Our mission is to develop empathy, understanding and respect through testimony
The Shoah Foundation Story

Watch our video introduction to learn about the Institute's history and its current mission at the University of Southern California.

Latest News

New Partnership to Develop Holocaust Education Programming for Medical Community
USC Shoah Foundation and the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust are partnering to develop new and innovative educational programing on medical ethics and the Holocaust. The Holocaust marked a profound and sadistic deviation from traditional notions of medical ethics, with medical and scientific communities in the Third Reich actively participating in the labeling, persecution and eventual mass murder of millions deemed “unfit.” Read More
Friday, July 30, 2021 - 5:14pm
Survivor Suzy Ressler Found Success with Old World Recipes and Charm
Suzy Ressler, a survivor of Auschwitz who parlayed her family’s old-world recipes into the Philadelphia-based Mrs. Ressler’s Food Products, died July 3, 2021, at the age of 93. She was remembered for her business savvy, her warmth and generosity, and her impeccable elegance. Read More
Monday, July 26, 2021 - 4:58pm
Iraqi Survivor Ruth Pearl, 85, Fostered Harmony and Understanding in Memory of Son Daniel Pearl
USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Ruth Pearl, mother of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and co-founder and CFO of The Daniel Pearl Foundation, which promotes cross-cultural understanding through journalism and music. Read More
Thursday, July 22, 2021 - 11:27am
After a School Year of Turmoil, a Summer of Empathy
Carson Sizemore is already bracing for the tough conversations she will have in her 10th grade government class at her private high school in Albany, a small city on the banks of the Flint River in southwest Georgia. “I kind of have conflicting ideas with a lot of people in my family and my school. They’re more conservative, and I’m more in the middle somewhere,” Carson said. “I know there will be some debates in my government class.” Read More
Friday, July 16, 2021 - 1:53pm
Hungarian Speaking Graduates of Teaching with Testimony Program Celebrate Milestone Anniversary
Graduates of the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program came together last month to celebrate the program's 10th anniversary in Hungary. The event took place June 28-30th to commemorate the program's success and chart new opportunities for its graduates. Read More
Friday, July 16, 2021 - 11:52am
Rwandan Rescuers and Those They Rescued Recall Trauma and Triumph
Rukesha’s testimony, along with six other interviews from The 600 documentary, was recently integrated into USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, which now holds 135 indexed and searchable interviews connected to the Genocide Against the Tutsi Rwanda. The majority of these testimonies were collected by Aegis Trust and the Kigali Genocide Memorial, in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation. The seven new testimonies include the first accounts of Rwandan liberators to be added to the collection. Read More
Friday, July 2, 2021 - 11:41am

Watch and Share

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
Ben Ferencz recalls his opening statement in the Nuremberg Trials
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.

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
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.

Our 2020 Annual 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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