Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: ItalianPiero Terracina recalls January 1945 in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where he witnessed SS guards leaving the camp. Upon their return, he was forced to participate in a death march where he managed to escape his wardens and seek refuge in Auschwitz I. On January 27, 1945, he recalls the first arrival of the Soviet armed forces in the camp and describes the first inmates' reaction to the liberators.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish Ana Benkel de Vinocur describes her first impressions of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp upon arrival from the Lódz Ghetto in May 1944. She remembers her reaction when the heavy doors of the deportation train opened and she saw prisoners, in striped uniforms, bald, looking like skeletons. She speaks of the seizure of all her belongings and of a selection process in which she remained with her mother, but was separated from her father and brother.

Rescuer, WW2 Interview language: Hungarian György Kis, a Catholic priest, rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, speaks about the power and influence of propaganda.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PortugueseMiriam Nekrycz describes the first few days upon arrival with her family at the Luck Ghetto, Poland, in 1941. She remembers the inadequate housing accommodations and the overcrowded conditions in which her family lived. She also recalls the extreme cold weather and the pervasive hunger in the ghetto due to lack of food.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: HungarianÉva explains how she survived a roundup of Jews by Hungary’s Arrow Cross party members in Budapest in winter 1944. A young Hungarian Nazi came to take Eva, but spared her at the last minute due to Eva's father's quick thinking. Years after the war, she encountered the man again, this time as a high-ranking political police officer in then-Communist Hungary.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: CzechVěra's mother was Otylie, Franz Kafka's sister. But the family never knew what a famous writer Franz would become many years after his death.

Egy pillanat alatt kellett eldönteni, hogy merjem-e, vagy ne merjem. —Somlyó György

In honor of Memorial Day, we gratefully honor Arthur Langhorst, an American surgical technician and decorated World War II veteran, and the 361 other liberators from 19 countries who have given testimony to the Visual History Archive. Arthur recounts in this clip a tragic encounter with a young soldier who was brought to his operating table after sustaining injuries in the Battle of the Bulge.

USC Shoah Foundation is committed to expanding its archive to include testimony from survivors and witnesses of other genocides and crimes against humanity, and to make such testimony available for educational use around the world, alongside more than 56,669 testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.To that end, USC Shoah Foundation works with partners around the world, sharing the expertise the Institute acquired through the collection, indexing, preservation, and dissemination of the testimonies that are currently in the Visual History Archive.

As the week of Memorial Day comes to a close we honor the soldiers who helped liberate Holocaust survivors from concentration camps. Lina Jackson, who was among the Sinti and Roma populations targeted for discrimination as part of the Nuremberg Laws, recounts her liberation from Dachau concentration camp by the American Armed Forces. She vividly remembers the kindness of one particular soldier.

In 1941, the Nazi regime, ordered the Jews in Germany to wear a Yellow Star of David inscribed with the word Jude (Jew). The following year, in June 1942, Jews in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and other lands under German control were ordered to begin wearing Yellow Stars.  Betty Gerard shows the Yellow Star with the word Jood (Jew in Dutch) she was forced to wear as a child in the Westerbork Concentration Camp in the Netherlands.

Dr. Bertram Schaffner, who served in the U.S Army during World War II as a psychiatrist evaluating the mental fitness of draftees, speaks about the discriminatory laws and regulations against homosexuals in the U.S. Army and his efforts to protect their privacy.

On June 5, 1942, the Nazis reported having killed 97,000 Jews in specially constructed gas vans. Friedrich August Jeckeln — who served as an SS and police leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II — testified in 1945 that Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler, who organized the mass murder of Jews, told him shootings were too impractical, so gas vans were devised as a more efficient system. The method was initially used against the mentally insane in Polish hospitals in 1939. By 1942 the Nazis had begun to deploy more than 36 of these specially designed and equipped vans.

Born in Coburg, Germany, on Nov 17, 1923, Harry Nomburg fled from Germany to the United Kingdom and fought with the British armed forces. He was attached as an interpreter to Commando Force. In this clip, Harry recalls landing on Normandy on D-Day, June 6.

Branko Lustig, who served as one of the producers on Schindler’s List reflects upon his experience when he returned to Auschwitz during the making of the 1980s television mini-series “War and Remembrance.”

Anna Heilman remembers fleeing from a burning building and making her way to the Aryan side during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Anna relates she was rounded up by the SS on May 3, 1943, was transported back and taken directly to the “Umschlagplatz” in the ghetto. She describes the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. Anna, along with her sister and parents, was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp that May.

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