News By Year

IWalk: Memory, Testimony, and Activism

In my role as part of USC Shoah Foundation’s Education Department, I have the honor of working with our team members both in the United States and around the world to create localized educational…
Monday, April 23, 2018

Survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda Promotes Peace Through Soccer

April is a difficult time for many in Rwanda, as it marks the month when government-backed militias of ethnic majority Hutus murdered over a million people – mostly minority Tutsis – over a period of…
Monday, April 23, 2018

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: A tribute

Seventy-five years ago today, on the eve of Passover, German forces entered the Warsaw Ghetto with intentions to liquidate. Through loudspeakers, Nazi troops called for Jews to emerge from their…
Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Filmmaker to give full footage of genocide trial in Guatemala to USC Shoah Foundation

It was 1982, and the Guatemalan government’s scorched-earth campaign to eradicate indigenous villages under the pretext of crushing a communist rebellion was in full tilt. Even so, the dictator at…
Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Cambodian Genocide: 43 Years Later

Forty-three years ago to the day, a communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge conquered the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. The occupation set in motion a four-year campaign of genocide that…
Monday, April 16, 2018

Armenian Genocide Researcher Stumbles onto Surprise that Hits Home

As the program officer of USC Shoah Foundation’s testimonies from the Armenian Genocide, Manuk Avedikyan has pored over thousands documents detailing the names of survivors and towns they came…
Friday, April 13, 2018

Pioneering "Dimensions In Testimony" interviewee passes away at 85

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor whose steadfast refusal to counter hate with more hate will echo for years to come. He was 85. …
Friday, April 13, 2018

Holocaust Survivors Inspire Students to Become Messengers of Memory

Story by Jessica MyLymuk How then could I ever truly preserve your memory? My efforts to record those six years of your life will be As inadequate as the food you were given in the ghettos, …
Thursday, April 12, 2018

Honoring My Grandfather’s Legacy

It’s a story my grandfather never told me, something that I only heard and understood later, years after my mother recounted it. In 1943, after his first wife and children were killed, my grandfather…
Monday, April 9, 2018

Women at Nuremberg: Edith Coliver

Editor’s Note: Narratives surrounding the Nuremberg Trials overwhelmingly focus on the men. From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to the notorious Nazi leader Hermann Goering, the legacy of…
Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Rohingya survivor: Myanmar government “wanted to punish me for telling the truth.”

Editor’s Note: Jamalida, a Rohingya survivor, begins our Genocide Awareness Month focus on new testimony collections in the Visual History Archive. Her testimony and others will be featured in an…
Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Kathryn Brackney Lecture Summary

"Phantom Geographies in Representations of the Holocaust" Kathryn Brackney (PhD Candidate, Yale University) 2017-2018 Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies March 22, 2018 Kathryn…
Monday, April 2, 2018

Mélanie Péron Lecture Summary

"Étoilement: The Starring Effect" Melanie Peron (University of Pennsylvania) March 15, 2018 On March 15, Mélanie Péron from the French department at the University of Pennsylvania…
Monday, April 2, 2018

Jennie Burnet Lecture Summary

"Good Amidst Evil: Rescue During the Rwandan Genocide" Jennie Burnet (Georgia State University) March 1, 2018 Jennie Burnet, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Georgia State University…
Monday, April 2, 2018

Murder of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor in Paris underscores the loneliness of the Jewish community in the face of rising antisemitism

Mireille Knoll managed to survive the Nazis during the Holocaust, but antisemitism is ancient and tenacious, and its tentacles finally caught up with her last week at her home in Paris. The 85…
Friday, March 30, 2018

Christopher Browning Talks About the Changing Attitudes of Witness Testimony in Genocide Studies

Despite the testimony of many witnesses to his Nazi-era crimes, Walther Becker walked out of a German courtroom a free man. The judge in the case – who was later revealed to have his own Nazi…
Thursday, March 29, 2018

Women at Nuremberg: Jane Lester

Editor’s Note: Narratives surrounding the Nuremberg Trials overwhelmingly focus on the men. From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to the notorious Nazi leader Hermann Goering, the legacy of…
Monday, March 26, 2018

The Otherworldliness of the Holocaust

Living through the Holocaust was such a strange and overwhelming experience, survivors often found it difficult to find ways to describe it. In her lecture “Phantom Geographies in Representations…
Monday, March 26, 2018

One Step Away: A Nazi Congressman in the USA?

It’s hard to imagine I’m even typing this sentence, but an avowed Holocaust denier on Tuesday became the official Republican nominee for an upcoming congressional election in Illinois. Arthur…
Friday, March 23, 2018

A Child Holocaust Survivor Bases Book on Mother's Testimony

Sara Eizenberg gave testimony to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in 1995. Born in 1911 in the Dutch city of The Hague, she went on to live in Australia after surviving the Bergen-Belsen…
Wednesday, March 21, 2018

USC Shoah Foundation adds 5 IWitness activities in Spanish about Guatemala Genocide

USC Shoah Foundation’s education team has launched a new set of IWitness activities related to survivors of the Guatemalan Genocide. Authored by our partners, Guatemalan Forensic…
Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Artist and Holocaust Survivor, Kalman Aron passes away at 93

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn about the passing of Kalman Aron, a Holocaust survivor who created in paint the horrors he witnessed during World War II. He died on Feb. 24. He was 93. …
Wednesday, March 14, 2018

USC Shoah Foundation Adds Large Collection of Armenian Genocide Testimony to its Archive

EDITOR'S NOTE: A pilot of 10 new Armenian testimonies – seven in English and three in Armenian – are available to the public in the Institute’s Visual History Archive Online. The rest will be added…
Thursday, March 8, 2018

An incredible woman: Vera Laska joined the Czech resistance, saved Jewish lives as a teenager

Vera Laska was born Vera Oravec on July 21, 1928, in Kosice, Czechoslovakia. Vera was not Jewish, but she went to an all-girls public school and had many Jewish friends. She originally wanted to…
Thursday, March 8, 2018

Philippe Sands Lecture Summary

Philippe Sands (University College London) "Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity under International Law: A Personal Story" February 26, 2018 Philippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director…
Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Summer 2017 Fellows Presentation Summary

"USC Research With Testimonies: Featuring the Center's Summer 2017 Research Fellows" Noha Ayoub and Maria Zalewska (University of Southern California) February 8, 2018 The USC…
Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Liberator Jim Sanders Passes Away at the Age of 93

We are sorry to hear about the recent passing of Jim Sanders, who wrote a book chronicling his experience liberating Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Sanders was recognized by USC…
Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Call for Applications: Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship Summer 2018

Call for Applications Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship Summer 2018 The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites…
Friday, March 2, 2018

Rohingya refugee interviews recorded by Institute show a genocidal pattern

During her tenure at USC Shoah Foundation, Karen Jungblut has interviewed hundreds of genocide survivors from history’s most horrific chapters: the Holocaust, the 1994 Rwandan genocide against…
Tuesday, February 27, 2018

What was unique about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?

The Jewish ghetto in Bialystok had easy access to weaponry. The Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Vilna had a resistance leader – the poet Abba Kovner – who famously shouted the true…
Thursday, February 22, 2018