Shoah
The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List. The original aim of the Foundation was to record testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust as a collection of videotaped interviews.
The Shoah Foundation moved to a permanent home at the University of Southern California. It is now the USC Shoah Foundation: The Institute for Visual History and Education. It currently houses nearly 55,000 audio-visual testimonies conducted in 65 countries and in 43 languages.
In September of 1995, Leslie Bennett-Troper interviewed Ruth Mermelstein Grunberger in Brooklyn, New York.
Unfortunately, Ruth’s testimony video is not viewable in the Visual History Archive Online but can be viewed onsite at many institutions around the world. There is, however, a Viewing Screen where there are a series of pictures available.
Below is the transcript of Ruthie’s video.
Ruthie in 1995
Q: Where did you think you were?
❝
“We didn’t know. It was all lit up. It was about 10:00 at night. There were no stars and it was dark but the place was lit. Just men in striped clothes with a hat like a beret. We didn’t know they were prisoners. I gave my mother my sister. And my brother Nute wasn’t with us because of his leg. So, they had a separate car. It was supposed to be like a Red Cross. He was there with my uncle, the one who didn’t have any children. So we thought it was best for him to be with my uncle. While we were being sorted. I had a little suitcase with things for the baby. I thought, what is my mother going to do without the baby clothes? So, I ran to the other side. Mengele held on to me. I didn’t know it was him at the time. He had white gloves.”