Holocaust survivor recalls experiences in Poland.

Howard Gillman, Dean of USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, announces newly appointed leadership positions of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Board of Councilors.

At one point in the horrific spring of 1994, Narcisse Gasimba had given up. Since April, Gasimba and other resistors in the mountains of western Rwanda had been using stones and spears to fend off wave after wave of Hutu attacks against Tutsis on the Bisesero hillside, but by the end of June their efforts felt fruitless. Tens of thousands, including members of Gasimba’s own family, had been massacred by Hutu attackers.

Hungarian ethics teachers and Polish educators were introduced this spring to IWalk, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational program that combines testimony with real-life locations, and are interested in incorporating it into their teaching.  

Thousands of people came to Times Square on Sunday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and to demand the U.S. government recognize the slaughter of 1.5 million people as genocide. In a speech at the event, USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith said that the world must stand together speak for those who are not here to speak for themselves.

The Problems Without Passports trip to Rwanda ends today after a busy second week that included visits to some of Rwanda’s most stunning nature sites and opportunities for the students to meet politicians and international representatives.

The conference is “Legal Legacies of Genocide: From Nuremberg to the International Criminal Courts.” USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith is one of the presenters.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) today announced the appointment of USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Robert Williams as Advisor to the IHRA for a three-year term.

Over the course of their stay, the team built six IWitness activities focused on peace building in Rwanda. The first to go online will focus on Propaganda and Social Cohesion, which will be available for teachers and students by Tuesday, Feb. 13.

We are grateful that so many of these survivors, partners, friends, and family members have entrusted us to share their stories for future generations, and for the passion and dedication they brought in support of our mission.

Aleksan Markaryan’s crystal-clear memory of the genocide against the Armenian people in 1915 has given him the distinction of being the last survivor interviewed by the Armenian Film Foundation for its collection of Armenian Genocide survivor and witness testimonies.

Rob Hadley, USC Shoah Foundation education consultant in the U.S., will lead an introductory IWitness workshop at the one-day seminar “Teaching and Learning About the Holocaust” Saturday, June 4, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

New Dimensions in Testimony will be exhibited in the Abe & Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience, enabling visitors to interact with the project’s filmed testimonies of 13 survivors, including seven who live in the Chicago area.

Kosal Path and Karen Jungblut taught Conflict Resolution and Peace Research course.

Dimensions in Testimony highlights “Speaking Memories,” an exhibit by the organization Jewish Culture in Sweden featuring the voices and stories of Holocaust survivors. The Swedish History Museum also launched access to the 55,000 testimonies in the Institute’s Visual History Archive.

The Institute mourns the passing of members of our community in 2022, including survivors who have given testimony, Joe Adamson, Helen Fagin, Sigmund Burke, Vera Gissing, Gerda Weissmann Klein, Bill Harvey, Max Glauben, Max Eisen, Phillip Maisel, Edward Mosberg, Judah Samet and Robert Clary.

Gerald Szames is 2, maybe 3 years old. He is standing at the foot of the bed, looking at his mother. She is sick, propped up on a pile of pillows. He has other flashes of memories of life before the Nazis invaded his Polish shtetl of Trochenbrod in 1941, when he was four years old – his grandfather taking him to the mill, his father lifting him up to give him a candy and a kiss.

President Paul Kagame visited USC Shoah Foundation on Wednesday to learn more about the Institute’s work linking testimony, technology and education.

Although the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive is typically thought of as a way to preserve the stories of people who survived the Holocaust, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to use the Archive to broaden the scope of memory to include not only survivors but also people who perished.

Fifteen hours of interviews related to a group of World War II-era diplomats who defied official policies to save hundreds of thousands of people from the Holocaust are to be integrated into the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

The four scholars who two years ago found their research transformed by the Visual History Archive will return to USC Shoah Foundation for a public presentation and a week of conducting new research.

USC Shoah Foundation and The Latin American Network for Education on the Shoah (Red LAES) today launch an educational partnership dedicated to the study, teaching, and dissemination of Spanish-language Holocaust testimonies in Latin America. The new initiative, announced to coincide with Yom HaShoah, will undertake a range of innovative activities including the creation of a landing page on USC Shoah Foundation’s award-winning IWitness platform that will feature downloadable Spanish-language modules based on testimonies from the 56,000-strong Visual History Archive.

Just one month after IWalk launched in Czech Republic, a second resource is already being developed. The city of Brno, in the Southern Moravia region of the country, will join Prague in offering downloadable testimony clip reels of Holocaust survivor testimonies that students may watch as they visit relevant historical sites.

USC Shoah Foundation will return to China, where it has collected some of its newest testimonies, to participate in University of Southern California’s Global Conference 2015.

The Institute is sad to learn that world champion swimmer and Holocaust survivor Éva Székely passed away at 92.

This month, the 2017-2019 Interdisciplinary Research Week team came together again for their second weeklong residency at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened by the recent loss of Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor who – along with her twin sister – endured cruel experiments conducted on her at Auschwitz, and, half a century later, sparked controversy by publicly forgiving the Nazis who tormented her and killed her parents and two older sisters. She went on to found CANDLES Museum and Education Center in Indiana.

Alberto Innocenti, grandfather of Francesca Innocenti, secretly hid Jewish people -- including members of his wife’s family -- in his apartment during World War II. For this and other acts of heroism the Catholic Italian was recognized posthumously by Yad Vashem.

As a survivor of the genocide, Rosalina Tuyuc Velásquez fully understands the complexities involved not only in surviving such an atrocity, but also in healing and moving forward.

Barnabas Balint, a PhD candidate at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, UK, has been awarded the 2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center during Spring 2022 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, which is entitled “Accelerated Development into Adulthood: The Changing Roles of Young Hungarians During the Holocaust.”