Fred Ostrowski talks about the arrest and deportation of Jews of Polish origin from Germany to Poland on October 28, 1938. He remembers the journey from his hometown, Essen, Germany, to Zbaszyn, a border town in Poland. He relates that he and his mother were placed in the home of a Polish family shortly after their arrival Zbaszyn and notes that his father was in Lódz, Poland, at the time.  

Joseph Greenblatt believes it was the antisemitic taunts he endured throughout his childhood in Warsaw that led him to a life of resistance. He was a key player in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and then took on the Germans again, this time with the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 — for which he later received a medal. Greenblatt’s testimony, recorded in New York City in 1996, is contained in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Joseph Greenblatt believes it was the antisemitic taunts he endured throughout his childhood in Warsaw that led him to a life of resistance. He was a key player in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and then took on the Germans again, this time with the Polish Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 — for which he later received a medal. Greenblatt’s testimony, recorded in New York City in 1996, is contained in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation’s liaison in Poland, Monika Koszyńska coordinates the Visual History Archive access sites in Poland; represents the Institute at conferences and seminars; organizes the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century training program for Polish educators; and coordinates fundraising and other outreach efforts. She is also on the staff of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews’ education department, a Visual History Archive Access Site.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish

Twenty-five years ago, in October, 1995, a then 72 year-old Fanny Starr sat down in her living room in Denver, Colorado and recorded a two-hour long testimony with USC Shoah Foundation. Fanny was born as Fala Granek in 1922 in Lodz, Poland -- a diverse city where Jewish and Polish students intermingled. Her family was modern yet traditional. They spoke Polish, kept kosher, went to public school, and celebrated the Jewish holidays; she and her four siblings were assimilated in the way that many young Jewish people in the United States are today.

Monika Koszynska, the USC Shoah Foundation’s regional coordinator in Poland, has been appointed as Chief Specialist in Education at the newly inaugurated Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Hungarian ethics teachers and Polish educators were introduced this spring to IWalk, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational program that combines testimony with real-life locations, and are interested in incorporating it into their teaching.  

USC Shoah Foundation is co-sponsoring an advance screening of the new Polish documentary "Bogdan’s Journey" in Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 8.

What are the pillars of modern democracy and how can democracy be defended in days of crisis? These questions keep coming to me these days, when Poland faces a really serious crisis that so far has caused a huge polarization in Polish society that divides neighbors, colleagues, friends, even families. Being an educator for almost 30 years, teaching first young students, then teenagers and finally teachers about history, civil rights and human rights, I have realized what a huge setback the Polish educational system has suffered.

A new monument honoring victims of women’s slave labor camps, most of whom were Polish Jewish teenagers at the time, was unveiled on May 9th, 2016, the 71st anniversary of their liberation, in Trutnov, Czech Republic. The camps, part of Organization Shmelt, were located by textile mills and included: Gabersdorf, Parshnitz, Schatzlar, Ober Alstadt, Bernsdorf, Arnau, Dunkenthal, Hohenelbe, Ober Hohenelbe, Leibau and Bausnitz. After the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, they became concentration camps grouped under the administration of Gross-Rosen.

Teachers learned how to use testimony in their classroom activities at the third Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program in Poland Nov. 9-14, 2014.

Poland faces a horrible wave of extremism after the election of a new right-wing government. As an educator and Polish citizen, I am not only scared by this type of radical hatred, but it also reminds me of the past because the same organization that marches on the streets of Polish cities today, organized boycotts of Jewish institutions and forbade Jewish students from studying at Polish universities before WWII.

Professor Atina Grossmann gave a public lecture co-hosted by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Max Kade Institute, offering a different reading of World War II and the Holocaust by mapping Jewish death, survival, and displacement via what she called the geographical margins – the colonial and semi-colonial regions including the Soviet interior, Central Asia, Iran, and British India.

The first-ever Rated SR Socially Relevant Film Festival will show two USC Shoah Foundation documentaries in its Spotlight on Human Loss March 16 and 17 in New York City.

The man who carried out one of the most extraordinary missions of World War II is the subject of a new documentary that will screen at select theaters in Los Angeles and New York City throughout November.

The first Jewish culture festival in Milan, Italy, will feature testimony clips about Shabbat from Italian Holocaust survivors and a Polish survivor in an online exhibit.

Presented in partnership with: Two Point Films, Metro Films, Jewish Renewal in Poland, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Polish Film Festival Los Angeles, Sigi Ziering Institute on the Holocaust (American Jewish University), Menemsha Films, CIYCL (California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language), and Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival. March 8, 2017 at 7:00 PM Laemmle's Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills CA 90211

Consulate General of Poland and USC Institute for Genetic Medicine Art Gallery Welcome Dr. Jacek Leociak.

The new Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw is now offering educational programming for students that uses the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

The History Meeting House in Warsaw has become the first institution in Poland to offer full access to the Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.  Nearly 52,000 videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, recorded in 56 countries and in 32 languages—mostly between 1994 and 1999—can now be remotely accessed via an online interface that allows searching and viewing the fully indexed video and related metadata.

Not everyone in Poland has made it to Warsaw to visit POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. But this summer, the museum came to them.

Anna Post remembers pretending to be a polish girl and sneaking into the Warsaw ghetto to visit her cousins for Hanukkah.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PolishStella's father was responsible for collecting dead bodies from the streets in the Cracow ghetto during WWII. When Stella’s grandfather died a natural death in the ghetto, he buried his father, then came home, and shared his feelings about it with the family.

Rena Bernstein recalls life after liberation when her family migrated to Italy from Poland. Her father was a doctor at a polish orphanage and the family still experienced anti-Semitism.

After leaving her hometown in Poland to escape Nazi persecution, Ruth remembers observing an atypical Rosh Hashanah in the synagogue of a small Polish town.

Abbie Akst remembers when the Nazis occupied his hometown in Poland in 1939. Abbie reflects on the restrictions imposed onto Polish Jews by the Nazis including wearing a yellow patch.

April 19, 2013April 19, 2013 is the day of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Commemorative events held in Warsaw will honor the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes.

Homosexual survivor Stefan Kosinski describes his budding romance with a young German soldier, which was taboo at the time because Stefan was Polish. The soldier was kind and generous toward Stefan.

Andrzej Siemiatkowski speaks in Polish about the medical experiements and forced labor he experienced in the Auschwitz camp complex.