The town of Buczacz is part of Ukraine now, situated between two graveyards – two mass graves – with a living population hovering at around 12,500, if you mind the 2001 Ukrainian census. This town, in itself a synecdoche of greater World War II, was the focus of a talk given by Professor Omer Bartov of Brown University, on 8 May in his Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar Lecture at USC’s University Club. Read More

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence Omer Bartov began his residence today with a Facebook Live interview about his work. Read More

The sun was setting when we pulled up to a fenced-in lot behind which stood a crumbling redbrick textile factory. There was a sign on the front gate that read “For Sale.” It wasn’t the kind of signage I expected to find on the site of a former women’s forced labor camp where my mother and 350 other Polish Jewish girls had been worked nearly to death, making thread used to sew Nazi uniforms. Gabersdorf survivor Sara Sliwka Bialas-Tenenberg, a resident of Berlin, had volunteered to revisit this painful spot to show me what my late mother never could. Read More