New Testimonies Spanning More than a Century Added to Visual History Archive

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

USC Shoah Foundation has added 132 testimonies to its Visual History Archive. These firsthand accounts of mass atrocities spanning more than 100 years are now available to researchers, educators, family members, and the public.
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.

Hela Goldstein’s testimony given to the British Film and Photographic Unit on April 24, 1945 is believed to be the first-ever audio-visual testimony given by a Holocaust survivor. As a 22-year old victim, she spoke from Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi concentration camp where she was imprisoned upon liberation. Standing at the foot of a mass grave with her killers before her, Hela recounted what she experienced. By telling her story in the face of death, she became a foremother of testimony.

Creative Storytelling

The Memory Generation

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Hela Goldstein’s testimony given to the British Film and Photographic Unit on April 24, 1945 is believed to be the first-ever audio-visual testimony given by a Holocaust survivor. As a 22-year old victim, she spoke from Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi concentration camp where she was imprisoned upon liberation. Standing at the foot of a mass grave with her killers before her, Hela recounted what she experienced. By telling her story in the face of death, she became a foremother of testimony.

Breaking Bread

Tuesday, June 24, 2025 - 12:02 PM PDT

3:00 PM PDT/6:00PM EDT/8:00 AM AEST (+1) 

Over the past year, budding bakers sought refuge and comfort in their kitchens, learning to bake bread. Loaves of sourdough and challah forged connections between families and cultures when we could not physically be together. These connections build on deep traditions in cultures around the world, often discussed in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive of 55,000 testimonies of genocide survivors and witnesses.   

Testimony of Espionage, Scheming, and Survival Reunites and Expands a Family

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Above: One branch of the Scheinman family, which expanded considerably after cousin Zoe found and reached out to descendants of the ten children of Shmuel and Feige Scheinman, her husband’s great grandparents.

Last summer, Phil Scheinman spent five hours straight watching Joseph André Scheinmann’s testimony on USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. He was both devastated and riveted.

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.

Jewish James Bond Aided MI6 and Fellow Prisoners

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

André, on the right, with his parents, Max and Regina, and an aunt at a café in Paris in 1939. Max and Regina were killed in Auschwitz in 1942.

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.
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