“Why the Jews?” Join us for another exploration of this question in the second event of USC Shoah Foundation’s Scholar Lab on Antisemitism event series. This moderated discussion will feature Dr. Jonathan Judaken of Rhodes College and Dr. Jeffrey Veidlinger of the University of Michigan, both the members of the Scholar Lab on Antisemitism program. As part of the discussion, Dr. Judaken and Dr.

Inside a Warsaw light stage surrounded by nine cameras, prominent historian and journalist Marian Turski in late June completed the first ever Polish-language Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) interview. Conducted by USC Shoah Foundation and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw (POLIN), Turski’s interview was a truly international collaboration involving 15 team members from Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the U.K and the U.S.

USC Shoah Foundation is accepting applications for USC student leaders to take part in the upcoming Stronger Than Hate Student Leadership Summit. Triggered by the deadly white nationalist rally of August 2017 in Charlottesville, VA, USC Shoah Foundation’s Stronger Than Hate initiative draws on the power of eyewitness testimony to help students and the general public recognize and counter antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and other forms of hatred.

Eugenia Adler was 17 at the start of World War II. She survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps, and spent time fighting with the partisans. In this clip, she recalls finding shelter with a frightened horse as Germany bombed Warsaw in September 1939. More clips from survivors on the beginning of World War II: Rosette Baronoff on the Breakout of War David Bayer remembers the Invasion of Poland

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Phillip Maisel, who died in Melbourne, Australia on August 22 just days after celebrating his 100th birthday. Born in Vilnus (now Lithuania) in 1922, Maisel lived through forced labor camps in Estonia, Germany and Poland before emigrating to Australia and going on to record more than 1,500 testimonies of his fellow Holocaust survivors. He called each recorded testimony “a miracle” and thereby earned the nickname “the keeper of miracles.” His memoir, published last year, was called The Keeper of Miracles.

Join Dr. Mehnaz Afridi of Manhattan College and Dr. Sara Lipton of Stonybrook University. As part of the discussion, Dr. Afridi and Dr. Lipton will present on their research projects examining antisemitism in the Arab world and representations of Jews in medieval Christian sermons, respectively, focusing on the insights they gained into the causes, manifestations and consequences of antisemitism through history and in relation to religion. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Jessica Marglin, Associate Professor of Religion at USC.

USC Shoah Foundation with its partner the Schindler’s Ark Foundation has added a tour of Oskar Schindler’s former factory in what is now the Czech Republic to its mobile IWalk application, enabling smartphone users to explore the site where the German businessman sheltered more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2023 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship. The fellowship provides $1,500 support for USC undergraduate students or $3,000 support for USC graduate students doing research focused on the testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive and/or other related USC resources and collections for one month during the summer of 2023. The fellowship is open to USC undergraduate students and graduate students of all disciplines.

In the wake of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, government officials, memory workers, and human rights activists have all deployed a litany of Holocaust references — from discussions of “Never Again” to allusions to Primo Levi’s “grey zone.” Drawing upon research conducted with testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Charlotte Kiechel (Visiting Assistant Professor, Williams College) will illuminate the global uses of Holocaust memory by examining Rwandan governmental forces use of Holocaust references.  

A public lecture by Charlotte Kiechel (Williams College) 2021-2022 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Shoah Foundation

The pages of my copy of The Giver are totally worn. The cover has been folded and there are subsequent pages with the same type of tear. On the bottom right corner is an advertisement for a special low price of $2.99 and in the upper right corner there is the embedded medal of the John Newbery Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in literature.

Join USC Shoah Foundation and The Leichtag Foundation for a dialogue between film producers and scholars, Konstantin Fam, Clint Burkett, Alan Markowitz, Kori Street and Jacqueline S. Gmach

George reflects on the importance of learning from the Holocaust and working to make the world a better place.

At the inaugural Scholar Lab online lecture series event, held September 14, 2022, MacArthur Grant-winner Dr. Josh Kun of USC presents commentary, music and archival recordings in his exploration of the Nazi’s use of music as a soundtrack of terror. UCLA’s Dr. Todd Presner, winner of the Digital Media and Learning Prize from the MacArthur Foundation/HASTAC, presents a computational analysis of the language survivors use to describe antisemitism in Visual History Archive testimony.  Discussion moderated by Dr.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor whose passion for sharing his story through lectures, recorded interviews, and educational trips back to concentration camps in Europe taught and inspired people everywhere. He was 96.

At USC for Trojan Family Weekend? Come visit us at Leavey Library! Search the 55,000 testimonies in our Visual History Archive with the help of trained staff. Find out about student internship opportunities.

Testimony has always posed challenges for educators: for example, whether to treat it as historical source or personal memory; how testimony transform over time; the trauma-literacy of recipients and the well-being of testimony-givers. Nevertheless, digital technologies introduce further complications, especially concerning access, provenance, ownership, and agency.

Eighty-one years ago today Nazi soldiers and their collaborators committed one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust with the murder of close to 33,000 Jews in the Babyn Yar ravine in Ukraine. The site of the atrocity on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv is now a memorial that people anywhere can visit with a new Virtual IWalk released by USC Shoah Foundation earlier this year. 

USC Shoah Foundation is accepting applications for the highly competitive William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program that begins November 13. Since 2014, the program has provided a dynamic and unique learning opportunity for hundreds of students to engage with testimonies from survivors and witnesses of genocide.  The program is looking for 40 grade 7-11 students nationwide who are representative of diverse backgrounds and academic skills. 

Pardy Minassian’s childhood in Syria was suffused with sounds from Armenia, the result of her father’s collection of more than 500 audio and video interviews he conducted over the years with Armenian Genocide survivors. When Pardy and her family left Syria for Armenia in 2012, the then 18-year-old student focused on a range of different Armenian sounds, earning a bachelor’s degree in Music Composition and a master's degree in Guitar Performance from the Yerevan State Komitas Conservatory. 

Rena Quint has worked hard to find a balance between moving beyond memory and living inside of it, between yearning to know—and have proof of—where she came from and what she lost, but of not wanting to be defined by it.

This moderated discussion features Dr. Jonathan Judaken of Rhodes College and Dr. Jeffrey Veidlinger of the University of Michigan, both the members of the Scholar Lab on Antisemitism program. As part of the discussion, Dr. Judaken and Dr. Veidlinger present on their research projects examining how major theorists of antisemitism understand its underlying causes and what prominent writers and thinkers in the historical western tradition had written about Jews, respectively, focusing on what we can learn about antisemitism from these writings. The discussion is moderated by Dr.

When Lee Liberman first viewed testimonies from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA) almost 25 years ago, she was immediately moved to action. “We have a commitment and duty to humanity to combat hate, and we must work diligently to bring these testimonies to communities around the globe,” she said. More than two decades later, as Lee transitions to an emeritus role after a successful term as Chair of the Institute’s Board of Councilors, she has more than delivered on her pledge.

In September 2022, the Institute launched its inaugural Scholar Lab Event Series that included three events that focused on the research conducted by the members of the Scholar Lab on Antisemitism. The first event featured professors Todd Presner (UCLA) and Josh Kun (USC), who discussed their projects on survivor narratives about antisemitism and antisemitism in music. The second event introduced the work of professors Jeffrey Veidlinger (University of Michigan) and Jonathan Judaken (Rhodes College), who explored the writings about antisemitism by major writers and theorists.

The Scholar Lab on Antisemitism gathers six scholars from different academic backgrounds, including history, digital humanities, communication, musicology, religious studies, Judaic studies, Holocaust studies, and media studies, who all examine the topic of antisemitism from their respective disciplinary and methodological perspectives. You can learn more about the scholars and their projects below.

Join us for this in-person event at the Institute for Armenian Studies on oral history and its implications. Organized in conjunction with the USC Dornsife Institute for Armenian Studies, the day will offer two panel discussions on the evolving place and role of oral history in the field of Armenian Studies.