Members of the USC Shoah Foundation Board of Councilors got creative during the annual board meeting in New York, Oct. 14-15.
board of councilors. board meeting, iwitness, detroit / Monday, November 2, 2015
Survivor Irene Adler reads a poem she wrote in the 1960s called "The Yellow Star," about her experiences during the Holocaust.
clip, poetry / Monday, November 2, 2015
In this documentary, Peter Logue explores the legacy that was left behind by the members of the White Rose after they were executed at the hands of the Gestapo. Through extensive interviews with scholars and conversations with current University of Munich students, Logue asks us all to consider what we can learn from the White Rose today and, most importantly, "what would you have done?"
cagr / Monday, November 2, 2015
When it’s time for Kathleen Ralf’s class on Genocide and Human Rights to begin, her students log in from their homes all over the world. This semester, they were all able to take part in a common project through IWitness.
/ Tuesday, November 3, 2015
About a year after I joined USC Shoah Foundation, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre’s Holocaust Education Week in Toronto. The theme that year was about memory and they had graciously invited me, the new Director of Education, to discuss memory in the context of the Institute’s education platform IWitness and testimony-based education.
memory, blog, op-eds / Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Mahima Verma is a sophomore at USC studying Journalism and History. She shares how testimony is inspiring her work as an intern at the Institute.
Begins With Me / Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Marina Kay is senior at USC studying at International Relations and president of USC Shoah Foundation's student organization, Defy. She shares how testimony now plays an integral part of her life in and outside of the university.
beginswithme / Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Dan-Morgan Russell is a senior at USC studying International Relations. Testimony inspires Dan to educate others and inspire policy to help those affected by atrocities.
Begins With Me / Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Neuroscientist Glenn Fox is a researcher at USC Brain and Creativity Institute and used testimony from the Visual History Archive to study the affects of gratitude in the brain.
beginswithme / Tuesday, November 3, 2015
The National Science Foundation awarded the Shoah Foundation a grant of $7.5 million distributed over five years, to develop speech-recognition software for cataloging more than 116,000 hours of videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and eyewitnesses, whose multilingual aspect poses special research challenges. As cataloging the testimonies is time-consuming and costly, particularly when it involves interviews in other languages, the NSF grant will support the development of a computer system that should be able to review the tapes and recognize important words and phrases.
NSF, National Science Foundation, grant, speech recognition, IBM, Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland / Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Today Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation announced that Douglas Greenberg, PhD, has been named President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Greenberg's appointment as Shoah Foundation President and CEO will begin September 5, 2000.
/ Friday, May 12, 2000
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has added Hungary to the list of countries in which eyewitness testimonies have been recorded for its Archive. The Foundation, established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg after filming Schindler's List, is videotaping the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses around the world.
/ Friday, February 12, 1999
Last night, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation commemorated the recording of its 50,000th testimony with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. At a ceremony attended by over 400 people involved with the project, both at its Los Angeles headquarters and abroad, Shoah Foundation Founder and Chairman Steven Spielberg thanked everyone and announced the future direction of the organization. Spielberg told the group, "no one could have imagined the breadth of the undertaking we embarked on four years ago.
/ Monday, February 1, 1999
Cornell marked the launch Wed., Nov. 3 with a public lecture by New Yorker columnist and Rwandan Genocide expert Philip Gourevitch.
visual history archive, access site, full access / Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in association with Maxell Corporation of America/Hitachi Maxell LTD and Burda Media is pleased to announce the release of Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust. The interactive CD-ROM, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and Winona Ryder, incorporates visual and oral histories recorded by the Shoah Foundation. It is the first educational CD-ROM from Steven Spielberg's nonprofit foundation.
/ Tuesday, September 8, 1998
Interviewer: Mr. Laks, what are your activities nowadays?
clip, brazil / Wednesday, November 4, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation is sorry to learn of the passing of Aleksander Laks, the first Holocaust survivor to give his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in Brazil and a special friend of the Institute. Laks passed away July 21 at age 88.Laks survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march as a teenager. He immigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and became a leader of the survivor community there as president of the Sherit Hapleita (Holocaust survivors’ organization).
/ Thursday, November 5, 2015
Peter Komor says the best defense against future genocides is education. He and his granddaughter are both graduates of Cornell University, the 52nd full access site of the Visual History Archive.
clip, education / Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Steven Spielberg, Founder and Chairman of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and Foundation Directors James Moll and June Beallor, announced today that Dr. Michael Berenbaum will join Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in early January 1997 as President and CEO.
/ Monday, November 25, 1996
USC President C. L. Max Nikias praised USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith’s dedication to preserving memory of the past through testimony.
viterbi, Max Nikias, nikias, Stephen Smith, erna viterbi / Thursday, November 5, 2015
Al talks about what the Holocaust taught him, including the value of freedom, having the right perspective on life, taking action and making decisions in your life, and keeping families together.
clip / Thursday, November 5, 2015
/ Thursday, November 5, 2015
/ Thursday, November 5, 2015
Kabera and his film Intore will receive the International Family Film Festival (IFFF)’s 2015 Humanitarian Award in Hollywood on Sunday, Nov. 8.
eric caber, wolf gruner, award / Friday, November 6, 2015
Kátia Lerner worked as interviewer and Regional Assistant Coordinator for USC Shoah Foundation in Rio de Janeiro from 1996 to 1999. After that period, she continued her work as liaison until 2012. Katia received an MA in Social Communication and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, both at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her thesis analyzes the process of shaping the memory of the Holocaust taking as object of study the then called Survivors of the Holocaust Visual History Foundation (from 1994 to 2001).
/ Monday, November 9, 2015
In December 1995, USC Shoah Foundation, then called, Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, held a training session for interviewers in Buenos Aires; bringing together people from different countries of Latin America. The Foundation had just started to collect the survivors’ testimonies throughout the world and was about to start recording testimonies in Brazil.
Aleksander Laks, op-eds / Monday, November 9, 2015
The roundtable discussions and panels helped lay the framework for UNESCO to develop digital educational resources and a teacher’s guide.
unesco, Stephen Smith, kim simon, kori street / Monday, November 9, 2015
Jennie Sauer describes how her cousin helped her escape from Kurowice concentration camp and join his band of Jewish resistance fighters in the forest. A week after she escaped, the camp was liquidated and most of the prisoners were killed.
clip, genocide resistance / Monday, November 9, 2015
Nearly 20 years ago, talent manager and producer Steve Sauer was having a business lunch with Tony Thomopoulos, then-president of Amblin Television. Thomopoulos knew that Sauer’s parents were Holocaust survivors, so he asked Sauer if they had recorded their testimonies for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation yet.
/ Monday, November 9, 2015
Keith Stringfellow teaches American History, World History, and English at Charlotte Islamic Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina. Stringfellow has been teaching for nine years and was named Business and Finance High School's Teacher of the Year in 2010.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2015

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