USC Shoah Foundation mourns the loss of László Kiss, a survivor of Auschwitz who played an integral role in USC Shoah Foundation’s educational efforts in Hungary. László died January 25 at the age of 94 in Budapest, where he has lived since after the World War II.

A USC Soá Alapítvány mély megrendüléssel emlékezik meg Kiss Lászlóról, az auschwitz-birkenau-i láger túlélőjéről, akinek meghatározó szerepe volt a USC Soá Alapítvány magyarországi oktatási tevékenységében. László 94 éves korában, január 25-én hunyt el Budapesten.

In his 1994 testimony, Mel recounts how he won a lawsuit in the 1980s against a group of Holocaust deniers who run the Institute for Historical Review in southern California. Watch his full testimony on the Visual History Archive Online.

Sandhya Iyer is a Senior Programmer at USC Shoah Foundation. Sandhya is into full stack development and works across multiple projects at the Institute. She holds a Master of Science in Engineering Technology from Birla Institute of Technology and Science - Pilani, India.

From the USC Shoah Foundation, simple, expressive animation brings to life the hope and optimism of famed sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s childhood journey out of Nazi Germany.

Join us for a special 90-minute online professional development opportunity for Colorado's middle school and high school educators.

In this excerpt from his testimony, a Srebrenica genocide survivor Smajil Klempić recalls the ordeal of Bosnian Muslim men who left Srebrenica after its capture on July 11, 1995 and embarked on a long and dangerous journey through the surrounding woods to reach safety. In this segment, he describes this column being attacked by Bosnian Serb forces while resting at the edge of a forest to prepare to cross an open field. More than 10,000 Bosnian Muslim men embarked on this journey in 1995. Only around 3,000 of them reached safety, some as late as September 1995.

Isabel Zarrow is a junior at Boston University majoring in public relations and minoring in business and entrepreneurship. She interned at USC Shoah Foundation in summer 2021.

A pilot collection of 20 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1995 genocide that took place in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been added to USC Shoah Foundation’s 55,000-strong Visual History Archive (VHA) thanks to a new collaboration with the Srebrenica Memorial Center. 

USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education today launched the fourth annual Stronger Than Hate Challenge offering students the opportunity to win $10,000 in prizes. The challenge encourages students aged 13-18 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to work individually or in groups of 2-4 on multimedia projects that demonstrate the power of story to create a community that is stronger than hate.

For much of their life, Allen and Peter Adamson didn't know that Joe, their easy-going, suburbanite dad, a VP at a New York plastics company, had a remarkable early history. He had escaped Germany at the age of 14 on the Kindertransport, served as an interrogator with the U.S. Army during the liberation of Mauthausen Concentration Camp, and helped in a U.S. effort to intercept secret messages encoded in German postage stamps.

A public lecture by Lilia Tomchuk (PhD candidate in History, Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt, Germany) 2021-2022 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow  (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom)  Organized by USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

In this clip from her 2019 interview with Dr. Stephen Smith, Ivy Schamis, an educator at Parkland High School, stresses the value of Holocaust education. More on Ivy Schamis Listen to Ivy reflect on the importance of reaching out after an act of violence. Explore our IWitness activity, Bonding Through Adversity.

In 2018, USC Shoah Foundation launched an 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.

A public lecture by Barnabas Balint (PhD candidate in History, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK) 2021-2022 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow  (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom)  Organized by USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

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

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.

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.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Thomas Blatt, a Holocaust survivor who was one of the few people to survive an escape from the Sobibor death camp in 1943. He was 88. Born April 15, 1927, in Lublin, Poland, Blatt also served as a witness at the 2009 trial of the camp guard John Demjanjuk.