If listening is a form of acknowledgment, can we hear the Roma? In this talk, Ioanida Costache (PhD candidate, Stanford University) problematizes the staggering silence and forgetting surrounding Romani persecution during the Holocaust, a history that has been muted or distorted for decades.

In France, Holocaust perpetrators did not segregate Jews in ghettos before deportation, and thus the first stages of antisemitic persecution affected Jews in everyday urban space. Indeed, in the West, the early stages of the Holocaust took place in the victims’ most familiar places, both in public and private spaces, where they lived and worked every day, in their apartments, their streets, and in daily environments.

Professor Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utrecht University, Department of History, and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam) gave a public lecture about the role of paramilitary militias in cases of mass violence, focusing on the example of pro-state paramilitary violence in the Syrian conflict. The lecture is based on Professor Üngör’s forthcoming monograph of the same title, which builds upon his broader and comparative research on the global phenomenon of paramilitarism.

Anna Lee, the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture about her research on survivor activism as a form of healing in the aftermath of mass executions during genocide and contemporary school mass shootings. During her one-month residency at the Center, Lee conducted comparative research on the topic by examining both survivor testimonies housed in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and accounts of school shootings survivors found in media and other sources.

Ayşenur Korkmaz, the Center’s 2019-2020 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture about narratives and conceptions of home among Armenian genocide survivors who fled to the south Caucasus during the Armenian genocide. The lecture is based on Korkmaz’s research with video and audio testimonies of Armenian survivors available in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, and is part of her larger dissertation project on post-genocide articulations of the Armenian homeland (Yergir) through materiality and rituals.

Martha Stroud manages the day-to-day operations of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which advances innovative interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides and promotes use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. She joined the Center in 2015 after earning her PhD in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Badema Pitic joined the Center for Advanced Genocide Research in 2017, where she is involved in the Center's outreach and academic programming directed at fostering and supporting the scholarly use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. Badema earned her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersections of music, memory, and politics in the aftermath of war and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

About a month before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, sparking World War II, a desperate Jewish father in Germany penned a letter in broken English to a friend in England, Mrs. Wolf.  “I beg to inform you that we have got a refuse from the Aid Committee in London, owing to our high waiting number for America. … We are very discouraged by this answer and are now forced to get out our children as quick as possible.” Alfons Lasker, an attorney in Breslau, was on a mission to get his two daughters – Anita and Renate – out of Germany. He did not succeed.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) and Fox Searchlight Pictures today announced a partnership to develop classroom curriculum tied to JOJO RABBIT, Taika Waititi’s heartfelt World War II anti-hate satire.

 

 

 

In 2019, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research conducted deep and wide-ranging outreach, introducing the Visual History Archive to scholars, academic faculty, fellows, librarians, and students through in-depth workshops, demonstrations, consultations, and class introductions.

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Cosponsored by the Center for Visual Anthropology at USC, the USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

A short documentary produced by USC Shoah Foundation and directed by Oscar-winning James Moll for use at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

In this documentary which aired around the world via Discovery Communications and subsequently on Comcast and Showtime, Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon revisits Auschwitz 70 years after her liberation. At 89, she shares her eyewitness experience and daily struggle for survival with two students the same age as she was during her internment.

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research

During my dissertation research on the history of fear in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, a Corrie ten Boom fellowship provided the opportunity for me to visit the USC Shoah Foundation to explore the visual testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. When I arrived, I was not exactly sure how I might make use of these incredibly important digitized collections in my project.

Russell A. Spinney is an independent historian and instructor at the Thacher School in Ojai, California.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

An online lecture by Mehmet Polatel (University of Southern California) 2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Cosponsored by the USC Institute of Armenian Studies

In this webinar, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research team will provide a deep dive into the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, including its history; methodologies of testimony collection, preservation, and indexing; current state of the archive and its collections; and how to use its search engines and interface for research and teaching. The participants will learn how to unlock the research potential of the archive and be able to ask questions and get assistance with effectively searching the archive.

Professor Peter Hayes, world-renowned scholar of the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, will serve as the 2019-2020 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) today announced a $10 million grant from the Koret Foundation to develop and implement a new global holocaust educational curriculum in partnership with Hold On To Your Music Foundation (Hold On To Your Music). This new curriculum will combine testimony, technology, and music, and alter the field of Holocaust education for primary and secondary school aged children around the world.

Judah Samet, a survivor of the Holocaust and of the 2018 attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh speaks about hope in his testimony recorded by USC Shoah Foundation in 2019.

Clip reel of testimonies from the Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony collection presented at ADL's 2019 Never is Now conference.

We are alarmed by the recent wave of antisemitic violence targeting the Orthodox Jewish communities in the New York region, including at least ten incidents in the past week, culminating in a mass stabbing at a Chanukah celebration within the Monsey home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg. We mourn for the victims and their families. A voice of conscience calls on all of us to take action against these heinous attacks.

Hannah Lessing represents Austrian society’s desire to atone. Her unique job involves, among other things, tracking down Austrian Holocaust survivors or their kin – inside the country and out – to offer financial reparations. Lessing, the secretary general of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, came to USC Shoah Foundation this week to discuss a potential collaborative project with the Institute.