USC Shoah Foundation’s international consultants in Poland and Czech Republic ended 2015 introducing the work of the Institute to new audiences.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will host a steady stream of undergraduate, graduate and faculty fellows this summer who will conduct research in the Visual History Archive for a wide range of projects and courses.

June 18 saw the U.S. premiere of a set of piano variations on a Polish patriotic theme composed in the Dachau concentration camp by prisoner of war Leon Kaczmarek (1903–1973). Kaczmarek’s composition was performed by 17-year-old pianist Nicholas Biniaz-Harris, winner of the National Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 Young Soloists’ Competition.

Alex recalls listening to Adolf Hitler's radio addresses before the war. He remembers how Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled from the country.

This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.

Herman Gottesman describes the forced labor, living conditions and lack of food in Auschwitz-III. Auschwitz III-Monowitz, also called Buna, was located near the Polish town of Monowice and was the last of three Auschwitz camps established in the vicinity of Oswiecim. This is the 21st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

USC Shoah Foundation Teaching Fellows Alina Bothe and Gertrud Pickhan’s course “The Deportation of Polish Jews from Berlin in 1938” has led to another family learning its fate for the first time and receiving a special memorial called a “Stolperstein.”

Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is a scholar of early modern history, specializing in Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, cultural, legal, and social history, as well as the history of transmission of historical knowledge in the premodern and modern periods. Dr.

Steve recalls how Jewish kids were harassed at school and Polish kids and Jewish kids played separately.

Staff from USC Shoah Foundation will gather with education leaders, teachers and other experts to explore the best practices of using filmed witness testimony in education in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on June 5.

Alexander Korb, the 2016-2017 Center Research Fellow and director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on his research on collaboration in the Holocaust in eastern and southeastern Europe.

A public lecture by Samuel Kassow (Trinity College).

On June 5, 1942, the Nazis reported having killed 97,000 Jews in specially constructed gas vans. Friedrich August Jeckeln — who served as an SS and police leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II — testified in 1945 that Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler, who organized the mass murder of Jews, told him shootings were too impractical, so gas vans were devised as a more efficient system. The method was initially used against the mentally insane in Polish hospitals in 1939. By 1942 the Nazis had begun to deploy more than 36 of these specially designed and equipped vans.

English translation: “As steel is forged by punches so is our personality. Punches harden and teach us to fight, to continue to fight, to meet challenges, to find new ones and overcome them.  I think that my message in this interview is that such is life. It means to overcome and to forge ahead. Punches can come from where we least expect and we must not fall down—if we do, we must get up. Not all people are bad. The Polish people were not all Antisemitic. Many were good people. And what I have to say to people is to be aware and to use reason.

Jewish Survivor Helen Fagin decribes the 'cultural resistance' through education in the Radomsko ghetto in Poland. She explains how reading a Polish translation of Gone With the Wind allowed her and her students to at least temporarily dream of a different world outside the reality of the ghetto.

Polski nowy, prawicowy rząd chce zmienić sposób nauczania polskich uczniów o Zagładzie Żydów, kreując Polaków na wyłącznie ofiary lub bohaterów. W tej nowej narracji Polacy zawsze pomagali słabszym, byli dobrymi sąsiadami i dbali o mniejszości.

Holocaust survivor Zenon Neumark and Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido are set to share their stories of survival and take questions from the audience.

While students across America enjoy their summer vacation, the education department at USC Shoah Foundation is busily making major new features to its award-winning IWitness educational website for educators and their students that will be ready by the time school resumes in the fall.

This lecture is part of the series "Hidden Archives - Public Sturggles: Events Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." Presented by Doheny Memorial Library and co-sponsored by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

After watching testimony in the Visual History Archive, many students say they feel like they really “met” the survivors they watched. Véronique Mickisch actually did.

Peter Hayes is Professor Emeritus of History and German and Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University and a former chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Among his thirteen books are The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (co-edited with John K. Roth), How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, and Why? Explaining the Holocaust, which also has appeared in German and Spanish translations and shortly will be in Chinese, Polish, and Slovak, as well.

Jewish Survivor Romana describes growing up in a small Polish town after the war and how her family had to give up most of the space in their home according to Communist rule. They were forced to live together with a family that had an abusive father who tried to attack Romana and her mother.

Holocaust survivor Zenon Neumark and Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido shared their stories of survival and their messages for the next generation at a Genocide Awarenes Month event hosted by DEFY, USC Shoah Foundation’s student organization.

November 8, 2012: Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda spoke at the institute's Sexual Violence Against Women During the Holocaust Symposium, co-sponsored by Equality Now. Ms.

Biographical Information about Hilda Eisen Born April 24, 1917Izbica (Lódz, Poland), Russia/Soviet Union Date of Interview June 18, 2001 Location of Interview California, U.S.A. Length of Interview 2:09:07 Ghetto(s) Miedzyrzec (Lublin, Poland: Ghetto) Went into hiding Yes Member of underground, resistance or partisan group

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation present the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar Lecture by Jan Grabowski (Professor of History at University of Ottawa, Canada) 2022-2023 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation

The young Nazi approached 13-year-old Szulem Czygielmamn as he walked on the sidewalk of Lubartowska Street in Lublin, Poland, and shoved him off the sidewalk. Szulem was lucky; Jews had died for less.

Barbara Reichmann survived the Holocaust by going into hiding and concealing her identity. In order to survive, she volunteered to work as a Polish forced laborer, which brought her eventually to Ulm, Germany. She was liberated by French armed forces. In Munich, she met her husband, Leon Reichmann, and had a daughter. They eventually emigrated to the United States.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: French Interned in the camp of Beaune-la-Rolande (France) after the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, Simon witnessed the deportation of his mother at the beginning of August 1942. He describes the difficulty that his mother experiences in being separated from her children. Some days later, Simon’s brother was deported. His mother and brother were gassed upon arrival in Auschwitz.

Nineteen educators gathered at Central European University Budapest the first weekend in July to share the activities they piloted in the classroom after being initiated into the Master Teacher program in Hungary last year.