It was not easy for the more than 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in our Visual History Archive to tell their stories. But they did it, because they understood the importance of preserving these painful memories for future generations. We are those future generations, and it is our turn to carry their stories and messages of strength and resilience forward.

More than 18,000 students and 250 teachers from school districts across Georgia last week experienced famed pianist Mona Golabek's livestreamed performance adapted from her acclaimed book, The Children of Willesden Lane. Produced in an exciting new format by Discovery Education in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, the special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gave students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brought to life the inspiring story of her mother and Holocaust survivor, Lisa Jura. 

Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and psychologist, describes the internal work she has engaged in to move past her experiences, and to share her experiences with others.

Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and psychologist, describes the power of passing her story on to future generations.  

Alan Rose was repeating himself. He was stuck in a particularly difficult part of his story about being deported from a labor camp to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Josh Turnil and the guests he had invited to hear Alan’s story in Josh’s Paris living room that January 2019 evening – about 20 people of all ages tucked into sofas and folding chairs – gently helped Alan along. After Alan had finished speaking, Josh’s teenage son sat at the piano and played a slow, jazzy melody with a repeating refrain that reflected the circularity of memory.

Join acclaimed pianist and author Mona Golabek for a 50-minute livestreamed performance adapted from her best-selling book, The Children of Willesden Lane. This special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gives New England students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brings to life the inspiring story of her mother, Lisa Jura, a young Holocaust survivor who in 1938 escaped from Vienna to London on the Kindertransport. More than one million students around the world have experienced the Willesden READS program to date.

Learn how you can be part of the inaugural cohort of USC’s new MA in Global Security Studies Program, starting in Fall 2022. Meet with leading international relations, global security and geospatial science faculty experts as they discuss the curriculum and opportunities for multi-faceted individuals to develop and implement creative and effective policies that address complex challenges such as environmental vulnerability, public health crises, food and resource scarcity, regional conflict, cyber-attacks and other natural and manmade causes of human insecurity.

USC Shoah Foundation continues to record interviews with Holocaust survivors as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection initiative, an urgent effort to give voice to survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust with the goal of educating people around the globe.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Vera Gissing, who died March 12 in Berkshire, England at age 93. Vera will be remembered for her extraordinary life, which included escaping Prague in 1939 on one of the last Kindertransport trains to make it out of Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II.

How best to fuse compelling testimony with the latest innovative technologies to produce the most effective instructional materials for students and educators around the world?

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.