Our mission is to develop empathy, understanding and respect through testimony
100 Days to Inspire Respect & Hope
Week 12: Countering Violence and Extremism

This week’s theme focuses on Countering Violence and Extremism. In this clip from the Visual History Archive, Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi addresses the importance of reconciliation.

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The Shoah Foundation Story

Learn about the Institute's history and its current mission at the University of Southern California.

Latest News

USC Shoah Foundation to Launch Tattooed Torah Animated Film on IWitness
USC Shoah Foundation will next week launch the U.S. premiere of The Tattooed Torah, an animated film that tells the inspirational story of a Torah rescued and restored after the Holocaust.  The film, based on Marvell Ginsburg’s beloved children’s book of the same name, recounts the true story of the rescue and restoration of a small Torah from Brno, Czechoslovakia. In the film, the Torah is described as the most “precious possession” of the Jewish people and is a symbol that represents memories tied to cultural heritage, family, hope and resilience. 
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 3:25pm
National World War II Museum and Cincinnati Holocaust Center Open Dimensions in Testimony Installations
Two museums have opened installations of Dimensions in Testimony, USC Shoah Foundation's interactive biography series.  In New Orleans, visitors to the National World War II Museum can interact with Staff Sergeant Alan Moskin, the first WWII Liberator filmed for Dimensions in Testimony. Moskin was a member of the 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division, that liberated Gunskirchen concentration camp in Austria. The exhibition runs through July 25, 2021.
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 2:19pm
Military Coup in Myanmar Puts Rohingya and Other Minorities at Risk
The coup in Myanmar earlier this week, ending the country's experiment with limited democracy, brought to power military and police implicated in carrying out genocide against the Rohingya people in 2017.    This troubling development could result in further consequences for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar. More than 600,000 people remain at risk—perhaps now even more than ever.    
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 12:40pm
USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education Empower Students to Build Empathy Through the Power of Story
The third annual Stronger Than Hate Challenge is now open and offers students the opportunity to win $10,000 in prizing. Students aged 13-18 are encouraged to submit a project demonstrating how a community can be stronger than hate. Full rules and submission details are available here.
Thursday, January 28, 2021 - 12:54pm
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Today, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a complex of concentration and extermination camps, we take the time to honor the millions of victims of the Holocaust by listening to those who survived these atrocities, and using their remarkable testimonies of survival and loss to cultivate empathy and respect in future generations so that these atrocities may never happen again. “History shows that the only way to stop genocide is to sound the alarm before it is too late.” 
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - 9:58am
USC Shoah Foundation to Premiere Ruth: A Little Girl's Big Journey starring Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer
USC Shoah Foundation this week will launch a Teaching with Testimony Webinar for K-5 educators featuring the exclusive global premiere of Ruth: A Little Girl’s Big Journey, an animated short film that brings to life the remarkable childhood journey of media personality, author and Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, known the world over as Dr. Ruth.  
Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - 4:13pm

Watch and Share

Speaking About Sexuality: Male Jewish Intimacy and Agency in Oral History Interviews
A Lecture by Florian Zabransky, 2020-2021 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow
Language: English
Kori Street in Conversation with Freddy Muntaguha and Tali Nates
Language: English
Challenging the Shame Paradigm: Jewish Women’s Narratives of Sexual(ized) Violence During the Holocaust
A Lecture by Lauren Cantillon, 2020-2021 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies
Language: English

Creative Storytelling

Our storytelling projects are both based on and inspired by the more than 55,000 testimonies in the Institute’s archive. They offer a deeper look into the emotional complexities of our survivor stories and told through the written word, video, audio and photography. They are opportunities to explore the impact that these voices have and the way in which testimony drives our understanding of conflict and grief as well as resilience, resistance and hope.

Last Chance Testimony Collection: The Legacy of Survivor Testimony
This past May, a friend sent me an article he knew I would appreciate. It was an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Burying My Bubby During the Pandemic” written by a comedy writer named Eitan Levine who, like me, grew up with a grandmother who survived the Holocaust. I began to read and found myself immediately wrapped inside his writing which was so honest it was cathartic. I immediately reached out to Eitan and asked if his grandmother’s testimony was in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 2:06pm
Listen Deeply: The Testimony of Black Lives Matter
“I remember lots and lots of light,” Karla Ballard told me about her childhood home just outside of Philadelphia, a community called Friends of the Fairfax. “So much light. And a beautiful, long dining room table. My father was an entrepreneur and my mom was a nurse. I just remember lots of light coming into that house and having grandparents around watching us, and having Susan, Eileen, and Max — my mother’s best friends.”
Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - 2:34pm
Julio & Dolly
USC Shoah Foundation’s Immersive Innovations team headed to Mexico in March of this year to spend a week with Holocaust survivors Dolly and Julio Botton. The couple, who have been together for more than 50 years, were part of the Institute’s first collection of videotaped testimonies back in the 1990s.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - 5:41pm
Together We Are Stronger Than Hate
Stronger Than Hate, an initiative that draws on the power of eyewitness testimony to help students and the general public recognize and counter antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and other forms of hatred.
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