Miriam Adler speaks on the camp intake procedures at Auschwitz concentration camp after being separated from her father. Miriam reflects that she didn’t recognize herself after seeing her reflection in a broken piece of glass.
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Jeffrey Shandler, professor at Rutgers University and the 2012-13 USC Shoah Foundation Institute Scholar, published a multimedia article that examines the impact of "Schindler’s List" on Holocaust survivors in the December 2013 issue of American Literature.
Henny Paritzky speaks on how her family escaped deportation with the help of a nun and a policeman in a hospital in Lyon, France.
This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.
The existence of the city dates back at least to 12th century. Following the partition of Poland in 1772, the city was annexed to the Habsburg Austrian Empire, returning to Polish rule only after the end of WWI. During that time, Oświęcim became an industrial center and an important railroad junction. Jewish population in 1921 was 4,950. On the eve of World War II, there were about 8,000 Jews in the city, over half the whole population. Oświęcim was occupied immediately at the beginning of WWII. By October 1939, it was annexed into Greater Germany.
Bella Arnett (née Froman) was born on September 6, 1917 in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland). She had three brothers and two sisters. Bella’s father, Chaim,
was a shoikhet, performing the ritual slaughter of animals according to Jewish tradition. He observed Ger Hasidism and was a respected member of the local community. Before the war, Bella attended a Polish school and received Jewish education at home.
John Baer was born to Bernhard and Marta Baer on April 26, 1917 in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, Poland). His father was a sales representative for fur and textile manufacturers and his mother owned a millinery store. John had an older sister, Lilly. He received his elementary and secondary education in public schools in Breslau, and also attended a Hebrew school.
Betty Berz (née Sagal) was born on June 22, 1926 in Kyiv, USSR (today, Ukraine). The family—Betty, her mother Marie, her father Boris, and her younger sister Rachel—immigrated to Paris in 1929.
Maurice Blindt was born on February 20, 1924, to Samuel and Fajga Blindt, both of whom were originally from Poland. He had a sister, Lucia, born in 1919, and a
brother, Henri, born in 1926. On the eve of World War II, Lucia left Paris to live in Algiers. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, the Blindts fled Paris. In the process of fleeing, they encountered heavy gunfire and arial bombings, and Fajga had a nervous breakdown.
Lajos Cséri (name at birth Lajos Klein) was born on January 22, 1928 in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary, in a secular Jewish family. Lajos had a brother, Gyula, and a sister, Anna. He attended a Protestant school in Sárrétudvari, where he spent most of his childhood.