The ties between Cornell University and USC Shoah Foundation are many, and now, they are permanent: The Cornell University Library has acquired access to the Visual History Archive in perpetuity. Cornell University became the 52nd site to provide full access to the archive on an annual basis in November 2015, and the impact on research and education has been significant. This impact can now continue for generations to come, as the witnesses who gave testimony had hoped.

This week, we pay tribute to the life and work of Ilia Salita, a key partner and friend to the Institute of many years.

USC Shoah Foundation—working with on-site partners National Historical Museums in Sweden and the Institution for Jewish Culture in Sweden—recently began filming two Swedish-language Dimensions in Testimony interviews in Stockholm, Sweden utilizing innovative social distancing and filming techniques.

The portrait I have been working on of Dario isn’t complete yet, but what an honor it was to have met him and is now to engage with his testimony through the act of painting,” said David Kassan of hi

The Institute is sad to learn that world champion swimmer and Holocaust survivor Éva Székely passed away at 92.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to hear of the recent passing of Millie Zuckerman, Holocaust survivor and longtime friend of the Institute. Millie was surrounded by her family when she passed away on August 9, 2020 at the age of 94. She was born on September 25, 1925 in Humniska, Poland and was a hidden child of the Holocaust.

My life and my work at USC Shoah Foundation are strongly connected to the joys and the sorrows of the Armenian community. Thus, I was both shocked and heartened by recent separate events that demonstrated how far we’ve come in advancing human dignity and how far we still have to go.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened by the recent loss of Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor who – along with her twin sister – endured cruel experiments conducted on her at Auschwitz, and, half a century later, sparked controversy by publicly forgiving the Nazis who tormented her and killed her parents and two older sisters. She went on to found CANDLES Museum and Education Center in Indiana.

USC Shoah Foundation is joining forces with The Genocide Education Project, which is dedicated to bringing curriculum about the World War I-era Armenian Genocide into high schools across the United States.

USC Shoah Foundation —The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) and Fox Searchlight Pictures today announced a partnership to develop classroom curriculum tied to JOJO RABBIT, Taika Waititi’s heartfelt World War II anti-hate satire.

New video challenge inspires students and educators to fight against discrimination, injustice and hate by using the power of testimony to create a brighter future.

In an effort to spark a social movement against hatred in all forms, USC Shoah Foundation, established by Steven Spielberg after his experience filming “Schindler’s List”— which gave voice to survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides through  education and action – and Discovery Education, today announced the Teaching with Testimony 2019 Stronger Than Hate Challenge winners.

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.

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. 

USC Shoah Foundation, Blavatnik Archive partner on adding soldiers’ narratives to searchable database. The project expands focus on veterans discussing their daily lives, Jewish experience before and during WWII.

The USC Shoah Foundation hosted winners of the 20th Annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest on Monday, June 24. Participants were asked to create artistic or written responses to Holocaust survivor testimony from IWitness or The 1939 Society’s archives, in the form of poetry, prose, artwork or short film.

Leading up to the one-year anniversary of the deadly synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, USC Shoah Foundation staff members trained educators in that metro area last week about how to use video testimonies of Holocaust witnesses as a tool to teach empathy, understanding and respect.

When it comes to implementing Nazi Germany’s Final Solution, few places were more successful than Nazi-occupied Lithuania. More than 90 percent of the country’s wartime Jewish population of 250,000 was murdered in the Holocaust.

Miriam Katin survived the Holocaust as a toddler because her quick-thinking mother faked their deaths in Budapest at a historically perilous time for Jews in Hungary. Now 77, Katin has a thriving career as a graphic artist whose humor cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker. Her remarkable oral history would have been lost to time without the initiative by USC Shoah Foundation to document the stories of Holocaust survivors before it is too late.

We at USC Shoah Foundation are saddened to hear of the passing of our beloved friend, Holocaust survivor and renowned artist Alice Lok Cahana, who passed away on November 28 at age 88. Through her internationally acclaimed artwork, writings, and public speaking, Alice put forth a message to the world that both memorialized those who perished during the Holocaust and celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Kurt Messerschmidt, Holocaust survivor, educator and beloved cantor. He was 102. Messerschmidt was born Jan. 2, 1915 in Weneuchen, Germany, but moved to Berlin in 1918 and excelled as a linguistics scholar, gymnast and musician. He was well-respected and a leader among his classmates and teachers, but was unable to attend college because of anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis.

USC Shoah Foundation is sorry to learn of the passing of Aleksander Laks, the first Holocaust survivor to give his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in Brazil and a special friend of the Institute. Laks passed away July 21 at age 88. Laks survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march as a teenager. He immigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and became a leader of the survivor community there as president of the Sherit Hapleita (Holocaust survivors’ organization).

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Johnny Strange, a record-holding adventurer and supporter of USC Shoah Foundation.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Erna Viterbi, philanthropist and longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation. Erna Finci Viterbi, a descendant of Sephardic Jews, was born in Sarajevo but fled Yugoslavia with her family during World War II. They were deported to the Parma region of Italy and interned in the village Gramignazzo di Sissa, but were saved from deportation to the extermination camps by the townspeople. Erna and her family were able to escape to Switzerland for the rest of the war. In 1950, they moved to California.

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary and recent rerelease of “Schindler’s List,” USC Shoah Foundation has produced a suite of learning activities connected to the film. The engaging activities encourage critical thinking; all feature clips of testimony from Holocaust survivors who were saved by Oskar Schindler.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened by the recent loss of Walter P. Loebenberg, a friend of the Institute and a Holocaust survivor who, after finding refuge in the United States, went on to open the Florida Holocaust Museum, one of the largest Holocaust museums in the nation. He was 94.

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.

Max Glauben was 13 when his family’s apartment was destroyed in the historic battle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Eva Kuper was 2 when her mother’s cousin rescued her from a train in the frantic moments before it headed to the Treblinka death camp. Both lost parents and other relatives in the Holocaust. And both are among the four Holocaust survivors whose testimonies USC Shoah Foundation is recording this week using cutting-edge, 360-degree filming techniques at the physical locations of their pre-war and wartime experiences, as well as their places of liberation.

The story of Leon Bass, who took part in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps only to later face discrimination in the United States, inspires a group of dormitory RAs at the Massachusetts campus to share their own experiences of feeling excluded.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Claude Lanzmann, whose monumental film "Shoah" introduced a new way of telling the story of the Holocaust. He died in Paris on Tuesday. He was 92.   Born Nov. 27, 1925, in Paris to Jewish parents, Lanzmann went into hiding during World War II. At 17, he joined the French resistance.