2. Between 1933 and 1945, the German government led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party carried out the systematic persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews. This genocide is now known as the Holocaust.

3. The Nazi regime also persecuted and killed millions of other people it considered politically, racially, or socially unfit.

4. The Allies’ victory ended World War II, but Nazi Germany and its collaborators had left millions dead and countless lives shattered.

5. Inmates waving a homemade American flag greet 7th Army troops upon their arrival at the Allach concentration camp, a subcamp of Dachau. INITIAL ENCOUNTERS LIBERATION 1945

6. Women and children in the Mauthausen concentration camp speak through the barbed wire to an American soldier. INITIAL ENCOUNTERS LIBERATION 1945

7. Survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp cheer the soldiers of the 11th Armored Division of the 3rd Army one day after liberation. INITIAL ENCOUNTERS LIBERATION 1945

8. A survivor shows American troops of the 46 th Armored Division, 9th Army, the watchtowers and the electrically charged barbed wire fence in the Buchenwald concentration camp. REALITIES LIBERATION 1945

9. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other high-ranking U.S. Army officers view the bodies of prisoners killed by the German camp authorities during the evacuation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. REALITIES LIBERATION 1945

10. A group of survivors sits outside a barracks in the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp. REALITIES LIBERATION 1945

11. American medical personnel evacuate survivors from Langenstein, a subcamp of Buchenwald, to a hospital for treatment. HELPING AND HEALING LIBERATION 1945

12. Recently liberated survivors in the Wöbbelin concentration camp support and help each other. HELPING AND HEALING LIBERATION 1945

13. U.S. Army medical personnel with the 10th Armored Division distribute food to two survivors liberated from a concentration camp. HELPING AND HEALING LIBERATION 1945

14. American chaplain Rabbi Herschel Schacter conducts a religious service for Jewish survivors of the Buchen- wald concentration camp shortly after liberation. HELPING AND HEALING LIBERATION 1945