When Deborah Long was a teenager, she often came home to find her mother sitting with the latest issues of Life or Look magazine, quietly tearing out pages.
“You see this picture?” her mother would say. “She looks a little like my older sister Ryfka.” Or, “This movie star right here? He reminds me of my father. So handsome.”
On August 2, 1944, nearly 3,000 Roma and Sinti women, men and children were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This documentary chronicles the Holocaust as experienced in Italy, from the racial laws Mussolini enacted in 1938 through the German invasion in 1943 and the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. The experiences are made personal through the use of testimony from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. Nine Italian citizens, all survivors of Auschwitz, share their stories; their testimonies are woven among personal and historical photographs and additional archival footage.
USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend and partner Eddie Jaku, who has passed away in Sydney, Australia, at age 101. Eddie will be remembered for his extraordinary life—which included surviving the Holocaust by escaping from four concentration camps—and for his relentless positivity and kindness to all.