EDITOR'S NOTE: The German army was in retreat and Polish citizens hoped to take control of Warsaw before approaching Soviet forces arrived. On Aug. 1, 1944, 50,000 members of the Polish underground, known as the Home Army, attacked German forces and within three days gained control of most of the city.

First they came for the Muslims, and we said, “not this time.”

In their third day of protest in certain cities, demonstrators gathered in unity against President Donald Trump’s recent executive order restricting immigration and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen – for 90 days.

Earlier this summer, Eleanor Beardsley of NPR met with a group of Holocaust survivors and relatives gathered in Bordeaux, France. They were beginning a 10-day trek, tracing a specific escape route from France to Portugal by way of Spain. These survivors were brought together by the memory of one man: Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

The young Nazi approached 13-year-old Szulem Czygielmamn as he walked on the sidewalk of Lubartowska Street in Lublin, Poland, and shoved him off the sidewalk. Szulem was lucky; Jews had died for less.  

In this moment, he decided he was not going to have his identity decided by the Nazis. He tore off the white armband with the blue Star of David. Szulem would determine his own destiny. 

Preserving Testimony 70 Years Later

Paris. The way we think of that beautiful city has changed. That's what they want. They want us to think about things differently, to use Paris as a symbol of bloodshed and fear, not the one we know and love of liberty and culture. That is the nature of extremism: It tries to change who we are, how we see the world, to change our habits and our patterns of thought, to enjoy our freedoms less, to exert control.

Rini Sampath is the last person any smart individual would choose to insult. She is intelligent, bright eyed, strong – an independent individual with a highly centered sense of her own identity. It is little wonder she was elected president of USC’s undergraduate student government.