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.)
Learn more about us

Upcoming Events

23
Oct
READ MORE
Fascism, Racism, and Historical Analogy: Perspectives from the Past and Present
Center for Advanced Genocide Research Event
A symposium with Professor Federico Finchelstein (New School For Social Research) and Dr. Susan Neiman (Einstein Forum, Potsdam) …
  • October 23, 2020
05
Nov
READ MORE
An Evening with Chuck D of Public Enemy
USC Stronger Than Hate Program
There are few artists who possess as sophisticated an understanding of the music business, the entertainment industry, and racial politics in America as Chuck D, and even fewer speakers who can command an audience like he does while breaking it down.…
  • November 5, 2020

Latest News

Survey Shows Holocaust Education and Survivor Testimony Has Profound Impacts
A new national survey administered by Lucid Collaborative LLC and YouGov shows that Holocaust education in high school reflects gains not only in historical knowledge but also manifests in cultivating more empathetic, tolerant, and engaged students.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - 2:04pm
A USC student was told her Zionism ‘made her complicit in racism’ — Read the OpEd by Stephen Smith
All university campuses are first and foremost places of learning. As such, I believe it is our duty to use this controversy as a teaching moment, for Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
Thursday, September 3, 2020 - 11:52am
Tribute to Arnold Spielberg
Sam Gustman, USC Shoah Foundation Chief Technology Officer, reflects on his long friendship with Arnold Spielberg, who passed away August 25 at the age of 103.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - 11:14am
USC Shoah Foundation, National Historical Museums in Sweden, and the Institution for Jewish Culture in Sweden Begin Filming Socially Distant Swedish-Language Dimensions in Testimony Interviews
USC Shoah Foundation—working with on-site partners National Historical Museums in Sweden and the Institution for Jewish Culture in Sweden—recently began filming two Swedish-language Dimensions in Testimony interviews in Stockholm, Sweden utilizing innovative social distancing and filming techniques.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - 9:07am
Institute Announces New Partnership with Ancestry® to Provide Free Access to Searchable Data from Nearly 50,000 Jewish Holocaust Survivor Testimonies
USC Shoah Foundation announced a new partnership with Ancestry® to provide free access to searchable data from nearly 50,000 Jewish Holocaust survivor testimonies that are in the Visual History Archive® (VHA). “We are grateful that Ancestry is providing access to this initial set of metadata and enhancing the discoverability of our archive and this critically important history,” said Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director at USC Shoah Foundation. Here’s how it works:
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - 8:35am
Voices of Rohingya – Today We Remember
Three years ago today, August 25, 2017, the Myanmar army coordinated and implemented a genocidal attack on Rohingya communities and villages across Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020 - 2:23pm

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.

What Is Home?
We asked you to submit your stories to us. Each week in April, we offered a new theme: spaces/places, family, resilience and messages for the future, and we asked for your stories. Your contributions were remarkable. We received dozens upon dozens of responses from around the world — from Morocco to Argentina to Switzerland, Israel, Canada, Poland and across the United States. Some of you shared that you even had family members in our archive.
Friday, July 17, 2020 - 10:25am
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

Watch and Share

Julia Lentini on Family Livelihood
Roma Holocaust Memorial Day
Language: English
Live Zoom Discussion - My Name Is Sara
Language: English
Paul Parks on his being called to choose non-violence
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.
Learn more
Our 2019 Annual Report is Available
See how your support helped us make a measurable change.
Download the report
You can help us make a difference
Our education programs bring the voices of survivors into classrooms, impacting future generations to build a better world based on empathy, understanding and respect.
Donate Today