In the 1980s, a tiny woman in her 50s named Ruth Westheimer shocked and delighted the world with her blunt advice – delivered in a grandmotherly German accent – about sex. She became a media sensation and remains a household name as “Dr. Ruth.” Less known is her perilous journey to get there – a story that includes her survival of the Holocaust and immigration to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, where she briefly became a sniper in a Jewish paramilitary force.

Professor Taner Akçam, Kaloosdian & Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, gave a public lecture about Father Krikor Guerguerian’s Archive, a collection of thousands of documents about the Armenian genocide that this scholar and Armenian genocide survivor collected from the 1930s to 1988. Professor Akçam and his graduate students have recently digitized and classified the collection, which is now available to the public.

After months of beta testing with educators around the globe, USC Shoah Foundation is launching the brand new IWalk app, which offers 29 IWalks in seven countries and eight languages.

On March 5, 2019, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Richard Hovannisian, Professor Emeritus of History at University of California, Los Angeles.

On April 25, 2019, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research celebrated the fifth anniversary of its founding.

Gabor Toth, 2018-2019 Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on his project to find, represent, and reflect on victims’ experiences during the Holocaust. 

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.

Danielle Willard-Kyle, the 2018-2019 Center Graduate Research fellow, gave a public lecture about her month-long research at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the testimonies of Jewish survivors who went through Italian Displaced Persons camps after World War II

Bieke Van Camp, the 2018-2019 Robert J.

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.

Ayşenur Korkmaz, a PhD candidate in European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has been awarded the 2019-2020 Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Ioanida Costache, a PhD Candidate in Music at Stanford University, has been awarded the 2019-2020 Breslauer, Rutman and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Maël LeNoc, a PhD Candidate in Geography at Texas State University, has been awarded the 2019-2020 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Brigittine M.

Alex Paiva Jr is a programmer helping build the Dimension in Testimony platform by using AI services to allow for an interactive experience with testimonies from survivor. Previously in his career Alex has worked on building and implementing enterprise level applications. He received a BS in Computer Engineering degree from California State University Northridge. 

Larina Palacpac supports the financial management of the Institute by assisting in account reconciliation, budget development and financial reporting. Prior to joining USC Shoah Foundation, Larina worked as a Budget/Business Technician at the USC Dornsife Business Office for six years where she was responsible for processing procurement orders and reimbursement requests for a high-volume research intensive department. She received her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing from the University of Southern California.

 

Their loved ones – including women and children – were slaughtered by the military and tossed into mass graves. For more than 30 years, survivors of the Guatemalan Genocide against the indigenous population assumed nobody cared about their stories. After all, nobody had ever bothered to ask.

Move-in day for students at the University of Southern California this week led to a remarkable small-world moment between two strangers with ties to the Holocaust in the public-exhibit space of USC Shoah Foundation’s lobby. Fifty-eight-year-old Alexander Moissis of the San Francisco Bay Area and his wife were helping their freshman son move into a dormitory when Alexander decided to steal away for a few minutes to visit USC Shoah Foundation, which is located on campus next to the dorm.

Each year, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosts an interdisciplinary team of scholars from different universities and different countries for one week so that they can develop and discuss a collaborative innovative research project in the field of Holocaust and Genocide

 

Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture. Even before the end of the Shoah, survivor historians in parts of Eastern Europe liberated from Nazi occupation collected testimonies and conducted interviews with fellow survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research cosponsors this lecture, which is part of the Fall 2019 Hebrew Union College-USC Casden Institute Faculty and Graduate Student Research Seminar.

This lecture offers an examination of pro-state paramilitary violence in the Syrian conflict. It analyzes the emergence and transformation of pro-state paramilitarism in Syria in the context of the uprising and civil war. It focuses on the Syrian government’s deployment of the Shabbiha (later renamed ‘National Defense Forces’), irregular paramilitaries dressed in civilian gear and committing a broad spectrum of violence, including torture, kidnapping, assassination, sexual violence, and a string of massacres across the country.

Alan Auyeung oversees the collection, management and transfer area of broadcast video equipment; administers educational, instructional and reference materials collections; and provides services for patrons including ensuring requests for distribution copies of the archive are fulfilled.  Prior to joining USC, Alan worked at a Los-Angeles area post-production technical support service provider for 20 years as an Electronic Technician, with experiences in post-production systems and equipment repair, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

The “comfort women” issue is perhaps Japan’s most contentious present-day diplomatic quandary.  Inside Japan, the issue is dividing the country across clear ideological lines. Supporters and detractors of “comfort women” are caught in a relentless battle over empirical evidence, the validity of oral testimony, the number of victims, the meaning of sexual slavery, and the definition of coercive recruitment. Credibility, legitimacy and influence serve as the rallying cry for all those involved in the battle.

WHY ATTEND THIS PROGRAM? Philadelphia is home to the new Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza. The Memorial Plaza features USC Shoah Foundation’s IWalk app that guides visitors through the interpretive elements of the Memorial Plaza with background information and personal testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. To support educators’ integration of this innovative resource, the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation and USC Shoah Foundation have partnered with ADL to provide professional development to educators in the Philadelphia area.