We are saddened to learn of the recent passing of Arkadii Vaispapir, one of few people ever to have survived the Sobibór death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. He was 96.

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.   - Zygmunt Bauman 2018 Polish-Israeli Crisis: History, Trauma, and Politics of Cultural Memory The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear. 1968-2018

Maria Zalewska is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, a 2016-2018 Mellon Ph.D. Fellow in the Digital Humanities and an affiliated scholar of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Her research interests include cinematic representations of the Holocaust; documentary film; national and transnational modes and media of memorialization; digital humanities; politics of technologized memory; place and space in cinema; history as film/film as history; and political economy of film.

The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear.

In this activity, students will examine the impact that personal stories can have in inspiring others to action. They will listen and reflect on genocide survivor testimonies, discuss the concept of leadership and form belief statements about how they can become leaders in their communities.

A film screening of Pamela Yates's documentary 500 Years. Presented in partnership with the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Co-sponsored by the USC Gould Law School's Center for Law, History and Culture. 

Even absent this current era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” the new Polish law making it a crime to point out Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust would be alarming.  But that it is occurring in today’s climate of demagoguery, heightened nationalism and ethnic tension – an unholy trio that threatens to metastasize on a global scale – is a troubling development. Poland’s effort has come under attack by Israel and stewards of Holocaust memory.

Presented in partnership with the USC Doheny Memorial Library.

A public lecture by Mélanie Péron (University of Pennsylvania) 2016 Rutman Fellow for Research and Teaching This event will take place at the University of Pennsylvania.

Over the course of their stay, the team built six IWitness activities focused on peace building in Rwanda. The first to go online will focus on Propaganda and Social Cohesion, which will be available for teachers and students by Tuesday, Feb. 13.

We are sorry to hear about the recent passing of Jewish Holocaust survivor Margot Schlesinger. The Chicago resident was 99. Schlesinger gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1995. Born Maria Miriam Wind, on July 24, 1918, she was raised in Berlin. In her interview, she talks about life before the war, and living in a ghetto, before being sent to the Plaszow concentration camp, where she was put to work in Oskar Schindler’s nearby factory. She was among a group of women who were accidentally sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Los Angeles, February. 13, 2018 – “The Last Goodbye,” a virtual-reality film that brings the viewer inside a Nazi concentration camp with Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter, won a top prize at the 2018 Lumiere Awards hosted Monday by The Advanced Imaging Society. The film was honored with the Creative Arts Award, VR – Documentary Jury Prize, at the awards ceremony held at the Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood.

The film was honored with the Creative Arts Award, VR – Documentary Jury Prize, at the awards ceremony held at the Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood.

February is Black History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate the central role African Americans have made in the United States. In honor of this special time, we invite educators and students to remember history in their classrooms, utilizing this year’s thematic lens, “African Americans in Times of War.”

Not long ago, Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch met in a hotel restaurant in Germany with a man named Niklas Frank, whose father was a German war criminal. They’d both been invited to appear together to speak to history students. While preparing at the restaurant, Lasker-Wallfisch and Frank were interrupted by a man who approached their table and complained they were “spoiling the pleasant atmosphere with all this talk of Auschwitz.”

Executive Director Stephen D. Smith introduces our work in the area of virtual reality with a look at "The Last Goodbye," a VR short featuring Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as he takes you on an intimate journey through the Majdanek concentration camp.

Letisha Young joined the Shoah Foundation in July of 2017 as the Program Manager of Administrative Programs.  She oversees Human Resources and Facilities for the Foundation.  Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked as a HR Analyst for the Dornsife Business office for 2 years.  Letisha received her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration with emphasis in Human Resources from California State University, Northridge.  She also holds two HR Certifications. (Professional in Human Resources- PHR and Society of Human Resources SHRM-CP).

Rachel Herman helps curate content for IWitness and other educational programs.  Rachel received her M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Stockton University, and worked at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh for four years.  Rachel also worked at the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest in New Jersey and was an intern at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

Lindsay manages Echoes & Reflections, the Institute's flagship Holocaust Education program with ADL and Yad Vashem.

Mark Weicht is a Video Archivist and Post Production Specialist. He also has fabricated many items designed for use with several DIT projects and exhibits. Prior to joining the staff at the Shoah Foundation, Mark worked at Post Production facilities around the Los Angeles area including Herzog and Company where they won 4 Primetime Emmy's for "Gettysburg (2011)".

Svetlana Ushakova provides the service of research, annotation, and evaluation to the Dimensions in Testimony program. In 2014-2018, she worked at USC Shoah Foundation as an indexer and research assistant. Before she moved to the USA, she worked for ten years as a researcher at an academic institution in Russia and has several publications. Svetlana received her doctorate in Russian History from Novosibirsk State University, Russia, and her master in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University.

Edith Umugiraneza joined the USC Shoah Foundation in 2009 as a consultant and later became an indexer. Before that, she lived in Canada for 10 years. Edith graduated from College Sainte-Foy with a degree in social work and got a bachelor’s degree from Laval University in multidisciplinary studies. Edith has worked for several organizations and the government especially in the field of integration and adaptation of immigrants.

By collecting clips of testimony to construct a "GeoStory" - a map and timeline with videos - students can discover how changes in time and place shape history.

At the exact moment a former student was destroying lives at Stoneman Douglas High School, a group of students inside a classroom was studying ways to make the world a better place. These were students in a Holocaust history class, where they were exploring the 1936 Olympics in an IWitness learning activity to teach them about compassion and respect, and about the perils of living a life filled with hate and violence.

In this clip from her testimony, Holocaust survivor Itka Zygmuntowicz recalls her mother's last words of advice to never allow herself to become bitter.

A public lecture by Christopher R. Browning (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) 2017-2018 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence

Lecture by Trinity College history professor Samuel Kassow lays out the unique circumstances leading to the legendary battle. The 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will be on April 19.

USC Shoah Foundation's Karen Jungblut speaks at The Berlin Conference on Myanmar Genocide about the nearly 100 video interviews recorded in Bangladesh refugee camps.

A public lecture by Julien Zarifian (American History, University of Cergy-Pontoise, France) 2017-2018 Fulbright Scholar, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research This lecture is co-sponsored by the California Hub of the Institut des Amériques and by the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies.

This lecture features two of our summer 2017 research fellows: Maria Zalewska, PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies and Mellon PhD Fellow in the Digital Humanities, USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Noha Ayoub, USC undergraduate student majoring in Law, History and Culture and minoring in Middle East Studies.