At its physical core, USC Shoah Foundation is an impressive bank of computers and programs that bring the testimony of genocide survivors to people around the world.

It’s a complicated and mysterious process for those who don’t have advanced degrees. But beyond the connections of wires and microchips, there is something far more mysterious and complicated going on: the human connection that takes place between people from different times, different places and different backgrounds when they engage with testimony.

Holocaust liberator Shiro Takeshita describes being in the Salinas State Assembly Center (Japanese internment camp) and seeing an old man killed by a guard simply for being too close to the camp fence.

Elie Borowski is overcome with emotion remembering the French army's retreat after the fall of Paris in 1940.

Jewish survivor William Good shares his incredible escape story from the Ponary massacre in Lithuania.

You’re invited to the USC Shoah Foundation!

Free and open to the public, our monthly tours give visitors a chance to explore the life stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and to discover how their memories are being used to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry.