Professor Hovannisian presented on the history of his Armenian Genocide Oral History collection, which is today part of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. Considering that this collection was created as part of two courses that Professor Hovannisian taught at UCLA over five decades, three of his former students – Salpi Ghazarian, Tamar Mashigian, and Lorna Tourian Miller – also spoke about their experiences of conducting interviews with Armenian genocide survivors.

We are very saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend and valued colleague Dr. Sharon Gillerman on November 20, 2020, at the age of 60.  

Sharon was a scholar in Jewish history on faculty at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) and at USC for more than 20 years. Her scholarship focused on modern German and central European Jewish history with a particular interest in gender history, cultural studies, popular culture, and transnational history.   

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.

Chad Gibbs, a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center during September 2020 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, entitled “Against that Darkness: Perseverance, Resistance, and Revolt at Treblinka.”

In this webinar, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research team will provide a deep dive into the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, including its history; methodologies of testimony collection, preservation, and indexing; current state of the archive and its collections; and how to use its search engines and interface for research and teaching. The participants will learn how to unlock the research potential of the archive and be able to ask questions and get assistance with effectively searching the archive.

In this webinar, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research team will provide a deep dive into the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, including its history; methodologies of testimony collection, preservation, and indexing; current state of the archive and its collections; and how to use its search engines and interface for research and teaching. The participants will learn how to unlock the research potential of the archive and be able to ask questions and get assistance with effectively searching the archive.

Two promising USC scholars – undergraduate student Lucy Sun and graduate student Rachel Zaretsky -- will share the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2020.

The Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship provides support for USC students at any academic level and from any discipline to conduct a month of research in residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) and/or other related USC resources and collections.

Lucy Sun will be a senior in the Fall 2020 semester. She is majoring in History and minoring in Psychology and Law.

A Holocaust survivor saved by Oskar Schindler who gave testimony to the Visual History Archive, the late Hazzan Moshe Taube z''l went on to become one of the great cantors of his generation. During this retrospective event, hosted by Hazzan Robert Kieval and produced by the Cantors Assembly, we will hear classic recordings and recollections of colleagues and friends.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with JewishGen.org, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, to integrate an index of data from nearly 50,000 Jewish Holocaust survivor testimonies found in the Visual History Archive® into the JewishGen Holocaust database.