"During the Holocaust I was living in a cocoon, with blinders. I lived completely in the present moment, because at any second, any Nazi, any German, any Kapo, could do away with me. You were like a gnat that they could squash. So, you lived inside a cocoon and hoped that one the day the butterfly would come out."

This talk examines the facets of Jewish women's agency in different contexts during the Holocaust in Transnistria, where Jews and Roma from Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported by Romanian authorities in 1941 and 1942 and where local Ukrainian Jews were brought from neighboring localities. 

Nicholas Bredie (PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing, USC) conducted research to contribute to a hybrid work of fiction and non-fiction centered around the life history of his great aunt, who was murdered in 1945 in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

In this lecture, Barnabas Balint—PhD candidate in History, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK, and 2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow—examines how the identities of this interwar generation were formed in times of crisis for the Jewish community, how their roles and agency in society changed, and how the institutions they were connected to reacted to persecution. He analyzes the subjective and personal ways young people experienced their age during the Holocaust in Hungary.

In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories - stories told many decades after the events occurred - often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier.

Joseph Greenblatt believes it was the antisemitic taunts he endured throughout his childhood in Warsaw that led him to a life of resistance. He was a key player in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and then took on the Germans again, this time with the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 — for which he later received a medal. Greenblatt’s testimony, recorded in New York City in 1996, is contained in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn about the passing of Max Glauben, a child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek and Dachau concentration camps, and a veteran of the United States Army. In 2018, Max was interviewed by USC Shoah Foundation, in association with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum—a center he helped found—for the interactive Dimensions in Testimony exhibit. He recorded his original video testimony for USC Shoah Foundation in Dallas, Texas in 1996.

"Shades of Agency: Choice, Survival & Resistance of Jewish Women During the Holocaust in Transnistria” Lilia Tomchuk (PhD candidate in History, Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt, Germany)  2021-2022 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow  March 2, 2022

"Reclaiming the 'Ruins of Memory': Gender, Agency, and Imagination in Stories of the Shoah” Sara R. Horowitz  (York University, Canada)  2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence  March 23, 2022

"Growing Up Jewish During the Holocaust in Hungary” Barnabas Balint (PhD candidate in History, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK)  2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow  March 29, 2022  

Download video Download Host Kit   About Kurt Thomas Kurt Thomas was born in the city of Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1914. He grew up in Boskovice, a small town with a famous medieval Jewish quarter. Kurt was drafted into the Czechoslovak Army, where he received military training.

Download video Download Host Kit   About Erika Gold Erika Gold was born in Germany on January 4, 1928. She was five years old when Hitler came to power.

Descargar video Descargar Kit   Sobre Elie Alevy Elie Alevy nació en Salónica, Grecia en 1926 en el seno de una familia judía de clase media. Tenía dos hermanas mayores.

Download video Download Host Kit   About Dr. Edith Eger Edith Eger was born in 1927 in Kosice, (then Czechoslovakia, later Hungary, now Slovakia) to Hungarian Jewish parents. She had two sisters.

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Download video Download Home Kit יוסף באו נולד ב 18- ביוני 1920 בקרקוב, שבפולין. כשהיה בן 18 התחיל ללמוד אמנות פלסטית באוניברסיטת קרקוב, אך מלחמת העולם השנייה קטעה את לימודיו. בתחילה הועבר יחד עם שאר יהודי העיר לגטו קרקוב ולאחר מכן למחנה הריכוז פלאשוב, במחנה זה הכיר את אשתו רבקה והם התחתנו בסתר בתוך מחנה הנשים.

Download video Download Host Kit   About Yehudah Bakon Yehudah Bakon was born in Moravska Ostrava (Czechoslovakia) on July 28, 1929.

Kurt describes liberating survivors of a death march in May 1945, in Volary, Czechoslovakia, including his first encounter with his future wife, Gerda. Kurt Klein was born July 2, 1920, in Walldorf, Germany. As the Nazi persecution of German Jews intensified, Kurt’s parents decided to send him and his siblings to live with distant relatives in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in various jobs, including the printing business, trying to raise enough money to bring his parents to the United States. Kurt was drafted into the United States Army in 1943.