A lecture with Ugur Üngör, Ph.D., Utrecht University

Sam Kadorian was born in 1907 in Hussenig, a small village in the province of Kharpert, in the eastern plains of Anatolia. He survived the Genocide in 1915 at the age of 8 when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed all the young boys of the village ages 5 to 10 and threw them into a pile on the sandy beach of the shores of the Euphrates River and starting jabbing them with their swords and bayonets. Fortunately, they only nipped his cheek and his grandmother later found him and nursed him back to health.

The first 60 interviews from USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian Genocide Collection are now safely in the hands of the Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute.

In honor of Gay Pride Month, each Friday in June USC Shoah Foundation will publish a testimony clip about the diverse experiences of gay people during the Holocaust.

As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Doris Lazarus has dedicated her career to Holocaust education and remembrance. She has been a Docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum for six years and is also a speaker on the Museum's Speaker's Bureau. Additionally, Doris was actively involved with the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Museum as well as the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. From 1994-1998 Doris interviewed Holocaust survivors for USC Shoah Foundation and their testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive. 

The President of the Republic went on record to tell the prospective immigrants “nobody invited you here!” Refugees escaping from a murderous regime are regarded as agents of that very regime. Concerned citizens who never saw a refugee discuss them with great fear: refugees will take our jobs, kill our wives, rape our daughters. “We may take a few of those who can prove they are and always were Christians,” some interior ministry clerk declared.

Raphael Zimetbaum speaks of his gratitude toward the Armenian people in Marseille, France. Along with his parents, he fled from Antwerp, Belgium, to Marseille, France, following the German invasion of Belgium in 1940. In Marseille, his family found housing within the Armenian community neighborhood, where they felt so welcome and were received with great affection. He states that he thinks that the sensitivity extended to his family may have been in part due to the history of the Armenian Genocide and the suffering the Armenian people endured at the time. 

Alex Biniaz-Harris is a recent USC graduate, with Bachelor degrees in business and music. Alex has worked for USC Shoah Foundation for three years, as a communications and social media marketing intern. His grandmother, Celina Biniaz, and her parents Phyllis and Irwin Karp are survivors of Schindler’s List. Both Celina and Phyllis’s testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation’s educational resource Giving Memory a Future: The Sinti and Roma in Italy and Around the World continues to make waves across Europe.

In this brief clip Father Krikor Guerguerian is faced with a theological question that has challenged many survivors of the Armenian Genocide. The perpetrator confesses to him that he killed his father, three brothers and confiscated their house and garden and asks Guerguerian for forgiveness.

In this short clip Harry Kurkjian recalls Armenians who were about to be killed crying out in despair, “Where are you God?”  “Why are you punishing us?”  As the first nation to convert to Christianity in 301 AD, the events of 1915 raised a fundamental theological problem for Armenians.  If God is good and all-powerful, why was he not intervening on their behalf?  The problem of theodicy, as theologians refer to it, is an issue that surfaces in nearly every genocide, driving some people to completely abandon faith in God.  Indeed, the “God is Dead” movement arose after the Holocaust as Jewis

USC Shoah Foundation is currently in the second year of Days of Remembrance: PastFORWARD, a five-year partnership with Comcast to provide USC Shoah Foundation content to Comcast Xfinity customers On Demand, through the Xfinity TV Go app and online, in conjunction with the U.S. National Days of Remembrance, a commemoration of the Holocaust held every spring.

Librarians from colleges, cities and prisons were among the steady stream of ALA conference attendees who visited USC Shoah Foundation's first table at the ALA Conference expo hall June 26-29.

USC Shoah Foundation will return to China, where it has collected some of its newest testimonies, to participate in University of Southern California’s Global Conference 2015.

USC students have until March 16, 2015 to enter this year’s Student Voices Short Film Contest.

Auschwitz: The Past is Present has left Australian teacher Christine Cole with a new motto and new motivation for imparting the lessons of the Holocaust on her students.

Two classes on opposite sides of the world completed an upcoming IWitness activity inspired by USC Shoah Foundation's social media campaign.

Over the last few days I’ve overheard my grandmother and father talk endlessly about Celia Tiano, an Auschwitz survivor from Salonika, Greece, their next-door neighbor on 7th Avenue -- a quiet block in the Hyde Park area of L.A., during the 1950s and 60s. After more than 40 years, my family has reconnected with Celia -- through testimony. We were able to make this connection because of a film project I had been working on for the Student Voices Short Film Contest.

Seeing new students starting their fall semester at USC – my recent alma mater – gives me a strange feeling. I have worked at USC Shoah Foundation during most of my career as an USC undergraduate student, and now I am about to step away from my favorite university and nonprofit organization. I’ve learned invaluable life lessons from video testimony as well as my wonderful coworkers.

Martha Stroud manages the day-to-day operations of the 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.

Due to the ongoing political and military conflicts in their country, many students in Ukraine have something in common with Holocaust survivors: They have all experienced the fear and uncertainty of war.

Wolf Dieter Bihl is a famous Austrian historian, with a number of published works on Austria-Hungary and the First World War. In this clip, he is touching upon two important issues pertaining to the history of the Armenian Genocide. The first is his assertion that representatives of the allies of the Ottoman Empire during the war, i.e. that other Central Powers, and Germany and Austria-Hungary in particular, reported extensively in their internal, confidential correspondence that what the Young Turk government was up to was actually a determined attempt to exterminate the Armenian race.

International training consultant Martin Šmok will talk about IWalks with Andrea Petö, former USC Shoah Foundation Teaching Fellow, at the "My Hero, Your Enemy" international conference in Czech Republic.

Board of Councilors member Lee Liberman and Lisa Hofheimer, finance director of the Lee Liberman Charitable Foundation, visited USC Shoah Foundation today to meet with staff about upcoming programs.

USC Shoah Foundation hosted a special event titled The Digital Future of Holocaust Memory and Education in Aspen, Colorado, yesterday, to introduce new supporters to the work of the Institute.

Steven Spielberg will present William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, with USC Shoah Foundation’s highest honor — the Ambassador for Humanity Award –– at the organization’s annual gala.

It was Ford Motor Company Executive Director William Clay Ford Jr.’s commitment to education and his devotion to the Detroit community that prompted USC Shoah Foundation to honor him with this year’s Ambassador for Humanity Award.

Poland faces a horrible wave of extremism after the election of a new right-wing government. As an educator and Polish citizen, I am not only scared by this type of radical hatred, but it also reminds me of the past because the same organization that marches on the streets of Polish cities today, organized boycotts of Jewish institutions and forbade Jewish students from studying at Polish universities before WWII.

Two months after her Auschwitz: The Past is Present trip to Poland, Karen Wells is more committed than ever to sharing what she learned and making sure the stories of survivors are not forgotten.

In the fascinating short documentary The Past is Present, teachers and students share their experience going to Poland to learn from testimony and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.