Martin Greenfield, born in 1928 in what was then Czechoslovakia, was the only member of his immediate family to survive Auschwitz. He immigrated to the U.S. at age 19 and eventually made his name as a Master Tailor, making suits for six US presidents. As a new immigrant, he worked on the suit of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In this clip, Greenfield recalls seeing Eisenhower when he was liberated at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in April 1945.   

A public lecture by Vaclav Masek (PhD student in Sociology, University of Southern California) 2022 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Tied to the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the day commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and seeks to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.

USC Shoah Foundation today unveils a Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) interview with internationally celebrated author and concert pianist Mona Golabek. Published on the Institute’s award-winning IWitness page in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, this is the inaugural DiT interactive experience to feature a second-generation (or ‘2G”) descendent of a Holocaust survivor.

A public lecture by Ryan Cheuk Him Sun (PhD candidate in History, University of British Columbia, Canada) 2022-2023 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research  

A public lecture by Vaclav Masek (PhD student in Sociology, University of Southern California) 2022 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

A public lecture by Ryan Cheuk Him Sun (PhD candidate in History, University of British Columbia, Canada) 2022-2023 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Suzette Sheft first recognized the importance of recording family history when it was already too late. As a young child, the New York City student had regularly listened to her father’s stories, but when he died of pancreatic cancer when she was just 13, she realized she was unable to remember many of them. “When he was alive, he would tell me stories about his life while tucking me in each night, but in the months following his death, I found myself forgetting many of his recollections,” Suzette said.

This webinar examines the stories of Black G.I.s featured in Echoes & Reflections who liberated concentration camps, including Leon Bass and Paul Parks. It will also focus on the experience of facing the reality of Nazi genocide, while balancing the impact of discrimination and violence at home in the United States.

Join USC Shoah Foundation for this unique webinar that will introduce Edith Maniker, a survivor of the Kindertransport, and Mona Golabek, the daughter of Lisa Jura who was saved by the Kindertransport, for a live conversation as well as an introduction to their digital biographies shared in the Foundation's Dimensions in Testimony program.

Carli Snyder is the 2022-2023 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies. Since the beginning of January, she has been in Los Angeles conducting research with Visual History Archive (VHA) testimonies. A PhD candidate in History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, she is conducting research as part of her larger dissertation project that is provisionally entitled ‘Flesh of the Facts’: Toward a Feminist Holocaust Consciousness.

Featured project: "The Blue Angel and the Holocaust"                   Inayat looked at him intently and said, "What do you know of pain?" And he responded simply, "I know no one has a monopoly on it."

A public lecture by Raíssa Alonso (PhD candidate in Social History, University of São Paulo, Brazil) 2022-2023 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Professor Jan Grabowski, a distinguished scholar of the Holocaust in Poland will serve as the 2022-2023 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation. He will deliver the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture, entitled "Holocaust in Poland: New Research, New Findings", and spend a week in residence at the Center and USC Shoah Foundation in March 2023.

Professor Jan Grabowski, a distinguished scholar of the Holocaust in Poland will serve as the 2022-2023 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation. He will deliver the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture, entitled "Holocaust in Poland: New Research, New Findings", and spend a week in residence at the Center and USC Shoah Foundation in March 2023.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation present the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar Lecture by Jan Grabowski (Professor of History at University of Ottawa, Canada) 2022-2023 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation

USC Shoah Foundation has announced a new fellowship for a U.S.-based secondary-level educator to produce testimony-based instructional resources about the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Genocide Education—Keep the Promise Teacher Fellowship will train an educator with content expertise in Armenian Genocide education to develop teaching material using the latest innovative technologies in IWitness, the Institute’s award-winning digital educational platform.

This webinar will provide educators with the information and tools needed to build awareness about the importance of building social and emotional learning competencies to effectively respond to antisemitism in schools.

As we mark the one-year anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, the devastation and human suffering continue to be staggering.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Betty Grebenschikoff, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and speaker, who was reunited with a childhood friend in February 2021, 81 years after the pair had last seen one other in a Berlin schoolyard. The reunion, made possible by a longtime researcher at USC Shoah Foundation, touched hearts across the world.  

We are deeply saddened by the untimely loss of our friend and colleague, Kim Simon, a beloved member and leader of the USC Shoah Foundation family for nearly three decades. Kim passed away February 28 at the age of 52 after living with a rare degenerative disease. She is survived by a husband and two daughters and leaves a rich legacy that will sustain the Institute’s mission for years to come.

In this presentation, Elyse Semerdjian will outline the earliest Armenian pilgrimages to the killing fields of Dayr al-Zur in the Syrian Desert. It is there that Armenians interacted with the remains of Armenians murdered during the Armenian Genocide (1915-1918) in acts of remembrance. Semerdjian will discuss the origins of the now-destroyed Armenian Genocide Memorial in Dayr al-Zur and the ritual and collection habits of pilgrims that enact what she calls bone memory.

Holocaust survivor Samuel Geller recalls a more sober celebration than usual on Purim of 1933 in Chemnitz, Germany, with a classmate dressing up as Hitler to play Haman, Purim’s villain.

Join us on campus or on Zoom for this special public convening featuring a keynote by distinguished scholar Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, in recognition of the Mickey Shapiro Endowed Chair in Holocaust Education Research at the University of Southern California. The event will be moderated by Dr. Ishwar K. Puri.

Modern methods of analyzing thousands of Holocaust survivor testimonies contained in collections such as the Visual History Archive present a challenge that is at once ethical and technological: how to listen to thousands of testimonies of Holocaust survivors as an integral body of voices and stories rather than a collection of fragmentary items in a database. In this talk, Hebrew University Researchers Renana Keydar and Eitan Wagner will examine the meeting point between testimony and computation, the new possibilities inherent in such an encounter, and the challenges and risks involved.

    -   Call for Papers INoGS 9th International Conference Genocide and Survivor Communities: Agency, Resistance, Recognition June 23-26, 2024 University of Southern California Los Angeles On the ancestral and unceded territory of the Tongva and Kizh Nation peoples

In partnership with USC School of Cinematic Arts, we invite you to a screening and special panel discussion of the award-winning feature film My Name Is Sara.

A public lecture by Dorota Glowacka (Professor of Humanities, University of King's College, Halifax, Canada) Center Visiting Scholar, April 2023 (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research mourns the death of Kim Simon who for the last decade served as Managing Director of the USC Shoah Foundation. She passed away on February 28, 2023.