Holocaust survivor David Fertig was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922 to Polish parents. He escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport at age 16 to live with cousins in England, where he joined the Royal Air Force. (02:04:22)
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Celina Biniaz recalls facing Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth while working under the protection of Oskar Schindler at his munitions factory in Brünnlitz labor camp in 1944.
Joe Samuels survived the 1941 Farhud, a Nazi-inspired pogrom in Baghdad. With antisemitic restrictions and violence increasing in Iraq with the establishment of the state of Israel, he and his younger brother were smuggled out of Baghdad in 1949. Here, he reflects on the power of accepting one’s destiny.
Dr. Anna Hájková, a scholar of Jewish Holocaust history and pioneer of queer Holocaust history, discusses why including queer perspectives helps us develop a more inclusive history of the Holocaust.
More than 75 years after the end of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jewry remains a touchpoint for modern history, international law, and numerous other fields of study. As we face the passing of the generation of the direct witnesses, and confront new challenges with rising antisemitism, the landscape of Holocaust memory is changing. How can the second and third generation - and beyond - ensure the preservation and relevance of Holocaust memory in a world without direct witnesses?
In 2020, while longtime USC Shoah Foundation indexer Ita Gordon was participating in a pandemic-era Zoom call about teaching the Holocaust in Latin America, she heard survivor Ana María Wahrenberg describe parting from a dear friend at a Berlin schoolyard in 1939. The story stayed with Ita – she had heard it before. Through several rounds of sleuthing in the Visual History Archive, Ita found the testimony: Betty Grebenschikoff, who in her 1997 interview said she was still hoping to find her childhood best friend, Annemarie Wahrenberg.
Dr. Shira Klein is Associate Professor, Chair, Department of History at Wilkinson College at Chapman University. Dr. Klein focuses on Italian Jewry, Jewish migration, and the Holocaust. Her book, Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was selected as finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award. Her next book project will examine Italian Jews’ participation in Italy’s African empire from the 1890s to World War II, including their ties to indigenous Jews in Libya and Ethiopia.
Mirjam Baitalmi, an 88-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor who survived Kristallnacht in 1938, left on a ship to England while it was being bombed, lost her parents in the Holocaust, and now decades later survived the October 7th Hamas attack on Kibbutz Zikim. On the day of the attack, she spent hours sheltering in her safe room with her caregiver.
Holocaust survivor Clara Isaacman recalls the cross-cultural joy of the holiday season when she was growing up in Antwerp, Belgium.