In this lecture, Philippe Sands discusses his most recent book East West Street: On the Origins of 'Genocide' and 'Crimes Against Humanity' — part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller — to connect his work on 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide', the events that overwhelmed his family in Lviv during World War II, and the untold story at the heart of the Nuremberg trial that pits lawyers Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht against Hans Frank, defendant number 7, former Governor General of Nazi-occupied Poland and Adolf Hitler's lawyer.

Badema Pitic joined the Center for Advanced Genocide Research in 2017, where she is involved in the Center's outreach and academic programming directed at fostering and supporting the scholarly use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. Badema earned her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the intersections of music, memory, and politics in the aftermath of war and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

10AM – 11AM PDT | 1PM - 2PM EDT Internationally acclaimed scholar and historian, Professor Yehuda Bauer, joins the Echoes & Reflections community from Israel for a special presentation on the Holocaust and other genocides. While the Holocaust is a unique historical event, the study of this history can inform the study of other mass atrocities. During this webinar, Professor Bauer will talk about similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, and what can be learned and applied from a study of the Holocaust to a study of other genocides.

Nicholas Bredie (PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing, USC) conducted research to contribute to a hybrid work of fiction and non-fiction centered around the life history of his great aunt, who was murdered in 1945 in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

In commemoration of Pride Month, the Institute recognizes the LGBTQ+ people persecuted under the Nazis from as early as 1933 to the end of the war in 1945, some of whose stories are in the Institute’s Visual History Archive.They are stories of survival, resistance, rescue, and heartbreaking loss. Some of the witnesses were targeted by the Nazis for being gay under the German penal code, Paragraph 175. Other witnesses recall their encounters with gay men and women who provided rescue and aid at great risk to their own lives.

Lindsay is the Managing Director of Echoes & Reflections, the Institute's flagship Holocaust Education program in partnership with ADL and Yad Vashem. In this role, she leads strategic planning and the ongoing programmatic and operational oversight to ensure successful reach of goals and objectives of the Partnership. Lindsay holds an MEd from the University of Vermont and a BA in History from Northwestern University. She has held a range of leadership positions in the non-profit education field for more than 25 years. Lindsay is based outside of Chicago, IL.

November 15, 2012: Dr. Sean Field discussed oral histories in the context of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Centre for Popular Memory in South Africa and approaches to studying memories of violence.

Rena Finder survived the Holocaust by working in Oscar Schindler’s factory. Finder is a featured speaker for the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at the United Nations on January 27, the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Dieses Video ist ein herunterladbarer Zusammenschnitt von mehreren Zeitzeugen-Interviews des USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archivs, welche mit jüdischen Überlebenden geführt wurden, die in der polnischen Stadt Oświęcim geboren wurden und aufgewachsen sind. Heute kennt man Oświęcim als eine Stadt, die von dem Lagerkomplex Auschwitz gezeichnet ist.

TV broadcast features seminar.

Raphael Zimetbaum speaks of his gratitude toward the Armenian people in Marseille, France. Along with his parents, he fled from Antwerp, Belgium, to Marseille, France, following the German invasion of Belgium in 1940. In Marseille, his family found housing within the Armenian community neighborhood, where they felt so welcome and were received with great affection. He states that he thinks that the sensitivity extended to his family may have been in part due to the history of the Armenian Genocide and the suffering the Armenian people endured at the time. 

Alex Biniaz-Harris is a recent USC graduate, with Bachelor degrees in business and music. Alex has worked for USC Shoah Foundation for three years, as a communications and social media marketing intern. His grandmother, Celina Biniaz, and her parents Phyllis and Irwin Karp are survivors of Schindler’s List. Both Celina and Phyllis’s testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive.

The Anne Bernard Interviewer Collection comprises more than 250 hours of survivor testimony. “It is ennobling to be in their presence,” reflected Anne. I’ve thought about all those interviews and how they truly changed my life. And how they touched me, each one of them, in so many ways. I was, and still am, grateful to the Shoah Foundation for giving me one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.”

“Locating Women in the Revolt: Gender and Spaces of Resistance at Treblinka” Chad Gibbs (PhD Candidate in History, University of Wisconsin at Madison) 2020-2021 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow September 29, 2020

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students for its 2018 Summer Research Fellowships.

This week, we pay tribute to the life and work of Ilia Salita, a key partner and friend to the Institute of many years.

The coup in Myanmar earlier this week, ending the country's experiment with limited democracy, brought to power military and police implicated in carrying out genocide against the Rohingya people in 2017.    This troubling development could result in further consequences for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar. More than 600,000 people remain at risk—perhaps now even more than ever.    

April 8 is International Roma Day, an opportunity to celebrate the Romani and Sinti culture and raise awareness about the challenges faced by Europe’s largest ethnic minority. An estimated 70 to 80 percent of Europe’s Roma and Sinti population was killed by the Nazis and their Axis partners during World War Two, a genocide with impacts that reverberate through the community today.

The Division of Academic Programs at the USC Shoah Foundation invites applications for its Sandy and Steve Cozen Graduate Top-Off Fellowship for the 2025-2026/ 2026-2027 academic years.

Over 70 new testimonies have been added to IWitness to increase the scope of experiences students can engage with. IWitness now features 1,321 video testimonies from the Visual History Archive that allows teachers and their students to search, watch, and learn directly from the eyewitness to history. IWitness activities allow students to construct multimedia projects that integrate testimony clips together with footage from other sources, as well as photographs and maps, voiceover audio, music and text.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was one of a select few organizations invited by the Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) Holocaust Center to lead a workshop at the Day of Learning. The JFCS organizes the Day of Learning to help young people gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and patterns of genocide, and to inspire moral courage and social responsibility in the future. Its many workshops are enhanced by testimonies of Holocaust survivors and survivors of other genocides.

Four applied mathematics undergraduate students are dedicating their summer to a major research project for the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

Holocaust survivor Leon Leyson passed away this January, but his story of survival as the youngest boy on Oskar Schindler’s “list” will live on in his new memoir, The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible…on Schindler’s List, which was officially released today.

University of Southern California students will study post-genocide reconstruction this summer on the second annual Problems Without Passports trip to Rwanda. The course is led by USC Shoah Foundation's Dan Leshem and Amy Carnes.

Hannah Pollin-Galay discusses how culture and language inform Holocaust testimony

JANUARY 6, 2011—JERUSALEM—Sixteen college professors from across the United States are attending a special seminar at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies this week to study about the Holocaust and antisemitism. The weeklong “Echoes and Reflections Professors’ Study Tour” opened January 5, 2010. Some of the professors will remain for additional study days.  

The Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest has launched a one-year long Fellowship Program in Holocaust Education for curriculum developers and teacher trainers.The Fellowship – a unique initiative in Hungary - is a yearlong program during which participants have to develop their own project in Holocaust Education. The major milestones of the year include a one-week intensive seminar, individual and group consultations, a four-day study tour to Holocaust-related sites, and a closing conference.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with the Center for Research on Intercultural Relations at Sacred Heart Catholic University in Italy to produce the multimedia website Giving Memory a Future: The Sinti and Roma in Italy and Around the World.

As the new school year begins, USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness consultants are busy introducing teachers to IWitness and teaching with testimony at seminars and workshops around the country.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Nanjing Massacre testimony collection more than doubled in size last week when USC Shoah Foundation and Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall conducted 18 new interviews with Nanjing Massacre survivors.