Filmmakers have begun the search for testimonies from diplomats involved in saving hundreds of thousands people from the Holocaust, while be used as part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, according to a press release from University of Southern California on Monday.
Thus far, USC has managed to gather at least 15 hours worth of interviews with these diplomats who became known for defying World War II-era policies in order to save people from meeting their deaths in the Holocaust.
The project, entitled 'The Rescuers-Last Chance Project,' features 13 diplomats, including Raoul Wallenberg and Americans Varian Fry and Hiram Bingham, who all worked in their time to save Jews from the Holocaust and were later honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” in Israel, a title given to non-Jews involved in saving Jewish lives during WWII.
The interviews are expected to be integrated into the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive that consists of the inaugural collection of testimonies to be named the Joyce D. Mandell Rescuers Collection. This collection, the world’s largest World War II-era compilation of testimonies, will be available to the public in the upcoming Fall 2021, coinciding with the 82nd anniversary of World War II.
“We can all be uplifted by the fact that the stories of these rescuers are themselves being rescued for posterity. Now they can inform and inspire future generations just as they are doing for viewers today,” said Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation.
Testimonies from numerous WWII-era figures will be featured in the collection, including from Georg F. Duckwitz, German diplomat in Denmark; Americans Varian Fry and Hiram Bingham in Marseilles; Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara and the Dutch Jan Zwartendijk in Kaunas; Polish diplomat Henryk Slawik in Budapest and many others. The collection also has testimony from members of the British Royal Family, such as Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, who told a unknown story about his grandmother Princess Alice.
Likewise, USC and the Andrew J. and Joyce D. Mandell Family Foundation have also stepped up efforts to identify additional Holocaust survivors and their relatives in order to collect more testimonies to be integrated into the collection. Michael W. King, an American filmmaker involved in the collection of testimonies, described the project as a 'race against time.'
“This is our last chance to document first-hand accounts related to diplomats who were at the center of the 20th century’s most unforgettable events,” King said.