Cette vidéo téléchargeable a été réalisée à l’aide de clips extraits des témoignages de survivants juifs de la Shoah (des archives  audiovisuelle de l’USC Shoah Foundation) qui sont nés et ont grandi dans la ville polonaise d' Oświęcim, sinistrement célèbre pour avoir été le lieu d´emplacement du camp d'Auschwitz crée par l´administration nazie allemande pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.

Avant Auschwitz, la ville d´Oświęcim avait une communauté juive diverse et prospère. Cette vidéo donne un éclairage sur cette période oubliée, un regard sur la vie d’avant Auschwitz, à travers des récits à la première personne, de celles et ceux qui ont y ont vécu.

Yaakov Handeli was born in a middle-class Jewish family on July 23, 1927 in Salonika, Greece. He was the youngest of six children; he had two brothers and
three sisters. His father, Shlomoh, co-owned a building material business. Ladino speaker at home, Yaakov attended a private, Ladino-language primary school and a
Gymnasium, where he studied in Greek.

Régine Jacubert (née Skørka) was born January 24, 1920 in Zagórów, Poland. Her father, Yacob Skørka taught Hebrew and Yiddish in a Yeshiva. Her mother, Slatka
Szejman was a milliner. She had three brothers. The family left for France in 1930, settling in Nancy.

A USC Shoah Foundation exhibit and New York Times article remember that millions of people were murdered not in concentration camps, but in public sites all over Eastern Europe.

USC Shoah Foundation -- The Institute for Visual History and Education invites proposals for its 2014 Student Research Fellow program. The fellowship provides support during summer 2014 or one designated semester of the 2014-2015 academic year for USC undergraduate and graduate students interested in doing research at the Visual History Archive. 

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education invites proposals for its 2014 Teaching Fellows program that will provide summer support for faculty at the Institute’s Visual History Archive access sites to integrate the Institute’s testimonies into new or existing courses.

Vera Gissing (née Diamant) was born on July 4, 1928 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). Her father, Karel, owned a wine and spirits business in
Celakovice, near Prague. Her mother, Irma, ran the business office. Vera attended a local Gymnasium and was very proud to be a Czech citizen. She had a sister, Eva,
four years her senior.

Though it’s most known as the city that was home to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Polish city of Oświęcim has a history of its own as a small industrial center with a thriving Jewish population.

Elizabeth Holtzman was born on August 11, 1941 in New York, NY, United States. Her father, Sidney, was an attorney and her mother was a college professor. Elizabeth graduated from Brooklyn’s Abraham Lincoln High School in 1958 and Radcliffe College in 1962. During the summer of 1963, after her first year of law school at Harvard, Elizabeth travelled to Albany, GA, to assist civil rights lawyer C.B. King in fighting for justice. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965 and entered public service.