The stories are truly harrowing.

One man watched as his house was burned down – with his baby brother inside. Another man’s grandfather literally died protecting him from attacking soldiers, and women tried to make themselves “ugly” so they wouldn’t be raped.

These are survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre that USC Shoah Foundation interviewed for its Nanjing Massacre collection in the Visual History Archive. Since 2014, a total of 30 interviews have been collected and integrated into the Visual History Archive.

Though they haven’t entered high school yet, Lauren Fenech is making sure her students understand the steps that can lead to genocide.

In her eighth grade language arts class at Inverness Middle School in Florida earlier this week, Fenech led her students in USC Shoah Foundation’s Pyramid of Hate activity. The activity integrates first-person testimonies from the Institute's Visual History Archive with the Pyramid of Hate, a curricular tool developed by the Anti-Defamation League for its A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute.

USC Shoah Foundation Records Testimonies About Current Anti-Semitism in Copenhagen


Unfortunately it is becoming an all too familiar scene: A man with a gun opened fire at a bat mitzvah celebration, killing a security guard and injuring two police officers.

Leaders of USC Shoah Foundation and its board of councilors were appalled by the act of violence in Copenhagen. They recognized that anti-Semitism was once again on the rise in Europe, and Jews were being targeted.

Robin Migdol