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In this clip from her testimony, Erika Gold recalls her fond memories of her favorite room in her childhood house, the living room, especially during Shabbat.

Take part in a grassroots revolution for observing Yom HaShoah: invite friends and family to an in-person or online gathering on or around Yom HaShoah. We provide you with a kit including hosting tips, an abridged testimony from our Visual History Archive, educational material and discussion prompts.

USC Shoah Foundation continues to record interviews with Holocaust survivors as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection initiative, an urgent effort to give voice to survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust with the goal of educating people around the globe.

How best to fuse compelling testimony with the latest innovative technologies to produce the most effective instructional materials for students and educators around the world?

After surviving the Holocaust, William Harvey immigrated to New York City and started working at a beauty shop simply because he needed to work. William Harvey continues to describe how his skill flourished and the A-list and celebrity clients who visited the shop.  

William (“Bill”) Harvey, a friend of the institute who survived two Nazi concentration camps, later became a well-known cosmetologist with a client list that included Judy Garland, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and a young Liza Minnelli.

Biographical Information about Gerda Klein Born May 8, 1924 Bielsko, Poland Date of Interview December 7, 1995 Location of Interview Arizona, U.S.A. Length of Interview 3:09:23 Ghetto(s) Bielsko Biala (Poland: Ghetto) Camp(s) Helmsbrechts (German: Concentration Camp) Bolkenhain (Germany: Concentration Camp)

Gerda describes being liberated by the United States Army and encountering her future husband, U.S. Army Lt. Kurt Klein, in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in May 1945. Gerda Klein was born Gerda Weissmann on May 8, 1924, in Bielsko, Poland. Gerda and her brother, Arthur, grew up relatively unaware of the spread of Nazism, until Poland was invaded in 1939; soon after, Arthur was taken away on a transport. In April 1942, Gerda and her parents were ordered into the Bielsko ghetto.

Gerda Klein reflects on daily life while imprisoned in the Merzdorf concentration camp a subsidiary camp of Gross Rosen. She describes her forced labor making textiles and also working alongside German citizens.

Kurt describes liberating survivors of a death march in May 1945, in Volary, Czechoslovakia, including his first encounter with his future wife, Gerda. Kurt Klein was born July 2, 1920, in Walldorf, Germany. As the Nazi persecution of German Jews intensified, Kurt’s parents decided to send him and his siblings to live with distant relatives in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in various jobs, including the printing business, trying to raise enough money to bring his parents to the United States. Kurt was drafted into the United States Army in 1943.

Leadership Workshop - Action and Values, presented by USC Shoah Foundation's William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program, provides a dynamic and unique opportunity for students to engage with testimonies – personal stories – from survivors and witnesses of genocide to develop a stronger sense of self and voice.

USC Shoah Foundation will be leading the following sessions during the Liberation75 Student Day Program. This is an excellent opportunity for students to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah): Learning with Testimony & Film: Love is Stronger Than HateTime (Eastern Daylight Time): 2:00-2:45pm (11:00 - 11:45 Pacific)Students of Grades: 4-6

Kurt describes liberating survivors of a death march in May 1945, in Volary, Czechoslovakia, including his first encounter with his future wife, Gerda. Kurt Klein was born July 2, 1920, in Walldorf, Germany. As the Nazi persecution of German Jews intensified, Kurt’s parents decided to send him and his siblings to live with distant relatives in Buffalo, New York, where he worked in various jobs, including the printing business, trying to raise enough money to bring his parents to the United States. Kurt was drafted into the United States Army in 1943.

Leo discusses other genocides and reflects on human responsibility in preventing them.

Through a new partnership with Zikaron BaSalon, we invite you to host your friends and family at an intimate gathering on Yom HaShoah. We will provide you with an abridged testimony, educational material, discussion prompts, and hosting tips to create an event that will inspire your guests and move them to action – maybe even to host their own gathering next year. 

Narcisse Gasimba, a Tutsi survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, describes Aminadab Birara, the leader of a resistance group in the mountains of Bisesero. 

Institution subscribing to USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive: University of Sussex Library Falmer Hill, Falmer Brighton BN1 9QL United Kingdom Tel: +44 01273 678163 Email: library@sussex.ac.uk Website: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/

100 Days ot Inspire Respect Armenian Genocide survivor Samuel Kadorian talks about the nightmares he used to have regularly about the horrors he witnessed during the genocide.

Sam Kadorian speaks on being an eyewitness to the Armenian Genocide. Kadorian’s testimony is part of the new Armenian Genocide collection.

Sam Kadorian was born in 1907 in Hussenig, a small village in the province of Kharpert, in the eastern plains of Anatolia. He survived the Genocide in 1915 at the age of 8 when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed all the young boys of the village ages 5 to 10 and threw them into a pile on the sandy beach of the shores of the Euphrates River and starting jabbing them with their swords and bayonets. Fortunately, they only nipped his cheek and his grandmother later found him and nursed him back to health.

Sam Kadorian remembers the separation and killings of Armenian families during the 1915 genocide.    

Sam Kadorian remembers the separation and killings of Armenian families during the 1915 genocide.    

In 2022, USC Shoah Foundation integrated first testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a particular emphasis on the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. The integration is the result of the Institute’s partnership with the Srebrenica Memorial Center.

This past Saturday marked twenty-five years since the Srebrenica genocide, the biggest in a cluster of massacres that occurred as part of the campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in eastern parts of Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war in the country.

On this day, 27 years ago, my city of Sarajevo became a besieged city, and remained such for the following four years. A seven-year old at the time, I remember those first days of April of 1992 well. On one of them, my family’s Yugo 45 – an iconic car model of the former Yugoslavia – broke down right next to the Kasarna Maršala Tita (military barracks), where the U.S. Embassy is located today. Without a car, we could not go home that night, so we returned to my grandparents’ house. Later that night, the Bosnian Serb forces took away all the Bosnian Muslim men from our street and killed them. That Yugo 45, which we sold for some firewood months later, saved my father. This is how I remember that April of 1992.

Earlier this year, thanks to a new collaboration with the Srebrenica Memorial Center, USC Shoah Foundation took possession of a pilot collection of 20 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The testimonies document the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys and the deportation of over 25,000 women and children that occurred in parts of eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.