You’re Invited

Everyone is invited to watch a pre-screening of Voices of Auschwitz, a new CNN documentary telling the stories of four survivors from the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp.

The USC Dornsife-based USC Shoah Foundation has joined forces with USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism to present the screening at 6 p.m., Jan. 15 at the newly opened Wallis Annenberg Hall, Room 105A, on University Park campus.

The hour-long special is hosted by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, himself the son of Holocaust survivors.

The USC screening, free and open to the public, will be followed by a half-hour panel discussion featuring two CNN producers. The two panelists are executive producer Leora Kapelus and Jennifer Hyde, director of development for CNN productions. Stephen Smith, executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, will moderate.

Voices of Auschwitz will air nationally on Jan. 27 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation.

A photograph of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. Eva and Miriam Mozes are shown holding hands in the very front.

In the documentary, the four survivors who recount their harrowing stories all lost loved ones to the Holocaust, and all became successful later in life. They are:

•          Eva Mozes Kor, who along with her twin sister was subjected to medical experiments led by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Later in life, Kor generated widespread attention for publicly forgiving the Nazis. According to CNN, Eva Kor arrived at Auschwitz with her mother and twin sister in 1944, when she was just 10 years old. That day on the selection platform was the last time she would ever see her mother again. Eva’s mother was sent directly to the gas chamber. For the next nine months, Eva and her sister Miriam were housed in a rat-infested bunk with 300 other children and subjected to medical experiments daily. Despite the daily torture, Eva was determined to survive, telling Blitzer: “I was not going to perish here in Auschwitz.” When liberation finally came on Jan. 27, 1945, Eva and Miriam were at the front of the line as the children were led out of Auschwitz.

•          Renee Firestone, whose talent as an aspiring designer helped her survive the atrocities. Afterward, she thrived as a fashion designer.

•          Martin Greenfield, who learned the tailoring trade in the camp, and went on to become a master tailor out of New York whose clients include U.S. presidents and celebrities.

•          Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a musician who was recruited by the Nazis to play cello in the Auschwitz orchestra. She later co-founded the British Chamber Orchestra.

Miriam and Eva Mozes, age 14 in 1949, four years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Eva later married another Holocaust survivor, Michael Kor.

All four survivors have given testimony to USC Shoah Foundation. Their audiovisual interviews are among the 53,000-plus testimonies housed in the institute’s Visual History Archive.