In China, the number of people still alive who survived the 1937 Nanjing Massacre at the hands of Japanese invaders has fallen to minuscule levels – some experts put the number around 80. USC Shoah Foundation’s collection of about 100 testimonies of survivors from this rampage that killed some 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers includes the vast majority of them. This fall, the Institute reached a milestone: The entire collection of Nanjing testimonies has been indexed and subtitled in English.

Each year, the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosts a team of scholars from different universities, different countries, and different academic disciplines for one week so that they can develop and discuss a collaborative, innovative, and interdisciplinary research project in the fi

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.

USC President Carol L. Folt and scholars from USC and beyond gathered at the global headquarters of USC Shoah Foundation on November 11 for the public launch of the redesigned Visual History Archive, the world’s largest collection of primary source video testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. 

George Clooney is well known as an actor, director, producer and writer. But it was his global humanitarian efforts that received the attention on Oct. 3 when he was honored with the Ambassador for Humanity Award by Steven Spielberg.

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute, whose work centers on making educational and scholarly use of their archive of nearly 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, will hold its third annual Teaching with Testimony Workshop this week for participants in the Institute’s Master Teacher Program, who hail from 15 cities in seven states.

Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust to create 65-screen video sculpture presenting USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s archive of 52,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnessesSurvivor video wall to further award-winning, nationally-recognized Museum’s role as a leader in exhibit innovation105,000 hours of interviews – representing every survivor and witness video available in the Institute’s archive—to be presented in the course of the year.

In July, Anna Lenchovska and Oleksandr Voitenko conducted a workshop entitled "The Power of Video Testimonies in the Formation of Historical Memory," for 32 teachers from Georgia and Armenia. The workshop was part of Sources of Tolerance.

Over 3,000 teachers trained and equipped with a new tolerance education resource.

Four years in development, Recollections integrates testimony from eyewitnesses.

Students and others will have access to testimonies.

Auschwitz, the final destination of Jewish people from across Europe destined to be murdered as a part of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Auschwitz, a place that housed prisoners of many religions, persuasions, minorities and nationalities, but whose evil reputation is seared onto our collective conscience because the five gas chambers at Birkenau were there for one reason only - to devour the lives of 960,000 Jews. Auschwitz, which has evolved into a universal symbol of man's inhumanity to man – and indeed it does remind us just how cruel human beings can be.

We have ample historical evidence that hateful words can be as dangerous as physical violence itself. German poet, Heinrich Heine said in 1821, “He who burns books will soon burn people.”

American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the USC Shoah Foundation announced today at AJC Global Forum their newly formed partnership to give voice to, document, and map modern-day antisemitism around the world. 

April is Genocide Awareness Month, a time to reflect on atrocities of the past while ensuring that we avoid acts of mass murder in the future. The urgency of this mandate was highlighted just weeks ago when the U.S. House of Representatives and the State Department officially recognized that ISIS is committing genocide in the Middle East.

The Holocaust is inarguably the most heinous crime against a group of people we have seen in modern times. Despite decades of wrestling with how such an atrocity could have occurred and the postwar generation promising never again, history keeps repeating itself. Therefore, the collection and the custody of testimonies from those who bear witness remains a necessary task for as long as inhumanities keep occurring. Genocide and crimes against humanity transcend religions, cultures, languages, geographic regions, socioeconomics, gender, age, etc., making testimony collection across all cultures not only a moral responsibility, but imperative given the mission of USC Shoah Foundation. We know for sure that under a certain set of circumstances, genocide could happen anywhere, and again.

"New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison" 

“Who Will Write Our History” tells how ghetto inhabitant Emanuel Ringelblum, a historian, spearheaded an effort to collect what became one of the most important caches of eyewitness accounts to survive World War II. USC Shoah Foundation is a screening-event partner.

Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture. Even before the end of the Shoah, survivor historians in parts of Eastern Europe liberated from Nazi occupation collected testimonies and conducted interviews with fellow survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) and Fox Searchlight Pictures today announced a partnership to develop classroom curriculum tied to JOJO RABBIT, Taika Waititi’s heartfelt World War II anti-hate satire.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Ruth Pearl, mother of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and co-founder and CFO of The Daniel Pearl Foundation, which promotes cross-cultural understanding through journalism and music.

The Starling Lab for Data Integrity (Starling Lab) today announced its inaugural class of Starling Journalism research fellows. The annual fellowship helps leading journalists from around the world use the latest advances in cryptography and Web3 technologies to protect the integrity and safety of digital content, as well as individuals working in and around the media. In an era of rampant mis- and disinformation, this timely program will apply in-field research to explore how to restore trust in digital media and underscore the legacy values of journalism.

The Center announces Call for Applications for research fellowships for senior scholars, PhD candidates, and USC students.

Middle and high school students around the world are exploring the themes of resistance, solidarity and resilience using an innovative new film-based curriculum produced by the USC Shoah Foundation and The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in Israel, one of the first Holocaust museums in the world. 

The Aladdin Project, founded by Anne-Marie Revcolevschi, uses the power of words to create bonds between Jewish and Muslim worlds. This article first appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward.

Starting immediately, ProQuest will become the exclusive distributor of USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to colleges and universities around the world.

What are the pillars of modern democracy and how can democracy be defended in days of crisis? These questions keep coming to me these days, when Poland faces a really serious crisis that so far has caused a huge polarization in Polish society that divides neighbors, colleagues, friends, even families. Being an educator for almost 30 years, teaching first young students, then teenagers and finally teachers about history, civil rights and human rights, I have realized what a huge setback the Polish educational system has suffered.

Kimberly Cheng (PhD candidate in Hebrew & Judaic Studies and History, New York University) 2018-2019 Breslauer, Rutman & Anderson Research Fellow “American Dreams: Jewish Refugees and Chinese Locals in Post-World War II Shanghai” September 27, 2018

USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith delivered remarks Friday at a special event at the United Nations marking the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the international law that defined genocide and held perpetrators accountable. The observance also featured a demonstration of the Institute’s Dimensions in Testimony interactive biographies that enable people to ask questions and instantly receive pre-recorded responses from Holocaust survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and accomplished structural engineer Sigmund Burke, who died February 6, 2022 at nearly 98 years old. He recorded his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation in 2019, at the age of 95, as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection initiative, USC Shoah Foundation’s race-against-time effort to record the stories and perspectives of the last remaining Holocaust survivors.