Anna Lee, a junior at USC from Los Angeles, California majoring in English Literature with minors in Spanish and Teaching English as a Second language (TESOL), has been chosen as the 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Josef Feingold describes in Spanish, his decision for not boarding the ship “Struma” on December 12 1941, set to sail from Constanta, Romania, en route to British Mandate Palestine, for fear the ship was unsafe and too overcrowded for the journey. He relates that, with almost 800 refugees on board, the Struma reached Istanbul, Turkey but it was not allowed to land. Instead, it was anchored offshore thus forcing the passengers to stay on board for several weeks. The Struma was finally set adrift, but was torpedoed and it sank off the coast of Sile, Turkey, on February 24, 1942.

The Visual History Archive added 1,302 new testimonies, 1,361 new interviewees, six new experience groups, one new historic event and 10 new collections in a single update over the weekend.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish Ana Benkel de Vinocur describes her first impressions of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp upon arrival from the Lódz Ghetto in May 1944. She remembers her reaction when the heavy doors of the deportation train opened and she saw prisoners, in striped uniforms, bald, looking like skeletons. She speaks of the seizure of all her belongings and of a selection process in which she remained with her mother, but was separated from her father and brother.

Used extensively in Europe and Latin America.

In the month of July, Julia Calderón, PhD candidate in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Los Angeles, will work with the Center as a visiting scholar and summer professional intern. Julia Calderón earned a Summer Internship Professionalization grant from the Spanish and Portuguese Department at UCLA that enables her to work at an organization of her choosing over the summer.

In the field of genocide studies and human rights, storytelling is the most impactful way to give information weight. And the first step to doing justice to the stories and the survivors who provide their testimonies is ensuring they’re translated accurately and with context.

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. 

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish

Drawing on 25 years of experience investigating human rights violations and genocide in Guatemala, Dr. Sanford will discuss the theory and practice of forensic exhumations, victim identification, archival and testimonial research, and their interplay in legal processes and community desires for justice. She will explore the ways in which science, law, and justice complement and collide with one another as investigations move forward from the field to legal courts and the court of public opinion.

The grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, Aliza Liberman wonders whether her children will feel as connected to its horrors and lessons as she does. As a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council, Liberman is doing what she can to ensure future generations feel that bond by supporting the Institute’s mission. From a young age, the Holocaust was part of her life. “The
fact that my grandfather never talked much about his life and his family in Poland always moved me to know more,” Liberman says.

Today IWitness launched its entire suite of new content and features to coincide with the new school year, including 13 new multimedia activities on a variety of languages and topics.

Professor Jessica Marglin is passionate about the testimonies of Sephardic Jews in the Visual History Archive, and that passion has rubbed off onto her students as well. Marglin is Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. She is a scholar of the history of Jews in the Middle East and teaches an undergraduate course about Sephardic Jews during the Holocaust.

A longtime scholar affiliate of the USC Shoah Foundation has received a $50,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to transcribe and translate the Maya-Kaqchikel and Spanish-language testimonies of survivors of the Guatemalan genocide.

USC Shoah Foundation is pleased to welcome its postdoctoral research fellow, Dr. Justin Elliot, who will be in residence at the Institute for a couple of years. In addition to his residency at the Institute, Dr. Elliot is affiliated with USC Dornsife Department of History. Dr.

The Holocaust is not widely taught in Latin America. Few books on the subject are available in Spanish, and university classes that do touch on the history are sometimes outdated.

In her presentation Estelle Tarica will discuss her recent book about how Holocaust memory and history circulate in Latin America and shape the ways Jews and non-Jews understand the state violence they experienced during the Cold War period.

Find out what new activities, testimonies and enhancements are coming to IWitness in time for the start of the 2016-2017 school year.

Two USC scholars – graduate students Emily Geminder and Vaclav Masek - will share the Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2022.

Google Translate is now embedded in the IWitness website, making it possible, for the first time, for non-English speaking users to view the site in their own language.

Wolf Gruner, Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, has published two new books about discriminatory policies against two distinct groups: the Jews in the annexed territories of the Third Reich and the indigenous people of Bolivia in the 19th century.

Expanding its reach in South America, USC Shoah Foundation has reached an agreement with a museum in Chile to house nearly 100 testimonies from Holocaust survivors.

A little over three months after staff finished indexing the Armenian Genocide Collection, work on creating English-language subtitles for the collection is progressing quickly, with subtitles for over 100 testimonies already completed.

Six months after it launched, the online guest book has gathered a remarkable collection of messages from people who have been affected by testimony. All are encouraged to sign the guest book until Dec. 31, 2014.

A USC Soá Alapítvány és a Zachor Alapítvány immár harmadik éve hirdetett művészeti pályázatot általános iskola felső tagozatán tanuló és középiskolás diákok számára. Idén január 27-e, az auschwitz-birkenaui láger felszabadulásának 70. évfordulója és a holokauszt nemzetközi emléknapja tiszteletére vártuk a pályaműveket.

For the past two months, the USC Shoah Foundation communications department has had a temporary new member: Leonie Schueler-Springorum, a recent high school graduate from Germany who has been an enthusiastic assistant on a variety of communications tasks.

While students across America enjoy their summer vacation, the education department at USC Shoah Foundation is busily making major new features to its award-winning IWitness educational website for educators and their students that will be ready by the time school resumes in the fall.

Join Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor as she discusses the historical events that have led to major changes in the linguistic profile of Jewish communities around the world.

Called Gypsy, Tsigan, Gitane, Cygane, Zigeuner, the Roma people have wandered the world for a thousand years—their mysterious origins a source of fascination as well as suspicion. They’ve been romanticized but also brutally persecuted by the more settled and orderly cultures they’ve traveled through and enriched.

Attendees of the 2015 Ambassadors for Humanity gala in Detroit on Thursday will get to hear remarks from a Michigan educator who is one of USC Shoah Foundation’s most passionate colleagues.