USC Shoah Foundation is saddened by the passing of Alan Moskin, a Jewish veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces who, at the age of 18, helped liberate Gunskirchern, a subcamp of Mauthausen Concentration Camp, in May 1945. Later in life, Alan became a tireless advocate for Holocaust education and remembrance at schools, veterans’ groups, and in the media, speaking with candor about the horror he witnessed at the camp, the brutality of combat, and the bigotry he encountered in the U.S. Army. 

Sedda Antekelian, a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s education team, never knew her own great grandmother had recorded testimony about surviving the Armenian Genocide. Hearing her great grandmother’s voice for the first time has brought Sedda closer to family, filled in gaps about her own history, and opened even more questions.

Between 1938 and 1940 an estimated 17,000 mostly Austrian and German Jews traveled from Europe to Shanghai, many on luxury liners. They were escaping the upsurge of violent antisemitism in Europe and headed primarily to Shanghai, at the time one of the few places in the world without any immigration barriers.

USC Shoah Foundation this fall launches a new Antisemitism Lecture Series to showcase to wider audiences the latest scholarly research on the topic and convene some of the leading scholars in the field.  

In this blog, the Center's 2022-2023 Greenberg Research Fellow Raíssa Alonso reflects on resistance and the roots of her research. 

In this blog, Center visiting scholar Robson Bello discusses his focus on play during his month of research. 

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Marta (Weiss) Wise, who was ten years old when she was liberated from Auschwitz, having endured the medical torture of Josef Mengele, along with her sister, Eva (Weiss) Slonim. She was 88. Marta and Eva were among a group of children pictured in a photograph—a still from a film shot by a Soviet cameraman soon after the liberation of Auschwitz—that became an iconic image of the horrors of the death camp where nearly one million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research will cohost the 17th biennial Lessons & Legacies conference, which will take place at Claremont McKenna College and the University of Southern California from November 14 to November 17, 2024. Organized and sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University (HEFNU) in partnership with host universities, the biennial Lessons & Legacies of the Holocaust Conference (popularly known as Lessons & Legacies) is the premier international scholarly gathering in Holocaust Studies.

The USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Thomas Buergenthal, one of the youngest known survivors of Auschwitz, who later became an esteemed human rights attorney and United States representative on the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Thomas passed away on May 29, 2023, in Miami, Florida. He was 89.

The USC Shoah Foundation mourns the June 6, 2023 passing of Joshua Kaufman, who survived Auschwitz and was liberated at Dachau Concentration Camp at the age of 17, and was recognized at the 2019 State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. He was 95.

A longtime scholar affiliate of the USC Shoah Foundation has received a $50,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to transcribe and translate the Maya-Kaqchikel and Spanish-language testimonies of survivors of the Guatemalan genocide.

Clara Dijkstra, a PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge, Christ’s College, has been awarded the 2023-2024 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. She will be in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research in September 2023 to conduct research on the experiences of Jews and Roma (Tsiganes) in detention and internment camps in France during the Second World War.

Clara Dijkstra, a PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge, Christ’s College, has been awarded the 2023-2024 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. She will be in residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research in September 2023 to conduct research on the experiences of Jews and Roma (Tsiganes) in detention and internment camps in France during the Second World War.

Christina Wirth, a Ph.D. student at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany, is to be the USC Shoah Foundation’s first Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Antisemitism Studies. She will be in residence at the Institute in April 2024.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research is one of the conveners for the conference "Archives in/of Transit: Historical Perspectives from the 1930s to the Present", which will take place at the University of Southern California from June 28 to June 29, 2024.

Alexandra Szabó, a PhD candidate in History at Brandeis University, has been awarded the 2023-2024 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will be residence for a month during the Spring 2024 semester to conduct research for her dissertation, in which she investigates Hungarian Romani and Jewish women’s experiences of fertility abuses (failed pregnancies, miscarriages, sterilizations, postwar infertility) in the shadow of Nazi persecution.

Julie Fitzpatrick, a PhD candidate in History at Royal Holloway, University of London, has been awarded the 2023-2024 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will be in residence at the Center for a month from mid-October to mid-November 2023 to conduct research for her dissertation, which is currently entitled "‘Light the Candles and Lay the Table’: A Study on German-Jewish Women’s Relationship with Food During the Prewar, Wartime and Postwar Eras."

The USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Dr. Richard Gable Hovannisian, a scholar who devoted his life to chronicling the 1915 Armenian Genocide and donated the more than 1,000 survivor and witness testimonies he amassed to the USC Shoah Foundation. He was 90. Born to Armenian Genocide survivors in Tulare, California, in 1932, Dr. Hovannisian was initially discouraged from learning his parents’ language and knew little about Armenian history.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research mourns the death of Richard G. Hovannisian, who was a close friend of the Center and passed away on July 10, 2023 at the age of 90 years old. 

In writing the story of Polish Catholic diplomat Jan Karski, who in 1943 brought eye-witness evidence of Nazi atrocities directly to Western leaders, creators of the play and film "Remember This" had many sources to draw on. But it was Karski’s 1995 interview with the USC Shoah Foundation that was most useful in navigating the intricacies of Karski’s character, providing emotional resonance to the film.

    -   Invitación para presentación de propuestas IX Conferencia Internacional de la INoGS Genocidio y comunidades sobrevivientes: agencia, resistencia, reconocimiento 23-26 de junio de 2024 University of Southern California Los Ángeles En el territorio ancestral y no cedido de las naciones de Tongva y Kizh

Middle and high school students around the world are exploring the themes of resistance, solidarity and resilience using an innovative new film-based curriculum produced by the USC Shoah Foundation and The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in Israel, one of the first Holocaust museums in the world. 

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education is pleased to invite applications from scholars of all levels for its Non-residential Scholar Program. The Program is intended to enable full access to the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA) to support scholarly research with survivor testimonies housed in the archive.

With anti-Jewish violence and rhetoric on the rise around the world, the USC Shoah Foundation this fall launches a new Antisemitism Lecture Series where leading scholars will guide audiences through the latest research on this persistent and shapeshifting bigotry.

More than 300 people turned out Wednesday for a public convening at which a high-level panel discussed threats to Holocaust memory caused by growing antisemitism and revisionist campaigns that deny and distort details of the Shoah.

In early September, Clara Dijkstra, a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Cambridge and the 2023-2024 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, arrived for her monthlong residency at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research (CAGR) to conduct research in the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education invites applications from graduate students from any university for the 2024-2025 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Antisemitism Studies.

There are no words that can adequately convey our grief, outrage, and sorrow. The barbaric crimes committed against Israeli civilians this week have shocked us all. As we continue to uncover the brutality of the attacks perpetrated by Hamas, including more than 1,300 murders, untold numbers of those abducted and violated, and the many more who have been traumatized by these crimes, we are deeply concerned for our friends and relatives in danger. Our hearts break for the families who fear for the safety of loved ones, and we grieve alongside those who have experienced unspeakable loss.

Over the past several days, I have been in touch with many members of the Trojan Family who voiced their pain and despair in the wake of the unprecedented terrorist attacks in Israel. We mourn the shocking loss of life. We condemn the terrorist attacks by Hamas and their brutal threats to execute kidnapped civilians and commit other atrocities.

Dear Friends, I am writing to you with profound sorrow. The murderous attack that occurred in Israel was an act of antisemitism in its most depraved form by a genocidal regime in Gaza sponsored by Iran, a country that repeatedly calls for the destruction of Israel. There can be no moral equivalence. “From the river to the sea” has only one meaning–the elimination of Israel. This was a massacre of people for only one reason—they were Jews.