New Partnership Brings Survivor Voices to Hearts and Homes


Alan Rose was repeating himself. He was stuck in a particularly difficult part of his story about being deported from a labor camp to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Josh Turnil and the guests he had invited to hear Alan’s story in Josh’s Paris living room that January 2019 evening – about 20 people of all ages tucked into sofas and folding chairs – gently helped Alan along. After Alan had finished speaking, Josh’s teenage son sat at the piano and played a slow, jazzy melody with a repeating refrain that reflected the circularity of memory.

Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Julie Gruenbaum Fax is a content strategist and writer for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was a senior writer and editor at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and has co-authored six personal history books. She is currently writing a book about her grandmother’s Holocaust experience.

Thousands of Georgia Students Participate in Willesden Lane Education Event


More than 18,000 students and 250 teachers from school districts across Georgia last week experienced famed pianist Mona Golabek's livestreamed performance adapted from her acclaimed book, The Children of Willesden Lane.

Produced in an exciting new format by Discovery Education in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, the special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gave students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brought to life the inspiring story of her mother and Holocaust survivor, Lisa Jura. 

USC Shoah Foundation

USC Shoah Foundation Mourns the Passing of Survivor, Educator and Friend Helen Fagin


USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Helen Fagin, who has passed away in Sarasota, Florida at age 104.

A Holocaust survivor, English professor and director of Judaic Studies at the University of Miami, Helen received numerous awards over her long career for her work in promoting tolerance, and in 1994 was invited by President Clinton to be on the advisory board for the World War II Memorial.

USC Shoah Foundation

Application Open for Leadership Workshop – Action and Values, presented by the William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program this Summer


USC Shoah Foundation is now accepting applications for rising 8th–12th grade students across the country to participate in its highly competitive week-long summer program, Leadership Workshop – Action and Values.

A Tribute to Sigmund Burke, 1924-2022


USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and accomplished structural engineer Sigmund Burke, who died February 6, 2022 at nearly 98 years old. He recorded his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation in 2019, at the age of 95, as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection initiative, USC Shoah Foundation’s race-against-time effort to record the stories and perspectives of the last remaining Holocaust survivors.

Eli Gruen

The Starling Lab for Data Integrity Announces Inaugural Starling Journalism Fellows


The Starling Lab for Data Integrity (Starling Lab) today announced its inaugural class of Starling Journalism research fellows. The annual fellowship helps leading journalists from around the world use the latest advances in cryptography and Web3 technologies to protect the integrity and safety of digital content, as well as individuals working in and around the media. In an era of rampant mis- and disinformation, this timely program will apply in-field research to explore how to restore trust in digital media and underscore the legacy values of journalism.

Reclaiming the “Ruins of Memory”: Gender, Agency, and Imagination in Stories of the Shoah


USC Main Campus
Doheny Memorial Library, Room 240
Los Angeles, CA
United States

In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories – stories told many decades after the events occurred – often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier. Looking at these deferred stories through the lens of gender, we will explore how survivors craft accounts that insist on reclaiming, owning, and interpreting what the writer Ida Fink called “the ruins of memory,” often against the grain and in tension with academic interpretation.