Danish historian Therkel Straede spent three days at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research this week watching testimonies in an attempt to understand the truth about one of the most gruesome and taboo aspects of the Holocaust: cannibalism in the Nazi concentration camps.

The reaches of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are unparalleled, attracting researchers and professors from such places as Sydney, Australia and enabling them to further their work with the testimonies available online.

More than a year after the 2015 gala to honor that year’s chosen humanitarian for his leadership and corporate citizenry around education and community, the ties between USC Shoah Foundation and the Detroit community have never been stronger.

Los Angeles, Nov. 15, 2016 – USC Shoah Foundation is offering one member of the public and a guest the chance to attend its Ambassadors for Humanity Gala in December. The gala is a crucial part of the Institute’s efforts helping to forge partnerships that sustain the organization into the future. The gala raises much-needed general funds to support its educational programs including expansion of the Institute’s award-winning IWitness website, professional development for educators globally, the Center for Advanced Genocide Research, academic conferences, expanding access to the Visual History Archive and testimony preservation, to name a few.

Samuel describes how the wearing of the yellow star was enforced in his town of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. 

Students in Budapest, Hungary, and Durham, North Carolina, are taking a joint online course this semester on archives, memory and human rights. And last month, that included an introductory session on the Visual History Archive that will help inform their class curriculum and projects.

L’édition 2016-2017 du Concours national de la Résistance et de la Déportation propose aux élèves des collèges et lycées français de travailler sur le thème suivant : « La négation de l’Homme dans l’univers concentrationnaire nazi ».

The contest aims to perpetuate in students the memory of the resistance and the deportation in France during the Holocaust so that they can draw inspiration from it and draw civic lessons from it in their lives today.

Several months ago in my former senior high school class, students were introduced to the ideas of illiberalism.  When discussing this issue, students are faced with how governments will apply laws and acts during times of crisis, as well as everyday life, that would limit or suspend civil liberties of any individual or group. 

The fourth museum installation of New Dimensions in Testimony kicked off last week at CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. It will remain open to the public for the next three months.

USC Shoah Foundation Czech regional consultant Martin Šmok will give a presentation about IWitness at the Terezín Memorial’s annual international seminar for educations Nov. 21-27, 2016.

Through IWitness, Justin Loeber helps inspire in his students a personal connection to the Holocaust as well as the knowledge that they have the power to make a positive difference in the lives of the people around them.

A talk by Professor Liliane Weissberg at University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania The Kislak Center, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library 3420 Walnut Street, 6th Floor

A little over three months after staff finished indexing the Armenian Genocide Collection, work on creating English-language subtitles for the collection is progressing quickly, with subtitles for over 100 testimonies already completed.

A panel discussion with Verena Buser, PhD (Alice Salomon University); Martin Dean, PhD (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum); Andrea Rudorff, PhD (Institut für Zeitgeschichte); and Sari J. Siegel, Doctoral Candidate (University of Southern California). 

100 Days to Inspire Respect Alicia describes when her house was attacked. She recognizes one of the attackers, and she makes a speech to him that causes him to leave.  

As educators, we are asked to help our students effectively process the outcome of our elections and the implications it may have in their communities. In doing so, we need to find ways to provide them a safe and supportive place to understand their changing roles.

As fall meets winter, we find ourselves in the seasonal in-between – summer is gone and winter is not yet biting. Yet it is in the in-between that we find moments for appreciation with friends and family. We create these moments in the cycle of the seasons. I think about what it means to live in the in-between – in a place of ambiguity and uncertainty where we must negotiate both the successes and the struggles of daily life. Progress propels us forward, but sometimes it is a roller coaster rather than the smooth gradient we may wish for.

The 54,000 voices of genocide survivors and eyewitnesses preserved in the Visual History Archive can inspire and guide us while we make the sometimes difficult choices to be tolerant, to become educated, to stand up and take action against the many wrongs in the world.

Helen describes how she established a school in the Radomsko Ghetto for young ghetto inhabitants. She introduced her students to “Gone With the Wind” because they longed for a story to take their minds off their harsh surroundings.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites proposals for its 2017 International Conference “Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies” that will be co-sponsored by the USC Mellon Digital Humanities Program.

Two years since they first met, Paula and Gabriel talked about visiting Poland together, the importance of remembering the Holocaust and how young people can make a difference in a special Facebook Live broadcast.

Psychology students and professionals in Hungary attended two seminars this fall that inspired them to use IWitness in their teaching and learning.

At this public panel organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, three international scholars presented about the evolution of Nazi camps, illuminating different types of camps and how the functions and purposes of camps changed, often serving multiple functions as external and internal conditions changed over time.

The Holocaust Geographies Collaborative made a return visit to the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in November 2016 for two days to work together, present their continuing research that they shared at the conference, meet with Center staff, and plan next steps in their collaborative project.

Reva was just eight years old when she was imprisoned at Deblin concentration camp with her sisters. She describes what she and the women in the barrack talked about at night and sings a song she learned in the barrack.

Paula Cuellar Cuellar, the 2016-2017 Center Graduate Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture focusing on her dissertation research about whether scorched earth operations in El Salvador and Guatemala constitute genocidal practices.