Through their testimonies on the Visual History Archive and The 1939 Society websites, Holocaust survivors and rescuers have inspired middle and high school students from across the nation and eight countries outside of the United States to become “Messengers of Memory,” the theme of this year’s Annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest sponsored by Chapman University and The 1939 Society. Read More

It’s a story my grandfather never told me, something that I only heard and understood later, years after my mother recounted it. In 1943, after his first wife and children were killed, my grandfather, Sam Wasserman, participated in one of the only successful mass escapes from a Nazi extermination camp. He and hundreds of other prisoners, overwhelmed and killed several guards and escaped the Sobibor death camp in Poland. My grandfather eluded capture, joined a band of partisans fighting the Nazis, and shortly after surviving the war, met the woman who would become my grandmother. Read More

As an interpreter at Nuremberg, Edith Coliver had a front-row seat to many historic moments, such as the testimony of Hermann Göring, creator of the Gestapo. Read More