Seven Holocaust survivors and liberators share their perspectives and recollections of liberation. Click on the thumbnails to watch.

As the Allies retook control of lands that had been occupied by the Germans, they came across many Nazi camps. In some instances, the Nazis had tried to destroy all evidence of the camps, in order to conceal from the world what had happened there. In other cases, only the buildings remained as the Nazis had sent the prisoners elsewhere, often on death marches.

USC Shoah Foundation – the Institute for Visual History and Education (the Institute) announces a special education outreach effort to mark the theatrical release of the acclaimed documentary film No Place on Earth, a film directed by Janet Tobias, which chronicles the experiences of 38 men, women and children who survived the Holocaust in Ukraine by hiding in natural cave systems for 511 consecutive days, living underground longer than any human had ever done before.

March 4, 2013: What can the Institute’s Visual History Archive teach us about other mediations of the Holocaust: how survivors tell their stories, how life performance and other media shape their narratives, or even how humor figures into remembrance? Rutgers University Professor Jeffrey Shandler, the Institute's Senior Fellow, explored such questions in a lecture titled “Interrogating the Index: Or, Reading the Archive against the Grain,” which gave a fresh look at the archive as more than a repository for testimony.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education brought its series of events for Genocide Awareness Week to a close on Thursday, April 11, 2013 with a screening and discussion with filmmaker Elida Schogt.

Called Gypsy, Tsigan, Gitane, Cygane, Zigeuner, the Roma people have wandered the world for a thousand years—their mysterious origins a source of fascination as well as suspicion. They’ve been romanticized but also brutally persecuted by the more settled and orderly cultures they’ve traveled through and enriched.

Stephen Feinberg remembers always finding the study of history to be interesting and exciting. During his studies as an undergraduate and graduate student, he was introduced to the history of the Holocaust. “I became increasingly aware that this was a watershed event in history,” he recalls. “Therefore, I felt that it should be taught in schools.”