Alla Svitlynets graduated with honors from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, holding a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in anthropology. She started her career in Kyiv, but after the outbreak of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, Alla made the courageous decision to relocate to Los Angeles. She joined the USC Shoah Foundation team as an Administrative Assistant in March 2024.

With antisemitic harassment and violence surging ferociously around the globe, the USC Shoah Foundation establishes a Countering Antisemitism Laboratory to research and combat one of the world's most virulent hatreds. The USC Shoah Foundation seeks an inaugural director for the Countering Antisemitism Laboratory, which will work with scholars, journalists, policymakers, and other leadership groups to address all forms of antisemitism. The Laboratory will house a major collection of testimonies from survivors of antisemitic violence, training programs centered on understanding and responding to antisemitism, an initiative focused on digital antisemitism and Holocaust denial, and other practical research efforts.

Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism became a hallmark of medieval Christianity, pinpointing the ancient origins of Christian Anti-Judaism poses challenges. Rabbi Joshua Garroway, PhD, examines the writings of Paul, Justin, Augustine, and other early Christian thinkers to trace the origins of Christian Anti-Judaism.

An invaluable resource for humanity, with nearly every testimony encompassing a complete personal history of life before, during and after the subject’s firsthand experience with genocide. Learn more about the collections that make up the Institute's Visual History Archive.

In 2018, USC Shoah Foundation launched an initiative to address requests from survivors who, for complex and often very personal reasons, could not come forward in the 1990s. Since the start of COVID, the foundation has received more than 400 requests from survivors to record their testimonies. We believe there are thousands more who want to tell their stories.

Leon Bass, who served as a sergeant with the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, was among the first U.S. soldiers to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945. Inspired by his experiences, he later became a high school principal and spoke extensively about the Holocaust and racism.

Nofar Sarudi reflects on the life of her brother who died saving eight lives at the Nova Festival.

Mirjam Baitalmi, an 88-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor who survived Kristallnacht in 1938, left on a ship to England while it was being bombed, lost her parents in the Holocaust, and now decades later survived the October 7th Hamas attack on Kibbutz Zikim. On the day of the attack, she spent hours sheltering in her safe room with her caregiver.

Aviv Oz, a visual artist from Ramat Yishai, survived the October 7th attack at the Nova Festival by hiding, facing imminent danger, encountering hostile terrorists, and eventually being rescued. Here he shares his hope for the future.

This event will bring together leading perspectives from researchers, academics and historical archival institutions to explore the pressing challenges and emerging opportunities for building, preserving, and providing access to archives.

In partnership with organizations in the United States and Israel, the USC Shoah Foundation began collecting testimony from survivors of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, just weeks after they occurred. These testimonies will be preserved and made available to the public as part of the Visual History Archive’s Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony Collection, which documents antisemitism after 1945.

The USC Shoah Foundation stands in solemn tribute to the memory of those murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and to those hostages still in captivity. As we mark this day, we reflect not only on the devastating loss of life but also on the dangerous beliefs that led to this atrocity. The attacks on October 7 revealed the persistence of virulent antisemitism in communities across the globe. Antisemitism threatens the memory of the Holocaust, threatens individual lives and communities, and undermines democratic values, the rule of law, and global security.

Gerald Szames was four years old when his family went into hiding in the forest near the shtetl of Trochenbrod, spending close to three years living in pits. In this clip, Gerald recalls an incident of antisemitism while a student at Ohio State University.

Shortly after her parents were arrested by French police, seven-year-old Nicole Spinner was seized from her school in France and taken to Drancy concentration camp. When she arrived, overwhelmed and suffering from an ear infection, she was cared for and protected by a Jewish woman in the camp, Mariette Etlin, whom she came to refer to as “Marraine” (godmother).

In the summer of 1915 Turkish gendarmes forced all the Armenian residents of Çomakli (now in Turkey) to march 300 miles to Aleppo, Syria, with no food or water. Hagop Asadourian, then 12 years old, was among them. Here he reflects on how surviving in refugee camps and orphanages, and losing 11 family members, shaped his life.

Dr. Richard Hovannisian was one of the world’s foremost scholars of Armenian history and the Armenian Genocide. A child of survivors, he founded the Armenian Genocide Oral History Project at UCLA in 1969, recording interviews with more than 1,000 genocide survivors. He donated the collection to the USC Shoah Foundation in 2018.

Dr. J. Michael Hagopian, who later founded the Armenian Film Foundation, survived the Armenian Genocide after his parents hid him beneath a mulberry bush as Turkish gendarmes approached. In 2010, he partnered with the USC Shoah Foundation to preserve and archive 400 testimonies from the Armenian Film Foundation.

On May 4, 1945, Staff Sergeant Alan Moskin entered the Gunskirchen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, with the 66th Infantry, 71st Division. The imperative to document the atrocities, ordered by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, inspired Alan to share his experiences decades later.

Francoise Muteteli was a young teacher in Nyanza, Rwanda, when a Hutu militia attacked her home and murdered her family in April 1994. Francoise escaped the attack by climbing an avocado tree with a bullet wound in her back. A Hutu neighbor hid her in an earthen oven until she was rescued weeks later.

Alphonse Kabalisa was 23 years old when he survived the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. His father and two siblings, as well as extended family members, were killed in the massacres.

Paul Rukesha, then 16, spent three months eluding Hutu militias who were rampaging across Rwanda in April 1994. His father, his stepmother, his brother, and many other relatives were killed in the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. He remembers being rescued by the Rwandan Patriotic Army on July 4, 1994.

Arye Ephrath was born in April 1942 in the basement of his home in Bardejov, where his mother was hiding to avoid deportation. He spent the first three years of his life in hiding, and Arye and his parents were reunited after the war. Here, he reflects on the millions of victims who cannot share their stories.

Floyd Dade served with the 761st Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army, an independent battalion consisting mostly of Black soldiers. He fought in six countries and was attached to the 71st Infantry Division when it liberated the Gunskirchen concentration camp in May 1945. Here he reflects on segregation within the US Army.

As a member of Kibbutz Be’eri’s stand-by unit, Yair Avital left his wife and children in a safe room as he went to the defense of his neighbors. Yair was hit by a bullet and grenades, and saw many friends ruthlessly murdered. While being wheeled into surgery, he learned that his family had survived.

Ron Segev and his younger brother were at the Nova music festival on the morning of October 7. When the attacks began they ran and took cover on the side of a hill, where they came face to face with terrorists. After a narrow escape, they found a jeep and rescued eight people.