The fourth museum installation of New Dimensions in Testimony kicked off last week at CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. It will remain open to the public for the next three months.

USC Shoah Foundation’s soon-to-launch IWitness initiative, called “100 Days to Inspire Respect,” provides teachers of civics, history, English and other subjects with 100 thought-provoking resources that tackle hate, racism, intolerance, xenophobia and more.

My father was born and raised in Sighet, Romania, just down the road from the Elie Wiesel's simple blue childhood home. When the Nobel laureate's house was spray-painted with antisemitic slurs this summer, it felt like an attack on my own familial history.

The Cold War began its thaw 25 years ago, then apparently melted sufficiently for us to get on with our lives without fear. Surprisingly, the slow thaw is still in progress.

Pictured: Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz who gave his testimony to the Azrieli Foundation in 2018. His interview is one of 31 new testimonies from the Azrieli Foundation that have been indexed and catalogued in the Visual History Archive. This week’s semi-annual VHA release adds 128 new testimonies to the 55,000-strong collection. All the updated testimonies are available at 163 access sites worldwide.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross.

As an educator who has used IWitness to teach various subjects, units and topics here are some tips to integrating testimony into any curriculum, including Science.

I did not sleep well last night. It was not the kind of sleeplessness brought on by jet lag, stress or workload. It is best described as a kind of numbness that leaves one physically discharged, emotionally drained and deeply troubled. I just completed one the most sedentary days I’ve had in months, just sitting in a chair listening to one of the most intelligent, sophisticated, gentle, yet strong people I know tell me about his life.

French film director Claude Lanzmann spoke candidly about his latest film, The Last of the Unjust, at a USC School of Cinematic Arts screening hosted by USC Shoah Foundation Tuesday night.

The contest aims to perpetuate in students the memory of the resistance and the deportation in France during the Holocaust so that they can draw inspiration from it and draw civic lessons from it in their lives today.

Two supporters of USC Shoah Foundation, Leonard Blavatnik and Trevor Pears, and Holocaust survivor Frank Lowy were awarded knighthoods in Queen Elizabeth II’s 2017 Birthday Honors List.

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.

The University of Southern California has established the Center for Advanced Genocide Research to study how and why such instances of mass violence occur, and how to intervene in the cycle that can lead to them.

Testimony from the Visual History Archive is being used as evidence to posthumously bestow Sister Louise the highest honor in the world for Holocaust rescuers, the title of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem.

Historian Tyaglyy arrives in Los Angeles to make use of archive.

For years, Celina Biniaz, one of the youngest people saved by Oskar Schindler, did not tell anyone – not even her children – that she was a Holocaust survivor. She feared no one could comprehend what she had been through, and she didn’t want to impose the trauma of her childhood upon her son and daughter. Celina’s reluctance to speak ended in 1994. That year, director Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List. He established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became the USC Shoah Foundation.

USC Shoah Foundation’s associate director of research, Dan Leshem, participated in Cardozo School of Law’s Law and Film course taught by documentary filmmaker/historian Christian Delage on Sept. 29.

IWitness has published a new activity about Kristallnacht just in time for its 77th anniversary this November.

Students, faculty, staff, and the public will have access.

USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education is pleased to announce its Fellows for 2013/2014 academic year.

Seventy-five years ago this week, Nazi Germany entered Austria. With most Austrians in support of the move, the country was incorporated into Germany on March 13, 1938.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence Omer Bartov began his residence today with a Facebook Live interview about his work.

The USC Shoah Foundation and The Latin American Network for Education on the Shoah (Red LAES) have launched a new educational web page featuring the first Spanish-language Dimensions in Testimony (DiT), an interactive biography that invites students to engage in conversation with the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Max Eisen, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau more than 20 times as an educator and testified at the trials of two SS guards in 2015, more than 70 years after his entire family was killed in Nazi concentration camps. Max’s memoir, By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz, was the 2019 winner of Canada Reads, a Canadian Broadcasting Company “battle of the books” program, and was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize in 2017. 

A distinguished voice of history has been lost today in the passing of Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent, who captured the agony of the Holocaust and the power of love in his telling of a simple story about his childhood dog, Lala. Kent was 92.

The initiative will support educators by providing them with tools and training to responsibly engage their students now and into the future.

An animated short film that brings to life the remarkable childhood journey of media personality, author and Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer netted one of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival’s three coveted Audience Awards last month. Produced by USC Shoah Foundation and Delirio Films, Ruth: A Little Girl’s Big Journey traces Dr. Ruth’s escape from Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The film was awarded the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival’s Best Short Film prize in early April.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens, a wartime hero who became a well-known character actor when he moved to the United States. He was 91. Born Curt Lowenstein on Nov. 17, 1925 in Germany, Lowen and his family had planned to emigrate to the United States as World War II was starting, but they were stopped from leaving the Netherlands when the Germans invaded that country. He was briefly deported to the Westerbork concentration camp in 1943, but he was released because of his father’s business connections.

On November 7th 1996, Nancy Fisher, a bundle of nerves, knocked on the door of Erika Gold’s home in Leonia, New Jersey. She was there on behalf of the Shoah Foundation to interview Erika, a Holocaust survivor. Nancy was terrified to conduct the interview. Knowing only the Nancy Fisher of today, I am shocked to hear this. Nancy exudes a calm wisdom, care, and confidence that only 25 years of Holocaust survivor interviewing could foster.

McBride will first give a lunchtime workshop on how to use the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. At 7 p.m., he will give a lecture "Of course, they were Neighbors": Testimony, Archives and the Holocaust in Ukraine.” Both will be held at Belk Library and Information Commons room 114.