The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear.

It’s been 80 years since Kristallnacht, a pogrom organized by Nazis against Jews in Germany and Austria, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks, the threat of antisemitic violence remains a horrifying possibility. Access educational resources that draw from the Institute's Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research welcomed the University of Munich’s Maximilian Strnad to USC last week.

Another year dominated by the ongoing pandemic draws to a close. From producing animated films to conducting interviews, forging new partnerships and sharing incredible testimonies, 2021 was a year to remember. Here are some of the highlights of the work the Institute has accomplished.

Betty Grebenschikoff and Ana María Wahrenberg were inseparable best friends before the Holocaust. Separated when their families each fled the Nazis, they each believed the other had perished. They were reunited just a few short months ago thanks to a combination of international partnerships, astute research, and the power of survivor testimony.

January 18, 2012: Resistance during the Holocaust is still mostly seen in terms of organized or armed group activities, yet this perspective overlooks individual acts of opposition. Up to now, the availability of sources for analyzing the behavior of German Jews has been limited. Historians used reports originated by the Nazi state and/or written post-war testimonies. In those sources individual acts of opposition barely emerge. However, a closer analysis of the micro level of Nazi society challenges the common image of German Jews as passive victims.

Dr. Justyna Matkowska, postdoctoral researcher at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poland and adjunct faculty at SUNY, will uncover the stories and struggles of the Roma and Sinti people during World War II, bringing new perspectives to this lesser-known aspect of Holocaust history and informing modern approaches to remembrance

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce its cooperation with a German government funded multi-institutional Holocaust research project entitled #LastSeen - Pictures of Nazi Deportations.

In this clip, Henry Sinason, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, recalls how widespread Nazi antisemitic propaganda was all over the city where he lived.

The medical experiments of Josef Mengele on concentration camp prisoners are well known and documented – but journalist Arthur Allen has written a new book, with help from the Visual History Archive, about two little-known doctors whose experiments actually saved lives and were in themselves acts of defiance against the Nazis.

Teresa Walch, the 2016-2017 Inaugural Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the calculated and gradual exclusion of Jews from public spaces and ultimately from their own homes that began in the 1930s.

This clip reel features several Holocaust survivors talking about the antisemitism they experienced in relation to the sports they played during the Nazi era in Germany.

Making DiT accessible at no-cost to educators and students through IWitness provides students anywhere in the world with the opportunity to have a conversational experience with survivors of the Holocaust and other witnesses to history. And at the Holocaust & Genocide Centres in Johannesburg and Durban, that’s exactly what students did, with a total of 400 learners interfacing with an interactive recorded video of Pinchas, a Jewish survivor of six Nazi concentration camps.

 In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of AuschwitzJoin us for the US film premiere of "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" Museum of Tolerance9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los AngelesTuesday, January 27 at 7 p.m. Presented by Museum of Tolerance, USC Shoah Foundation with the support of the British Council

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.   - Zygmunt Bauman 2018 Polish-Israeli Crisis: History, Trauma, and Politics of Cultural Memory The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear. 1968-2018

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life invite proposals for their 2018 International Conference “New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison”.

The child of Holocaust survivors, George Schaeffer has supported USC Shoah Foundation’s mission since he first heard about it. His parents met after the Soviets liberated Ravensbrück, the Nazis’ largest concentration camp for women. His father had been sent there as a laborer. The couple married in 1945, the same year they were freed.

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.

Adriana Reynoso is a Holocaust Indexer for USC Shoah Foundation. She also supports the training program of new indexers for Holocaust and Guatemalan Genocide testimonies.

There is a current controversy about the allegation that the great mufti of Jerusalem instigated the final solution of the Nazis. While there is no doubt that Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a virulent anti-Semite, history shows that the Final Solution was conceived and implemented by Nazis and nobody else.

Kurt, an American soldier, and Gerda, a Holocaust survivor, recall how they met the day Kurt liberated her from a derelict factory where Nazi soldiers abandoned her and other women during a death march.

The need for continued memorialization of the fate of the Roma and Sinti population of Europe has never been more important.

Holocaust survivor Gloria Lachman remembers Nazi soldiers appearing at her house and physically forcing her grandmother to vote for Hitler, an experience that caused her to deeply value the right to vote.

Famed musician and Holocaust survivor Victor Borge describes how he was targeted by Nazi sympathizers in Denmark. They harrassed him at his concerts, attacked him in the street, and published articles about him in their papers.

Edith Lowy describes how her family hid during the Holocaust and after a series of event, the family decided to voluntarily march into the nearby labor camp to avoid the consequences of being caught by the Nazis.

The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series continues with Lesson 9: Perpetrators, Collaborators and Bystanders

Holocaust survivor testimony to enhance education initiative in the Czech Republic In the Czech Republic, Holocaust survivors’ eyewitness testimonies will soon be used to teach a different aspect of local history: the imprisonment of Czechoslovak citizens in the Soviet Gulag.

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.

George Auman escaped Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s and immigrated to the United States. He later joined the military and helped liberate Nordhausen concentration camp. Auman describes the importance of learning from the Holocaust and speaking about his experience.

Holocaust survivor David Fertig was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922 to Polish parents. He escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport at age 16 to live with cousins in England, where he joined the Royal Air Force. (02:04:22)