In the predawn hours of June 6, 1944 – 75 years ago this week – an armada of Allied ships sailed across the English Channel and began unloading thousands of troops into shallow waters off the shores of Normandy, France. Operation D-Day had begun.
In the 1980s, a tiny woman in her 50s named Ruth Westheimer shocked and delighted the world with her blunt advice – delivered in a grandmotherly German accent – about sex. She became a media sensation and remains a household name as “Dr. Ruth.”
Less known is her perilous journey to get there – a story that includes her survival of the Holocaust and immigration to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, where she briefly became a sniper in a Jewish paramilitary force.
Anna Lee, a junior at USC from Los Angeles, California majoring in English Literature with minors in Spanish and Teaching English as a Second language (TESOL), has been chosen as the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.
Max Glauben was 13 when his family’s apartment was destroyed in the historic battle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Eva Kuper was 2 when her mother’s cousin rescued her from a train in the frantic moments before it headed to the Treblinka death camp.
Both lost parents and other relatives in the Holocaust. And both are among the four Holocaust survivors whose testimonies USC Shoah Foundation is recording this week using cutting-edge, 360-degree filming techniques at the physical locations of their pre-war and wartime experiences, as well as their places of liberation.
Bieke Van Camp, the 2018-2019 Robert J.
Danielle Willard-Kyle, the 2018-2019 Center Graduate Research fellow, gave a public lecture about her month-long research at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the testimonies of Jewish survivors who went through Italian Displaced Persons camps after World War II
Professor Marion Kaplan, 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave the annual Shapiro Scholar public lecture on gender and the Holocaust.
Gabor Toth, 2018-2019 Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on his project to find, represent, and reflect on victims’ experiences during the Holocaust.
Smith said 21 survivors of the Holocaust have been filmed so far, and they are recording survivors in more languages — Russian, German, Spanish and Hebrew — to capture cultural and linguistic nuances in their responses.