Our mission is to develop empathy, understanding and respect through testimony.
Through our research and educational programs, the Institute harnesses the power of its archive of personal testimonies from witnesses to genocide in order to do our part to build a better world. (Photo: Edith Umugiraneza, a survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda; and George Weiss, a Holocaust survivor.)
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Latest News
Stop calling it anti-Semitism. It’s Jew hatred.
“Most leading authorities and publications use ‘anti-Semitism.’ I prefer ‘antisemitism,’ the spelling used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. But this debate obscures the core issue: whether spelled anti-Semitism or antisemitism, we should retire the term entirely and begin calling it what it really is: Jew hatred.”
Tuesday, July 7, 2020 - 4:27pm
Preserving Memory in Russian: The Life and Work of Ilia Salita
This week, we pay tribute to the life and work of Ilia Salita, a key partner and friend to the Institute of many years.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - 7:13pm
USC Shoah Foundation and Liberation75 partner with Mike Myers on “Stories are Stronger than Hate: A Call to Action” Student Program
Liberation75 and USC Shoah Foundation partnered on a virtual student program, “Stories are Stronger than Hate: A Call to Action,” hosted by actor/director Mike Myers, with special guest Akim Aliu, Co-founder of Hockey Diversity Alliance, on Monday June 22. Through the personal narrative of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter and other stories, participants explored how stories create the possibility to learn about ourselves, about others and about how we can affect the change we want to see in our communities right now.
Monday, June 29, 2020 - 7:00am
Creative Storytelling

Our storytelling projects are both based on and inspired by the more than 55,000 testimonies in the Institute’s archive. They are a deeper look into the emotional complexities of our survivor stories and told through the written word, video, audio and photography. They are an opportunity 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.

My Name Is Sara
“You can’t just close your eyes and pretend that the history goes away,” says Mickey Shapiro the eldest son of two Holocaust survivors who just finished a four-year-long journey to create a film about his mother’s story. “I am stuck with this for life, but I think it makes me more motivated. When you hear a story like that from your parents, you want to make things better.”
Friday, June 5, 2020 - 7:06pm
Current Conflict Collections: How and Why USC Shoah Foundation is Collecting Testimony from Ongoing Conflicts
The young woman stares at me as I wait to press play on the video. Her eyes are dark and her lips are pursed. You can see a bit of her thick black hair which is matted beneath an off-white, or perhaps a light-pink scarf. It is hard to tell the exact color in the shadowed room.
Monday, June 1, 2020 - 1:09pm
I Watched Jojo Rabbit With a Former Hitler Youth
“I am ashamed to say this,” Ursula said to me. We were sitting in her lovely Los Angeles home in the middle of the day on a Saturday in February. All the lights in her house were off, but the blue skies outside graced her face, her 90-year-old wrinkles defined. “I was so stupid to believe that when Hitler died, that the world would come to the end.”
Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - 11:40am
Watch and Share
Gad Beck on rescuing his lover Manfred Lewin
Gay Pride Month
Language: German
Kathy Fuchs on Shavuot
Language: English
Live ZOOM Discussion - Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses
Language: English
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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Our 2018 Annual Impact Report is Available
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Our education programs bring the voices of survivors into classrooms, impacting future generations to build a better world based on empathy, understanding and respect.
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