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Voices of Resistance

In this clip series, survivors and other witnesses to genocide recall the various ways they individually or collectively resisted injustice and discrimination during wartime, sometimes at great personal risk. What are the circumstances in which resisting authority becomes a moral duty? What forms can resistance take? What does the face of resistance look like?

Voices of Resistance

Ruth Brand on resistance

 

Ruth Brand talks about the decision to fast on Yom Kippur—also known as the Day of Atonement—in Auschwitz II-Birkenau as a form of resistance.

 

 

MORE CLIPS...

  • Days of Remembrance: Roman Kent

    Language: English

    Roman Kent talks about the songs he would sing for resistance in camps and how these songs create a sense of community.

  • Ruth Brand on resistance

    Language: English

     

    Ruth Brand talks about the decision to fast on Yom Kippur—also known as the Day of Atonement—in Auschwitz II-Birkenau as a form of resistance.

     

     

  • Ralph Friedman on Resistance Songs in Vilnius

    Language: English

    Ralph Friedman recalls the songs he used to hear in the Vilnius ghetto, including one about a resistance leader who turned himself in to the commandant.

  • Esperance Kaligirwa on her neighbors standing up to genocide

    Language: English

    In this clip, Esperance Kaligirwa recalls being rounded up by men intent on killing her and her family but were spared by the actions of her neighbors who interceded for them.

Remembering the Warsaw Uprising

Tue, 07/31/2018 - 12:00am

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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.
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Vera Laska on how she joined the Czech resistance

First they came for

Tue, 02/07/2017 - 11:55am

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Photo of protests at LAX of the travel ban. (Rennie Svirnovskiy / USC Annenberg Media)
Photo of protests at LAX of the travel ban. (Rennie Svirnovskiy / USC Annenberg Media)
What I’ve learned, looking back at my family history and while working at USC Shoah Foundation, is how to do resistance. That’s how you do resistance. You see injustice and you tirelessly fight against it.
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Remembering Dutch Rescuer Marion Pritchard

Clips from the testimony of Dutch rescurer and aid provider Marion Pritchard.

Remembering Dutch Rescuer Marion Pritchard

  • Marion Pritchard on the dangers of propaganda

    Language: English

    Marion Pritchard a member of the Dutch resistance movement remembers the use of anti-Jewish propaganda when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. She speaks on how the Nazis used education tools to separate the rest of the population from the Jews.

  • Marion Pritchard confronts Nazi to protect Jewish children

    Language: English

    Marion Pritchard a member of the Dutch resistance movement, recounts her experience hiding a Jewish family. In this compilation of clips from Marion's testimony she describes how she killed a Nazi in order to save the lives of the Jewish family she was hiding.

  • Marion Pritchard on her early attitude regarding homosexuality

    Language: English

    Marion Pritchard recalls bringing up the topic of homosexuality at the dinner table and how her father took her aside to discuss the importance of tolerance.

    She passed away in 2016 at the age of 96. Read our tribute to her.

Religious Resistance in Auschwitz: The Sacrifice of Saint Kolbe

Fri, 08/12/2016 - 10:15am

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Maximilian Kolbe, born in Poland in 1894, was a Franciscan friar and Catholic priest. He spent most of his life studying theology and dedicating himself to the church, traveling across Europe and Asia during his lifetime.
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Esperance Kaligirwa on her neighbors standing up to genocide

The Memory of a Hero: Aristides de Sousa Mendes' Legacy Preserved in Testimony

Fri, 08/05/2016 - 9:52am

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Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux in the late 1930s who issued tens of thousands of visas to Jewish families, in direct violation of anti-Jewish laws instituted by Portugal’s fascist government at the time. For this act of resistance, Sousa Mendes faced trials and conviction, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in poverty and disgrace, and his 15 children scattered all over Europe and the U.S.
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Tearing Off the Label: Resistance as a State of Mind

Fri, 05/27/2016 - 10:29am

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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.
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In the Name of Paris

Mon, 11/16/2015 - 11:06am

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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.
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