Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen.

Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen.

Chair/Moderador: Douglas Carranza, Central American Studies, CSU Northridge

English translation: “First, I would like to thank Mr. Steven Spielberg for the brilliant idea he had to create the Shoah Foundation so that all the cruelty committed by the Nazis is never forgotten. I hope that all that we spoke about here, and all that is told about the Shoah, be just a small grain of sand in the vast mountain that should be created (formed) for the much-desired  peace in the world. And all that took place in Germany and in Europe should never happen again. I would also like to say that the world should prevent Nazi cruelty from returning with all its might.

Jewish Holocaust survivor Agnes Adachi shares a story about the antisemitic name-calling she endured as a child attending school in Hungary during World War II.

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.

Noémi Ban remembers the very first time she saw members of the SS, right before she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. She recalls the terrifying journey in the cattle cars from Hungary to Poland and also her first impressions of the concentration and extermination camp. This clip reel of Noémi’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity My Story Matters.

In 2020, while longtime USC Shoah Foundation indexer Ita Gordon was participating in a pandemic-era Zoom call about teaching the Holocaust in Latin America, she heard survivor Ana María Wahrenberg describe parting from a dear friend at a Berlin schoolyard in 1939. The story stayed with Ita – she had heard it before. Through several rounds of sleuthing in the Visual History Archive, Ita found the testimony: Betty Grebenschikoff, who in her 1997 interview said she was still hoping to find her childhood best friend, Annemarie Wahrenberg.

November 8, 2012: Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda spoke at the institute's Sexual Violence Against Women During the Holocaust Symposium, co-sponsored by Equality Now. Ms.

English Translation: “Yes, it was very difficult to carry on with my life after my husband’s death and after my son disappeared. But, I must say that I never lost my will to live even after having suffered so much, having lived through a war as I did. However, to see myself now surrounded with so much love, my daughter, my son-in-law and my two granddaughters, I never feel down. I have always been willing to help others not to feel left out.

Questo video scaricabile contiene spezzoni delle testimonianze di sopravvissuti ebrei nati e cresciuti nella città polacca di Oświęcim, dove i nazisti tedeschi crearono l’infame sistema dei campi di Auschwitz.

Armin T. Wegner was in the German Sanitary Corps and was posted to Eastern Turkey during WWI.  There he was witness to the genocide of the Armenian people. Seeing the devastating consequences of the deportations he documented the genocide in photographs, keeping meticulous notes at great personal risk.Wegner was arrested for his covert documentation, but was able to smuggle his photographs back to Germany. These photographs were later used in German Court as evidence that genocide had indeed taken place in Eastern Anatolia against the Armenian people.

With a focus on our first-ever podcast, We Share The Same Sky, join us for a conversation of the digital impacts of testimony, featuring We Share the Same Sky producer Rachael Cerrotti.

Born into an affluent German Jewish family, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was raised in New York, where he attended school and received his training as an attorney at Columbia. An early supporter of Woodrow Wilson, Morgenthau was tapped by the then newly-elected president to become the United States Ambassador for the Ottoman Empire.

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.

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, SlatkaSzejman was a milliner. She had three brothers. The family left for France in 1930, settling in Nancy.

Over the last several years, I’ve had the distinct privilege to work with the recorded materials collected by the late Dr. J Michael Hagopian. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide himself, Michael had the foresight to capture the voices of those who witnessed the atrocities first hand.  Later this month, the USC Shoah Foundation will make a group of 60 of these interviews available through the Visual History Archive, ensuring that these recollections will be preserved in perpetuity, for future generations.  Michael would have certainly been proud to witness this accomplishment.

The murder of extended families, the targeting of community leaders, the critical role of eyewitnesses--each of these factors surfaces in Haigas Bonapart’s interview. These tactics are all too familiar to those of us who study the crime of genocide and the strategies employed by its perpetrators. By destroying communal ties and eliminating those individuals who might rally a group in self-defense, civilians under systematic assault are made much more vulnerable to isolation and mass violence.

Clara Isaacman (née Heller) was born in Borsa, Romania, before WWII. Due to rampant anti-Semitism, her family left Romania and moved to Antwerp, Belgium inthe late 1920s, when Clara was a child. Clara’s father, Shalom, was in the diamond business and owned a soda factory. Clara attended a Hebrew school and a publicschool in Antwerp.

Clara Isaacman (née Heller) est née à Borsa, en Roumanie, avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Sa famille quitte la Roumanie à cause de l’antisémitisme rampant et rejoint Anvers (Belgique) à la fin des années 1920, alors que Clara n’est encore qu’une enfant. Le père de Clara, Shalom, est diamantaire et possède une fabrique de soude. Clara fréquente une école hébraïque et une école publique à Anvers.

Vera Gissing (née Diamant) est née le 4 juillet 1928, à Prague, Tchécoslovaquie (actuelle République tchèque). Son père, Karel, possède un magasin de vins et de spiritueux à Celakovice, près de Prague. Sa mère, Irma, remplit les tâches administratives. Vera fréquente un lycée local et se sent fière d’être une citoyenne tchèque. Elle a une soeur, Eva, de quatre ans son aînée.