In this October 11, 2023, lecture, Dr. Robert J. Williams, Mark Weitzman, and Dr. James Wald present on their edited volume, the Routledge History of Antisemitism. Antisemitism is a topic on which there is a wide gap between scholarly and popular understanding, and as concern over antisemitism has grown, so too have the debates over how to understand and combat it. This book explores its history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet.

In this clip from his 2022 testimony, Gerald Szames recalls his personal encounter with antisemitism from a fellow college student. Recorded in the Ceci Chan and Lila Sorkin Memory Studio at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's global headquarters on the USC campus in Los Angeles, California.

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.   

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.

Jola Gelb is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in the Metajna Concentration camp in Slana/Pag in today’s Croatia. More than 3,500 Jews, Roma and Serbs were held at Slana in the summer of 1941, and 1,000 were killed at a complex of camps run by the Ustasha regime. Researchers are using Jola’s testimony to help document and preserve the sites of persecution in Slana.

Watch and learn more about the relaunch of the Visual History Archive.

Yiddish Poet and Holocaust survivor Rikva Basman Ben-Hayim died March 22, 2023, at 98. In her March 1996 testimony, Holocaust survivor Adela Bay, who was in Kaiserwald concentration camp with Rivka, remembers the opening lines of Rivka's poem reflecting on the humanity that still remains through a person's eyes, despite the inhumanity of a shaved head and wearing a prison uniform.

Stephen Kalmar, an activist who fled Austria in the 1930’s and emigrated to Mexico with his wife in 1940.

Heinz Geggel was Secretary of the Freies Deutschland anti-Nazi group in Cuba during World War Two.

In this keynote from March 28, 2023, in recognition of the Mickey Shapiro Endowed Chair in Holocaust Education Research at the University of Southern California, distinguished scholar Mary Helen Immordino-Yang suggests that the foundation of the future of education is rooted in story – stories that help us care.

In this clip from his 2019 interview, recorded for the Visual History Archive, WWII veteran and liberator Alan Moskin speaks of the importance of giving testimony. Alan Moskin passed away in 2023 at the age of 96. Read our tribute to him.

In this presentation, Elyse Semerdjian outlines 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 discusses 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.

In this talk, Renana Keydar and Eitan Wagner examine the meeting point between testimony and computation, the new possibilities inherent in such an encounter and the challenges and risks involved. They introduce the new avenues for listening to the multitude of testimonies in the archives afforded by the development of advanced computational tools. The talk presents a computational model of "distant listening," which is motivated by the moral commitment to the integrity of each testimony while simultaneously approaching the multiplicity of testimonies as such.

Marta describes an instance of Holocaust denial which occurred at a school where she spoke.