Griffin Williams is challenging assumptions held by some of the most famous names in Holocaust scholarship as a DEFY Undergraduate Research Fellow at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research this summer.

During his two-week internship at USC Shoah Foundation this summer, Ohio 10th grader Dov Ratner is testing the latest New Dimensions in Testimony interviews by asking the computer system questions for each survivor and noting the accuracy of the responses he receives in return. But there’s one interviewee he doesn’t need New Dimensions in Testimony to have a conversation with: Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone, his great-grandmother.

Acadia Grantham decided to take action against bullying in her IWitness Video Challenge entry, “Silence,” which won second place in the 2017 national contest. The IWitness Video Challenge asks students to submit short videos to show how they were inspired by testimony to make positive choices and create value in their community. The contest is open to middle and high school students across the United States and Canada (except Quebec). 

Working on assignment from her teacher Katherine Rastrick, Acadia Grantham constructed a video about speaking out against bullying and won second place in the 2017 IWitness Video Challenge.

Shayna Kantor turned her passion for American Sign Language into her third-place winning IWitness Video Challenge project.

Sarah Pitcher-Hoffman can count herself as part of an elite club: teachers whose students have placed in the IWitness Video Challenge not once, not twice, but three times. Pitcher-Hoffman’s student Shayna Kantor won third place in the 2017 IWitness Video Challenge. Her student last year, Lanna Knoll, and three years ago, Ruby Merritt and Ayva Schiff, were all regional winners in the challenge.

For a century, Michael Rettig’s family has passed down boxes upon boxes of photographs, papers, records and other documents. But because most of it was written in Armenian, no one knew much about what it all meant. When his grandmother invited him to take a look, Rettig became eager to investigate, to fill in the gaps in both scholarly research and his family's own knowledge about their fascinating history. 

David Hales’ dedication to IWitness has taken him from Michigan to Prague. Hales is the social studies consultant for Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency, helping to bring best practices to classrooms in the 33 school districts in Wayne County, Mich., through teacher trainings, workshops and meetings. He was introduced to IWitness through USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness Detroit program, which launched in 2015 in order to expand the use of IWitness in Michigan.

He was under five years old at the time, but World War II left an indelible mark on Louis Schmidt. He’s never forgotten the air raid drills, seeing his uncles in military uniform, or looking at pictures of prisoners of war in Life magazine. So when Steven Spielberg announced after he won the Oscar for Schindler’s List in 1994 that he was setting up a foundation to record interviews with 50,000 Holocaust survivors, Schmidt didn’t hesitate.

Suzi Weiss-Fischmann’s mother survived Auschwitz because upon arrival to the camp she was sent to the line to the right designated for slave labor. Her grandmother and uncles were directed to the left, to die in gas chambers because they were considered too old or too young to work.

As a documentary filmmaker, historian and curator, Christian Delage has long consulted with and used video testimonies of Holocaust survivors in his work.

Hilda Mantelmacher’s life features many defining moments, yet three in particular stand apart from the rest: going through the Holocaust; an episode of 60 Minutes; and the film Schindler’s List.

At the behest of his father, 17-year-old Erwin Rautenberg boarded a steamer for South America in 1937 to escape Nazi Germany. His brother, sister, and parents planned to join him, but never made it. His father died in 1938, soon after being
forced into the German army. The rest of the family was killed during the Holocaust.

Armed with insights gathered during her two-week research trip to USC Shoah Foundation, Professor Maria Rita Corticelli is ready to begin building an archive of testimonies of minority groups who have experienced various forms of mass violence, including genocide and ethnic cleansing, in Iraq. “It’s something that is absolutely missing because there is nothing on Iraq regarding genocides committed there, not only the last one by ISIS but the ones committed before,” Corticelli said. “There is no centralized database where these testimonies are together.”

Less than a week after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, USC Shoah Foundation received a call from Blake Humphrey, student body president of West Virginia University. How could he work with USC Shoah Foundation to speak out against this blatant display of hatred and bigotry?

For Board of Councilors Chair Emeritus Robert J. Katz, involvement with USC Shoah Foundation stems not from a direct personal connection, but from an emotional pull he later identified.


The grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, Aliza Liberman wonders whether her children will feel as connected to its horrors and lessons as she does. As a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council, Liberman is doing what she can to ensure future generations feel that bond by supporting the Institute’s mission. From a young age, the Holocaust was part of her life. “The
fact that my grandfather never talked much about his life and his family in Poland always moved me to know more,” Liberman says.

Each week, we will profile a scholar who will present his or her research at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research's upcoming conference Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies, Oct. 23-24, 2017.

Each week, we will profile a scholar who will present his or her research at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research's upcoming conference Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies, Oct. 23-24, 2017.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the death of Georg Citrom, Holocaust survivor and longtime friend of the Institute. Citrom was born in Oradea, Romania, in 1931. His father was a teacher in the local Jewish school and he had one older sister, Suzy. His family practiced modern Orthodox Judaism and he loved visiting his grandparents at their house in the countryside.

Each week, we will profile a scholar who will present his or her research at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research's upcoming conference Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies, Oct. 23-24, 2017.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Kurt Messerschmidt, Holocaust survivor, educator and beloved cantor. He was 102. Messerschmidt was born Jan. 2, 1915 in Weneuchen, Germany, but moved to Berlin in 1918 and excelled as a linguistics scholar, gymnast and musician. He was well-respected and a leader among his classmates and teachers, but was unable to attend college because of anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis.

Maria Zalewska grew up in what acclaimed writer and journalist Martin Pollack calls the “contaminated landscapes” of Eastern Europe, where most of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps were built. Her physical proximity to spaces of the Shoah, as well as her familial relationships to victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, drew her initially toward the study of the different ways in which Eastern Europeans filled, organized and produced spaces of memory.

It’s well-documented that family units were disrupted and displaced during the Holocaust – but just how affected were they, and were they able to reconvene following the war?

A thousand frayed puzzle pieces sit on a long table ahead of you, split by color into several quadrants but otherwise unconnected. Many are bent or folded, and still others remain at the outskirts of the table with colors that don’t match at all with the rest, you can’t even fathom where they fit in. And you’ve seen the general picture they’re all meant to finally arrange into but there’s a distinct chance you’re misremembering most of its fragments, that the big picture is gone to you.

Sasha Yemelianova has learned about the Babi Yar massacre in school before, but going on USC Shoah Foundation’s IWalk and leading it for other students has given her a new perspective of the massacre and its memorialization. German and SS police units murdered nearly the entire Jewish population of Kiev – 33,771 men, women and children – at the Babi Yar ravine outside the city on September 29 and 30, 1941. About 75,000 more Jews as well as communists, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war were also murdered there over the next few months.

D’Angelo King ran for Indiana University’s student association on a platform of improving the school’s diversity and inclusion. Next week, he will join 19 other student leaders from across the country at USC Shoah Foundation’s first-ever Intercollegiate Diversity Congress to develop strategies to make his vision a reality.

Ohio State University Student Body President Andrew Jackson and his counterparts across the Big 10 Conference will join student leaders from universities around the country at USC Shoah Foundation next week to think critically about diversity and inclusion on their campuses.

Now well into his second year as student body president of Michigan State University, Lorenzo Santavicca understands the realities of his school, one that has made headlines both for its athletics but also for its numerous reports of sexual misconduct. This year, he’ll be well-equipped to deal with some of these realities, stocked with resources from a new initiative by USC Shoah Foundation.

The idea of building inclusive connected communities through the testimonies of genocide survivors may be a novel one, but DePauw University Student Body Vice President Armaan Patel is eager to learn more about it at the USC Shoah Foundation Intercollegiate Diversity Congress (IDC) later this week.