“I see she had her hair done”:
Testimony (re)viewed in the family
September 15, 2026 at 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Taper Hall (THH) Room 309K
Join us in person or on Zoom
A public lecture by Mirah Langer (PhD student in Sociology, University of Vienna)
2025-2026 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow
Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research
What happens when the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors watch their family member’s recorded testimony – sometimes for the first time – thirty or forty years after it was made? Drawing on interviews and testimony-viewing sessions with descendants of Holocaust survivors, Mirah Langer (PhD candidate in Sociology) explores what happens when recordings created for public archives become part of family life across generations. Whether descendants had never seen the testimony or had watched it many times, each viewing revealed something new: stories previously unknown, new understandings of familiar family histories, and meanings visible only to those who knew the survivor. Descendants’ responses reveal what testimony can hold for families across generations and how descendants can unlock meanings within it that are otherwise inaccessible.
Register Here
Refreshments will be served.
Mirah Langer is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Vienna in Austria. Her dissertation project looks at the positioning of the children and grandchildren of survivors within Holocaust commemoration practice. Most recently, Mirah conducted fieldwork across the USA and Germany as a Marietta Blau Fellow and also completed an EHRI Conny Kristel Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, She was part of the 2024 cohort for the Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at Royal Holloway, University of London as well as one of ten students selected worldwide for the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk’s Global Jewish Leadership Programme.
Lecture image: Tracing of a family photograph, made by the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors.
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