Rachael Cerrotti is an award winning author, producer and documentary storyteller as well as the inaugural Storyteller in Residence for USC Shoah Foundation. She is the granddaughter behind 'We Share The Same Sky' and the host of 'The Memory Generation' podcast. Learn more at www.rachaelcerrotti.com.

Throughout the month of April, Genocide Awareness Month, we have been asking for you to send in your stories of home relating to different themes: spaces and places, family and resilience. We have received moving contributions from around the world — from Morocco to Argentina to Israel and the United States. We have received photographs and videos and beautiful pieces of writing and poetry -- family photographs from generations before and visions of life as it looks now. As we move into the last week of April, we want to share with you some of what you have so generously shared with us.

The USC Fisher Museum of Art will host a Facebook Live with artist David Kassan, whose portrait work of Holocaust survivors appeared in the 2019 exhibition Facing Survival: David Kassan. In this Facebook Live event, David will talk about his work with survivors and give us a live demonstration of his process. Set a reminder for the event in Facebook  

Please join us for a special 2-part event: a LIVE screening of the documentary Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses on Facebook, followed by an interactive ZOOM conversation. The event begins this Thursday, May 7, 2020, at 3pm PDT/6pm EDT. A 75th Anniversary Commemoration in honor of the Allied Heroes of WWII, the screening will be followed by a conversation with Alan Moskin, one of the liberators featured in the film, and moderated by Executive Director Stephen Smith.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, USC Shoah Foundation education team has adapted its already robust online content and tools in IWitness to meet current educational demands for online teaching and learning.

The elderly population is among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the victims include a large and growing number of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.

In 2017, Mr. Feingold recorded a more than 4 hour testimony with USC Shoah Foundation as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection, enabling Holocaust survivors to share their stories for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive—before it is too late—where they will exist in perpetuity.

For 25 years, USC Shoah Foundation has given voice to survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides with the goal of educating people around the world, and inspiring action. The 55,000 women and men in its Visual History Archive® share their life stories — of trauma and loss, as well as culture and family, and ultimately survival. Representing more than a century of history, these testimonies provide an enduring legacy of memory. As long as there are still witnesses ready to speak, their voices must be heard.

“I am ashamed to say this,” Ursula said to me. We were sitting in her lovely Los Angeles home in the middle of the day on a Saturday in February. All the lights in her house were off, but the blue skies outside graced her face, her 90-year-old wrinkles defined. “I was so stupid to believe that when Hitler died, that the world would come to the end.”

On May 7, 2020, in conjunction with a virtual screening of Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Camps, USC Shoah Foundation hosted a conversation with WWII Liberator Alan Moskin and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger.

Visit Echoes & Reflections for comprehensive programming and resources about the Holocaust especially designed for educators so they can gain the skills, knowledge, and confidence to teach this topic effectively. On January 27, 2020, the bipartisan bill passed in the House with nearly unanimous support. Today, it passed the senate with complete support and is now on its way for the president's signature.

Our Echoes & Reflections June Online Course offers you a chance to continue learning about Holocaust education and stay connected with colleagues during a time when we cannot all meet face to face. Through this course:

The ties between Cornell University and USC Shoah Foundation are many, and now, they are permanent: The Cornell University Library has acquired access to the Visual History Archive in perpetuity. Cornell University became the 52nd site to provide full access to the archive on an annual basis in November 2015, and the impact on research and education has been significant. This impact can now continue for generations to come, as the witnesses who gave testimony had hoped.

Please join us for an exclusive event featuring a moderated conversation and selected scenes from 'My Name Is Sara,' an award-winning feature film based on a true story of survival, produced in association with USC Shoah Foundation.

The young woman stares at me as I wait to press play on the video. Her eyes are dark and her lips are pursed. You can see a bit of her thick black hair which is matted beneath an off-white, or perhaps a light-pink scarf. It is hard to tell the exact color in the shadowed room.

We mourn the murder of George Floyd and join the outcry for justice in his name. He is now linked to countless others who have suffered systemic violence, injustice and hate perpetrated against African Americans throughout a 400-year history in this nation. This legacy and manifestation of hate is still present today.