Jews settled in Novogrudek in the 16^th century and the community numbered over 6,000 in 1931. In 1941, half of Novogrudek’s population were Jewish. In September 1939, following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and the German invasion of Poland, Novogrudek was absorbed into the Soviet Union. During this period many Jewish refugees took refuge in the town.

The vast majority of Jews who lived in the area were murdered between July 1941 and May 1943.

Today, there is no Jewish community in Novogrudek.

Jews settled in the area in the 18^th century.

The town of Baja was a main concentration point for the concentration of Jews after the Nazi invasion of Hungary in March 1944. In the months that followed, 8,200 Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland.

Only a handful of Jews live in the area today.

Leipzig is a city in Saxony in Germany. Jews have lived in the city since the 13th century and Leipzig played an important role in the history of German Jewry. Despite the mass deportations and forced emigration of the Nazi period, Leipzig still has a lively and growing Jewish community.

The Krakow region

Gyor-Moson-Sopron County borders Austria and Slovakia in the north-west of Hungary. Most of the Jews who lived in the area before the Second World War were merchants and industrialists.

Before Hungary was occupied by the Germans, the Jews suffered from anti-Jewish legislation. In 1942, most of the Jewish men in the county were recruited into forced labour in the Hungarian army on the eastern front, where many lost their lives.

On 19 March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. Two months later the Jews of Gyor-Moson-Sopron county were imprisoned in the ghetto in Gyor. Over 5,000 people were deported in two transports to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland.

After the Holocaust, hundreds of Jews who had been expelled from the city returned to Gyor and re-established a Jewish community. In 1949, there were 459 Jews in the city but after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in 1956 the overwhelming majority of the Jews left.

Crisana Province is in north western Romania and its principal city is Oradea. The region, which has a rich Jewish heritage, is part of Transylvania, which was awarded to Romania after the First World War.

Jews have probably lived in the region since the 10^th century, but it was only in the 19^th century that the Jewish population grew steadily. The Jewish population participated in every important development in the city's history. The city had a Jewish hospital and a number of schools. Significantly, the Jewish community embraced the Hungarian language and culture. During the interwar period this made them a target for Romanian nationalists and fascists. After the creation of the fascist Iron Guard in 1927, the Jews of Oradea suffered from violent attacks and synagogues were vandalised.

In 1940 the area was given to Hungary under the second Vienna Awards. Oradea assumed its Hungarian name of Nagyvarad. The state’s anti-Jewish laws meant that situation of the Jews of Crisana deteriorated further. From 1942, Jewish men in the area were forcibly recruited into labour battalions in the Hungarian army and Jewish businesses were confiscated.

In 1944, about 30,000 Jews lived in Oradea, a third of the city’s population. In May 1944, they were forced into a ghetto alongside 8,000 Jews from the surrounding area. Nine transports left for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland in the weeks that followed.

Thirteen-year-old Eva Heyman left behind an important testament of this period. In her dairy she describes the deteriorating situation in Oradea. Heyman was a highly assimilated middle-class teenager. The Eva Stories project tells her story on Instagram. Heyman was murdered in Auschwitz in October 1944.

After the liberation Oradea became a regional hub for survivors and had a Jewish population of 8,000. Many Jews passed through the city on their journey out of eastern Europe.

After the Second World War, Crisana province became once again part of Romania. Today, there are only a few hundred Jews living in the city but there is a functioning Jewish community.

Dresden is the capital of the German state of Saxony. The city was famous for its baroque and rococo architecture but the Allied bombing towards the end of the war destroyed the city centre and killed over 25,000 people.

In 1933, 6,000 Jews lived in the city, but emigration, deportation and murder reduced that population to 41 in 1945.

Some of the Boys endured slave labour in Dresden, among them Roman Halter and Stephen Wolkowicz. Both were prisoners in the Lodz ghetto when it was liquidated in the summer of 1944 and were included on a list of experienced metal workers known at Biebow’s List.

Hans Biebow was a wealthy German coffee merchant from Bremen and was head of the Lodz ghetto administration and chose to protect a group of 500 Jews who he hoped would testify in his favour after the war. He was hung for war crimes in 1947.

When those on his list were deported to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp there was no selection and they were transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp in northern Poland, where they were held until November 1944. They were then taken to Dresden, where they worked in a labour camp attached to the Flossenburg concentration camp.

Halter and Wolkowicz witnessed the bombing of Dresden. They were then part of a death march that left Dresden destined for Theresienstadt. Halter escaped but Wolkowicz continued on to Theresienstadt. During the march he lost both his parents.

Today, thanks to the arrival of Jews from the former Soviet Union, Dresden has a population of at least 700 Jews.

Zala County, Hungary is close to the Croatian border and was a key trading route in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Jews settled in the area in the 18th century but relations with other inhabitants remained tense. In the years after the First World War a number of Jews were lynched by gangs and arrested for security reasons.

In the 1930s, the Croatian fascist Ustasha ran a training camp in Belezna. After the Discrimination Laws were passed in 1938 many Jews suffered persecution. In 1941, young Jewish men in the area were conscripted into labour battalions. In May 1944 the Jews of Zala county were rounded up into ghettos and in July deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in occupied Poland.

After the war about 100 survivors returned. They tried to re-establish the community in the administrative capital of Zalagerszeg but the overwhelming majority left to start a new life elsewhere.

The region in south-central Poland was in the 19^th century during the partition of Poland part of the Russian Empire. The area became an important centre for the production of armaments and there were a number of large munitions factories. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, these factories were integrated into the economy of the Third Reich and many of the Boys were taken as slave labourers to work in them.

Kielce had a significant Jewish population before the war. After the liberation the city was the scene of a major program in July 1946 in which almost 40 Jews lost their lives and many more were injured. It prompted a mass exodus of Holocaust survivors from Poland.

Today, Kielce is the home of an important Holocaust education programme.