nazi intentions. It changed the size of what those intentions were now aimed at, and it did so within weeks in western and central Poland, and in June 1941 in the east.
The bombing of Wieluń is where this page starts because of what it shows about the whole campaign. A town of sixteen thousand people, no significant military target, about seventy percent of it destroyed in a raid that ran from early morning until the afternoon. One of the first bombs hit the hospital; whether it carried a visible Red Cross is disputed. The synagogue was destroyed. The war and the destruction of Jewish Poland begin on the same day.
We show the disagreement about the timing rather than settle it. Polish accounts give 4:40 in the morning, which would place Wieluń five minutes ahead of the first shells at the Westerplatte. Luftwaffe flight documents give 5:40, and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance's investigation, closed in 2011, also gave 5:40. The death toll is contested in the same way: a published range runs from 700 to 2,000, while the Institute could confirm only 127 dead and said the true figure could have been several hundred.
Six hours behind Warsaw, the news reached the President by telephone at ten minutes to three in the morning: from Ambassador Biddle in Poland, through Ambassador Bullitt in France. What Roosevelt did first was order every Navy ship and Army command notified by radio. What he did next was write it down. The note is short, exact and unhurried, and it survives.
Two nights later he had five men to the second-floor study, mixed the cocktails himself, and played cards until quarter to twelve. Around ten a cable arrived from Ambassador Kennedy in London, and he told the table that war would be declared by noon. On September 3 Britain and France declared war, and that evening the President told the country that the United States would stay neutral, while adding that he could not ask any American to be neutral in thought. The United States entered the war twenty-seven months later.
The most persistent misunderstanding about this period is that the murder of Polish Jews belongs to 1941 and after. It does not. The Einsatzgruppen followed the army into Poland in September 1939 and killed from the start, shooting thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites. Warsaw surrendered on September 28. Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned the country the next day. In October Germany annexed most of western Poland and organized the rest as the General Government (Generalgouvernement). Forced labor and the marking of Jews began within two months, and the first ghettos followed within months.
Seven things you will often read about September 1939. Some are true, some are false, and on some the sources disagree.
The Holocaust began on September 1, 1939.
It is false.
Persecution of Jews in Germany began in 1933. What began on September 1, 1939, was the scale: the occupation of the largest Jewish community in Europe, about three million people.
The killing of Polish Jews began in 1941.
It is false.
The Einsatzgruppen followed the army into Poland in September 1939 and shot thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, EinsatzgruppenWieluń was bombed five minutes before the first shots at the Westerplatte.
It is disputed.
It depends on the hour. The town's inhabitants and Polish border guards gave 4:40, five minutes before the Westerplatte. Luftwaffe documents and Poland's Institute of National Remembrance give 5:40.
Source: European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, Bombing of WieluńRoosevelt learned of the invasion in the middle of the night and wrote it down.
It is true.
The telephone woke him at 2:50 a.m. At 3:05, in bed, he wrote down what he had been told and the order he gave. The note is held by the National Archives.
Source: U.S. National Archives, Roosevelt's bedside noteThe bombing of Wieluń on the first day of the war destroyed its synagogue.
It is true.
The raid lasted from early morning until about 2 p.m. and destroyed about 70 percent of the town, the synagogue among it.
Source: European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, Bombing of WieluńAbout 2,000 people were killed in the bombing of Wieluń.
It is disputed.
Poland's Institute of National Remembrance could confirm at least 127 dead and did not rule out several hundred. Higher figures have been published, and the exact number is unknown.
Source: Dzieje.pl, Polish History Museum (in Polish)Almost every photograph of Poland in September 1939 was taken by Germans.
It is false.
The invading army and its press units took many of them. But Polish press agency photographs of the siege of Warsaw survive, and so do those of the American Julien Bryan.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Julien BryanEvery archival image we cleared for this episode, with its caption, its origin and its rights. Where a holding record names a German photographer or press unit, the caption says so; where the photographer is unknown, it says that. Images we cannot date precisely say that too.
Poland as it stood on August 31, 1939. This is the country that existed the day before this episode begins, and the state that no longer existed a month later.
Poland then held the largest Jewish community in Europe.
Map drawn after the events Halibutt · CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia Commons
Wieluń after the bombing of September 1, 1939. The town held no significant military target. About seventy percent of it was destroyed.
The exact minute the bombs fell is still disputed. See the note on timing in this section.
Photographer unknown Photographer unknown · Public domain Wikimedia Commons, from a Polish postcard series
Jewish women clearing rubble at Wieluń. Like the photograph above it, this one is dated only to 1939 and carries no photographer's name.
Forced clearing work was among the first things demanded of Jews under occupation.
Photographer unknown Photographer unknown · Public domain Wikimedia Commons, from a Polish postcard series
Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr., the American ambassador in Poland. The news started with him.
Biddle was in Poland as the bombing began.
Portrait or personal record U.S. Department of State, US Embassy Oslo · Public domain Wikimedia Commons
William C. Bullitt, ambassador in Paris. He took Biddle's news and telephoned the President.
Roosevelt's note names both men.
Portrait or personal record Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection
Edwin M. Watson, the President's appointments secretary, who made the telephone call to Jamestown.
That call is why Jackson was in Washington at all.
Portrait or personal record U.S. Army · Public domain Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library
Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior. He won the card game.
Portrait or personal record Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection
Stephen T. Early, the President's press secretary, one of the five men in the room.
Portrait or personal record Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection
Jews under German occupation, September 1939. The archive title says Kielce; the place may be Mielec. A Wehrmacht propaganda-company photograph.
The camera belonged to the occupying army. What it chose to record, and how, was a decision made by the people doing the occupying.
German propaganda-company photograph Klose · CC BY-SA 3.0 de Bundesarchiv
A Jewish woman from Warsaw, named in the German caption as Bajla Gelblung, after her capture near Brest-Litovsk in September 1939. A German propaganda-company photograph. Its original caption calls her the leader of a gang of murderers, a smear of the kind these captions carried.
She is one of the people this episode is finally about, and the only record of her here is the occupier's caption.
German propaganda-company photograph Heinz Boesig · CC BY-SA 3.0 de Bundesarchiv
An Einsatzkommando execution in occupied Poland, October 1939.
The mass shootings did not begin in 1941. They began in the first weeks of this occupation.
Photographer unknown Photographer unknown · Public domain Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni w Polsce
Palmiry, in the forest outside Warsaw, shortly before an execution.
From December 1939 to the summer of 1941 the Germans shot Poles and Jews here in twenty-one executions. Almost 1,800 bodies were found in the graves.
Photographer unknown Photographer unknown · Public domain Władysław Bartoszewski, "Warszawski pierścień śmierci 1939-1944", Interpress, Warszawa 1970.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives about three million for 1933, roughly 9.5 percent of the population. It was the largest Jewish community in Europe. For comparison, Germany had about 525,000 Jews in the same year, and Austria 191,000.
This is genuinely disputed and we will not pretend otherwise. Accounts from the town’s inhabitants and Polish border guards give 4:40 in the morning. Luftwaffe flight documents and other testimony give 5:40, and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, in an investigation opened in 2004 and closed in 2011, also put it at 5:40. The historian Tadeusz Olejnik collected accounts putting the first bombs as early as 4:30. You will often read that Wieluń was hit five minutes before the Westerplatte; that claim depends on the earliest reading and is not settled.
Also unresolved. A published range runs from 700 to 2,000 civilians, with the exact number unknown because of the difficulty of identification. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance’s investigation, closed in 2011, confirmed at least 127 dead and said the true figure could have been several hundred. We give the range rather than choose a number.
Yes. The raid of September 1 destroyed about seventy percent of the town, the synagogue and the church among it. The photographs of the ruined synagogue on this page are dated only to 1939 and carry no photographer’s name, so we do not caption them as having been taken on the first morning even though the building was hit that day.
A short note in pencil that Roosevelt wrote in bed at 3:05 in the morning on September 1, 1939, fifteen minutes after being woken with the news. It records that word came by telephone at 2:50 from Ambassador Biddle in Poland through Ambassador Bullitt in France, that Germany had invaded Poland and four cities were being bombed, and that he ordered all Navy ships and Army commands notified by radio at once. (He first wrote "defense" before "Commands" and struck it out.) It is held by the U.S. National Archives.
Because it is the reason the record exists. The evening of September 2, 1939, was recorded in the White House Usher’s Log and reconstructed by John Q. Barrett, Robert Jackson’s biographer, which is why we can follow it hour by hour. For Wieluń that same weekend we cannot even fix the hour the bombs fell or the number of the dead. The contrast between an archive that survived intact and one destroyed along with the people in it is the point, not the card game.
Warsaw surrendered on September 28, 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned the country on September 29 along the Bug River. In October Germany annexed most of western Poland outright and organized the remainder as the Generalgouvernement, with districts at Krakow, Warsaw, Radom and Lublin.
Hundreds of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees fled east ahead of the advancing army. After the partition about 300,000 Jewish refugees from the German zone were left in Soviet-held territory. More than half of those who got out of Poland altogether went to Romania and Hungary, and 15,000 went to Lithuania.
Because the invading army and its press units took many of the photographs of these weeks. Some Polish press agency photographs of the siege of Warsaw survive too, and so do those of the American Julien Bryan. Where a holding record names a German photographer or press unit, the caption says so. Where the photographer is unknown, we say that instead.
Yes. Project Witness is a nonprofit and our Holocaust education is free to use. Every claim carries its source, and the disputed points are marked as disputed so students can see what a contested historical record actually looks like.
For educators
Project Witness is a nonprofit Holocaust education organization in New York. Tell us what you teach and we will send you what fits your classroom.
Every claim on this page rests on one of these. Nothing is hotlinked: the images we show are self-hosted with their licenses recorded beside them.
These records are real and relevant, and their rights are restricted or unresolved. We link and credit them. We do not copy them.
This episode exists because of The Jackson List, written by John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law at St. John's University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center. His dispatches on Roosevelt's bedside note and on the evening of September 2, 1939, are the source for the Washington side of this page. The essays are his own copyright and are not reproduced here. Read them at thejacksonlist.com.
