USC Shoah Foundation’s project to record testimonies of Jews who experienced persecution while living in the Middle East and Africa during the Holocaust will be a topic of discussion at the "Jews of the Middle East in the Shadow of the Holocaust" conference Jerusalem on April 5, 2016.

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.

Lisa Farese’s eighth-graders learn about hate and ethical editing by watching IWitness videos, and then go to different corners of the school to discuss important issues.

Researchers conducting the study for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences say their conclusions are all the more vital in an age where, thanks to the internet, youth are more susceptible to believing “fake information.”

Equipped with blankets and snacks and dressed in pajamas, 24 young women of USC’s Gamma Phi Beta settled into the living room of their sorority house last fall to watch a video of Edith Eger telling her story of survival and resilience during the Holocaust. Edith’s story struck a chord with many sisters, as she recounted how her friendships with other women saved her life in Auschwitz. In the discussion that followed, the women focused on themes of sisterhood, solidarity and cooperation.

Shortly after I saw Schindler’s List for the first time, I had an argument with my father about the value of such Hollywood blockbusters for teaching people about the Holocaust. We debated the following question: If Schindler’s List was the only source of information for people about the Holocaust would it perhaps be better if they did not see it at all? That is, is Schindler’s List better than nothing if what it shows is all you know about what happened to nearly six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe? My dad said (or shouted) yes, but I was unconvinced.

A panel discussion and appearances by World War II Soviet veterans marked the grand opening of the Blavatnik Archive Foundation's exhibit at USC Thursday night.

Chair/Moderador: Douglas Carranza, Central American Studies, CSU Northridge

English translation: “First, I would like to thank Mr. Steven Spielberg for the brilliant idea he had to create the Shoah Foundation so that all the cruelty committed by the Nazis is never forgotten. I hope that all that we spoke about here, and all that is told about the Shoah, be just a small grain of sand in the vast mountain that should be created (formed) for the much-desired  peace in the world. And all that took place in Germany and in Europe should never happen again. I would also like to say that the world should prevent Nazi cruelty from returning with all its might.

Jewish Holocaust survivor Agnes Adachi shares a story about the antisemitic name-calling she endured as a child attending school in Hungary during World War II.

RSVP Today! Get to know USC Shoah Foundation in this brief introductory webinar! Participants will have an opportunity to:

RSVP Today! Get to know USC Shoah Foundation in this brief introductory webinar! Participants will have an opportunity to:

Throughout the month of April, Genocide Awareness Month, we have been asking for you to send in your stories of home relating to different themes: spaces and places, family and resilience. We have received moving contributions from around the world — from Morocco to Argentina to Israel and the United States. We have received photographs and videos and beautiful pieces of writing and poetry -- family photographs from generations before and visions of life as it looks now. As we move into the last week of April, we want to share with you some of what you have so generously shared with us.

Hela Goldstein’s testimony given to the British Film and Photographic Unit on April 24, 1945 is believed to be the first-ever audio-visual testimony given by a Holocaust survivor. As a 22-year old victim, she spoke from Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi concentration camp where she was imprisoned upon liberation. Standing at the foot of a mass grave with her killers before her, Hela recounted what she experienced. By telling her story in the face of death, she became a foremother of testimony.

Eva (Geiringer) Schloss was 15 on January 27, 1945, the day the Soviet army first entered Auschwitz. But, she says, as the war raged on and uncertainty persisted, survival was a struggle even after liberation. Read about and view behind-the-scenes photos of Eva’s interactive biography for Dimensions in Testimony, an interview  that took more than 100 hours to capture with 3D technology.

Yad Vashem has collected approximately 4.8 million pages of testimony that restore the personal identities and record the brief life stories of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis. In honor of Yom HaShoah—Israel’s Day of Holocaust Remembrance—this webinar, led by a Yad Vashem educator, will highlight survivor testimony from Echoes & Reflections, and pages of testimony from Yad Vashem’s archive, to examine the importance of memory and how it serves us and future generations, to create a better world. This webinar is open to teachers and their students.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony enables people to ask questions that prompt real-time responses from pre-recorded video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide. This innovative project integrates advanced filming techniques, specialized display technologies, and next generation natural language processing to create an interactive biography that humanizes the individual story. Pairing Dimensions in Testimony with Echoes & Reflections helps educators pair historical context and effective pedagogical principles with this new and impactful technology. During this webinar, teachers will discover the variety of ways that they can meet and interact with Holocaust survivor, Pinchas Gutter.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux in the late 1930s who issued tens of thousands of visas to Jewish families, in direct violation of anti-Jewish laws instituted by Portugal’s fascist government at the time. For this act of resistance, Sousa Mendes faced trials and conviction, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in poverty and disgrace, and his 15 children scattered all over Europe and the U.S.

This December marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award™-winning film that brought Holocaust remembrance to the forefront of popular culture. To commemorate the anniversary, the USC Shoah Foundation and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City are hosting a special panel discussion on November 5 to examine the impact and legacy of the film and its influence on the evolution of Holocaust history and memory.

Borrowing from a tradition set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he assumed office in 1933 and announced an aggressive agenda for his first 100 days, USC Shoah Foundation will offer 100 Days to Inspire Respect starting Jan. 20, 2017, when America swears in its 45th president.

This seminar was a part of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies’ "Protecting Memory" project.

A new IWitness activity focuses on the complex situation in Hungary after liberation. Students interpret and evaluate different behaviors exemplified through the testimony and film clips and think about their past and present correlations.

In a new quantitative study, USC Shoah Foundation will evaluate how teachers’ familiarity with IWitness impacts implementation and students’ learning outcomes.

"The Girl and The Picture," a film by USC Shoah Foundation that centers on a survivor of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, has been nominated for a 2018 International Documentary Association Award, which is considered among the world’s most important recognitions of the documentary genre.

The controversial standoff between a tribal elder and a high school student that went viral has captivated the media and those on all sides of the political aisle. While all the details are still being uncovered, what strikes me is the climate that permeates our nation. We have devolved to a state of “othering” our countrymen, without reflecting on how our own actions may affect one another. We have stopped seeking to understand one another and instead just attack, sometimes even when the facts are not clear. 

The Institute mourns the passing of members of our community in 2020, including survivors who have given testimony Hanna Pankowsky, Dario Gabbai, Anneliese Nossbaum, Éva Székely,

Today, October 1st, marks the day in 1990 that Rwandan Patriotic Front troops crossed into Rwanda from neighboring Uganda and the beginning of a sequence of events that culminated in the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi that claimed as many as one million lives over the course of approximately 100 days.

How best to fuse compelling testimony with the latest innovative technologies to produce the most effective instructional materials for students and educators around the world?

Holocaust survivors from the Bay Area of California who have shared their experiences on video, and in numerous in-person appearances, were recognized for their contributions at a ceremony in San Francisco on June 9, 2013.

Steven Spielberg, founder of the USC Shoah Foundation, said it is vital for genocides to be remembered through eyewitness testimony in his keynote address this morning at the United Nations’ International Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony.