News for January 2023

Suzette Sheft first recognized the importance of recording family history when it was already too late. As a young child, the New York City student had regularly listened to her father’s stories, but when he died of pancreatic cancer when she was just 13, she realized she was unable to remember many of them.

“When he was alive, he would tell me stories about his life while tucking me in each night, but in the months following his death, I found myself forgetting many of his recollections,” Suzette said.

/ Friday, January 27, 2023

January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Tied to the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the day commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and seeks to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.

/ Thursday, January 26, 2023

USC Shoah Foundation today unveils a Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) interview with internationally celebrated author and concert pianist Mona Golabek.

Published on the Institute’s award-winning IWitness page in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, this is the inaugural DiT interactive experience to feature a second-generation (or ‘2G”) descendent of a Holocaust survivor.

/ Thursday, January 26, 2023

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the December 7, 2022 passing of Tom Tugend, a Berlin-born veteran of three wars and an award-winning journalist who fled the Nazi regime just months ahead of the outbreak of World War II. He was 97. 

/ Monday, January 23, 2023

USC Shoah Foundation partner and celebrated author, performer and concert pianist Mona Golabek this week brings her virtual, theatrical performance based on The Children of Willesden Lane book to 50,000 students and educators in Texas.

Premiering as part of Texas Holocaust Remembrance Week, the Willesden READS performance promises to be the largest Holocaust education event ever to be held in the state. The virtual program and accompanying live events this week in Texas was made possible with the generous support of the Morton H. Meyerson Family Foundation.

/ Monday, January 23, 2023

Equipped with blankets and snacks and dressed in pajamas, 24 young women of USC’s Gamma Phi Beta settled into the living room of their sorority house last fall to watch a video of Edith Eger telling her story of survival and resilience during the Holocaust.

Edith’s story struck a chord with many sisters, as she recounted how her friendships with other women saved her life in Auschwitz. In the discussion that followed, the women focused on themes of sisterhood, solidarity and cooperation.

/ Thursday, January 19, 2023

Gerald Szames chokes up easily, especially when talking about his mother. So for years, his daughter has taken it upon herself to tell her father’s story of surviving the Holocaust as a small boy. She speaks to audiences at schools, houses of worship and community centers, often with her father by her side to answer questions. 

/ Thursday, January 19, 2023

A group of Bioethics and the Holocaust Fellows recently gathered at USC Shoah Foundation headquarters in Los Angeles to develop content for new curriculums that will feature Visual History Archive testimony from survivors of Nazi medical experiments.

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.”

/ Wednesday, January 18, 2023

USC Shoah Foundation invites applications from advanced-level PhD candidates for the 2023-2024 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Antisemitism Studies.

/ Wednesday, January 11, 2023

A partnership including USC Shoah Foundation next week holds its first professional development webinar to train teachers to recognize and respond to antisemitism with their students.

The Recognizing and Responding to Antisemitism in Schools webinar series, which begins Monday at 1pm PST, is aimed at schoolteachers, principals and superintendents who can earn credits for taking each of six modules.

/ Thursday, January 5, 2023