Voices from the Archive
Learn more about our testimony collections.
In The Mountains of Western Rwanda, a Resistance Led By Elders
At one point in the horrific spring of 1994, Narcisse Gasimba had given up.
Since April, Gasimba and other resistors in the mountains of western Rwanda had been using stones and spears to fend off…
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Attack on Ukraine Summons Haunting Echoes of the Past
Above, Alex Redner with his grandparents in 1937 in Lvov
As the world watches in horror as millions of Ukrainians resist, take shelter or flee from Russian attacks, news reports stir up…
Monday, March 7, 2022
Joe Adamson, Refugee, Interrogator, Regular Dad, Finally Told his Story
For much of their life, Allen and Peter Adamson didn't know that Joe, their easy-going, suburbanite dad, a VP at a New York plastics company, had a remarkable early history. He had escaped Germany at…
Friday, February 11, 2022
Liberation Through a 15-Year-Old’s Eyes—Fear, Relief, Uncertainty
For weeks, Eva (Geiringer) Schloss and a small band of young women had been exploring the far corners of the women’s section of Auschwitz-Birkenau, alone and, for the first time in months, unwatched…
Friday, January 21, 2022
At 14, She Searched for Refuge Along Bloodied Roads
Theogene Kayitakire, a sergeant in the Rwandan Patriotic Army, helped capture the strategic high ground of the Mount Rebero neighborhood in Kigali in April 1994, just days after the Genocide Against…
Friday, July 2, 2021
She Smuggled Love, Hope, and Dynamite Over the Ghetto Walls
Not long after Feigele (Vladka) Peltel’s father died of untreated pneumonia in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, the 17-year-old found herself at a lecture about Yiddish author I.L. Peretz hosted by her…
Friday, June 11, 2021
Was Her Sister’s Life Too High A Price?
For decades, Anna (Wajcblum) Heilman struggled with the question of whether she and her sister Esther had done the right thing. If smuggling little packets of gunpowder out of the munitions factory…
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Remembering Gay Pioneer Bertram Schaffner
A boy caught between two worldsBertram Schaffner’s story is a unique one because of the multiple roles he played as a gay German American during the period that saw the rise of Nazi Germany and World…
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Under the Shadow of Paragraph 175: Part 3: Gad Beck
Gerhard “Gad” Beck was born on June 30, 1923, in Berlin, along with his twin sister Margot (Miriam). His birth came as a surprise to everyone including the doctor, who had left after Margot was born…
Monday, June 15, 2015
Under the shadow of Paragraph 175: Part 2: Stefan Kosinksi
Stefan (Teofil) Kosinski’s testimony is the only English-language testimony we have in the Visual History Archive from a homosexual survivor, which is also remarkable for the fact that Stefan is not…
Monday, May 18, 2015