Connecting Next Generations


Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:50 PM PDT
Stephen Smith, UNESCO chair on Genocide Education and Finci Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation talks with Elisha Wiesel about growing up with his father, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eli Wiesel, and the responsibilities of the second generation.

Generation to Generation: The Evolution of Memorialization


Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:50 PM PDT
We will explore the history behind the exhibits, discuss the nature of memory and memorials, and discover how the world remembers the Shoah and honors the lives we lost. We will also explore how that memory is interconnected to genocides, both past and present.

Back to School Activities to Help Teachers Address Critical Contemporary Issues


USC Shoah Foundation today launches its 2021-2022 Back to School package, a suite of testimony-based resources on IWitness to help educators navigate the complex issues created by the Covid-19 pandemic and surfaced by the recent upsurge in social movements demanding racial justice.

This year’s classroom activities and educator professional development modules are based on testimony from the Visual History Archive that help students to critically evaluate historical context, consider various perspectives and impacts, and reflect on personal connections.

Two Sides of Survival Nets Best Documentary Prize at Angeles Film Festival


The documentary Two Sides of Survival just landed Winner of Best Documentary Short at the Angeles Film Festival.

Produced by USC Shoah Foundation, Two Sides of Survival brings together stories from the East and West, chronicling how Jews who fled the Nazis in Europe, and Chinese who were threatened by Japanese occupation, improbably found refuge close to one another in the 1930s and during World War II.

USC Shoah Foundation

"Two Sides of Survival" Online Screening


Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:50 PM PDT

Produced by USC Shoah Foundation, the award-winning Two Sides of Survival brings together stories from the East and West, chronicling how Jews who fled the Nazis in Europe, and Chinese who were threatened by Japanese occupation, improbably found refuge close to one another in the 1930’s and during World War II.

Buy ticket (Use discount code "Shoah Foundation" at checkout)

Building Bridges


Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:50 PM PDT

Twenty years after the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed on U.S. soil, have we gained enough perspective to evaluate the impact of 9/11 on our society and heal the wounds of its aftermath? USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith joins leaders from New Ground, a Muslim-Jewish partnership for change; 30 Years After, an Iranian-American Jewish organization; and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles for a discussion about the legacy of the September 11 attacks.

It Took 50 Years For Father and Son to Tell This Story Together


On an autumn day in 1998, Joel Poremba waited in a bedroom with his wife and infant son as his father sat in his Southern California living room with an interviewer from USC Shoah Foundation. This was the first time Nathan Poremba was talking about how he survived the Holocaust as a child.

Restless and curious, Joel snuck out and poked his head into the living room doorway.

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.

Final Account Screening


Monday, June 30, 2025 - 07:50 PM PDT
Recently released by Focus Features, Final Account, the documentary from Participant Media, shares never-before-seen interviews with the last living generation of people to have participated in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Filmed over a 10-year period, the timely documentary raises questions about authority, conformity, complicity, perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women—ranging from former SS members to civilians—reckon with their memories, perceptions, and personal appraisals of their role in the Holocaust.