In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories – stories told many decades after the events occurred – often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier. Looking at these deferred stories through the lens of gender, we will explore how survivors craft accounts that insist on reclaiming, owning, and interpreting what the writer Ida Fink called “the ruins of memory,” often against the grain and in tension with academic interpretation.

It was not easy for the more than 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in our Visual History Archive to tell their stories. But they did it, because they understood the importance of preserving these painful memories for future generations. We are those future generations, and it is our turn to carry their stories and messages of strength and resilience forward.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Shoah Foundation present Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture by Prof. Sara R. Horowitz (Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities, York University, Canada) 2020-2021 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) 

Join acclaimed pianist and author Mona Golabek for a 50-minute livestreamed performance adapted from her best-selling book, The Children of Willesden Lane. This special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gives New England students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brings to life the inspiring story of her mother, Lisa Jura, a young Holocaust survivor who in 1938 escaped from Vienna to London on the Kindertransport. More than one million students around the world have experienced the Willesden READS program to date.