Ita Gordon: A Passion for Testimony

As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we pay tribute to some of the people who helped build the organization.

Ita Gordon has worked as an indexer, translator, mentor, and researcher at the USC Shoah Foundation since its founding 30 years ago, channeling her passion for the organization’s mission into diligent care and helping to establish the USC Shoah Foundation as a world leader in collecting, preserving, and sharing survivor testimony.

Ita joined what was at the time Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1995, just months after the organization was established to record 50,000 oral histories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust.

In her three decades with the Institute, Ita has indexed or reviewed more than 4,100 testimonies – around 9,000 hours – mentored dozens of staff members, researched documentaries, books, and other projects, and helped define and refine the keywords that make the Visual History Archive’s 56,000 testimonies accessible around the world. 

USC Shoah Foundation Curator Cripsin Brooks, who works closely with Ita, says that at the core of Ita’s dedication is a love for the archive and the voices it contains, and a deep belief in the good that comes from sharing those voices with the world. 

Raised in Brazil by Yiddish-speaking parents, Ita speaks Portuguese, Spanish, Yiddish, and English and is a trained translator, which made her an agile staff member in the USC Shoah Foundation’s early years.

As interview tapes came in, Ita worked with cataloging teams in trailers on the backlot of Universal Studios, watching hours a day of Holocaust survivor and witness testimony. Indexers attached keywords to make the testimonies searchable segment by segment, including names of people and places, specific historical events, or common experiences.

Ita was also instrumental in establishing USC Shoah Foundation’s collection efforts in Brazil, where close to 600 testimonies were recorded.

After most of the initial batch of 52,000 testimonies was indexed, Ita stayed on when the Shoah Foundation moved to the University of Southern California in 2006, applying her skills and commitment in an array of areas. 

She has worked on research projects for filmmakers and scholars, and helped train interviewers and indexers, following up with one-on-one mentorship and guidance. She adapted her skills when the institute expanded to collect testimonies related to genocides in Rwanda, Armenia, Guatemala, Bosnia, and others.

Brooks says Ita connects deeply with survivor testimonies, absorbing and recalling details of the interviewee’s experiences and emotions. 

Staff members and researchers have long relied on Ita and her encyclopedic knowledge to mine the archive for the perfect testimony or clip for a classroom resource, a scholarly project, a public presentation, or a social media post. 

Ita’s legendary recall allowed her to draw connections between interviewees, including a headline-making reunion in 2020 after she reunited childhood friends from Berlin who hadn’t realized the other had survived (see Betty and Annemarie). 

“I have had the rare privilege to see the breadth of humanity as well as the details of each person’s life,” Ita said when USC Shoah Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2014. “Minute by minute, the keywords provide a way for families, scholars, and students to find wonderful moments of insight and truth.”

 

Below is a selection of testimonies meaningful to Ita.

Jack Pinto and Aldean Mason

In 1995, a newspaper article about the USC Shoah Foundation, featuring Holocaust survivor Jack Pinto, caught the attention of U.S. Army veteran Aldean Mason. While serving in the US Army Nurse Corps in Cham, Germany in April 1945, Aldean tended to an emaciated and depressed survivor named Jacob Pinto. She had kept a letter the survivor had written in 1945, thanking her and the US Army for giving him back the will to live.

After reading the article, Aldean called the Shoah Foundation, and Ita Gordon answered the phone. Ita made it her mission not only to confirm for Aldean that Jack Pinto was the survivor she had treated but also to help connect the two. Aldean and Jack were reunited, and in June 1995, Aldean recorded her testimony.

To view Jack Pinto’s full testimony, click here. 

To view Aldean Mason’s full testimony, click here.

 

Betty and Annemarie

In 2020, while Ita 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, whom she had last seen in Berlin in 1939. Ita tracked down Betty, who was living in Florida, and helped connect the two women in a reunion that made headlines around the world.

 

Ria Elias

In the 1990s, Ita helped establish collection efforts in Brazil. Ria Elias, who was born in Humenné, Slovakia, recorded her testimony in São Paulo in January 1997. Ria was among the first Jewish prisoners brought to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, surviving in the camp as a kapo and a medical assistant until 1944.

 

Dina Gottlliebova-Babbitt

Ita was drawn to this clip from Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt’s testimony, which she said she found both uplifting and sad. An art student in Prague before the Holocaust, Dina was 20 years old when she was transported from the Theresienstadt ghetto to Auschwitz concentration camp. There she met Fredy Hirsch, a prisoner who ran the children’s barrack, who asked her to paint a wall to cheer up the children. The mural of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, which she describes in this clip, ended up saving Dina’s life; an SS man reported her talent to Josef Mengele, who enlisted her to paint portraits of Romani inmates. Dina later went on to become a Hollywood animator.

To view Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt’s full testimony, click here.

 

Whitney Harris

While helping educators choose videos for classroom resources about the Einsatzgruppen, Ita recommended that in addition to testimony from survivors, students might also benefit from hearing the account of Whitney Harris, a prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In this clip, Harris describes how he began to uncover the mass atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units deployed in the Soviet territories Germany occupied in 1941-42.

To view Whitney Harris’ full testimony, click here.

 

Dr. Elena Ottolenghi Nightingale

Ita helped Dr. Elena Ottolenghi Nightingale connect with the USC Shoah Foundation to record her testimony in 1997, shepherding her through the process with care and sensitivity and staying in touch long after. Elena and her family fled Italy in 1939, finding refuge with a relative in New York City. Antisemitic laws in Italy had prevented Elena from attending school, but in the U.S. she pursued her education and went on to earn a PhD and MD. She became an accomplished pediatric geneticist and medical scholar as well as a social activist, advocating for children and working at the intersection of health care and global human rights. Her testimony is included in IWitness educational resources. Dr. Elena Nightingale died in May 2024 at the age of 91.