Grayson Schmidt is a writer and multimedia journalist with USC News. He comes to USC with news experience in print, radio and television. He also worked as a crime reporter for three years in Iowa, and is well aware of the irony.

https://news.usc.edu/author/grayson-schmidt/

JANUARY 6, 2011—JERUSALEM—Sixteen college professors from across the United States are attending a special seminar at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies this week to study about the Holocaust and antisemitism. The weeklong “Echoes and Reflections Professors’ Study Tour” opened January 5, 2010. Some of the professors will remain for additional study days.  

The first phase of the program in which educator teams developed multimedia lessons from the Hungarian-language testimonies of the Institute’s Visual History Archive ended on April 17, 2010 with an official ceremony at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. The program was based on a three-way partnership between the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the Holocaust Memorial Center and the Educational Research and Development Institute (OFI) of the Hungarian Ministry of Education.

Until he retired from the Soviet Red Army in 1967, Leonid Rozenberg carried the banner at the head of the semi-annual military parade in the city of Lugansk, in what is now Ukraine, with hundreds of fellow soldiers marching behind him and thousands of spectators cheering him on.

Although highly decorated – his chest was covered in medals – the honor of leading the parade was tainted for Leonid. During his 26 years in the Soviet military Leonid was never promoted beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel. The reason? He was a Jew.

Alice Herz-Sommer plays the radio broadcast recording of her performance at eight years old of two piano pieces by German composer, Robert Schumann. Alice died February 23, 2014 in England; she was 110 years old and the oldest known Holocaust survivor.