USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to hear of the recent passing of Millie Zuckerman, Holocaust survivor and longtime friend of the Institute. Millie was surrounded by her family when she passed away on August 9, 2020 at the age of 94. She was born on September 25, 1925 in Humniska, Poland and was a hidden child of the Holocaust.
/ Tuesday, October 6, 2020
An Unprecedented Partnership with Orlando Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity The Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida has partnered with USC Shoah Foundation to be a content and creative partner in the development of the new Holocaust museum to be located in downtown Orlando. This marks the first time USC Shoah Foundation has teamed with a Holocaust museum as they design, develop, and implement a ground-up and permanent museum-wide exhibition.
DiT / Thursday, October 1, 2020
“Locating Women in the Revolt: Gender and Spaces of Resistance at Treblinka” Chad Gibbs (PhD Candidate in History, University of Wisconsin at Madison) 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow September 29, 2020
cagr / Thursday, October 1, 2020
  Call for Applications from PhD Candidates   Greenberg Research Fellowship Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies
cagr / Monday, October 5, 2020
Founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, and housed at USC since 2006, USC Shoah Foundation is the caretaker of the Visual History Archive: 55,000 testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors and witnesses that fuels programming around the world to educators, scholars, organizations, and community members. The Visual History Archive contains countless treasured family stories, including members of the Trojan family, and during Trojan Family Weekend, we invite you to experience our work in this virtual event.
/ Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Experience USC Shoah Foundation's world-renowned Dimensions in Testimony interactive biographies, recently featured on 60 Minutes. Join this event to learn about USC Shoah Foundation and ask questions to Holocaust survivors powered by AI and fueled through technological innovation.
/ Tuesday, October 6, 2020
In recent years, there has been a significant spike in antisemitism and hate-fueled violence and rhetoric against different groups on both a national and global scale. Surveys show that Holocaust education has an enormous positive impact on young people’s attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and actions. Despite the decisive outcomes from an understanding of this important history, Holocaust education is a requirement in only 15 U.S. states. The need for Holocaust education could not be greater now. Join this panel of experts to learn about the ongoing efforts to increase Holocaust education across the country.
/ Thursday, October 8, 2020
On October 21, 2020, at 9:00 AM EDT, join Echoes & Reflections Director Ariel Behrman as she discusses how her team responded to the needs and concerns of teachers faced with suddenly having to teach the history of the Holocaust in a virtual classroom as schools closed in the wake of COVID-19, by developing and extending their pedagogy, teaching strategies and tools to support teaching about the Holocaust in the context of COVID-19.
/ Thursday, October 8, 2020
USC Shoah Foundation has been awarded the nation’s prestigious distinguished building award – The American Architecture Award® for 2020 – for its new global headquarters at the University of Southern California.
/ Friday, October 9, 2020
In this clip from her testimony, Itka Zygmuntowicz reads one of her poems to illustrate the danger of being a bystander.
/ Monday, October 12, 2020
We are very saddened at the USC Shoah Foundation to learn that our friend and Holocaust survivor Itka Zygmuntowicz passed away October 9, 2020, at the age of 94.
/ Monday, October 12, 2020
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, October 12, 2020, three members of the organizing committee discussed goals and plans for the international conference “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples - The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region.” The conference, postponed until October 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will convene Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge holders and scholars from around the world at the University of Southern California, which sits on the traditional land of the Tongva/Gabrieliño People.
/ Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Thanks to an extraordinary gift from the Koret Foundation, USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with the Hold On to Your Music Foundation to develop an educational program centered around The Children of Willesden Lane, a novel and musical that highlight the story of Jewish children rescued from central Europe and sent unaccompanied to Great Britain by the Kindertransport at the start of World War II.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Alive through oil and acrylic, the eleven survivors of Auschwitz look forward resolutely, facing the world together, bound by their shared history. The survivors are subjects depicted in an 18-foot wide portrait that served as the centerpiece of artist David Kassan’s recent exhibition Facing Survival: David Kassan at USC Fisher Museum of Art.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Twenty-five years ago, the world watched as the small African country of Rwanda descended into genocidal violence. Over the course of just a few months, forces in the government, media, military and general population attacked members of the country’s Tutsi minority, killing more than 800,000 of them in an organized campaign of genocide. In the years since, as the country has rebuilt and invested in a process of investigation, justice and reconciliation, the voices of survivors have become central.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
In 1964, America’s first Holocaust memorial was unveiled in central Philadelphia at the head of Benjamin Franklin Parkway. More than 50 years later, the location surrounding this historically significant monument houses an interactive plaza, the Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial Plaza, a living monument to the 6 million lives lost in the Holocaust. The new plaza opened in October 2018 with onsite installations to inspire visitors to remember and reflect.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Born in Hungary, Weiss-Fischmann supports USC Shoah Foundation’s International Teacher Training program to help reverse the rising antisemitism and intolerance there. She wants no one else to ever have to suffer the way her mother did — or to endure the even worse fates of those family members she never knew.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
The grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, Aliza Liberman wonders whether her children will feel as connected to its horrors and lessons as she does. As a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council, Liberman is doing what she can to ensure future generations feel that bond by supporting the Institute’s mission.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Rautenberg's longtime accountant, Tom Corby, now the president of the foundation that bears the Rautenberg name, remembers Erwin as a hard-working, deeply principled man. “He established the Erwin Rautenberg Foundation to strengthen Jewish causes,” Corby says. “He wanted to make sure that the Jewish people and religion endured.”
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
The San Francisco-based Koret Foundation shares USC Shoah Foundation’s goals of using history to build connections between communities and cultures. “An important pillar of the Koret Foundation is to create a vibrant and connected Jewish community,” Koret Foundation Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Farber says.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Melanie Dadourian is an active member of the Next Generation Council because she understands all too well the dangers of silence and denial. Her grandparents were Armenian Genocide survivors who escaped certain death in Turkey by fleeing to the United States and that history deeply affects her.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Tianfu Bank and Tianfu Group support the collection of Nanjing Massacre survivors’ testimonies for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive and New Dimensions in Testimony project. They want to ensure that the world will learn from — and never forget — the Nanjing Massacre, which resulted in the mass rape and killing that began on December 13, 1937, and lasted for several weeks, ending nearly 300,000 lives.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
“Stories have the power to educate, change people’s world view, and inspire empathy,” says David Zaslav, a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Executive Committee and the president and CEO of Discovery Communications. “It’s a kind of understanding that can’t be replicated by history books.”
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
Samuel H. Pond, managing partner of Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano and a longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation, decided to dedicate even more time and energy to the cause by joining the Institute's Next Generation Council after a moving conversation with Board of Councilors Chair Stephen Cozen.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
As a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Sarah Sternklar, PhD, recognizes the powerful healing effects of words - how important and therapeutic it can be for people to tell their story. "This is a wonderful benefit for the survivors."
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
An Auschwitz survivor who lost her parents, little brother, and grandparents during the Holocaust, she does not know her birthday, but says, “every day I wake up is my birthday.” After the camps were liberated, Mantelmacher came to the United States in the 1950s to begin her new life. She found work and started a family. Her two daughters became teachers, and she found her own life’s work as an educator.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
For Board of Councilors Chair Emeritus Robert J. Katz, involvement with USC Shoah Foundation stems not from a direct personal connection, but from an emotional pull he’d later identify.
/ Friday, October 16, 2020
When Maryam, a hardworking young doctor in a small-town clinic, is prevented from flying to Dubai for a conference without a male guardian’s approval, she seeks help from a politically connected cousin but inadvertently registers as a candidate for the municipal council. Maryam sees the election as a way to fix the muddy road in front of her clinic, but her campaign slowly garners broader appeal.
/ Thursday, October 22, 2020
This past May, a friend sent me an article he knew I would appreciate. It was an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Burying My Bubby During the Pandemic” written by a comedy writer named Eitan Levine who, like me, grew up with a grandmother who survived the Holocaust. I began to read and found myself immediately wrapped inside his writing which was so honest it was cathartic. I immediately reached out to Eitan and asked if his grandmother’s testimony was in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
/ Thursday, October 22, 2020

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