To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, USC Shoah Foundation, The Willesden Project, and The Conscious Kid today launch a video read-along of Hold on to Your Music, the children’s book telling the story of Lisa Jura, a young Holocaust survivor who in 1938 escaped from Vienna on the Kindertransport and went on to become an acclaimed pianist in the United Kingdom.

For the last year, six scholars from diverse fields have been collaborating in USC Shoah Foundation's inaugural Scholar Lab to address the question, “Why the Jews?” This fall, in a series of three events, scholars will discuss what they have learned and present individual research projects.  

Above: Gerda Weissmann Klein with her granddaughter Alysa Cooper

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the loss of Holocaust survivor and Institute friend Gerda Weissmann Klein, who passed away on April 3, 2022. She was 97.

Fifteen hours of interviews describing the actions of a group of World War II-era diplomats who defied official policies to save tens of thousands of lives during the Holocaust have been added to USC Shoah Foundation’s 55,000-strong Visual History Archive (VHA) thanks to a collaboration with the Andrew J. & Joyce D. Mandell Family Foundation.

“Why the Jews?” Join us for another exploration of this question in the second event of USC Shoah Foundation’s Scholar Lab on Antisemitism event series. This moderated discussion will feature Dr. Jonathan Judaken of Rhodes College and Dr. Jeffrey Veidlinger of the University of Michigan, both the members of the Scholar Lab on Antisemitism program. As part of the discussion, Dr. Judaken and Dr.

Alexa Dollar flings open her arms and spins across the stage, relishing the moment as if she’s just arrived at a party thrown in her honor. She kicks out her leg and flutters back across the floor, chasing the piano’s tantalizing lilt.

Drew Lybolt comes next, taking over the stage with powerful leaps and commanding twirls set to an insistent, almost argumentative, piano vignette.

East Coast dance artist Rachel Linsky combines movement and testimony to create a novel form of Holocaust education. 

Rachel directs and choreographs ZACHOR, an initiative that honors Holocaust survivors through dance. Her latest work in the project is Hidden, a dance film and production based on the story of Aaron Elster, a Jewish boy who from 1943 to 1945 hid from Nazi persecution in the attic of a Polish family. 

Rabbi Gunther Plaut was born in Germany and escaped to the United States in 1935, two years after the Nazi rise to power. He later immigrated to Canada, where he became rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. In March 1963, at Rabbi Plaut’s invitation, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Holy Blossom Temple. During his speech, Dr. King said, “Time is neutral. Time can be used destructively or constructively. We must help time and the time is right now.”

USC Shoah Foundation today presents the first of two events in Aspen, Colorado hosted by Melinda Goldrich, a prominent member of the Aspen philanthropic community who serves on USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors’ Executive Committee.