Public lecture by Doerte Bischoff (University of Hamburg) Co-sponsored by USC Libraries, the USC Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies, the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Los Angeles, the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Villa Aurora and the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Public lecture by Virginia Bullington (USC undergraduate, Narrative Studies)

In this lecture, 2018 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow Virginia Bullington will reflect on research she conducted last summer at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research analyzing how testimonies from the Armenian, Guatemalan and Rwandan genocides regarding sexual violence are constructed by interviewees, and how these narratives influence and are influenced by contemporary concepts of gender in those societies post-conflict.

Dimensions in Testimony highlights “Speaking Memories,” an exhibit by the organization Jewish Culture in Sweden featuring the voices and stories of Holocaust survivors. The Swedish History Museum also launched access to the 55,000 testimonies in the Institute’s Visual History Archive.

Charlotte McKern, who survived the Holocaust by taking refuge in Shanghai, shares the story of how she met her husband, Robert Grosslight, a physician who’d been released from the Dachau concentration camp in Germany to migrate to Shanghai.

The controversial standoff between a tribal elder and a high school student that went viral has captivated the media and those on all sides of the political aisle. While all the details are still being uncovered, what strikes me is the climate that permeates our nation. We have devolved to a state of “othering” our countrymen, without reflecting on how our own actions may affect one another. We have stopped seeking to understand one another and instead just attack, sometimes even when the facts are not clear. 

“The Stories We Tell: Narratives of Sexual Violence and Concepts of Gender in Post-Genocide Societies” Virginia Bullington (USC undergraduate, Narrative Studies) 2018 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow January 23, 2019

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary and recent rerelease of “Schindler’s List,” USC Shoah Foundation has produced a suite of learning activities connected to the film. The engaging activities encourage critical thinking; all feature clips of testimony from Holocaust survivors who were saved by Oskar Schindler.

Visit this page to watch the live-streamed event:

In her research of testimonies, USC student Virginia Bullington observed that women in the context of both the Armenian and Tutsi Rwanda genocides are often described as “bearers of culture, maternity and nationalism,” while in the Guatemalan context, “indigenous women were not essentialized -- they were erased.”

Born June 21, 1923, in Olcsva, Hungary, Weiss and her family were sent to the Mátészalka ghetto. She was then deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp before being liberated by Soviet armed forces.

USC Shoah Foundation is joining forces with The Genocide Education Project, which is dedicated to bringing curriculum about the World War I-era Armenian Genocide into high schools across the United States.

Professor Marion Kaplan, world-renowned scholar of German-Jewish history, will serve as the 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research after being awarded its most esteemed fellowship. Professor Kaplan will deliver a public lecture and spend one week in residence at the Center this Spring.

USC Shoah Foundation joined a Friday ceremony at a classroom in Cottbus, Germany that contributed 100 butterflies to the Butterfly Project, an international effort by schoolchildren to paint 1.5 million ceramic butterflies – one for every child murdered in the Holocaust.

Charlotte McKern, who was among the roughly 20,000 Jews from Germany and Austria who survived the Holocaust by taking refuge in Shanghai, turns 100 today. In her testimony, McKern recalled not only the dangers, but also the brighter moments, during her years in China.

Bill Morgan, now 93 years old, is a survivor of the Stanislawow Ghetto. After obtaining a birth certificate from a Polish Christian, he escaped the ghetto and found work as a farmhand in Ukraine. Museum audiences will be able to ask questions of Morgan about his life experiences and hear his pre-recorded responses in real time.

“Who Will Write Our History” tells how ghetto inhabitant Emanuel Ringelblum, a historian, spearheaded an effort to collect what became one of the most important caches of eyewitness accounts to survive World War II. USC Shoah Foundation is a screening-event partner.