At age 4, Morris Dancyger witnessed the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces. In his 2008 testimony held by the Calgary Jewish Federation and part of the USC Shoah Foundation archive, Morris recalled the moment he and his family realized Soviet troops had entered their barracks. Shortly after liberation, a Soviet military crew filmed Morris revealing his concentration camp tattoo. This historic footage later appeared in the 1945 documentary "Oswiecem" (Auschwitz), which documented evidence of Nazi crimes and atrocities.

On January 27, 1945, Allied Forces liberated the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each year on this anniversary, the world observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a solemn occasion for us all to affirm our commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education and to a world that respects and knows the histories of the victims and survivors of this terrible crime. 

Please join the USC Shoah Foundation and our partners at UCLA as we hear from Dr. Leon Saltiel who will focus on the challenges of grappling with the past and with current antisemitism.

The Following Op-Ed was published in U.S. News by the USC Shoah Foundation's Finci-Viterbi Executive Director, Robert J. Williams, Ph.D. January 27, 2025   As we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day today and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, we find ourselves at a critical juncture in history.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Feb. 11, 2025) — The USC Shoah Foundation announced the appointment of Dr. Brian Hughes as the inaugural Director of its Countering Antisemitism Laboratory, marking a significant expansion of the institute's mission to combat hatred through research, education and action.

In a follow up to her inaugural lecture series, Mélanie Péron will discuss how she and her students at the University of Pennsylvania drew upon a wealth of different sources such as diaries and archives to reconstruct the individual stories of Jewish children and their families in occupied France before they were reduced to a typed line on a deportation list and the importance of using sources such as diaries and video testimonies to teach about the Shoah despite the inexorable disappearance of the last remaining witnesses.

Dr. Brian Hughes directs the Shoah Foundation’s Countering Antisemitism Laboratory (CAL). In this role, he develops evidence-backed interventions to prevent and reduce antisemitic attitudes and behaviors. These interventions address the problem of antisemitism at scale, online and offline, with a focus on the needs of impacted communities and victim-survivors. A media and communication scholar by training, Dr.

World War II liberator William McKinney describes the need for communities to come together.

Join us as Professors Michelle Lynn Kahn and Steven J. from the University of Southern California’s Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, explore the lingering international support for Nazism post World War II.

We are saddened to learn of the passing of György Kun, who gave his testimony in October 1999 in Budapest, Hungary. His daughter, Andrea Szonyis, an educator and former colleague at the USC Shoah Foundation, authored a story in the series "Voices from the Archive” about her father.