How does the USC Shoah Foundation Institute define the term “survivor”?
We have used the following definition in our collection: A survivor is anyone who suffered and survived persecution for racial, religious, sexual, physical or political reasons while under Nazi or Axis control between 1933 and May 8, 1945; or who was forced to live clandestinely; or to flee Nazi or Axis onslaught during the war in order to avoid imminent persecution. A person is a survivor if he/she was alive at the point of liberation and/or on May 8, 1945. A person is a survivor if he/she died before May 8, 1945, but successfully fled from German or Axis countries. This definition would apply, for instance, to German Jews fleeing from Germany before the war, as well as to Jews in eastern Poland who fled to Soviet territory after September 1, 1939, but before the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941. It would also include non-Jewish groups of victims such as homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the physically and mentally disabled, Sinti and Roma, political prisoners and non-Jewish P
