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In this clip, Robert Waisman, a Jewish survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, and Leon Bass, the American soldier who helped liberate the camp each recall what they saw on April 11, 1945.
liberation, clip reel, dachau / Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Kurt, an American soldier, and Gerda, a Holocaust survivor, recall how they met the day Kurt liberated her from a derelict factory where Nazi soldiers abandoned her and other women during a death march.
liberation, clip reel, death march, Kurt Klein, gerda klein / Tuesday, January 2, 2018
In this clip from testimony recorded in Bangladesh in 2017, Anwar Sadek, a Rohingya refugee, refuses to stay silent about the Myanmar government's treatment of the Rohingya.
/ Friday, January 5, 2018
As we look ahead in 2018, we offer a few moments of joyful music from the Visual History Archive.
music, music recital, clip reel / Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Barbara Reichmann survived the Holocaust by going into hiding and concealing her identity. In order to survive, she volunteered to work as a Polish forced laborer, which brought her eventually to Ulm, Germany. She was liberated by French armed forces. In Munich, she met her husband, Leon Reichmann, and had a daughter. They eventually emigrated to the United States.
/ Thursday, January 11, 2018
In this clip, Holocaust survivor Raphael Zimetbaum recounts how Brazilian ambassador Luis Martins de Souza Dantas granted him and his family diplomatic visas, allowing them to eventually escape to Brazil. The ambassador also happened to be married to Elise Meyer, sister of Washington Post owner Eugene Meyer, Katharine Graham's father.
clip, subtitled, holocaust survivor / Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Testimony brings to life why we join World Jewish Congress and communities everywhere for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the #WeRemember campaign.
/ Thursday, January 25, 2018
Drawing on USC Shoah Foundation oral history videos, personal papers, and other sources, Dr. Diane Marie Amann's lecture situates stories of the unsung women who played vital roles at Nuremberg in the context of the Nuremberg trials themselves, international law, and the postwar global society. Diane Marie Amann is the inaugural 2017-2018 Breslauer, Rutman and Anderson Research Fellow.
presentation, discussion, lecture, cagr / Thursday, February 1, 2018
Executive Director Stephen D. Smith introduces our work in the area of virtual reality with a look at "The Last Goodbye," a VR short featuring Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as he takes you on an intimate journey through the Majdanek concentration camp.
/ Wednesday, February 14, 2018
In this clip from her testimony, Holocaust survivor Itka Zygmuntowicz recalls her mother's last words of advice to never allow herself to become bitter.
/ Friday, February 16, 2018
This lecture features two of our summer 2017 research fellows: Maria Zalewska, PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies and Mellon PhD Fellow in the Digital Humanities, USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Noha Ayoub, USC undergraduate student majoring in Law, History and Culture and minoring in Middle East Studies.
presentation, lecture, cagr, Rwandan Genocide, holocaust / Wednesday, February 28, 2018
In this lecture, Philippe Sands discusses his most recent book East West Street: On the Origins of 'Genocide' and 'Crimes Against Humanity' — part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller — to connect his work on 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide', the events that overwhelmed his family in Lviv during World War II, and the untold story at the heart of the Nuremberg trial that pits lawyers Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht against Hans Frank, defendant number 7, former Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland and Adolf Hitler's lawyer.
discussion, lecture, presentation, cagr / Monday, March 5, 2018
Georgia State University professor Jennie Burnet lectures on the moment-by-moment changing landscape of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda that resists efforts to formulate a structural model of rescuer behavior.
presentation, discussion, lecture, rwanda, rescue, cagr / Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Dr. Vera Laska describes how, as a teenager, she began helping Jews and French political prisoners cross the mountains from Slovakia into Hungary.
mtw, lesson, clip, female, résistance, political prisoner, Vera Laska / Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Sarkis Miranian was born in 1908 or after in Yeghekis (present-day Göllü) in the current province of Bitlis, a village nestled in a valley on the southern shores of Lake Van. He describes the situation in his village right before the Genocide began in the Van region as well as the immediate impact it had on his family.  This audio clip is a part of the Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection which is an audio only collection.
clip, Armenian Genocide, Richard Hovannisian / Friday, March 9, 2018
Sandra Patricia García Paredes, a survivor of the Guatemalan genocide, speaks about her attempt to escape from the soldiers who kidnapped her. A clip of her testimony appears in the IWitness activity, “The Mechanisms of Violence Used During the Armed Conflict.”
subtitled, Guatemala, Guatemalan Genocide, clip / Wednesday, March 14, 2018
In this clip from her testimony, Jane Lester talks about the relative gender equality that existed in her work environment during the Nuremberg Trials.
clip, Nuremberg Trials, war crimes trial participant / Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Nurusseher is a Rohingya refugee. An English transcript of Nurusseher's message is below:
/ Wednesday, March 28, 2018
In this clip, Sara Shapiro describes her initial refusal to leave her parents after they had arranged her escape, but because of her father's insistence, she and her brother fled the ghetto.
clip, ghetto, escape, sara shapiro, mickey shapiro / Thursday, March 29, 2018
Inge Sack de Kord describes what she and her family went through during the years of war to obtain visas to leave Europe while her father was at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
subtitled, female jewish survivor, chilean exhibit / Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Alfred Fischer remembers his voyage through different countries before arriving and settling in Chile with his wife Herta Eisenreich, also a Holocaust survivor.
subtitled, jewish survivor, chilean exhibit / Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Eva Klein remembers how she felt towards Chile and their citizens who welcomed her when she arrived to the country in 1947.
subtitled, jewish survivor, chilean exhibit / Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Paulina Bohorodzaner remembers the beginning of her working life in Chile, her adaptation to a new culture with her husband and the start of their new business.
subtitled, jewish survivor, chilean exhibit / Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Gustavo Seelenberger reflects on the aftermath of his experience during the war and what he went through during those years from a spiritual perspective.
subtitled, jewish survivor, chilean exhibit / Tuesday, April 10, 2018
In this clip from her testimony, Jamalida Begum describes how Myanmar authorities murdered her interpreter and pursued her in retaliation for her speaking with UN representatives and the press about her plight.
subtitled, Rohingya, clip / Wednesday, April 11, 2018
This is footage from Aaron Elster's testimony for the New Dimensions in Testimony project. He was one of the Institute's earliest interviewees. In this clip, Aaron Elster gives a message to future generations.
clip / Friday, April 13, 2018
In this clip from her 2017 testimony, Anneliese recalls telling her grandchildren how antisemitic vandalism is now a crime. In her youth during the Nazi regime, such violence was condoned by the state.
clip / Thursday, April 19, 2018
Christopher Browning, the 2018 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research, talks about the changing attitudes about witness testimony and how the process of gathering it has changed since the end of World War II.
presentation, discussion, lecture, cagr, mickey shapiro, sara shapiro / Tuesday, April 24, 2018
In this clip from Haiastan Terzian's testimony, she describes how she was in hiding with several other Armenians in the American Consulate during the Armenian Genocide.
Armenian Genocide, Armenian Genocide survivor, AFF / Wednesday, April 25, 2018
In this clip from Frieda Roos van Hessen's testimony, the opera singer and Holocaust survivor recalls her ill-fated attempt at a career in the diamond business when she was an 18 year-old music student.
clip, holocaust survivor, female / Thursday, April 26, 2018

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