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To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#20
Amit Ades, October 7 Hamas Attack survivor. She shared her testimony with us in 2023.
Amit Ades, her husband Tomer, and their three children were in their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas launched an attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. They hid in their safe room, showing their kids a movie on an iPad on repeat to drown out the sound of gunshots and explosions. Their only source of food was a cake, which had been made for her son’s fifth birthday that weekend. When Amit's family was rescued after 35 hours locked in their safe room, the soldiers sang happy birthday to her son.
Watch Amit's full testimony: https://ow.ly/iEPJ50TgWZh
#survivorstory #USCShoahFoundation
On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland and ignited World War II.
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1920, Sala Hudes had just gotten married when World War II began. As the German army entered Warsaw, Sala, her husband, and her family were forced to flee. They initially escaped to relatives in a different part of the city, but German bombings soon drove them back to their home. In December 1939, Sala and her husband escaped to Russia and were sent to Kopeisk to work in coal mines.
Seeking better living conditions, Sala and her husband relocated to Russian-occupied Poland in September 1940, shortly after the birth of their first son. They settled among other refugees in Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine) until the Russian military began arresting Jewish refugees for deportation. Sala, her husband, and their son narrowly escaped by jumping from the wagon and fleeing into the woods. The family returned to Kopeisk, where Sala gave birth to their second son. After the war, they returned to Warsaw and Sala began searching for her family. She reunited with one younger sister, who revealed that they were the only two members of their immediate family who survived.
Sala shared her testimony with us in 1996.
#ww2history #survivorstory #USCShoahFoundation
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#19
Morris Venezia, a Jewish survivor. He shared his testimony in 1996.
Morris Venezia was born in Salonika (now Thessalonica, Greece) in 1921. In April 1941, Germany occupied Salonika, home to about 50,000 Jews – the largest Jewish community in Greece. Jews were subject to forced labor, ghettoization and deportation, and by August 1943, the Germans had deported more than 45,000 Jews from Salonika to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Morris' family was deported first to the Haidari concentration camp and then to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Upon arrival, Morris’ mother was sent to the gas chamber. Morris, his brother Schlomo, and his cousin Dario were selected to be Sonderkommandos, forced to usher other prisoners into the gas chamber and then ready it for the next victims.
As Soviet armed forces neared Auschwitz in early 1945, Morris, Schlomo, and Dario were sent on a death march to Mauthausen concentration camp. Morris was separated from Schlomo and Dario and sent to Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen. After learning of Hitler's death, Morris and a few other prisoners left Ebensee and walked until they came across the U.S. army.
Morris spent the next few months in Austria and Italy recovering before reuniting with Dario in Athens. His brother Schlomo and their oldest sister survived.
Morris passed away in 2013.
Watch Morris' full testimony: https://ow.ly/c6G750T8Ulh
#ww2history #survivorstory #USCShoahFoundation
On August 25, 1944 Allied French and American troops liberated Paris after four years of Nazi occupation. Eva Shane had been living in a village nearby when she saw the Allied troops arrive.
Eva was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1928. After Hitler came to power in 1933, her family fled to Antwerp, Belgium as political refugees. Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940, and Eva's father was deported to a camp in the Pyrenees, but he managed to escape and make his way to Mâcon, France. A year later, Eva, her mother, and her brother escaped Antwerp and reached Mâcon. Eva's father obtained false papers to conceal their Jewish identity and the family settled in a village near Mâcon, where Eva attended school at a local convent. They were liberated by the United States armed forces in 1945.
Eva shared her testimony with us in 1995.
#Paris #ww2history #USCShoahFoundation
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#18
Aurora Mardiganian, Armenian Genocide survivor. She shared her testimony with the Armenian Film Foundation in 1975 and 1980.
Aurora was born in Chmshgatsak (today Çemişgezek, Turkey) in 1901. The Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began systematically targeting Armenians for elimination in 1915. Aurora’s father and oldest brother were among the men taken away and killed. Then, Aurora, her mother, and her remaining siblings were forced to march over 1,400 miles. During the march, Aurora was kidnapped, sold to slave markets, and witnessed the deaths of her family members. She eventually escaped to Russian territory and, with the help of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, she immigrated to the United States in 1918.
After arriving in New York, Aurora began to share her story. She became the face of the genocide after writing a memoir, Ravished Armenia (1918), about her experiences. The book was adapted into the 1919 film Auction of Souls, in which Aurora played herself.
Watch Aurora's testimony: https://ow.ly/S89m50SYTxF
#ArmenianGenocide #survivorstory #ww1history
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#17
Alan Moskin, World War II liberator and advocate for Holocaust education and remembrance. He shared his testimony with us in 2019 and again in 2021 for an interactive biography (Dimensions in Testimony).
Alan was born in New Jersey in 1926. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in October 1944 and deployed to Europe in January 1945 as a member of the 66th Infantry, 71st Division, in General George Patton's 3rd Army. Alan fought on the frontlines in France, Germany, and Austria, during which time he was promoted from private to staff sergeant.
On May 4, 1945, Alan’s outfit entered the Gunskirchen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, and the soldiers were horrified at the death, starvation, and disease they witnessed. In his testimony, Alan recalled the warning delivered by his captain, in the name of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe: “Someday people are going to say we made it up.”
Those words came back to Alan years later as Holocaust denial became more prevalent. While for decades he had been reluctant to revisit the brutality of what he had witnessed, in his retirement, he became a tireless advocate for Holocaust education and remembrance at schools, veterans’ groups, and in the media, speaking with candor about his experience. Alan passed away in 2023.
#ww2history #ww2veteran
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Between August 9 and August 28, 1944, the Nazis liquidated the Lódz ghetto and deported over 60,000 Jews and Roma to Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp. Among those deported were Rose Kohn and her mother, Malka.
Rose and her family were confined to the Lódz ghetto in 1940, where they endured terrible living conditions, forced labor, and disease. Although Rose's family managed to avoid selections in 1942, as she describes in this clip, her father and sister later died in the ghetto and her extended family was deported. When deportations resumed in 1944, Rose and Malka went into hiding, but were eventually deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau when the Germans shut down the ghetto in August 1944.
Rose and Malka survived Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, and Geislingen an der Steige concentration camps together. They were liberated by U.S. armed forces in April 1945.
Rose shared her testimony with us in 1996.
Watch her testimony: https://ow.ly/lOLZ50SY3t3
"We still believed that – that God is there somewhere. And he might help us to get out from here..."
Tisha B'Av (The Ninth of Av), which begins tonight, is a day of mourning and fasting. The day commemorates various tragedies that befell the Jewish people throughout history, particularly the destruction of the first and second Temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE. In her testimony, Irene Weiss recalls observing Tisha B'Av while imprisoned in Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Irene survived the Satu Mare ghetto, Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp, Guben concentration camp, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She and five siblings were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust.
Irene shared her testimony with us in 1994.
#tishabav #jewishtradition #survivorstory
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#15
Eva Schloss, a survivor of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Anne Frank’s stepsister. She shared her testimony with us in 1996.
Eva was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. When World War II began, Eva, her brother, and their parents fled to Amsterdam, where they hid for two years before they were betrayed and sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in May 1944. Upon arrival, Eva and her mother, Fritzie, were separated from her brother and father, and the two endured back-breaking labor, cruel punishments, and malnutrition for nine months.
In December and January of 1945, the Germans, nearing defeat, forced 60,000 prisoners to evacuate Auschwitz on foot. Eva, then 15, and Fritzie evaded evacuations and remained in the camp until the Russian armed forces arrived at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Eva and Fritzie moved from the women’s barracks to the main camp, where they had access to running water and heat and Russian forces provided food and clothing to the remaining inmates. There, Fritzie and Eva reconnected with Otto Frank, a neighbor from Amsterdam and the father of Eva’s playmate, Anne.
In February 1945, Russian commanders evacuated inmates to Odessa, where Eva and Fritzie stayed until the war ended. When they returned to Amsterdam, they learned that Eva’s father and brother had died after a death march to Mauthausen concentration camp, just days before the war ended.
In 1953 Fritzie married Otto, making Eva the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank, who had died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Eva was a co-founder of The Anne Frank Trust UK in 1990, through which she told her story to audiences around the world. She has published three books about her life and recorded an interactive biograp
Between July 16-17, 1942, French police rounded up approximately 13,000 Jews in Paris, France. 7,000 Jews, including 4,000 children, were deported to Vélodrome d'Hiver, a cycling stadium in Paris, while the remaining 6,000 were deported to Drancy transit camp.
Cecile (Widerman) Kaufer and her family were among the 7,000 rounded up and sent to Vélodrome d'Hiver, where they were held for three days in the summer heat with no food or water. Cecile and her sister Berthe escaped the Vélodrome with their mother when she was sent to the hospital, and were later sent to Normandy to hide in the home of a Catholic woman named Lucie. Cecile and Berthe were liberated by United States armed forces in 1944.
After the war, Cecile learned that her parents, older sister, and grandparents did not survive. Cecile shared her testimony with us in 1997. She passed away in 2022.
#otd #ww2history #Holocaustsurvivor
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On July 15, 1942, the German army and their Dutch collaborators began deporting Jews from the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany. By September 1944, more than 107,000 Dutch Jews had been deported, including 19-year-old Cecilia de Haan.
Cecilia was born in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, where her father was a rabbi and head of the community. Nazi Germany occupied The Netherlands in May 1940 and in February 1942 the entire Jewish community of Alkmaar was forcibly relocated to Amsterdam. Cecilia and her family, including her parents, four siblings, and a niece, lived in cramped quarters in a restricted area of the city.
When deportations began, Cecilia heard that prisoners in the Vught concentration camp, about 60 miles south of Amsterdam, were producing clothing for the Germans. In an effort to avoid deportation to Auschwitz, she and her sister wrote on their ID cards that they were seamstresses. In April 1943 they were sent to Vught.
After a few months at Vught, Cecilia’s sister was sent on a transport and Cecilia was selected to work for the Philips electronics factory, where she was safeguarded by Frits Philips, who saved hundreds of Jews by employing them to work in his factory.
That protection remained even when Cecilia was among a group of prisoners deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in June 1944. Soon after arrival in Auschwitz, the Philips group was transferred to the Reichenbach labor camp and assigned to work in a factory.
In February 1945, as Russian forces were nearing, Cecilia was sent on a forced march and then transported through several concentration camps until she was liberated at the end of April 1945. After the war, Cecilia learned that she and two siblings were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust.
Cecilia shared her testimony in 1997 in Melbourne, Australia.
Watch Cecilia’s testimony here: https://ow.ly/iFyh50StkwZ
#otd #HolocaustHistory #HolocaustSurvivor #Auschwitz
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#14
Haigas Bonapart, Armenian Genocide survivor. He shared his testimony with the Armenian Film Foundation in 1975.
Haigas was born in Malatya, Turkey (historical Ottoman Empire) in 1899. He was studying at Euphrates College in Harput, Turkey when Ottoman gendarmes closed the school in April 1915. He moved to Mezire (today Elâzığ) to work at his brother and brother-in-law's pharmacy until it was taken away. His brother-in-law was arrested and killed along with Armenian teachers, merchants, professors from Euphrates College, and other professionals in Harput and Mezire.
Haigas hid for six months to avoid deportation. After a non-Armenian family adopted him, he went by the name Rifat and hid in Dersim until the Russian forces occupied the town. He later reunited with his brother in the Russian Empire. His parents, siblings, and uncles were all killed during the Armenian Genocide.
Watch Haigas' testimony here: https://ow.ly/EE7y50StkvH
#ArmenianGenocide #survivorstory
July 4 is Kwibohora, Rwanda Liberation Day. On this day in 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) secured the capital of Kigali and ended the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which killed approximately 1 million people.
Paul Rukesha was 16 years old when the genocide against the Tutsi began on April 7, 1994. At first, his father paid attackers to spare their lives, allowing Paul's family to hide in their home. However, on May 8, their home was attacked, and his father, stepmother, and brother were taken and killed. Paul escaped and was able to continue hiding in his house because his neighbors would warn him if attackers were coming.
At the end of May, Paul fled to the home of a friend of his father's, where he hid until he was liberated by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in early July.
On July 4, 1946, a Polish mob attacked Jews in Kielce, Poland, after a non-Jewish boy falsely claimed he was kidnapped and hidden in a Jewish Committee building. Forty-two people were killed, and 50 people were wounded. The Kielce Pogrom signaled to many Jewish survivors who had returned to Poland, including Malwina Moses and her family, that they were not safe in the country.
Malwina Tiefenbrunner was born in Wadowice, Poland in 1928. When World War II began in September 1939, her family fled to Russian-occupied Poland. They lived in Łuck (now Lutsk, Ukraine) until the Russian government relocated them to Siberia in the spring of 1940 with the promise that they would have better housing, employment, and school. Instead, they endured extreme weather, forced labor, and harsh living conditions. Malwina’s family lived in Siberia until they were able to move to Leninabad (now Khujand, Tajikistan) in 1943. There, her parents worked and Malwina and her sister attended school.
Malwina and her family left Leninabad for Poland in May 1945 as World War II was coming to an end. Concerned that they would be recognized and targeted for being Jewish if they returned to their hometown, Malwina's family chose to go to a bigger city, Wrocław. Malwina completed her education in Wrocław and married her husband, Salomon, in 1949. They immigrated to Israel in 1950 before reuniting with her family and settling in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1956.
She shared her testimony with us in 1998.
Watch Malwina’s testimony: https://ow.ly/hKHp50Su944
#ww2history #HolocaustSurvivor #OTD
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#13
Helen Colin, believed to be the first Holocaust survivor to speak on camera after she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. She shared her testimony with us in 1996 and again in 2016, shortly before she passed away.
Helen Colin was born in Łódź, Poland in 1923, one of four siblings in a loving Jewish family that lived comfortably until the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. In 1942, the family was sent to live in a cramped apartment in the Łódź ghetto, where they suffered from hunger and were forced into hard labor. More than 210,000 people were interned in the ghetto, where conditions were horrendous. Helen’s father died in early 1943, and in 1944 Helen married Kopel Colin, in part to get extra food rations for her family.
In the summer of 1944 the Germans began the final deportations from the Łódź ghetto. Helen, Kopel, her mother, and her siblings were sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Helen and her older sister were selected for work and sent to Bremen concentration camp and later Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They were liberated by British armed forces on April 15, 1945 – Helen’s 22nd birthday.
A few days after liberation, Sidney Bernsteing, a member of the British Army’s Film and Photographic Unit, filmed an interview with Helen Colin. Sidney had hoped to create a documentary about the Holocaust, but the project was never completed. After the war, Helen reunited with her husband and they immigrated to the United States. Helen's mother, brother, and younger sister did not survive.
Helen shared her story with students at conferences, in recorded interviews, and in her book “My Dream of Freedom; From Holocaust to My Beloved America,” fr
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany turned on its ally, the Soviet Union, launching a surprise attack that marked the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. This operation aimed to conquer the communist Soviet Union and was the largest military invasion in history.
Behind the front line, Germany deployed the Einsatzgruppen, mobile units that embarked on the mass killings of millions of Jews and Soviet partisans. These killing squads foreshadowed the ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps that would become central to Hitler’s “Final Solution.” More than 1.5 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen.
Ultimately, Operation Barbarossa failed in its broader military objectives and depleted Germany’s military capabilities, but not before leading to some 8 million combined casualties. The invasion is widely regarded as the start of the Holocaust.
Esther Livingston was living in Michaliszki, now in Belarus, when Operation Barbarossa began. Soon after, her family was sent to the Michaliszki ghetto. Esther endured forced labor at eight concentration camps and was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.
#ww2history #operationbarbarossa
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#12
Yarin Levin, October 7 Hamas Attack Survivor. He shared his testimony with us in 2023.
Yarin Levin was attending the Nova Music Festival on October 7 when Hamas launched a brutal attack on southern Israel. He and his friends attempted to drive away, but were soon ambushed and forced to abandon their car. Alongside hundreds of other festival-goers, they began to run. Despite the danger, Yarin tried to help others find a way to escape and he stopped to treat someone who was injured. After running and walking for miles, he arrived at Patish and was able to return home to Havatzelet HaSharon soon after.
Watch Yarin's testimony here: https://ow.ly/1p2m50Sb59r
#SurvivorStories #WitnessForTheFuture #USCShoahFoundation
The enduring values of the United States shone as a beacon of hope for Jewish Holocaust survivors. In stark contrast to the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as the oppressive authoritarian regimes and antisemitism that systematically violated human dignity, freedom, and liberty, American ideals and values offered a promise of a better future.
While acknowledged as ‘perfectly imperfect’ by many, American political values laid the groundwork for ongoing individual and societal progress, which was absent in many parts of the world in the early twentieth century.
As we continue to mark our thirtieth anniversary, we are honoring the voices of Holocaust survivors and witnesses who sought refuge in the United States.
Survivor testimonies reveal their hopes and experiences, bearing witness to inform and guide our responses to today's challenges.
In this clip, insert survivor Holocaust survivor Israel Baicher shares what it meant to his family to arrive in the United States, and finally be free.
Israel grew up in Tarnów, Poland in 1924 and survived Różnów labor camp, Pustkow-Lager A labor camp, the Tarnów ghetto, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Mauthausen concentration camp, Melk concentration camp, and Ebensee concentration camp. He shared his testimony with us in 1996.
To mark our 30th anniversary year and launch into our fourth decade, we bring you #30for30, a curated series of remarkable clips from our core Holocaust Collection, the Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, and our expanding Contemporary Antisemitism Collection.
#11
Justus Rosenberg, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and rescuer who helped save thousands from persecution.
He shared his testimony with us in 1998.
Justus Rosenberg was born in what is now Gdansk, Poland in 1921 and was studying in Paris in June 1940 when France surrendered to Germany. While at a refugee shelter in Toulouse, as he tried to escape France, Justus met a woman named Miriam Davenport, who introduced him to Varian Fry, an American journalist who had set up the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseilles.
Fry hired Justus, who spoke five languages, to carry messages and documents and soon he was tasked with coordinating logistics with mobsters, guarding files, and helping manage the crowds of people who lined up daily for interviews to determine whether they qualified for rescue.
The Emergency Rescue Committee extricated close to 2,000 people from Nazi-occupied territories, smuggling many over treacherous routes through the Pyrenees to Spain. Among those rescued by Fry’s operation were historian Hannah Arendt, artists Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst, and writers Heinrich Mann and André Breton.
At the end of 1941, the Emergency Rescue Committee was disbanded and Justus became a spy and guerilla soldier for the French underground, then a scout for the U.S. Army, and after the war, a relief worker in displaced persons camps in Germany. Justus' family survived the war and they reunited in Israel in 1952.
Justus was awarded the U.S. Bronze Medal and Purple Heart and made a commander in the French Legion of Honor for his service. He was a beloved literature professor at Bard College and did not share his story until later in life. Justus Rosenberg passed away in 2021 at the age of
"Shavuos is outstanding in my mind because of the garden, everything was in full bloom."
Shavuot, which begins tonight, traditionally commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, as well as the spring grain harvest. For many Jews who celebrate, the holiday is most beloved for its flowery decorations and dairy-rich delicacies. In her testimony, Holocaust survivor Kathy Fuchs recalls her family's Shavuot traditions and how they stored cherry soup in a well to keep it cold.
Kathy grew up in Berehovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) and survived the Berehovo ghetto, Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp, Lippstadt concentration camp, and Ravensbrück concentration camp.
#Shavuot #JewishHolidays #familytraditions
