Martina Kessel's research examines the meaning and role of humor as an identity practice in Germany during the time of National Socialism in Germany. In this lecture, she explores the theory that non-Jewish Germans disguised violence as 'art' to justify their failure to comply with international or humanitarian beliefs.

The Stronger Than Hate initiative will publish stories on a regular basis that will each highlight a separate learning activity in IWitness, tackling some of today’s toughest subjects for students in middle school, high school and universities.

In this activity, students examine stories that have the power to strengthen our human connection or create deep divides leading to hate, intolerance and violence.

Our hearts ache and our minds reel. Innocent lives have been lost at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh where a celebration of life was taking place. Now is a time to mourn those who have been wrenched away from their families at a time that should have been filled with joy. It’s a time to grieve for their families and friends who will forever struggle to understand what happened.

BY STEPHEN SMITH. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Poland, is the first person I have spoken to since the mass shooting which left eleven dead at the Tree of Life synagogue. She does not waste time greeting me in the doorway of her home in London. “So what are we going to do Stephen? We are not making progress!”

The history of antisemitism is strewn with the corpses of Jews who could not get out of the way when words turned to violence. The slaying of innocent Jewish lives by Pittsburgh gunman Robert Bowers, who this weekend turned his rhetoric about killing Jews into the actual killing of Jewish people, is the latest example. We need laws to allow intervention much earlier, or this will not be the last time we see Jewish people die in America because they are Jews.

In this lecture, Kimberly Cheng aims to write Central European Jewish refugees back into the changing landscape of postwar Shanghai by examining the ways in which Jewish refugees and Chinese locals perceived and interacted with each other. In particular, she will explore the impact of the arrival of American forces on Sino-Jewish relations on the ground in the immediate postwar period.

In this lecture, Professor Geoffrey Robinson (UCLA) discusses his newest book, The Killing Season. The Killing Season examines one of the largest and swiftest instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking anti-leftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965–66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention.

Kimberly Cheng (PhD candidate in Hebrew & Judaic Studies and History, New York University) 2018-2019 Breslauer, Rutman & Anderson Research Fellow “American Dreams: Jewish Refugees and Chinese Locals in Post-World War II Shanghai” September 27, 2018

Geoffrey Robinson (University of California, Los Angeles) “The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66” October 4, 2018

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from advanced-standing Ph.D. candidates for its 2019-2020 research fellowships. Each fellowship provides $4,000 support and will be awarded to an outstanding advanced- standing Ph.D. candidate from any discipline for dissertation research focused on testimony from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and other USC resources.

Our thoughts are with the families and community of those who were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh -- the most deadly antisemitic attack in U.S. history. We have curated a handful of resources to help educators engage students in meaningful dialogue.

USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith gave the keynote address at a conference with Holocaust educators located at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the U.K, he attended events celebrating the launch of the Visual History Archive at the University of Oxford. USC Shoah Foundation Director of Global Outreach Karen Jungblut was also in Poland and then attended an event in Hungary to celebrate the launch of the Visual History Archive at 40 Hungarian institutions.

Learning from eyewitnesses of some of history’s darkest moments, educators strive to teach the power of decency and respect.

The collaboration between USC Psychology Professor Beth Meyerowitz and the Center for Advanced Genocide Research is possibly the first large-scale examination of the challenges and rewards of engaging with survivor testimony.

Holocaust survivor Judah Samet is a member of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that was attacked by a gunman who killed 11 on October 27, 2018. Samet, who missed the massacre by minutes, gave his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1997. In this clip, he talks about the antisemitism he witnessed as a child.

In an effort to spark a social movement against hatred in all forms, and to commemorate the 25th anniversary and re-release of Schindler’s List, USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms, have partnered to create Teaching with Testimony – a new educational program that unlocks the powerful classroom potential of testimony.

In recognition of their longstanding commitment to humanitarian causes and support of veterans, Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks were presented the Ambassador for Humanity Award by Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, USC trustee and founder of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

It’s been 80 years since Kristallnacht, a pogrom organized by Nazis against Jews in Germany and Austria, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks, the threat of antisemitic violence remains a horrifying possibility. Access educational resources that draw from the Institute's Visual History Archive.

4 p.m. PST, Nov. 15 This webinar will develop educators' understanding of how to effectively build activities in IWitness, utilizing various resources across the site to support their curriculum. More information here.  

4 p.m. (PST) Nov. 20. Participants will explore multimedia resources available on IWitness that enhance the teaching of Schindler's List with testimony. Participants will access best practices for integrating testimony into the classroom to support student's learning before, during and after viewing the film. More information here.

Hailed by some as a milestone in Ottoman Empire scholarship, the new book “Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, 1914” was the product of a manuscript that was donated to the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in 2016. It will be a boon for testimony indexers and other researchers at the Institute.

"We'll Meet Again," the PBS series that featured a Holocaust survivor who came to USC Shoah Foundation in hopes of reconnecting with the family of another Holocaust survivor he met at a displaced-persons camp in the waning days of World War II is now available for streaming.

In this lecture, Professor Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester, UK) presents the first results of his research in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive regarding the treatment of corpses in the Holocaust.

Musician Alex Biniaz-Harris, a former employee at USC Shoah Foundation, writes about his inspiration for a piano composition he is co-writing with Ambrose Soehn, a former intern at the Institute. The duo plans to perform the piece in Cambodia in January to commemorate that country’s upcoming 40-year anniversary of liberation from the genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Braham was a professor of political science and an influential thinker about the Holocaust and its impact on his native Hungary. A Holocaust survivor himself, Braham was barred from attending school by the Hungarian government before the outbreak of World War II. He gave his testimony to the Institute and participated in the USC Shoah Foundation film “The Last Days."

In a webinar interview, the film’s director and the Institute’s founder says he believes that 25 years after the release of 'Schindler's List,' the film is more important than ever. “Especially for the young people today, who face a country and a world where democracy is threatened.”

The event hosted by USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research appears to have been the only international academic conference to mark the 80th anniversary of this fateful event of November 1938, during which Nazis and ordinary Germans murdered more than 100 Jews and destroyed thousands of synagogues, Jewish institutions, stores and homes across Germany.

Public lecture by Danielle Willard-Kyle (PhD candidate, Rutgers University) 2019 Center Graduate Research Fellow

Public lecture by Bieke Van Camp (PhD candidate, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France) 2018-2019 Katz Research Fellow