In January 2015, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Poland with other students from across the country for USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: Past is Present program. We toured various sites in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, with teachers and our friend Paula Lebovics, a survivor of the Holocaust. Each point in the trip was remarkable and extremely inspiring. However, the visit to the Auschwitz-Birkeanu Memorial Museum impacted me the most.

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.

A handful of witnesses in the genocide trial against former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt appear in Pamela Yates’ film “500 Years,” but her cameras captured the entire proceeding. The case is considered a landmark in human rights law.

As a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who survived the tragedy on Feb. 14, 2018, I have spent the past year grappling with this question.

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.

In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel, the USC Shoah Foundation and Tablet Studios announced a partnership to collect, archive, and make available testimonies of survivors, bereaved family members, and rescuers who risked their lives to save others during the assault.

April 7 is the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The day of remembrance marks the start of the 100-day genocidal campaign in which an estimated 800,000 Rwandans—mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus—were killed by well-organized mobs of Hutu extremists. Edith Umugiraneza, a survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda who now works for USC Shoah Foundation, says false information and manipulated facts helped ignite and sustain the violence, and even today threaten to distort our understanding of events.

Like many of you, I sat in front of my television on the evening of Friday, November 13, 2015 and watched in horror as news of the terrorist attacks in Paris flooded the airways. "Not again," I thought to myself. My heart ached for people whom I had never met and for a city and country thousands of miles away.

Longtime USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro has given a gift to fund an endowed research fellowship program at the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in honor of his parents, Sara and Asa Shapiro, who both survived the Holocaust.

IWitness users looking for secondary source material can now use keywords to search "The Holocaust and Other Genocides: An Introduction," the first digital book to be integrated into the IWitness platform.

The 22 new testimonies will bring the total number in the Nanjing Massacre collection to 72.

On the heels of filming its first-ever Mandarin-language testimony last week, New Dimensions in Testimony added another language to its repertoire of genocide survivor interviews: Holocaust survivor Nimrod “Zigi” Ariav’s Hebrew-language testimony, filmed this week at USC Institute for Creative Technologies.

Through this set of resources, students learn about the immigrant and refugee experience, including specific definitions for migrant groups, the processes by which newcomers settle into their new home countries and the complex and difficult experience it can be.

Starting Thursday, Tribeca Film Festival attendees will be able to walk alongside Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as he tours the concentration camp where his parents and sister lost their lives during World War II.

One year after the Future of Storytelling Festival exhibited USC Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony, Gustman has been invited back to give a talk at the 2017 Future of Storytelling Summit on October 4-5.

The 1:30-3:30 p.m. panel on the second day of the Digital Approaches to Genocide Studies conference at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will gather three scholars who create maps, not of geographic places of genocide, but rather the personal journeys and social networks of survivors as they went on their trajectories through the Holocaust and Cambodian Genocide.

“My mother very rarely spoke about the Holocaust or about what happened to her or how she, my father, my brother and myself survived the Holocaust as a complete family,” said Eddy Boas, whose book "I Am Not A Victim -- I Am A Survivor" chronicles the story of his family. “But the inspiration for my story actually came from the interview my mother did with USC Shoah Foundation in March 1995 – she would only participate in the interview if I was allowed to sit next to her.”

During the trials, she worked as a research analyst. Her command of the English and German languages made her an invaluable resource to the prosecution.

During the Institute's inaugural summer William P. Lauder Internship Program, about two-dozen young people came to USC Shoah Foundation from across the country to participate in the intensive program, which focused on the causes and impacts of injustice and the ways an individual can respond.

Southern California students in the seventh grade and above are welcome to apply to the highly competitive internship program, which provides a dynamic learning opportunity for young people who will engage with testimonies from survivors and witnesses of genocide.

We commemorate the students and teachers who were killed on Feb. 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and we gratefully acknowledge the class of Ivy Schamis, the recipient of USC Shoah Foundation’s inaugural Stronger Than Hate Educator Award.

I much enjoyed my stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in early March, just before the pandemic turned all of our lives upside down. Meeting the wonderful members of the staff and seeing how much the operations of both the Foundation and the Center have grown since my last visit in 2014 were remarkable experiences.

The third annual Stronger Than Hate Challenge is now open and offers students the opportunity to win $10,000 in prizing. Students aged 13-18 are encouraged to submit a project demonstrating how a community can be stronger than hate. Full rules and submission details are available here.

USC Shoah Foundation will next week launch the U.S. premiere of The Tattooed Torah, an animated film that tells the inspirational story of a Torah rescued and restored after the Holocaust.  The film, based on Marvell Ginsburg’s beloved children’s book of the same name, recounts the true story of the rescue and restoration of a small Torah from Brno, Czechoslovakia. In the film, the Torah is described as the most “precious possession” of the Jewish people and is a symbol that represents memories tied to cultural heritage, family, hope and resilience. 

USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education today launched the fourth annual Stronger Than Hate Challenge offering students the opportunity to win $10,000 in prizes. The challenge encourages students aged 13-18 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to work individually or in groups of 2-4 on multimedia projects that demonstrate the power of story to create a community that is stronger than hate.

USC Shoah Foundation is bringing The Willesden Project educational initiative to a group of 500 Ukrainian refugees and other guests in Warsaw, Poland this weekend. The event will also feature a musical performance by USC Shoah Foundation partner and celebrated pianist Mona Golabek.

USC Shoah Foundation partner and celebrated author, performer and concert pianist Mona Golabek this week brings her virtual, theatrical performance based on The Children of Willesden Lane book to 50,000 students and educators in Texas. Premiering as part of Texas Holocaust Remembrance Week, the Willesden READS performance promises to be the largest Holocaust education event ever to be held in the state. The virtual program and accompanying live events this week in Texas was made possible with the generous support of the Morton H. Meyerson Family Foundation.

Steve's passion for fighting antisemitism and educating the next generation led him to join the Board of Councilors in 1997 when the organization was in its infancy. He has remained committed to our mission, serving as Chair of the Board of Councilors from 2015 to 2019.

High school teacher Peter Cook discusses the importance of character education, and putting "culture before content," in today's classrooms.

A group of dedicated USC students is reviving the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association (SFISA).