The "Final Solution"

Jewish Uprisings in the Midst of Destruction

The sixth gallery, the largest in the museum, deals with the implementation of the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question in Europe and Jewish resistance in the Ghettos.  Beginning with the deportation of Jews from the Ghettos, the gallery shows the murder of Poland’s Jews in the extermination camps of Operation Reinhard. 

As Jews began to understand their fate at the hands of the Nazis, instances of revolt such as that in the Warsaw Ghetto erupted.  The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto was essentially the first urban revolt within the territories of Nazi occupation. The fighters did not view revolt as a tool by which to rescue themselves or their fellow Jews. Rather, they saw resistance as the last honorable recourse in the face of the utter annihilation of entire Jewish communities.

The totality of the Holocaust is demonstrated by images of deportations and deportees from all corners of Europe to Auschwitz.  In the north-east corner of the gallery a map depicts the extensive network for deportation to the death camps.  An authentic cross-section of a cattle car forms an emotive part of this exhibit, leading to the final section of the gallery that focuses on the largest death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Visitors survey testimonies of the few survivors who recount the horrors of the journey and their arrival at the camp.

The original Auschwitz Album depicts the arrival of a transport of Hungarian Jews in May 1944 and provides visitors with a painful insight into this oft-repeated process of arrival and selection.