USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith delivered remarks Friday at a special event at the United Nations marking the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the international law that defined genocide and held perpetrators accountable. The observance also featured a demonstration of the Institute’s Dimensions in Testimony interactive biographies that enable people to ask questions and instantly receive pre-recorded responses from Holocaust survivors.

The survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that antisemitism pervades everyday life across Europe.

This presentation of video testimonies on antisemitism appeared at a convening of the European Commission's Agency for Fundamental Rights on December 10, 2018.

Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester, United Kingdom) 2018-2019 Center Research Fellow “Corpses of the Holocaust” November 13, 2018

Selma Engel describes the chaos that erupted during the uprising at the Sobibor death camp, enabling her and her future husband, Chaim Engel, to escape.

We are saddened to hear of the recent passing of Selma Engel, who, after becoming one of the few people to escape Sobibor death camp in Poland during the Holocaust, immediately began telling the world what she saw. She was 96.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites applications from postdoctoral scholars for its 2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. The fellowship offers an annual salary of $70,000 and will be awarded to an an outstanding junior postdoctoral scholar from any discipline who will advance genocide research through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and other USC resources.

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University Libraries and the University of Southern California Libraries Collections Convergence Initiative invite applications from postdoctoral scholars for their 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. The fellowship offers a salary of $50,000, medical benefits, as well as a fixed amount for moving expenses between New Haven and Los Angeles. The fellowship will be awarded to an outstanding postdoctoral scholar from any discipline who will advance genocide research through the comparative analysis of testimonies by Holocaust survivors who gave interviews to both the Fortunoff Video Archive and the USC Shoah Foundation.

Selma Engel describes how the insurrection at Sobibor was timed to coincide with the vacation of Gustav Franz Wagner, an infamously sadistic Nazi commander at the camp who reportedly had a strong intuition about inmate collusion.

“New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison” was an international conference held at USC. Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute, the conference convened 22 scholars from all over the world — the United States, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

I have been associated with USC Shoah Foundation since 2007. I attended my first gala that year because a close friend of mine was the honoree. I knew very little about the Institute before attending and I was blown away when I started to learn the story. The mission touched me deeply.

Public lecture by Lukas Meissel (PhD candidate, Haifa University, Israel) 2018-2019 Greenberg Research Fellow

The Institute’s Sara Brown discusses the power of narrative at the 3rd Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide held earlier this month in Armenia.

In the article, Spielberg tours the Institute’s new global headquarters and explains its expanded mission to use testimony from genocide survivors to counteract a rising tide of hate.

University of Manchester Professor Jean-Marc Dreyfus’ lecture, entitled “Corpses of the Holocaust,” focused on the discussions of corpses in the Visual History Archive testimonies of Holocaust survivors and liberators.

Check out our year in review of the Institute's work in 2018, including stories about our new collection of testimonies from survivors of anti-Rohingya violence and the work we have done with the United Nations.

Charlotte Adelman, who gave testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1996, and the son of the French couple who rescued her found each other on Facebook.

Charlotte Adelman describes the cellar she hid in for nine months as a 9-year-old Jewish girl hiding from Nazi soldiers in France.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual history and Education embarked on a new chapter on Tuesday when it unveiled its new global headquarters on the USC campus. The event also marked the start of the Institute’s 25th anniversary, a time that will propel its work into new frontiers as it continues its mission of sharing the 55,000 testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides to foster empathy and respect.

Niemand, who was raised in the small town of Linz in Austria, became interested in Holocaust history through the teachings of his mother, a professor of modern history at a local university.

Rachel Herman is the Program Platforms Lead of the USC Shoah Foundation. In this role, Rachel manages IWitness, the Visual History Archive, SFI Access, Echoes & Reflections and the building of in-app and Virtual IWalks. Rachel joined the Institute in 2017, working as a content specialist with the Education team.

Lindsay is the Managing Director of Echoes & Reflections, the Institute's flagship Holocaust Education program in partnership with ADL and Yad Vashem. In this role, she leads strategic planning and the ongoing programmatic and operational oversight to ensure successful reach of goals and objectives of the Partnership. Lindsay holds an MEd from the University of Vermont and a BA in History from Northwestern University. She has held a range of leadership positions in the non-profit education field for more than 25 years. Lindsay is based outside of Chicago, IL.

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.

As a lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials, Harriet Zetterberg made breakthrough discoveries. But as the only woman on the prosecutorial staff, she had to look on as male members of the team presented her work.

Davina Pardo is a determined woman. For two years, the Emmy award-winning filmmaker had reached out to USC Shoah Foundation and Conscience Display, asking again and again for access to create a documentary about the New Dimensions in Testimony program. A native Canadian residing in Brooklyn, Pardo was no stranger to grappling with memories of mass murder. She had previously spent time in Rwanda filming a documentary about the 1994 genocide.