​USC Shoah Foundation’s consultant in Ukraine Anna Lenchovska shared the resources of USC Shoah Foundation at a roundtable discussion for educators at the Ukraine National Museum’s Memorial to the Victims of Holodomor in Kyiv on April 7.
Ukraine, anna lenchovska, holodomor / Friday, April 15, 2016
Ukrainian survivor Alexander Contract reflects on the Holocaust and the terrible atrocities that the world faced and continues to face all around the world. He hopes that all people can live in peace across the world.
clip / Friday, April 15, 2016
 Lemyel Amirian touches on the power of courage. The Armenians of Van and the surrounding regions took extraordinary measures to defend themselves – and, like Mr. Amirian, fortunately, many survived to share their stories. 
GAM / Friday, April 15, 2016
Elsie Taft recalls the Great Fire of Smyna (Izmir) in September 1922 and how she was saved by American sailors.
GAM / Friday, April 15, 2016
Before he made his major league debut in 1947 breaking the color barrier in baseball, Jackie Robinson was standing up to injustice and discrimination. Holocaust camp liberator Floyd Dade remembers when his fellow serviceman, Robinson refused to sit in the back of the bus
clip, jackie robinson / Friday, April 15, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation published 185 Armenian Genocide testimonies in the Visual History Archive on Friday, nearly tripling the size of the Institute’s Armenian Genocide collection.
Armenian, Armenian Genocide, armenian film foundation, Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection / Monday, April 18, 2016
Armenian Genocide scholar Richard Hovannisian speaks about Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide in an interview with J. Michael Hagopian in 1975.
clip / Monday, April 18, 2016
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews premiered an original short film about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising featuring testimony from the Visual History Archive.
polin, poland, warsaw ghetto uprising, warsaw ghetto / Tuesday, April 19, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will host the international conference “A Conflict? Genocide and Resistance in Guatemala,” at the University of Southern California, Sept. 11-14, 2016. The scholars profiled in this series were each selected to present their research at the conference.As a 2014 graduate of Tufts University, Miguel Zamora-Mills is one of the youngest scholars selected to present at the Center’s Guatemala conference.
cagr / Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Twenty-two and 71 years after surviving genocide, Edith Umugiraneza and Celina Biniaz, respectively, shared poetry they wrote about their experiences at a special event organized by DEFY, USC Shoah Foundation’s student association.
poetry, defy, celina binaz, edith umugiraneza / Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Holocaust survivor Anna Geslewitz reads a poem she wrote in 1967 reflecting on the Holocaust.
clip / Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Every year, some of Angela Gottesburen’s high school seniors enter an essay contest held by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. This year, the students are using testimony from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to help craft their responses.The 2016 prompt for the Midwest Center’s annual White Rose Student Essay Contest, open to 8th-12th graders, asks students to explore how one Jewish survivor was affected by the Nazis’ anti-Jewish propaganda.
/ Thursday, April 21, 2016
Helena Horowitz describes her struggle to hide the fact that she was Jewish as a young girl. This clip is part of the new IWitness activity Narratives of Identity: In the Open or In the Shadows?
clip / Thursday, April 21, 2016
The newest activity in IWitness draws on testimonies of Holocaust survivors to spark students’ reflection on how identity, and the struggle to hide it, can affect people from all walks of life.
iwitness, IWitness activity, Claudia Wiedeman / Thursday, April 21, 2016
Professor Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London, offered a global perspective of the origins and history of concentration camps.
cagr, discussion, lecture, presentation / Thursday, April 21, 2016
In this lecture, Professor Atina Grossmann addresses a transnational Holocaust story that remarkably – despite several decades of intensive scholarly and public attention to the history and memory of the Shoah – has remained essentially untold, marginalized in both historiography and commemoration.
cagr, discussion, presentation, lecture / Thursday, April 21, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation is expanding its efforts to develop educational resources about the Armenian Genocide with the creation of a new position devoted to the IWitness Armenia program.
iwitness, Armenian Genocide, dadourian / Friday, April 22, 2016
Rafael Grosz describes his memory of Passover as a child in Bergen-Belsen. 
clip, jewish survivor, Rafael Grosz, bergen belsen, Passoverm Religion, Judaism / Friday, April 22, 2016
Passover, Bergen-Belsen, 1945. These two thoughts do not belong together: Bergen-Belsen, the epitome of captivity; Passover, the celebration of freedom from slavery.
passover, religion, bergen-belsen, op-eds / Friday, April 22, 2016
Armenian Genocide Survivor Hovsana Kumjian sings the ballad Der Zor Chollerende (Desert of Der Zor). During the genocide victims sang this song in Turkish while on the forced marches into the Syrian Desert. The song is often from a child’s perspective and describes violent scenes and feelings of hopelessness. Kumjian states she sings this song in memory for the victims, every April 24, the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Kumjian is a survivor of the death march from Kilis, Turkey. English Translation of Der Zor Chollerende
clip, GAM, Armenian Genocide survivor, Armenian Genocide, Der zor, music / Friday, April 22, 2016
Aleksan Markaryan’s crystal-clear memory of the genocide against the Armenian people in 1915 has given him the distinction of being the last survivor interviewed by the Armenian Film Foundation for its collection of Armenian Genocide survivor and witness testimonies.
Armenian, Armenian Genocide, armenian survivor, armenian film foundation / Monday, April 25, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will host the international conference “A Conflict? Genocide and Resistance in Guatemala,” at the University of Southern California, Sept. 11-14, 2016. The scholars profiled in this series were each selected to present their research at the conference.Heather Vrana’s presentation “H.I.J.O.S.: A New Politics and Memory Beyond Reconciliation” will focus on the next generation of activists in Guatemala.
cagr / Monday, April 25, 2016
Edith Kaufman describes her thoughts as she stayed at a hospital at the Ravensbruck camp during Passover. Although she could not formally celebrate the holiday, she refused to eat bread as a gesture of defiance.
clip / Monday, April 25, 2016
As the Institute’s partner Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala (FAFG) records testimonies of survivors of the genocide in Guatemala, it has begun sending the first few testimony videos back to USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles, where staff are beginning to index them – the first step toward their eventual integration into the Visual History Archive and IWitness.
Guatemalan Genocide, indexing, visual history archive / Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Dora Szlajcher explains how she was able to borrow books even though it was forbidden in the harsh years of the Holocaust, and how reading helped her escape her difficult situation.
clip / Tuesday, April 26, 2016
One of USC Shoah Foundation’s biggest champions in Michigan is educator Sean McBrady, whose passion for IWitness resulted in a workshop for teachers in his district last week.McBrady first learned about IWitness in 2008 when he co-taught 9th grade world history and geography with a colleague who introduced him to USC Shoah Foundation and its testimonies and educational resources. The response from their students was “powerful,” he said, and they were excited to see IWitness continue to grow over the years.
/ Wednesday, April 27, 2016
As part of the IWitness Detroit program, USC Shoah Foundation education staff hosted a half-day IWitness workshop for educators at the Macomb Intermediate School District (MISD), Michigan, last Tuesday, April 19.
detroit, iwitness, workshop, presentation / Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido reflects on the seemingly eternal suffering endured by indigenous civilian non-combatant populations in a Guatemalan village who practiced their own limited form of resistance during the war.
clip / Wednesday, April 27, 2016
News of the deadly bombs that ripped apart the Brussels airport terminal last month sent a shockwave through me. I know that line, that place. I have stood in that spot. The “what if” scenario is not what troubles me most, however.
GAM, Tolerance, education, op-eds / Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Neumark spoke to undergraduate students in Wolf Gruner's "Resistance to Genocide" class and donated two postcards he wrote while he was evading the Nazis.
holocaust survivor, cagr, wolf gruner / Thursday, April 28, 2016

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