There is talk of a “new anti-Semitism” sweeping the globe, but all I see is the same irrational hatred aimed at the same perplexed victims, who are once again left wondering what has energized such bile.

A sea of faces dotted with “Nie Wieder!” banners wraps around the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Germany's capital. As I join them on this Sunday afternoon, I cannot help but think of the crowds that once had gathered under the same grey skies hanging onto every hateful word of their chosen leader, Adolf Hitler.

The Visual History Archive enables its users to observe the history of political utilization of anti-Jewish prejudice since the beginning of the 20th century until the century's end. Teaching about the mechanisms of hatred and the real goals of the propagandists is of utmost importance especially in what used to be the Soviet Block, where the liberation from Nazi regime did not necessarily mean the end of anti-Jewish propaganda.

“My father is Jewish.  My mother is Jewish. And I am Jewish.”  Those were the words I kept repeating to myself as I boarded my flight from JFK to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Students are asked to engage with primary and secondary sources and construct a short video essay on the nature of contemporary anti-Semitism.

Auschwitz, the final destination of Jewish people from across Europe destined to be murdered as a part of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Auschwitz, a place that housed prisoners of many religions, persuasions, minorities and nationalities, but whose evil reputation is seared onto our collective conscience because the five gas chambers at Birkenau were there for one reason only - to devour the lives of 960,000 Jews. Auschwitz, which has evolved into a universal symbol of man's inhumanity to man – and indeed it does remind us just how cruel human beings can be.

We are hiding from the fact that subsequent to Haman, Hitler was successful in carrying out the genocide of the Jews and the survivors of the Holocaust are better examples than Mordechai or Esther.

What does it mean to live 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz in a world in deep crisis? What does it mean with all we know about the damage that hatred causes – after all the pain we have gone through – that we are hurtling out of control into an inferno of rage that takes us right back to where we started?  Why are survivors of the Holocaust who walked out of the camps with at least the hope that their own suffering was not in vain, dying disappointed?

In light of the deplorable anti-Semitic incident at Ohio State University, and other campuses in recent months, USC Shoah Foundation is working to develop programs that will combat the troubling rise in anti-Semitism at colleges across the United States.

Survivors and witnesses of the 2015 synagogue attack in Copenhagen were interviewed for a new collection on contemporary anti-Semitism.

Echoes and Reflections, a Holocaust education partnership program of USC Shoah Foundation, Anti-Defamation League and Yad Vashem, published a new lesson dedicated to teaching students about antisemitism as it exists in the world today.

Though still in its planning stages, the program will aim to humanize the experience of antisemitism by sharing firsthand testimonies of people who have been affected by it.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Junior Interns witnessed a disturbing example of modern antisemitism firsthand during their trip to Budapest in June. And they have something to say about it.

Testimonies from the Visual History Archive’s newest collection have been added to IWitness in time for the upcoming school year along with a Mini Quest multimedia activity.

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.   - Zygmunt Bauman 2018 Polish-Israeli Crisis: History, Trauma, and Politics of Cultural Memory The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear. 1968-2018

Even absent this current era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” the new Polish law making it a crime to point out Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust would be alarming.  But that it is occurring in today’s climate of demagoguery, heightened nationalism and ethnic tension – an unholy trio that threatens to metastasize on a global scale – is a troubling development. Poland’s effort has come under attack by Israel and stewards of Holocaust memory.

As a non-Jew living in Paris, the scourge of antisemitism had, until recently, faded from my mind as a major concern. But my eyes were opened in 2016 when I was approached by the USC Shoah Foundation to executive produce for them a new collection of testimonies on contemporary antisemitism.

Like many countries around the world, we commemorated Labor Day on May 1 here in Germany. The day also coincided with the beginning of a new government position – commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and to fight antisemitism, but everyone refers to it as the “Antisemitism Commissioner.” The inaugural holder is Felix Klein, a career diplomat with an international law degree, who coincidentally happens to come from the same town I grew up in.

When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made the claim that Jews were targeted in the Holocaust for their “social function” in banking and not for their religion, he was not ranting from the podium or calling for death to the Jews. His approach was much more subtle, and therefore much more sinister.

UNESCO’s push is part of a wider effort to address rising incidents of antisemitic events, which in recent years have ranged from online hate speech to physical violence.

The two-week seminar at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. is meant to help university faculty make meaningful comparisons and to expand student awareness of Holocaust history.

It’s hard to imagine I’m even typing this sentence, but an avowed Holocaust denier is the official Republican nominee for an upcoming congressional election in Illinois, while a man whose website warns of a “Jewish supremacy” is running in California.

Those who openly deny the Holocaust are either apologists for the Nazis, right wing radicals, religious extremists, and all are antisemites, even if they deny that too.

USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith joined a group of leaders from Holocaust and genocide-awareness organizations who signed a letter offering to meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who sparked controversy last month by saying he wouldn’t shut down accounts of Holocaust deniers.

My father was born and raised in Sighet, Romania, just down the road from the Elie Wiesel's simple blue childhood home. When the Nobel laureate's house was spray-painted with antisemitic slurs this summer, it felt like an attack on my own familial history.

Racism. Holocaust denial. BDS. Students at USC Shoah Foundation’s second-annual Intercollegiate Diversity Congress Summit delved into some of the touchiest campus topics, and discussed ways to effect positive change.

A film by USC Shoah Foundation featuring video testimonies on current antisemitism opened a high-level panel Wednesday organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) titled, “The Power of Education for Countering Racism and Discrimination: The Case of Anti-Semitism,” at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly. 

Our hearts ache and our minds reel. Innocent lives have been lost at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh where a celebration of life was taking place. Now is a time to mourn those who have been wrenched away from their families at a time that should have been filled with joy. It’s a time to grieve for their families and friends who will forever struggle to understand what happened.

BY STEPHEN SMITH. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Poland, is the first person I have spoken to since the mass shooting which left eleven dead at the Tree of Life synagogue. She does not waste time greeting me in the doorway of her home in London. “So what are we going to do Stephen? We are not making progress!”

The history of antisemitism is strewn with the corpses of Jews who could not get out of the way when words turned to violence. The slaying of innocent Jewish lives by Pittsburgh gunman Robert Bowers, who this weekend turned his rhetoric about killing Jews into the actual killing of Jewish people, is the latest example. We need laws to allow intervention much earlier, or this will not be the last time we see Jewish people die in America because they are Jews.