USC Shoah Foundation has joined forces with La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization, to collect video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide.

Los Angeles - July 28, 2015 - USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education has joined forces with La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization, to collect video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide, which killed some 200,000 civilians in the early 1980s, mainly indigenous Mayans, at the hands of a military junta whose leader was convicted of genocide and war crimes in May 2013.

La Fundación Shoah USC– El Instituto para la Historia Visual y Educación une fuerzas con La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), una organización forense guatemalteca, para recopilar videos con testimonios de los sobrevivientes y testigos del Genocidio Guatemalteco.

Fredy Peccerelli grew up like any other boy in Brooklyn: he played baseball, went to school, and graduated from college. But his family’s history was anything but average.

La Fundación Shoah USC– El Instituto para la Historia Visual y Educación une fuerzas con La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), una organización forense guatemalteca, para recopilar videos con testimonios de los sobrevivientes y testigos del Genocidio Guatemalteco, en el cual murieron cerca de 200.000 civiles, principalmente indígenas maya, a principios de la década de 1980 a manos de una junta militar cual líder fue declarado culpable de genocidio y crímenes de guerra en mayo de 2013.

Guatemalan survivor Jesús Tecú speaks about his parents going into town to take care of business in 1982, and never returning home. He later discovered that they were killed that day during the massacre Río Negro.

A social anthropologist, Sandra Gruner-Domic, PhD, is the research expert on the Guatemalan Testimony Collection at USC Shoah Foundation. She is an experienced lecturer in sociology and gender studies at California State Long Beach University and USC. Her research interests are migration and gender, violence, displacement and genocide. Additionally she has researched, taught and published works on migration, race and ethnic relations, process of representation and identity in transnational context, global citizenship u.a. 

During the 1960s, the Guatemalan government unleashed a war against various small guerilla groups across the country. This so-called “internal conflict” turned into a 36-year genocide against Mayan populations.

Armenian Apostolic Church of Crescenta Valley, Prelacy “Dikran and Zarouhie Der Ghazarian” Hall  6250 Honolulu Ave, La Crescenta, CA 91214

Madelon Bino and her husband Raoul weren’t quite ready to leave USC Shoah Foundation’s office in Los Angeles when the monthly public visit they attended on July 23 concluded.Instead, they headed straight for a computer as intern Sebastian Goditsch showed them how to access the Visual History Archive and start watching testimony. After just a few minutes, Madelon pointed at the screen and smiled.“That’s one of the interviews I did,” she said.

Robert Wagemann remembers being a physically handicapped child during World War II. Doctors often preferred euthanizing children with physical disabilities rather than keep them alive. Robert describes how his mother helped him escaped a facility, saving his life.

USC Shoah Foundation Senior Education Specialist and Trainer Lesly Culp will lead the first session of a two-part webinar on Echoes and Reflection Wednesday, August 5; educators can sign up here.

A Rwanda Tutsi Genocide survivor and a Holocaust survivor each describe experiences they had with sterotyping.

Two USC Shoah Foundation staff members gave a presentation to 120 high school students from all over the world who are in Rwanda for the three-week WiSci Girls STEAM Camp.

Director Walter Manoschek, Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna, explores the story of Adolf Storms, a young SS officer who was suspected to have participated in the murder of 57 Jewish slave laborers in the small Austrian town of Deutsch Schützen in March,1945. The event will include a screening followed by a Q&A session with director Walter Manoschek.

When Rob Hadley joined 10 other teachers for the IWitness Teaching Fellowship in July, it was far from his first time creating testimony-based lessons and activities.

Holocaust survivor Suzanne Gross remembers when she had to wear the Yellow Star of David for the first time and the anti-Semitism that followed in 1942 France.

In light of the deplorable anti-Semitic incident at Ohio State University, and other campuses in recent months, USC Shoah Foundation is working to develop programs that will combat the troubling rise in anti-Semitism at colleges across the United States.

The presentation will engage the theoretical and practical implications of effectively using the audio-visual testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

Sam Kadorian remembers the separation and killings of Armenian families during the 1915 genocide.    

The Czech project Ours or Foreign? Jews in the Czech 20th Century delivered materials and training to 600 educators in the last fiscal year and added a new unit on the Terezín family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau featuring testimony clips from the Visual History Archive.

Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt talks about her arrival at Auschwitz from Terezín. She and the rest of the transport were treated differently from other prisoners; they did not have their heads shaved and they were given civilian clothes.

Professor and Holocaust scholar Kenneth Waltzer has no trouble coming up with topics to research in the Visual History Archive.There’s his current study of the rescue of the children and youths at Buchenwald, or his investigation of the brick mason school in Auschwitz. Or there’s the project he just started a few weeks ago researching how many of the boys liberated from Buchenwald went on to serve in the Palmuch underground army in Israel. No matter what, he says, “if you know the material and you can get into it, you can find all kinds of ways to research in the testimonies.”

Testimony from the Visual History Archive is being used as evidence to posthumously bestow Sister Louise the highest honor in the world for Holocaust rescuers, the title of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem.

Jewish survivor Henri Weinzweig describes his three and a half years at a Catholic convent and orphanage in Levignac, France. The sisters allowed him to live there to protect him from the Nazis.

Martin Becker fled Nazi Germany and immigrated to the United States where he later joined the Armed Forces. He speaks on his deployment to Japan including being stationed in Hiroshima only two weeks after US dropped the atomic bomb in August 1945.

Five staff members gathered for a special event to celebrate the conclusion of their year-and-a-half long project to index the Institute's new collection from Jewish Family and Children's Services (JFCS) of San Francisco.

Thursday’s event to celebrate the completion of indexing the Institute’s new collection from Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) of San Francisco was the culmination of not just a year and a half, but eight years of work on the collection for indexer Debbie Kahn.

Estelle Laughlin describes the influence of Dr. Janusz Korczak the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, a doctor, writer and educator who established a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. Rather than accept offers of asylum for himself he died with his orphans at Treblinka.