icon for Home page
icon for Kid's Home page
icon for Digital Collection
icon for Activities
icon for Turns Exhibit
icon for In the Classroom
icon for Chronologies
icon for My Collection

Online Collection

front
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.



label levels:

The Holocaust is the name applied to the systematic state-sponsored persecution and genocide of various ethnic, religious, and political groups during World War II (WWII) by Nazi Germany and collaborators. The Jews of Europe were the main victims of the Holocaust in what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." The widely-used figure for the number of Jewish victims is six million. Considerable effort was expended over the course of the Holocaust to find increasingly efficient means of killing large numbers of people in the death camps; for example, by switching from carbon monoxide poisoning in the crematoriums to the use of Zyklon B gas. This is a key to one of those crematoriums, brought back from Dietz, Germany by the liberating American forces. The young soldier who took the key locked the door, in the fervent hope that the death chamber could never be used again. The key is held by the Pichette family of Ashfield, Massachusetts, as a symbol of the important accomplishments by WWII American soldiers.

 

top of page

Crematory Key

date   c. 1940
process/materials   metal
accession #   #M.36


Look Closer icon My Collection icon Detailed info icon


ecard icon Send an e-Postcard of this object



See Also...

Trench Art

German Bayonet

German Prisoners, Lyons, France

"Americans With The Wrong Ancestors"


button for Side by Side Viewingbutton for Glossarybutton for Printing Helpbutton for How to Read Old Documents

 

Home | Online Collection | Things To Do | Turns Exhibit | Classroom | Chronologies | My Collection
About This Site | Site Index | Site Search | Feedback