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Through their testimonies on the Visual History Archive and The 1939 Society websites, Holocaust survivors and rescuers have inspired middle and high school students from across the nation and eight countries outside of the United States to become “Messengers of Memory,” the theme of this year’s Annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest sponsored by Chapman University and The 1939 Society.
Holocaust survivors, Chapman University, contest, The 1939 Society / Thursday, April 12, 2018
Lemkin is the subject of a new documentary called "Watchers of the Sky," now playing in select theaters. It is inspired by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book A Problem from Hell.
documentary / Friday, October 17, 2014
In the fascinating short documentary The Past is Present, teachers and students share their experience going to Poland to learn from testimony and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
comcast, past is present, a70, poland, auschwitz / Friday, May 22, 2015
Junior Intern Charlotte Masters made a very personal discovery during the trip to Poland and continues to share her experiences today.
past is present, junior interns, Auschwitz70 / Monday, September 28, 2015
Member of Ukrainian Parliament, Viktor Pinchuk, has made a generous contribution to support the production of a new documentary film that will rely upon the testimonies in the Shoah Foundation archive recorded in Ukraine. Mr. Pinchuk, who initiated the project, is the founder of Interpipe Scientific and Industrial Production Group. The 18-month project also includes the creation of a study guide for students and teachers that will be based on the film.
Pinchuk, Spell Your Name / Wednesday, January 19, 2005
The conference included a night of films, an academic symposium and a concert, all exploring music as it has been used as a form of resistance to genocides throughout history.
music as resistance, cagr / Thursday, October 15, 2015
As the son of two survivors of the Shoah and the husband of a daughter of two survivors, identifying as the Next Generation has been the essence of who I am. It is the prism through which I see and evaluate all worldly events. It was particularly my father’s life that affected me the most. He truly was a “survivor." He survived the war running for his life through Russia, Siberian labor camps and other lands in Asia. He survived losing his parents, five of his sisters their husbands and children. He escaped from his hometown in the Russian sector to a displaced person camp in in the American sector. He survived as a refugee in Belgium and then as an immigrant in the United States. He survived the loss of his wife at a young age raising three children as a single parent in a foreign land.
yom hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Next Generation, beginswithme, op-eds / Thursday, May 5, 2016
Professor Peter Hayes, world-renowned scholar of the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, will serve as the 2019-2020 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.
cagr / Monday, February 3, 2020
Professor Dan Stone, a renowned historian of the Holocaust, will serve as the 2023-2024 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation. He will spend a week in residence at the Center and USC Shoah Foundation in April and deliver the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture entitled “The Holocaust: An Unfinished History” on April 8, 2024.
research, academics / Friday, February 2, 2024
The 2015 Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century program in Hungary has finally begun after the most competitive application process in the history of the program.
Teaching with Testimony in 21st Century, Teaching with Testimony, hungary, budapest, Andrea Szőnyi, kori street, Martin Smok / Monday, July 20, 2015
A Modern Germany history course taught by Longwood University Professor Melissa Kravetz received an honorable mention for “Interesting Assignment” from the H-German online network for its IWitness-based final assignment.
iwitness / Wednesday, September 2, 2015
There is a current controversy about the allegation that the great mufti of Jerusalem instigated the final solution of the Nazis. While there is no doubt that Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a virulent anti-Semite, history shows that the Final Solution was conceived and implemented by Nazis and nobody else.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, holocaust, GAM, op-eds, cagr / Thursday, October 22, 2015
In a five-hour interview with USC Shoah Foundation, Justus Rosenberg refers to himself as “small fry,” “a cog,” an unimportant person. And perhaps it was for this reason that for decades, the Bard College literature professor hadn’t let on—to his colleagues, to his students, and even, for a time, to his own wife—that he had fought and outwitted the Nazis during World War II to save thousands from persecution.
in memoriam / Monday, January 10, 2022
Rena Quint has worked hard to find a balance between moving beyond memory and living inside of it, between yearning to know—and have proof of—where she came from and what she lost, but of not wanting to be defined by it.
/ Friday, October 14, 2022
This collection of photos offers a rare glimpse of an outdoor Jewish ghetto in the countryside – specifically in Kutno, Poland. The images depict a form of ghetto that was actually more common, but far less known, than the urban settings (i.e. Warsaw Ghetto) that are cemented in the public imagination.
cagr / Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Museum visitors can now interact with the testimonies of Holocaust survivors Sam Harris, Aaron Elster and Fritzie Fritzshall, in addition to Pinchas Gutter, three weekends a month from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
New Dimensions in Testimony, ndt, Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center / Tuesday, May 2, 2017
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.
/ Wednesday, November 2, 2022
A forgotten forced labor camp for Jews in Czech Republic has been rediscovered as a result of research conducted in the Visual History Archive by Marcel Mahdal, a graduate of USC Shoah Foundation’s Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century program.
/ Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Jeannie Woods was the only person from her school in Fort Payne, Al., to travel to Poland for "Auschwitz: The Past is Present," but she made sure she wasn't the only one to experience it.
past is present, poland / Monday, March 9, 2015
The 45-minute live-streamed broadcast provided a personalized look at USC Shoah Foundation’s recent trip to Poland for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
discovery, past is present, poland, a70, auschwitz / Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The educators from 11 different countries representing four continents will attend a four-day workshop during the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 2015.
past is present, teacher training, auschwitz / Thursday, November 6, 2014
Our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series continues with Lesson 6: Jewish Resistance.
echoes and reflections, genocide resistance, education, testimony, visual history archive / Friday, October 18, 2013
USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms, on education components of Auschwitz: The Past is Present.
past is present, discovery, iwitness / Tuesday, September 16, 2014
A few weeks ago, USC Student Body President Rini Sampath posted on her Facebook page about incidents of hatred and intolerance on campus. A Saturday night after a USC football game, Sampath had been walking down USC’s Fraternity Row when a man leaned out his frat house window and hurled a racial epithet and a beverage cup at her.
usc, Tolerance, rini Sampath, discrimination, op-eds / Monday, October 19, 2015
On January 25, 2019, the fifth- and sixth-graders of a school in Cottbus, Germany honored all those affected during the Holocaust by unveiling a Butterfly Project memorial to the 1.5 million children murdered during this dark moment in history. This first-ever initiative in Germany introduced a new, younger audience to real stories of local children.
op-eds / Wednesday, February 13, 2019
USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to hear of the recent passing of Millie Zuckerman, Holocaust survivor and longtime friend of the Institute. Millie was surrounded by her family when she passed away on August 9, 2020 at the age of 94. She was born on September 25, 1925 in Humniska, Poland and was a hidden child of the Holocaust.
/ Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Actress, activist speaks at international symposium convened by USC Shoah Foundation and Remember the Women Institute
Jane Fonda, symposium, performance, reading, sexual violence / Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Seventy years after the camp was liberated, institute helps bring survivors, teachers and others to milestone event. The Auschwitz camp is seen at the end of the tracks.
/ Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Roman Kent, Auschwitz survivor, speaking at the commemorationIt took months of preparation. But there is little one can do to prepare for a visit to Auschwitz.
a70, auschwitz / Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Bartov centered his discussion on how the East Galician town of Buczacz was transformed from a site of coexistence – where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews had all lived side-by-side for centuries – into a site of genocide during World War II.
cagr, mickey shapiro, sara shapiro, omer bartov / Monday, May 8, 2017

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