Comcast Xfinity subscribers can watch the film on-demand as part of USC Shoah Foundation’s PastFORWARD broadcast through December 29.

USC Shoah Foundation launched one of its newest Polish-language IWitness activities with an ITeach professional development seminar at Ian Kasprowicz High School in Łódź, Poland last weekend.

On the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre today, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing, China, debuted its permanent exhibition of New Dimensions in Testimony (NDT), USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive survivor testimony technology.

Renowned anthropologist Alexander Hinton gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research about his new book Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer, which attempts to offer a deeper understanding of Comrade Duch, the notorious head of the S-21 prison, a notorious facility where between 12,000 and 20,000 people were detained, tortured, and ultimately murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel, the 2017-2018 Center Research Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands just before, during, and just after the Holocaust. In the lecture, Professor von Frijtag presented some of the preliminary conclusions from her four-month residency conducting research with testimonies housed in the Visual History Archive.

One feature of her research is examining the role of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive interviews in the construction of social memory of the Holocaust in the Soviet Jewish community and more widely in the post-Soviet society. During her month-long residency at the Center, Rebrova examined some of the USC Shoah Foundation’s institutional records about the selection, training, and methodology of interviewers in Russia.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites proposals for its 2018-2019 International Teaching Fellowship that will provide support for university and college faculty to integrate testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) into new or existing courses.

USC Shoah Foundation launched the first in a series of educational activities developed in partnership with the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). The series incorporates testimony of Armenian Genocide survivors and their descendants with supplementary videos from AGBU WebTalks, and is available to students through the Institute’s award-winning educational website, IWitness.

Reflections on the recent conferences the USC Shoah Foundation hosted or participated in, and the ways in which these scholarly gatherings enrich the field of genocide studies and demonstrate the value of the Visual History Archive.

“Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies” was the first international conference bringing the fields of digital humanities and genocide studies together. Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and cosponsored by the USC Digital Humanities Program, the conference convened 23 scholars from all over the world — the United States, Germany, Poland, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

New Dimensions in Testimony has been a work of passion for USC Shoah Foundation since 2010. After years of development at the University of Southern California including with USC Institute for Creative Technologies and with content developer Conscience Display, the program is now reaching audiences in museums around the world.

We at USC Shoah Foundation are saddened to hear of the passing of our beloved friend, Holocaust survivor and renowned artist Alice Lok Cahana, who passed away on November 28 at age 88. Through her internationally acclaimed artwork, writings, and public speaking, Alice put forth a message to the world that both memorialized those who perished during the Holocaust and celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Kurt Messerschmidt, Holocaust survivor, educator and beloved cantor. He was 102. Messerschmidt was born Jan. 2, 1915 in Weneuchen, Germany, but moved to Berlin in 1918 and excelled as a linguistics scholar, gymnast and musician. He was well-respected and a leader among his classmates and teachers, but was unable to attend college because of anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens, a wartime hero who became a well-known character actor when he moved to the United States. He was 91. Born Curt Lowenstein on Nov. 17, 1925 in Germany, Lowen and his family had planned to emigrate to the United States as World War II was starting, but they were stopped from leaving the Netherlands when the Germans invaded that country. He was briefly deported to the Westerbork concentration camp in 1943, but he was released because of his father’s business connections.