Harry Haft survived through his skills as a boxer for the entertainment of the Nazis in Auschwitz. Others imprisoned at the camp—including Benjamin Jacobs, a dentist—have mentioned in their testimonies that their professional usefulness to their captors may have saved their lives. Besides boxing, another form of entertainment for the Nazis at Auschwitz was the camp orchestra. The Visual History Archive has the testimonies of several musicians who recount their experiences playing in the orchestra.

Theary Seng

By: Eli Gruen

One morning in 1978, Theary Seng awoke alongside her younger brother in their prison cell in Boeng Rai Security Center, about 100 kilometers south of their hometown of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The children’s mother had been in the cell the night before, but now she was gone. 

Eli Gruen

Four Siblings—Aged 95, 97, 99, and 100—Record “Last Chance Testimony” Stories of Survival

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Sally (Fink) Singer still cries over the spilled milk. Yes, it happened more than 80 years ago. And at the age of 100, Sally knows that her siblings – Anne (99), Sol (97), and Ruth (95), who to this day remain inseparable – have long since forgiven her. But the pangs of guilt and hunger linger.

Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Julie Gruenbaum Fax is a content strategist and writer for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was a senior writer and editor at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and has co-authored six personal history books. She is currently writing a book about her grandmother’s Holocaust experience.

New Partnership with NCFL Producing Testimony-based Educational Offerings to Support Family Literacy Skills

Modern day Kentucky and WWII-era Austria may seem worlds apart, but the far-flung locales and distant timeframes came together last month at a series of educational workshops at the Iroquois Branch Library in south Louisville.

Over the course of five weeks, a group of young children and their caregivers gathered each Saturday morning for a special educational series sponsored by the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) and The Willesden Project, a program of USC Shoah Foundation and Hold On To Your Music Foundation, with support from the Koret Foundation. 

War and Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina

In 2022, USC Shoah Foundation integrated first testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a particular emphasis on the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. The integration is the result of the Institute’s partnership with the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
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