Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1928, Lotte Schmerzler was sent to France with her older brother via the Kindertransport. In 1940, the two siblings fled to Portugal and snuck onto a boat headed for the United States, where they reunited with their mother in New York. (02:00:04)
/ Friday, May 3, 2024
Honey Chester was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1928. At age 10, she was sent to England via the Kindertransport where she reunited with her siblings. She lost her parents and extended family members in the Holocaust. (02:25:11)
/ Friday, May 3, 2024
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)
/ Friday, May 3, 2024
/ Tuesday, April 30, 2024
The Division of Academic Programs at the USC Shoah Foundation invites applications from PhD candidates and early-career scholars for the inaugural cohort of fellows in its non-residential colloquium “The LGBTQIA+ Community in the Holocaust.” We understand this topic broadly and are seeking applicants whose work touches on the members of any nation persecuted by the Nazis or their allies for their sexual identity, along with the long-term impact and legacies of this history.
research, academics / Monday, April 29, 2024
The Division of Academic Programs at the USC Shoah Foundation invites applications from PhD candidates and early-career scholars for the inaugural cohort of fellows in its non-residential colloquium “Gender and Sexual Violence in the Holocaust.” We understand this topic broadly and are seeking applicants whose work touches on the members of any nation or population affected by these issues, as well as the long-term impact and legacies of these histories. from the between 1933 and 1955, though we will also consider projects whose scope may examine the legacies of this violence.
research, academics / Monday, April 29, 2024
The USC Shoah Foundation and The Latin American Network for Education on the Shoah (Red LAES) have launched a new educational web page featuring the first Spanish-language Dimensions in Testimony (DiT), an interactive biography that invites students to engage in conversation with the recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor.
education, iwitness, DiT / Monday, May 6, 2024
On April 24, we call on the world to remember the genocide of the Armenian people. 109 years ago, during the First World War, Ottoman authorities arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). At the time, the Ottoman Empire was under the control of the relatively new leadership of the Young Turks; a party that had sought to create an ethnically homogenous Turkish state – a state that would have little space for the millions of Armenians then living in that empire.
Armenian / Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Professor Dan Stone, a renowned historian of the Holocaust, will serve as the 2023-2024 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation. He will spend a week in residence at the Center and USC Shoah Foundation in April and deliver the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture entitled “The Holocaust: An Unfinished History” on April 8, 2024.
research, academics / Friday, February 2, 2024
Samuel Clowes Huneke, author of the award-winning States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany, uncovers stories about queer women during the Third Reich—their treatment in society and opportunities to resist.
recovering voices / Tuesday, March 12, 2024
In Nazi Germany, the medical field was part of the larger effort to dehumanize anyone who did not conform to the idea of a “healthy German nation.” Dr. Sabine Hildebrandt, who teaches the history of anatomy at Harvard Medical School, scrutinizes the biographies of medical professionals during the Nazi era and restores the histories of victims subjected to coercive medical experimentation both before and after death. Dr. Hildebrandt also considers the legacies of this history for the present, including how to ethically approach work with human remains in historical collections at universities, museums, and historical institutions.
scholarship, research, lecture, recovering voices / Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Shown at Witness for the Future: Holocaust Memory in a Post-Survivor World at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on May 6, 2024. 
/ Thursday, May 9, 2024
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
scholarship, research, lecture, recovering voices / Friday, May 10, 2024
Dr. Milovan Pisarri, research fellow at Belgrade University, lectures on the mechanisms that led to the Roma Genocide in southeastern Europe, the history of anti-Roma racism, and the reasons behind the general lack of interest in the topic.
recovering voices / Monday, May 13, 2024
Thursday, February 22, 2024 at 1:00 PM PT | 4:00 PM ET
antiSemitism / Monday, October 30, 2023
Dr. Anna Hájková, pioneer of queer Holocaust history, will discuss why including queer narratives is crucial to developing a deeper understanding of Nazi persecution and societal resistance.
recovering voices / Tuesday, March 12, 2024
“Recovering Victims’ Voices,” a lecture series on marginalized victims of the Holocaust, highlights new and emerging scholarship on often un- or underexplored victims of Nazi persecution. The series shows how historical identity-based hate influences contemporary discourse about race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities.
/ Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Florian Zabransky seeks to excavate the particular intimate experience of male Jews, including how are queer relations narrated in the interviews.
discussion, presentation, lecture, cagr / Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor at Northwestern University Peter Hayes examines antisemitism and homophobia as central components of Nazi racism.
presentation / Friday, March 13, 2015
At the close of World War II, the Allies labeled survivors of the Holocaust as either displaced persons (DPs), refugees, or stateless persons. These categories included Jews, prisoners of war, Roma and Sinti, forced laborers, and perpetrators who used the chaos to hide their identity. But as the scale of the humanitarian disaster became more apparent, the Allies were forced to refine these designations. Christina Wirth, the USC Shoah Foundation's inaugural Robert J. Katz Fellow in Antisemitism Studies, explores postwar sorting processes and the roles officials and humanitarian organizations played in shaping these categories. She further examines how antisemitism contributed to the establishment of a "Jewish DP" subcategory.
/ Monday, October 30, 2023
“Being together with Dita - We did it together. [...] Neither of us would have survived without the other, and we both realize that.”⠀⠀ Margot Heuman was born in Hellenthal, Germany in 1929. In 1942, she and her family were sent to Theresienstadt ghetto, where Margot and her sister were put into a youth home. ⠀
/ Tuesday, May 28, 2024
In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel, the USC Shoah Foundation and Tablet Studios announced a partnership to collect, archive, and make available testimonies of survivors, bereaved family members, and rescuers who risked their lives to save others during the assault.
Oct 7, CATT, collections, no homepage / Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Dr. Shira Klein is Associate Professor, Chair, Department of History at Wilkinson College at Chapman University. Dr. Klein focuses on Italian Jewry, Jewish migration, and the Holocaust. Her book, Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), was selected as finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award. Her next book project will examine Italian Jews’ participation in Italy’s African empire from the 1890s to World War II, including their ties to indigenous Jews in Libya and Ethiopia.  
antiSemitism, antiSemitism, antisemitism series, antisemitism series, lecture, lecture, discussion, discussion, presentation, presentation, homepage, homepage / Thursday, May 23, 2024
Dr. Anna Hájková, a scholar of Jewish Holocaust history and pioneer of queer Holocaust history, discusses why including queer perspectives helps us develop a more inclusive history of the Holocaust.
lecture, presentation, recovering voices, homepage / Thursday, May 23, 2024
On January 23, 2002, Ruth Pearl dreamt that her son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was scared and in trouble. In her dream, she told him she would bring him tea and take care of him. She woke up in a panic and sent an email to Daniel, who was on assignment in Karachi, Pakistan. “I said, ‘Danny, this is a dream that I had. Please humor me and answer this email immediately.’ He never did,” Ruth said in an interview with the USC Shoah Foundation in 2014.
/ Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Warren Rosenblum, Professor of History at Webster University, St. Louis, will discuss his research on the history of disability during both the Weimar Republic and Third Reich. He will further explore how Nazi conspiratorial theories about antisemitism and persons with disabilities are linked through fear of the “other."
recovering voices / Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Jaclyn Singer has a lifelong passion for Judaism, Israel and community-building. She holds a bachelor's degree in social science from San Diego State University and a master's in security and diplomacy from Tel Aviv University.
/ Thursday, May 30, 2024
Rachel Herman is the Program Platforms Lead of the USC Shoah Foundation. In this role, Rachel manages IWitness, the Visual History Archive, SFI Access, Echoes & Reflections and the building of in-app and Virtual IWalks. Rachel joined the Institute in 2017, working as a content specialist with the Education team.
/ Thursday, February 15, 2018
Sam Gustman has been chief technology officer (CTO) of the Shoah Foundation since 1994. Gustman is also associate dean and CTO at the USC Libraries where he oversees IT for the Libraries and started the USC Digital Repository.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2022
The USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Dr. Abner Delman, a cardiologist and longtime supporter of the USC Shoah Foundation. He was 93. Abner's wife, Ilse-Lore Delman, was a Holocaust survivor who fled her hometown to escape Nazi persecution at a young age. She spent three years in hiding. In 1998, Ilse recorded her testimony with the USC Shoah Foundation, and soon after, the couple became involved with the organization.
obit / Monday, June 3, 2024

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