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USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive: Portugal

Established in 1994 to preserve the audio-visual histories of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains one of the largest video digital libraries in the world: the Visual History Archive (VHA).

Portugal

The USC Shoah Foundation collected some 265 testimonies with content about Portugal. In most cases, Portugal is discussed as the country from which Jewish refugees left Europe for the Caribbean and the United States. A group of testimonies describe the actions of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese diplomat in Bordeaux who issued transit visas to Jews enabling them to leave France. These include the testimony of his son, Pedro de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches (interviewed in Lisbon in French).

The archive contains a total of 563 Portuguese-language interviews, all of which were conducted in Brazil. The two interviews taken in Portugal are in French (see above) and English (with a Jewish survivor from Hungary).

Visual History Archive Curator

Profile Photo
Crispin Brooks
Contact:
crispinb@usc.edu
213-740-6001
Website