We are alarmed by the recent wave of antisemitic violence targeting the Orthodox Jewish communities in the New York region, including at least ten incidents in the past week, culminating in a mass stabbing at a Chanukah celebration within the Monsey home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg. We mourn for the victims and their families. A voice of conscience calls on all of us to take action against these heinous attacks.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) and Fox Searchlight Pictures today announced a partnership to develop classroom curriculum tied to JOJO RABBIT, Taika Waititi’s heartfelt World War II anti-hate satire.

About a month before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, sparking World War II, a desperate Jewish father in Germany penned a letter in broken English to a friend in England, Mrs. Wolf.

 “I beg to inform you that we have got a refuse from the Aid Committee in London, owing to our high waiting number for America. … We are very discouraged by this answer and are now forced to get out our children as quick as possible.”

Alfons Lasker, an attorney in Breslau, was on a mission to get his two daughters – Anita and Renate – out of Germany. He did not succeed.

Ayşenur Korkmaz, the Center’s 2019-2020 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture about narratives and conceptions of home among Armenian genocide survivors who fled to the south Caucasus during the Armenian genocide. The lecture is based on Korkmaz’s research with video and audio testimonies of Armenian survivors available in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, and is part of her larger dissertation project on post-genocide articulations of the Armenian homeland (Yergir) through materiality and rituals.

Anna Lee, the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture about her research on survivor activism as a form of healing in the aftermath of mass executions during genocide and contemporary school mass shootings. During her one-month residency at the Center, Lee conducted comparative research on the topic by examining both survivor testimonies housed in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and accounts of school shootings survivors found in media and other sources.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross.

 

 

 

In China, the number of people still alive who survived the 1937 Nanjing Massacre at the hands of Japanese invaders has fallen to minuscule levels – some experts put the number around 80.

USC Shoah Foundation’s collection of about 100 testimonies of survivors from this rampage that killed some 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers includes the vast majority of them.

This fall, the Institute reached a milestone: The entire collection of Nanjing testimonies has been indexed and subtitled in English.