On Monday I received a voicemail from Suzan Trevor that her father Marcus Segal had passed away. I had only just met Marcus, albeit virtually, weeks before when he shared his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation on January 26th. While saddened by the news of his passing, I’m filled with immense gratitude for having had the opportunity to hear his incredible life’s story in the final weeks of his life. 

Moira Hamilton coordinates the Institute’s Last Chance Testimony Collection, managing the remote video production of Holocaust survivors’ stories. Prior to the Institute, Moira worked on various feature-length documentaries with the Los Angeles based O’Malley Creadon Productions. She received her BA in Film and American Studies from the University of Notre Dame.

Join Rachael Cerrotti, Storyteller in Residence at USC Shoah Foundation as well as an award-winning photographer, writer, educator, and audio producer, for a special segment in The Ghetto Fighters' House international online lecture series "Talking Memory."

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and friend of the Institute, Julio Botton. Julio first recorded a testimony for the Visual History Archive in 1998 and in March 2020 recorded a Dimensions in Testimony interactive biography in Spanish. He was also an active speaker for many years with the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City and elsewhere. 

An online event with Lucy Sun (USC undergraduate student, History major) and Rachel Zaretsky (MFA candidate in Art, USC Roski School of Art and Design) 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellows Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research

How can a podcast encapsulate a generational turning point, reveal hidden histories, and make connections between Alfred Hitchcock and the Holocaust? When it is based on USC Shoah's Foundation's Visual History Archive of 55,000 audiovisual testimonies. With testimonies from over 60 countries and many experience groups including the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the possibilities for connections and intersections are many.

Sara R. Horowitz, Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies at York University and an esteemed scholar of the Holocaust, has been named the 2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will deliver a public lecture and spend over a week in residence at the Center in March 2022.

Shiro recalls instances of anti-Japanese hate that targeted by Japanese Americans after they returned home from internment camps following World War II.

Today we mourn the murder of eight people in Georgia that includes six Asian women — and we are appalled by the increased acts of anti-Asian hate and violence across the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.   The horrific events in Georgia underscore the importance of working to counter anti-Asian racism. At the outset of the pandemic last March, USC Pacific Asia Museum experienced increased acts of anti-Asian racism that spurred discussions about the need for a campus-wide initiative to confront the rising tide of identity-based hatred.   

We lost a giant in the fight against hate yesterday - Karen Wells, educator from Midland High School in Pleasant Plains, Arkansas, Discovery Education DEN leader, and IWitness Master Educator and Teaching Fellow. The Institute joins her students, Discovery Education colleagues, educators worldwide, friends and her family in mourning her loss.

Watch a virtual panel discussion on the topic of Hate speech and the prevention of genocide through education hosted by UNESCO, jointly with the Permanent Delegation of Rwanda to UNESCO. Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith will be joined by many experts from around the world during this virtual panel discussion marking International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Presented by The Miller Center for Community Protection & Resilience, Rutgers University, International March of the Living and Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust, in cooperation with USC Shoah Foundation.

Among the Holocaust survivors participating are those who survived due to the selfless acts of medical professionals. Participants in the Virtual March from across the globe were filmed using innovative 3D technology so they appear to be marching along the traditional March of the Living route at Auschwitz – Birkenau.

Join Ohio Governor Mike DeWine as he hosts the 41st Annual Governor’s Holocaust Commemoration.

Explore the ways that our lives can be shaped by the experiences of our ancestors through the power of firsthand testimonies.

Join Sedda Antekelian, Educator and Outreach Specialist at USC Shoah Foundation, and filmmaker and broadcaster Carla Garapedian for this webinar as they explore the legacy of the Armenian Genocide.

In this talk, Lauren Cantillon explores the tensions and textures of emotions present in Jewish women’s personal memory narratives of sexual(ized) violence during the Holocaust. Drawing on interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, she highlights some of the numerous Jewish women who shared their stories within the context of a Holocaust testimony interview.

Yad Vashem has collected approximately 4.8 million pages of testimony that restore the personal identities and record the brief life stories of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis. In honor of Yom HaShoah—Israel’s Day of Holocaust Remembrance—this webinar, led by a Yad Vashem educator, will highlight survivor testimony from Echoes & Reflections, and pages of testimony from Yad Vashem’s archive, to examine the importance of memory and how it serves us and future generations, to create a better world. This webinar is open to teachers and their students.

Holocaust education is a powerful pathway to commemorate and educate about past genocides and events occurring in the world today such as human rights violations. To honor Genocide Awareness Month, teachers and their students are invited to participate in this interactive webinar, and engage in activities from the Echoes & Reflections Teaching about Genocide Resource, which includes video testimonies from witnesses to genocide, and other primary sources.

A conversation featuring Salphi Ghazarian, Umit Kurt, Beth Meyerowitz, and Michael Renov Moderated by Peter Mancall

Liberation75's Student Education Days are running from April 7-8, 2021, beginning at 6am PST on April 7! Liberation75 has brought together over 15 of the world's leading Holocaust education organizations, including USC Shoah Foundation, to teach your students the important lessons of the Holocaust.

After the UNESCO event “From Hate Speech to Genocide: Lessons from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,”  USC Shoah Foundation’s Kori Street continues the conversation with Freddy Mutanguha, Survivor and Executive Director of the Aegis Trust and Tali Nates, Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre.

Betty Grebenschikoff and Ana María Wahrenberg were inseparable best friends before the Holocaust. Separated when their families each fled the Nazis, they each believed the other had perished. They were reunited just a few short months ago thanks to a combination of international partnerships, astute research, and the power of survivor testimony.

“Challenging the Shame Paradigm: Jewish Women’s Narratives of Sexual(ized) Violence During the Holocaust” Lauren Cantillon (PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London, UK) 2020-2021 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies March 25, 2021

Twenty-one-years after my grandmother recorded her testimony with USC Shoah Foundation, I teamed up with the Institute to create a podcast about my own decade-long journey to retrace her war story. It would be the first-ever narrative podcast to be based around survivor testimony. After years of research, criss-crossing international borders, living in stranger’s homes, and harmonizing history with the politics of today, I began to sit with her voice. “I always felt very guilty,” she told the interviewer about her survival.