In this clip from her testimony, Erika Gold recalls her fond memories of her favorite room in her childhood house, the living room, especially during Shabbat.

William (“Bill”) Harvey, a friend of the institute who survived two Nazi concentration camps, later became a well-known cosmetologist with a client list that included Judy Garland, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and a young Liza Minnelli.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the loss of the Holocaust survivor and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who passed away on April 3, 2022. She was 97.

Leadership Workshop - Action and Values, presented by USC Shoah Foundation's William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program, provides a dynamic and unique opportunity for students to engage with testimonies – personal stories – from survivors and witnesses of genocide to develop a stronger sense of self and voice.

USC Shoah Foundation will be leading the following sessions during the Liberation75 Student Day Program. This is an excellent opportunity for students to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah): Learning with Testimony & Film: Love is Stronger Than Hate Time (Eastern Daylight Time): 2:00-2:45pm (11:00 - 11:45 Pacific) Students of Grades: 4-6

Narcisse Gasimba, a Tutsi survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, describes Aminadab Birara, the leader of a resistance group in the mountains of Bisesero. 

At one point in the horrific spring of 1994, Narcisse Gasimba had given up. Since April, Gasimba and other resistors in the mountains of western Rwanda had been using stones and spears to fend off wave after wave of Hutu attacks against Tutsis on the Bisesero hillside, but by the end of June their efforts felt fruitless. Tens of thousands, including members of Gasimba’s own family, had been massacred by Hutu attackers.

On April 27, in recognition of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the powerful film The Survivor premieres on HBO and HBO Max.

Earlier this year, thanks to a new collaboration with the Srebrenica Memorial Center, USC Shoah Foundation took possession of a pilot collection of 20 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The testimonies document the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys and the deportation of over 25,000 women and children that occurred in parts of eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.

Sally (Fink) Singer still cries over the spilled milk. Yes, it happened more than 80 years ago. And at the age of 100, Sally knows that her siblings – Anne (99), Sol (97), and Ruth (95), who to this day remain inseparable – have long since forgiven her. But the pangs of guilt and hunger linger.

Modern day Kentucky and WWII-era Austria may seem worlds apart, but the far-flung locales and distant timeframes came together last month at a series of educational workshops at the Iroquois Branch Library in south Louisville. Over the course of five weeks, a group of young children and their caregivers gathered each Saturday morning for a special educational series sponsored by the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) and The Willesden Project, a program of USC Shoah Foundation and Hold On To Your Music Foundation, with support from the Koret Foundation. 

One morning in 1978, Theary Seng awoke alongside her younger brother in their prison cell in Boeng Rai Security Center, about 100 kilometers south of their hometown of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The children’s mother had been in the cell the night before, but now she was gone. 

Harry Haft survived through his skills as a boxer for the entertainment of the Nazis in Auschwitz. Others imprisoned at the camp—including Benjamin Jacobs, a dentist—have mentioned in their testimonies that their professional usefulness to their captors may have saved their lives. Besides boxing, another form of entertainment for the Nazis at Auschwitz was the camp orchestra. The Visual History Archive has the testimonies of several musicians who recount their experiences playing in the orchestra.

Rachel Peacock has a B.S. in Telecommunications Production from University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. She has eight years of professional experience in educational video production, broadcast production, and project management.

Noah began his role as Associate Director of Annual Giving for USC Shoah Foundation in 2021. He leads the Institute’s comprehensive annual fund program and is responsible for content development, strategy, and general annual fund progress. Before joining the Institute’s advancement team, he worked in annual giving at Caltech and graduated from the University of Michigan.

Since December 2021 Matthew Rabin has served as Senior Director of Development for USC Shoah Foundation, coming from his prior role as Chief Development Officer for the Doheny Eye Institute. He has twenty years in the field, having worked at Stanford University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  He received his B.A. from Rutgers College, Rutgers University, and his Juris Doctor from George Washington University. Prior to development work, he was a community organizer and attorney.

Hanna Bokor’s testimony, given to USC Shoah Foundation in 1999, features prominently in the Hungarian documentary Monument to the Murderers. Here she describes what happened after she was arrested—at the age of 19 and eight months pregnant—by Arrow Cross militia in Budapest.

A powerful documentary that hinges on USC Shoah Foundation testimony raises difficult questions about how Hungary memorializes victims of the Nazi occupation and confronts its own role in wartime atrocities. Released last year, filmmaker Dániel Ács’ Monument to the Murderers recounts the controversy surrounding a monument erected in Budapest in 2005 to honor local victims of World War II.

The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida (HMREC) has unveiled architectural renderings of the new Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity in Orlando, Florida that will be the world’s first Holocaust museum designed around survivor and witness testimonies. USC Shoah Foundation serves as a content and creative partner in the development of the new museum, the first time the Institute has teamed with a Holocaust Museum to design and implement a ground-up and permanent museum-wide exhibition.

When Sam Kadorian was a child, Ottoman soldiers would conduct drills in a field near his home in Mezre (modern-day Elazığ, Turkey), adjacent to the fortress town of Kharpert. Sam would stand close by, mimicking their drills.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce its cooperation with a German government funded multi-institutional Holocaust research project entitled #LastSeen - Pictures of Nazi Deportations.

In this clip from her testimony, Mania recalls learning on May 8, 1945, that the war was over and how she felt about a dream come true.

"During the Holocaust I was living in a cocoon, with blinders. I lived completely in the present moment, because at any second, any Nazi, any German, any Kapo, could do away with me. You were like a gnat that they could squash. So, you lived inside a cocoon and hoped that one the day the butterfly would come out."