During my dissertation research on the history of fear in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, a Corrie ten Boom fellowship provided the opportunity for me to visit the USC Shoah Foundation to explore the visual testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. When I arrived, I was not exactly sure how I might make use of these incredibly important digitized collections in my project.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

Professor Peter Hayes, world-renowned scholar of the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, will serve as the 2019-2020 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) today announced a $10 million grant from the Koret Foundation to develop and implement a new global holocaust educational curriculum in partnership with Hold On To Your Music Foundation (Hold On To Your Music). This new curriculum will combine testimony, technology, and music, and alter the field of Holocaust education for primary and secondary school aged children around the world.

Today we mourn the loss of Hanna Pankowsky, a remarkable woman who gave us her testimony and was one of the subjects in a portrait series of Holocaust survivors painted by David Kassan.

USC Shoah Foundation joins the Hollywood community and people worldwide in mourning the loss of Kirk Douglas, who passed away earlier this week at age 103. Douglas was an acting legend and an icon of the Golden Age of moviemaking, but it was the zeal and empathy that he brought not only to his work as an artist but also to so many humanitarian causes that made him a close friend of USC Shoah Foundation.

Ioanida Costache, the Center’s 2019-2020 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow, gave a public lecture about the monthlong research she conducted in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive during her residency at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. This research is part of her ongoing dissertation project that examines how music helps facilitate the cultivation and transmission of Romani memories of the Holocaust.

From the Annals of Krakow, a sequence of poems by Piotr Florczyk that was inspired by testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual Archive, will be published in September 2020 by Lynx House Press, a press whose titles are distributed to the trade by University of Washington Press. 

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosted professors Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University) and Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth College), who gave a lecture based on their recently published book School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference.

Museum Visitors engage with Interactive Biography of Acclaimed Cellist and German-Born Holocaust Survivor Anita Lasker Wallfisch.

The Institute is sad to learn that world champion swimmer and Holocaust survivor Éva Székely passed away at 92.

As local communities assess and adjust to the needs of the world community—and as many schools shift from in-person to virtual classrooms—IWitness and its standards-aligned resources are ready to help educators and parents support students learning.

The portrait I have been working on of Dario isn’t complete yet, but what an honor it was to have met him and is now to engage with his testimony through the act of painting,” said David Kassan of hi

USC Shoah Foundation welcomed staff from the educational program at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ABSM) in Oświęcim, Poland, to its Los Angeles headquarters for a week-long collaboration.

USC Shoah foundation is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Anneliese Nossbaum, who survived a Jewish ghetto and three concentration camps. Anneliese passed away March 23, 2020 after falling ill within weeks of returning from a trip that commemorated the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. She was 91. She was born on January 8, 1929 in Guben, Germany as Anneliese Winterberg.  At the age of two, her family moved to Bonn where her father later became the rabbi of their synagogue.  

Only a day after the University of Southern California announced that it would conduct a three-day test to move all classes online, which soon turned into a permanent arrangement until the end of Spring semester, my colleague and I gave our last in-person introduction to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive to a USC class. Perhaps serendipitously, one of the topics discussed in this class was physical health.

I much enjoyed my stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in early March, just before the pandemic turned all of our lives upside down. Meeting the wonderful members of the staff and seeing how much the operations of both the Foundation and the Center have grown since my last visit in 2014 were remarkable experiences.

  “Geographies of Persecution in Occupied Paris: Place and Space in Survivors' Testimonies” Maël Le Noc (PhD Candidate in Geography, Texas State University) 2019-2020 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow March 12, 2020  

  “Makeshift Murder: The Holocaust at Its Peak” Peter Hayes (Northwestern University) 2019-2020 Shapiro Scholar in Residence March 5, 2020

On April 17, 1975, the city of Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, triggering a four-year genocide. In commemoration, USC Shoah Foundation is spotlighting its Cambodia-based learning activities for high school students.

Pictured: Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz who gave his testimony to the Azrieli Foundation in 2018. His interview is one of 31 new testimonies from the Azrieli Foundation that have been indexed and catalogued in the Visual History Archive. This week’s semi-annual VHA release adds 128 new testimonies to the 55,000-strong collection. All the updated testimonies are available at 163 access sites worldwide.

Panama’s Jewish community is commemorating Yom HaShoah virtually this year with a week-long series of thematic Instagram posts that will integrate clips from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. In memory of the six million killed, Panama Friends of Yad Vashem coordinated a six-day campaign focused on survivor families in Panama, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and community commemorations of Yom HaShoah.

  “Continuity, Escalation, and Local Actors: The Hamidian Massacres and the Armenian Genocide” Mehmet Polatel 2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow April 13, 2020

The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will feature full access to the public of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA) of over 54,000 testimonies. One of the world’s leading Armenian Studies centers, NAASR advances education and scholarship through supporting and connecting scholars globally and providing outstanding programming to the general public.  NAASR plans to conduct outreach with schools, colleges, libraries, and other institutions in order to spread awareness about the availability of the VHA at NAASR’s headquarters.

Videóinterjúk a 21. század oktatásában 2020 A Dél-Kaliforniai Egyetem (USC) Soá Alapítvány nemzetközi oktatási programja Magyarországon MOST jelentkezhet a magyarországi program kilencedik évfolyamára! Jelentkezés az online jelentkezési lap kitöltésével! Online képzés: június 22-26. Online kurzus (önálló tanulás): június 27 – július 15. Jelentkezési határidő: 2020. május 31.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, USC Shoah Foundation education team has adapted its already robust online content and tools in IWitness to meet current educational demands for online teaching and learning.

The elderly population is among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the victims include a large and growing number of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.

In 2017, Mr. Feingold recorded a more than 4 hour testimony with USC Shoah Foundation as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection, enabling Holocaust survivors to share their stories for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive—before it is too late—where they will exist in perpetuity.

Visit Echoes & Reflections for comprehensive programming and resources about the Holocaust especially designed for educators so they can gain the skills, knowledge, and confidence to teach this topic effectively. On January 27, 2020, the bipartisan bill passed in the House with nearly unanimous support. Today, it passed the senate with complete support and is now on its way for the president's signature.

The ties between Cornell University and USC Shoah Foundation are many, and now, they are permanent: The Cornell University Library has acquired access to the Visual History Archive in perpetuity. Cornell University became the 52nd site to provide full access to the archive on an annual basis in November 2015, and the impact on research and education has been significant. This impact can now continue for generations to come, as the witnesses who gave testimony had hoped.