Longtime USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro has given a gift to fund an endowed research fellowship program at the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in honor of his parents, Sara and Asa Shapiro, who both survived the Holocaust.

The resolution was led by the Mission of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations and had the support of over 80 member countries.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2015 – Longtime USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro has given a gift to fund an endowed research fellowship program at the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in honor of his parents, Sara and Asa Shapiro, who both survived the Holocaust.

USC Shoah Foundation is sorry to learn of the passing of Aleksander Laks, the first Holocaust survivor to give his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in Brazil and a special friend of the Institute. Laks passed away July 21 at age 88. Laks survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march as a teenager. He immigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and became a leader of the survivor community there as president of the Sherit Hapleita (Holocaust survivors’ organization).

Film composer James Horner died when his single-engine plane crashed near Santa Barbara on June 22. Earlier this year, the Academy Award-winner worked with USC Shoah Foundation on a movie about a Holocaust survivor. These are the recollections of producer Leslie Wilson.

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.

ext week the USC Shoah Foundation will host the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) 2015 Winter Seminar: “Fading Memories and Emerging Voices: The Changing State of Holocaust Research.”

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.

Two USC Shoah Foundation staff members gave a presentation to 120 high school students from all over the world who are in Rwanda for the three-week WiSci Girls STEAM Camp.

Five staff members gathered for a special event to celebrate the conclusion of their year-and-a-half long project to index the Institute's new collection from Jewish Family and Children's Services (JFCS) of San Francisco.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch had a lucky moment while being processed at the Sauna in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  One of the girls processing her asked her what she did prior to landing in that place of unspeakable horror. “I played the cello,” she answered. That surreal conversation, not far from the gas chambers at Birkenau, would save her life.  As a member of the Auschwitz women's orchestra, playing the cello meant respite from heavy labor.  

USC Shoah Foundation executive staff, supporters and partners met in China this week for the 2015 USC Global Conference, where they shared the Institute’s mission and newest projects with an international audience.

Thousands of people came to Times Square on Sunday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and to demand the U.S. government recognize the slaughter of 1.5 million people as genocide. In a speech at the event, USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith said that the world must stand together speak for those who are not here to speak for themselves.

A presentation by Tim Cole (Bristol University), Alberto Giordano (Texas State University), Paul Jaskot (DePaul University), and Anne Knowles (University of Maine)Holocaust Geographies CollaborativeUSC, Social Sciences Building, Room 250

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.

A lecture by Maximilian Strnad (University of Munich)Doheny Memorial Library, Room 240

As a survivor of the genocide, Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez fully understands the complexities involved not only in surviving such an atrocity, but also in healing and moving forward.

Wolf Gruner is the founding director of the Center. He developed the vision and main features of its now internationally recognized innovative academic program.

In December 1995, USC Shoah Foundation, then called, Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, held a training session for interviewers in Buenos Aires; bringing together people from different countries of Latin America. The Foundation had just started to collect the survivors’ testimonies throughout the world and was about to start recording testimonies in Brazil.

During the 1960s, the Guatemalan government unleashed a war against various small guerilla groups across the country. This so-called “internal conflict” turned into a 36-year genocide against Mayan populations.

Teachers participating in Facing History and Ourselves’s “Holocaust and Human Behavior” seminar spent a day at USC last week learning how to use IWitness to teach about the Holocaust, genocide, tolerance and other topics.

Seventeen countries, 28 states and 122 cities later, the USC Shoah Foundation 20th Anniversary Guest Book is officially closed.

These resources make it possible for anyone to embark on the IWalks and hear the stories of survivors in the authentic locations where they experienced the Holocaust.

Survivors and witnesses of the 2015 synagogue attack in Copenhagen were interviewed for a new collection on contemporary anti-Semitism.

Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen.

I expected to feel an intimate and profound connection to Auschwitz after touring the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for the first time late last month. After three consecutive days visiting and working at the museum, I was indeed moved. But the insight I was hoping for came from beyond the well-worn paths of tourists, from a source that hits close to home here at USC Shoah Foundation.

The four-year project will identify and develop resources, activities and pathways into IWitness that will be appropriate and effective for teaching the Holocaust and other topics at Jewish day schools of all denominations.

When watching a testimony in the Visual History Archive, Liliane Weissberg pays close attention to the words the survivor is saying, and, just as importantly, to the silences in between those words.

During the weekend of October 10-11, the University of Southern California gathered international academics, musicians and members of the Los Angeles community for a symposium and series of events, collectively called Singing in the Lion’s Mouth: Music as Resistance to Genocide. Hosted by Professor Wolf Gruner of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and Professor Nick Strimple of the USC Thornton School of Music, the symposium, film screening and concert were also sponsored by USC’s Vision and Voices arts and humanities initiative. The following paragraphs are a reflection on the individual events that made up the weekend, and an exploration into the larger ideas raised in discussions over the course of the weekend.