New Online Exhibit Commemorates the Battle of Normandy on 70th Anniversary of D-Day

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On the 70th anniversary of D-Day, in which Allied troops landed on the Normandy coast in France, USC Shoah Foundation has published a new online exhibit featuring the testimonies of soldiers and witnesses who recall that historic day.

June 6, 1944, marked the beginning of one of the greatest battles of the Second World War, the Battle of Normandy. Faced with German forces already established in the East and South of Europe, the Allies opened a new front in the West by landing that day on the Normandy coast. The Battle of Normandy lasted three months and was a fundamental step in the liberation of French territory and, more generally, occupied Europe.

Six clips presented in the exhibit La Bataille de Normandie (1944): acteurs et témoins se souivennent (The Battle of Normandy: Actors and Witnesses Remember) are the voices of some players and witnesses to these events. Chester Kozik, William Levine and Walter Rosenblum, all three veterans of the U.S. army, tell of their arrival on the Normandy beaches. Margot Loeb, Alsatian Jewish, recalls the day when the news circulated in Auschwitz where she had been deported. Pierre Cahen shares his journey from England to the French beaches with the 2nd Armored Division. Finally, Daniel Baranoux, a refugee during the war with his parents in the French department of Manche, recounts the events he lived through as a child. Each testimony clip is accompanied by a biography of the witness.