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Testimony of Espionage, Scheming, and Survival Reunites and Expands a Family

Above: One branch of the Scheinman family, which expanded considerably after cousin Zoe found and reached out to descendants of the ten children of Shmuel and Feige Scheinman, her husband’s great grandparents.

Last summer, Phil Scheinman spent five hours straight watching Joseph André Scheinmann’s testimony on USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. He was both devastated and riveted.

Spark of Inspiration

Join Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Dr. Stephen Smith in a conversation with psychologist, author, writer and Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Teaching About Genocide

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.

Research With Testimonies

In this event, the Center's two student research fellows will discuss the testimony-based research they conducted during Summer 2020. Exploring testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive's Nanjing Massacre collection, Lucy Sun (USC undergraduate student, History major, Psychology and Law minor) researched the resistance of women during the Nanjing Massacre.

Pittsburgh: "For Me, It’s Never Over"

Holocaust Survivor Judah Samet first gave testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1997. In 2019, as part of the CATT testimony collection, he spoke to us again. This time Judah wasn’t talking about his experiences in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Echoes & Reflections Invites Educators, Students to Commemorate Kristallnacht

November 9 and 10 marks the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom, the first major public and government-sanctioned display of antisemitic violence against Jews in Germany.

Orchestrated by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth named Herschel Grynzspan, 1,400 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed, almost 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Teaching with Testimony Webinar

The 30-minute webinar will provide educators with a brief overview of the testimony-based resources associated with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a well-known media personality, author and Holocaust survivor.

The Importance of Memory

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.

Felicia Galas Munn Brenner on her parents

Felicia Galas Munn Brenner, who grew up in Łódź, Poland, remembers her parents, Abram Michel Galas and Hinda Dworja (nee Dobrzynska) Galas. Felicia, the middle child of seven, lost her whole family in the Holocaust.

View Felicia’s full testimony.

Remembering those we lost in 2021

The Institute mourns the passing of members of our community in 2021, including survivors who have given testimony Julio Botton, Fritzie Fritzshall, Eddie Jaku, Roman Kent, Rabbi Bent Melchior, Ruth Pearl, Suzy Ressler, Irving Roth, and Marcus Segal.