I recently was an expert witness from October 11-13, 2016, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh, the so-called Khmer Rouge Tribunal that was established in 2001. When I mention this to colleagues, a typical response is, “That’s still going on?”  Indeed. Many forget the train that runs direct from USC to Long Beach takes you to the largest concentration of Cambodian survivors in the United States, where elders make daily offerings to ancestors in their homes or Buddhist temples.

Middle and high school students around the world are exploring the themes of resistance, solidarity and resilience using an innovative new film-based curriculum produced by the USC Shoah Foundation and The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in Israel, one of the first Holocaust museums in the world. 

In the collective memory, the February Revolution has faded or been mixed with the October Revolution, which happened eight months later and defined the trajectory of the Russian history for the next 70 years. However, the memory of the February Revolution is preserved in several eyewitness testimonies to the Holocaust in the Visual History Archive.

Viterbi Family Foundation grants gift to Institute.

Part of a series that will examine genocide and the law, this moderated discussion will explore why eyewitness testimony matters in preventing genocide. USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith will lead the conversation with witnesses and experts in the field to tackle this urgent challenge from multiple perspectives.

A powerful documentary that hinges on USC Shoah Foundation testimony raises difficult questions about how Hungary memorializes victims of the Nazi occupation and confronts its own role in wartime atrocities. Released last year, filmmaker Dániel Ács’ Monument to the Murderers recounts the controversy surrounding a monument erected in Budapest in 2005 to honor local victims of World War II.

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.

Gabor Toth, 2018-2019 Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on his project to find, represent, and reflect on victims’ experiences during the Holocaust. 

A love of old movies drew Shiraz Bhathena into the moving image archive field. As an archivist and post-production specialist at USC Shoah Foundation, he supervised the process of restoring the Institute's testimonies with video and audio problems. The herculean task is finally complete.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, Professor Peter Kreko says education is necessary to combat Hungary’s troubling rise in antisemitism.

In January 2015, I traveled to Poland for the Auschwitz: Past is Present professional development program, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau. This entire experience, was and continues to be a life changing event for me on every level personally, professionally, and academically.

The Spring 2014 issue of PastForward includes an excerpt of director Joshua Oppenheimer’s talk, which he gave in Los Angeles on the eve of the Oscars, describing his own journey of discovery as he encountered perpetrators willing to describe, even boast about, their acts of killing.

USC President C. L. Max Nikias praised USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith’s dedication to preserving memory of the past through testimony.

As the son of two survivors of the Shoah and the husband of a daughter of two survivors, identifying as the Next Generation has been the essence of who I am. It is the prism through which I see and evaluate all worldly events. It was particularly my father’s life that affected me the most. He truly was a “survivor." He survived the war running for his life through Russia, Siberian labor camps and other lands in Asia. He survived losing his parents, five of his sisters their husbands and children. He escaped from his hometown in the Russian sector to a displaced person camp in in the American sector. He survived as a refugee in Belgium and then as an immigrant in the United States. He survived the loss of his wife at a young age raising three children as a single parent in a foreign land.

This collection of photos offers a rare glimpse of an outdoor Jewish ghetto in the countryside – specifically in Kutno, Poland. The images depict a form of ghetto that was actually more common, but far less known, than the urban settings (i.e. Warsaw Ghetto) that are cemented in the public imagination.

A testimony-based audiovisual resource for educators in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary is now available online.

The conference included a night of films, an academic symposium and a concert, all exploring music as it has been used as a form of resistance to genocides throughout history.

Curious but friendly onlookers in the multicultural middle-class neighborhood in Amsterdam joined us. A café owner slowly crossed the street. “What’s happening?” she asked. “We are placing memorial stones in front of my grandparents’ home where they last lived before being deported in 1942,” I replied. “Please join us!”

Customized Education Activities, Once-In-A-Lifetime Teacher Professional Development Program in Poland and Exclusive Virtual Field Trip will be Part of Auschwitz: The Past is Present Initiative

On Monday I received a voicemail from Suzan Trevor that her father Marcus Segal had passed away. I had only just met Marcus, albeit virtually, weeks before when he shared his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation on January 26th. While saddened by the news of his passing, I’m filled with immense gratitude for having had the opportunity to hear his incredible life’s story in the final weeks of his life. 

Today marks the 84th anniversary of the Kindertransport, the rescue operation that beginning in 1938 helped nearly 10,000 Jewish children escape to the United Kingdom from Germany and Nazi-controlled territory in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. 

Malach Visual History Center to provide local access to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive.

The archive was taken in 56 countries, 21 of which were in Central and South American. Ana is just one of the 1,352 who chose Spanish as their language of choice, while another 560 chose to speak Portuguese.

On April 17, 1975, the city of Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, triggering a four-year genocide. In commemoration, USC Shoah Foundation is spotlighting its Cambodia-based learning activities for high school students.

Andrea Szőnyi tells the story of her father, who survived Auschwitz as a boy with the help of a man named Ernő Spiegel.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, USC Shoah Foundation's international consultants explain the power of watching testimony on location.

Alberto Innocenti, grandfather of Francesca Innocenti, secretly hid Jewish people -- including members of his wife’s family -- in his apartment during World War II. For this and other acts of heroism the Catholic Italian was recognized posthumously by Yad Vashem.

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.

“My father is Jewish.  My mother is Jewish. And I am Jewish.”  Those were the words I kept repeating to myself as I boarded my flight from JFK to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The President of the Republic went on record to tell the prospective immigrants “nobody invited you here!” Refugees escaping from a murderous regime are regarded as agents of that very regime. Concerned citizens who never saw a refugee discuss them with great fear: refugees will take our jobs, kill our wives, rape our daughters. “We may take a few of those who can prove they are and always were Christians,” some interior ministry clerk declared.