There are many Holocaust survivors who wrote after the war about their experiences, but Beatrice Mousli Bennett is focusing her attention on writers who are far less studied: those who continued to write even while they faced occupation, deportations and oppression in the throes of World War II. Bennett is the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2016 Faculty Summer Research Fellow. The fellowship provides support for a USC faculty member to conduct research in the Visual History Archive while in residence at the Center for one month.

The staff of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research had a dilemma on their hands. They could only choose one applicant to award the 2016 Graduate Summer Research Fellowship – but they couldn’t bring themselves to turn away their runner-up, Piotr Florczyk, because his proposal was so fascinating. It’s easy to see why. Florczyk, a PhD candidate in the USC Literature and Creative Writing program, intends to write poetry inspired by the testimonies of Polish Holocaust survivors in the archive.

Edward Łukawer was a famous Polish Jewish economist who lectured at the Krakow University of Economics. Now, four students and a professor at that same school are working on developing the material for a movie on him using the testimony he gave to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

After Pamela Applebaum attended USC Shoah Foundation’s Ambassadors for Humanity gala in Detroit last year, she knew the Institute was something she wanted to be a part of.  “We immediately embraced the importance of ensuring the vital preservation of the darkest chapter in Jewish history with the enduring vision of connecting the next generation to a modern perspective of this past to better grapple with today’s complicated, challenging, and belligerent environment,” she said.

Elise Garibaldi had heard her grandparents’ story of falling in love while surviving the Holocaust countless times throughout her life. With her new book Roses in a Forbidden Garden: A Holocaust Love Story, that story is now being shared with the world.

Three years ago, Lacey Schauwecker became interested in the Guatemalan Genocide through work she was doing with USC Shoah Foundation. Now, Schauwecker is back for four weeks as a 2016 Summer Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research utilizing the Institute’s Guatemalan testimonies.

Kim Kerwin was one of a select group of teachers who participated in USC Shoah Foundation’s first three-day ITeach Institute in Michigan last week, and she walked away from the training inspired to incorporate testimony into her classes at St. Fabian Catholic School.

Mélanie Péron discovered the power of personal stories the first time she was assigned to teach the Holocaust at the University of Pennsylvania. She had started out the course just trying to teach dry historical facts, and it didn’t go very well. “It was one of the hardest experiences ever,” Péron said. “It was horrendous. My students were bored, I was scared. Finally I said, ‘We’re going to do something else.’”

Today’s younger generation is often known for having short attention spans. They want their news short and immediately. But it’s for exactly this reason that Texas A&M senior Anna Davis enjoyed listening to testimony through USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.