A public event with Nicholas Bredie (PhD candidate, Literature and Creative Writing, USC) and Atharva Tewari (USC undergraduate student, Global Studies and Journalism major)2021 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellows (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom)  Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Holocaust liberator Shiro Takeshita describes being in the Salinas State Assembly Center (Japanese internment camp) and seeing an old man killed by a guard simply for being too close to the camp fence.

As the world watches in horror as millions of Ukrainians resist, take shelter or flee from Russian attacks, news reports stir up connections to a haunting past. We scanned our Visual History Archive to bring just a few stories from these places to light. The words of survivors, as they often do, reach forward through time.

March 1, 2022, Russian forces damaged buildings at the Babi Yar Memorial in Kyiv, Ukraine, dedicated to the memory of 100,000 Ukrainians murdered at the site during Nazi occupation. Among them were 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children, killed over the course of two days on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1941. In this clip, Lyudmila Tkach recalls surviving the Babi Yar massacre.

Helen describes how she established a school in the Radomsko Ghetto for young ghetto inhabitants. She introduced her students to “Gone With the Wind” because they longed for a story to take their minds off their harsh surroundings.

Celina Biniaz, a “Schindler Jew,” remembers hearing about the end of the war while listening to an underground radio at the munitions factory set up by Oskar Schindler in the Brünnlitz concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The Brünnlitz concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet armed forces in May 1945. With the approach of the Soviets, Oskar Schindler left and arranged for several of the camp personnel to leave as well. Celina Biniaz remembers her liberation and describes her liberators.

This short documentary tells the remarkable story of Grace Uwamahoro. She was 10 years during the genocide in Rwanda, yet she made a life-changing decision to save an infant destined to become a victim of genocide. Told in Grace's own words 20 years later, this story is a testament to love in the face of deadly consequences.

Today is International Women’s Day and this year we are honoring girls—from Holocaust Europe to Africa, from Central America to the Middle East, from occupied China to pre-war Armenia—who demonstrated extraordinary strength and resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors. Here is a selection of USC Shoah Foundation clips and films to mark the occasion.

Eva Kor describes her first encounter with death in the camp and how the event ignited her self-promise to never let the same fate fall upon her or her sister. This is the 65th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

In recounting the past, Holocaust survivors deliberately or unconsciously craft the stories they recount about the Shoah. Whether through literature, memoirs, or testimony, survivors shape stories about the past while signaling what remains unsaid. Deferred memories – stories told many decades after the events occurred – often address issues that survivors did not dare or could not bear to recount earlier. Looking at these deferred stories through the lens of gender, we will explore how survivors craft accounts that insist on reclaiming, owning, and interpreting what the writer Ida Fink called “the ruins of memory,” often against the grain and in tension with academic interpretation.

We stand with our programmatic partners in both Ukraine and Russia who continue the hard work of building more tolerant communities by educating about the horrors of the Holocaust and the consequences of unchecked hatred.  We are deeply disturbed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's call to "denazify" Ukraine—a country with a Jewish president who lost family members in the Holocaust—and by his unfounded claim that the military incursion was justified by “genocide” in Ukraine.

Alex Redner was 11 years old when the German army began bombarding his hometown of Lviv (then Lwow) on Sept. 1, 1939. Less than three weeks later, the Red Army occupied the city. Related With Ukraine under attack, we stand by our programmatic partners in Ukraine and Russia working to  build more tolerant communities. “Once We Repel the Aggressors, We Will Get Back to Work.” A report on our educational programming in Ukraine.

Emiliia Kessler grew up in Khmel'nik, then part of Soviet Ukraine. She recalls the complex tensions between the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Jewish community that were part of everyday life in the 1930s. Related With Ukraine under attack, we stand by our programmatic partners in Ukraine and Russia working to  build more tolerant communities.

The Starling Lab for Data Integrity (Starling Lab) today announced its inaugural class of Starling Journalism research fellows. The annual fellowship helps leading journalists from around the world use the latest advances in cryptography and Web3 technologies to protect the integrity and safety of digital content, as well as individuals working in and around the media. In an era of rampant mis- and disinformation, this timely program will apply in-field research to explore how to restore trust in digital media and underscore the legacy values of journalism.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Holocaust survivor and accomplished structural engineer Sigmund Burke, who died February 6, 2022 at nearly 98 years old. He recorded his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation in 2019, at the age of 95, as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection initiative, USC Shoah Foundation’s race-against-time effort to record the stories and perspectives of the last remaining Holocaust survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation is now accepting applications for rising 8th–12th grade students across the country to participate in its highly competitive week-long summer program, Leadership Workshop – Action and Values.

In 2018, USC Shoah Foundation launched the Last Chance Testimony Initiative to address requests from survivors who, for complex and often very personal reasons, could not come forward in the 1990s. Since the start of COVID, the foundation has received more than 400 requests from survivors to record their testimonies. We believe there are thousands more who want to tell their stories. The global pandemic has accelerated our race against time. The last chance is upon us.

In 2018, USC Shoah Foundation launched the Last Chance Testimony Initiative to address requests from survivors who, for complex and often very personal reasons, could not come forward in the 1990s. Since the start of COVID, the foundation has received more than 400 requests from survivors to record their testimonies. We believe there are thousands more who want to tell their stories. The global pandemic has accelerated our race against time. The last chance is upon us.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Helen Fagin, who has passed away in Sarasota, Florida at age 104. A Holocaust survivor, English professor and director of Judaic Studies at the University of Miami, Helen received numerous awards over her long career for her work in promoting tolerance, and in 1994 was invited by President Clinton to be on the advisory board for the World War II Memorial.

Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and psychologist, describes the internal work she has engaged in to move past her experiences, and to share her experiences with others.

Dr. Edith Eger, Auschwitz survivor and psychologist, describes the power of passing her story on to future generations.  

More than 18,000 students and 250 teachers from school districts across Georgia last week experienced famed pianist Mona Golabek's livestreamed performance adapted from her acclaimed book, The Children of Willesden Lane. Produced in an exciting new format by Discovery Education in partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, the special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gave students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brought to life the inspiring story of her mother and Holocaust survivor, Lisa Jura. 

Join acclaimed pianist and author Mona Golabek for a 50-minute livestreamed performance adapted from her best-selling book, The Children of Willesden Lane. This special theatrical and musical Willesden READS event gives New England students and educators the opportunity to interact with Mona as she brings to life the inspiring story of her mother, Lisa Jura, a young Holocaust survivor who in 1938 escaped from Vienna to London on the Kindertransport. More than one million students around the world have experienced the Willesden READS program to date.

Learn how you can be part of the inaugural cohort of USC’s new MA in Global Security Studies Program, starting in Fall 2022. Meet with leading international relations, global security and geospatial science faculty experts as they discuss the curriculum and opportunities for multi-faceted individuals to develop and implement creative and effective policies that address complex challenges such as environmental vulnerability, public health crises, food and resource scarcity, regional conflict, cyber-attacks and other natural and manmade causes of human insecurity.

It was not easy for the more than 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in our Visual History Archive to tell their stories. But they did it, because they understood the importance of preserving these painful memories for future generations. We are those future generations, and it is our turn to carry their stories and messages of strength and resilience forward.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Vera Gissing, who died March 12 in Berkshire, England at age 93. Vera will be remembered for her extraordinary life, which included escaping Prague in 1939 on one of the last Kindertransport trains to make it out of Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II.