In this lecture, Irina Rebrova discusses her research on the process of remembrance and translation of the memory about the Holocaust in the North Caucasus, South of Russia. She studies the mechanism of storytelling by Holocaust survivors interviewed by the Shoah Foundation in the early Post-Soviet states in the 1990s.

Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is a scholar of early modern history, specializing in Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, cultural, legal, and social history, as well as the history of transmission of historical knowledge in the premodern and modern periods. Dr.

USC Shoah Foundation is committed to expanding its archive to include testimony from survivors and witnesses of other genocides and crimes against humanity, and to make such testimony available for educational use around the world, alongside more than 57,466 testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.To that end, USC Shoah Foundation works with partners around the world, sharing the expertise the Institute acquired through the collection, indexing, preservation, and dissemination of the testimonies that are currently in the Visual History Archive.

Chair: Cyrus Shahabi, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Spatial Sciences, USC

Chair: Jeremy Mikecz, Digital Humanities and History, USC

Chair: Gabor Toth, Digital Humanities and History, Yale University

Agnes talks about delivering messages to the Jews and how she brought them to her aunt’s home where they could hide. This is a part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Women’s History Month Clip series.

Jewish survivor Edgar “Eddie” Lion remembers the brutal treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis before the war, and a particularly disturbing scene outside of his dormitory. This clip is part of the Visual History Archive's Concordia University Centre for Oral History collection.

Professor Marion Kaplan, 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave the annual Shapiro Scholar public lecture on gender and the Holocaust.

Holocaust survivor Minna Aspler -- who spent time in the Warsaw Ghetto -- recalls the personality of Emanuel Ringelblum, who had been her history teacher. Ringelblum went on to lead a clandestine effort with other Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants to amass an archive that would eventually shine a light on the atrocities that occurred there. Aspler's testimony, recorded by McGill University in Montreal in 1995, is stored in USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive.

Chair: Lyn Boyd-Judson, Global Humanities and Ethics, USC

Paula Cuellar Cuellar, 2016-2017 USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Center Graduate Research Fellow, discuss esher dissertation research on scorched earth operations in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Tento střihový film, který si můžete stáhnout do svého počítače, obsahuje úryvky ze svědectví pamětníků Holocaustu z archivu vizuální historie USC Shoah Foundation. Všichni se narodili v polském městě Osvětim (Oświęcim), dnes nechvalně proslulém díky systému koncentračních táborů pojmenovaném Auschwitz, který ve městě a jeho okolí vybudovala německá okupační správa.

Peter Mancall, PhD Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute Professor of History and Anthropology University of Southern California

This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.

On October 11, 2016, Dr. Benjamin Madley presented a lecture detailing just some of his exhaustive research on the systematic extermination of California’s indigenous population from the first wave of gold rush settlers to the beginning of California’s third decade as an American state. The result of that research is his book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.

On Thursday, January 19, 2017, after a screening of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Dr. Wolf Gruner, Center of Advanced Genocide Research Director and Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, joined a panel with Dr. Michael Renov, Haskell Wexler Endowed Chair in Documentary, Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Dr. Steven Ross, Professor of History and Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.

Chair: Jason Lustig, History, UCLA 

In this event, the Center's two student research fellows will discuss the testimony-based research they conducted during Summer 2020. Exploring testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive's Nanjing Massacre collection, Lucy Sun (USC undergraduate student, History major, Psychology and Law minor) researched the resistance of women during the Nanjing Massacre.

This lecture features two of our summer 2017 research fellows: Maria Zalewska, PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies and Mellon PhD Fellow in the Digital Humanities, USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Noha Ayoub, USC undergraduate student majoring in Law, History and Culture and minoring in Middle East Studies.

In the spring of 1915, the Young Turk regime of the Ottoman began a genocide against its Armenian population under the cover of World War I. This minute-long excerpt features survivor Haroutune Aivazian.  He describes the horror his mother faced when a town crier in Marash, a city in Cilcia in South West Anatolia, called for the Armenians of the community to gather in a square just outside of the town for deportation. As his mother prepared for the journey, a local Turkish man warned the family that deportation meant death.

On November 19, 2015, visiting scholar Maximilian Strnad gave a lecture on the role that intermarriage played in the survival of German Jews during World War II.

Dr. Shira Klein is Associate Professor, Chair, Department of History at Wilkinson College at Chapman University. Dr. Klein focuses on Italian Jewry, Jewish migration, and the Holocaust. Her book, Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was selected as finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award. Her next book project will examine Italian Jews’ participation in Italy’s African empire from the 1890s to World War II, including their ties to indigenous Jews in Libya and Ethiopia.  

For 25 years, USC Shoah Foundation has given voice to survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides with the goal of educating people around the world, and inspiring action. The 55,000 women and men in its Visual History Archive® share their life stories — of trauma and loss, as well as culture and family, and ultimately survival. Representing more than a century of history, these testimonies provide an enduring legacy of memory. As long as there are still witnesses ready to speak, their voices must be heard.

In this keynote from March 28, 2023, in recognition of the Mickey Shapiro Endowed Chair in Holocaust Education Research at the University of Southern California, distinguished scholar Mary Helen Immordino-Yang suggests that the foundation of the future of education is rooted in story – stories that help us care.

As we look ahead in 2018, we offer a few moments of joyful music from the Visual History Archive.

Anne Bertolino leaves a message for future generations about standing up to hate and not letting history repeat itself.

Professor Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London, offered a global perspective of the origins and history of concentration camps.

When Michael Hagopian made his first classic acclaimed documentary on the Armenian Genocide in 1975, nominated for two Emmys, he titled the film “The Forgotten Genocide.” Since then decades have passed and hundreds of publications in a variety of languages have been written on the subject. The Armenian Genocide has now taken its rightfully important place within the field of genocide studies. It is not a “forgotten genocide” anymore, despite the existence of a denialist State - Turkey, which has developed denialism into an Industry.

This video shows select clips from survivors of the Holocaust, as well as other genocides that have occurred in recent history.