It wasn't until Renée received a phone call from the Simon Wiesenthal Center asking her to tell her story that she thought seriously about sharing her testimony with the world. Hearing about a particular antisemitic event that occurred in Los Angeles made Renée reflect on her experiences and motivated her to share her experiences.

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.

In this event Hosted by USC Shoah Foundation, in partnership with Writer's Bloc and Holocaust Museum LA, Batalion unveils countless stories of ingenuity, ferocity, and daring by girls and young women who fought the Nazis in Hitler’s ghettos in Poland. They blew up trains. They smuggled food and guns. They distributed false papers. They built bombs from a recipe unearthed in an old Russian pamphlet. They bought munitions. They spied.

Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and psychologist, describes the power of passing her story on to future generations.  

Watch her full testimony Read Vladka Meed's remarkable story of resistance

Justus Rosenberg worked with Varian Fry to rescue more than 1,000 artists and intellectuals as part of the Emergency Rescue Committee. In this clip, Rosenberg expresses frustration at having to turn away many others. Read more about Justus Rosenberg

Eva (Geiringer) Schloss was 15 on January 27, 1945, the day the Soviet army first entered Auschwitz. But, she says, as the war raged on and uncertainty persisted, survival was a struggle even after liberation. Read about and view behind-the-scenes photos of Eva’s interactive biography for Dimensions in Testimony, an interview  that took more than 100 hours to capture with 3D technology.

Emiliia Kessler grew up in Khmel'nik, then part of Soviet Ukraine. She recalls the complex tensions between the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Jewish community that were part of everyday life in the 1930s. Related With Ukraine under attack, we stand by our programmatic partners in Ukraine and Russia working to  build more tolerant communities.

Alex Redner was 11 years old when the German army began bombarding his hometown of Lviv (then Lwow) on Sept. 1, 1939. Less than three weeks later, the Red Army occupied the city. Related With Ukraine under attack, we stand by our programmatic partners in Ukraine and Russia working to  build more tolerant communities.