In the early twentieth century, approximately nine million Jewish people lived across Europe, from Britain in the West to the Soviet Union in the East. This extract, from an IWM film called The Way We Lived, shows the diversity of Jewish life before the Second World War. The photograph is of the actress and dancer, Ida Rubinstein.

In this section of The Way We Lived several Jewish people describe the variety of life and culture while they were growing up before the Second World War. The photograph is of the artist, Roman Halter, (on the left) as a young boy with members of his family.

In this extract from The Way We Lived we find out more about the different ways of being Jewish. The photograph is of Lili Pohlmann (wearing the bow in her hair) with her family before the Second World War.

In this section of The Way We Lived, Jewish people recall how they were subjected to antisemitism as children before the Second World War. The photograph is of Ezra Jurmann (on the left), a Holocaust survivor, and his brother.

In spite of hard times in the early 1930s, the rise of Nazism and antisemitism in their own countries, most Jewish people believed that these problems would eventually go away. This image from the film The Way We Lived is of a group of young Jews dancing at a public event before the Second World War.