The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC faculty members and graduate students for its Summer 2017 Research Fellowships.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence Omer Bartov began his residence today with a Facebook Live interview about his work.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Junior Interns witnessed a disturbing example of modern antisemitism firsthand during their trip to Budapest in June. And they have something to say about it.

One student listened to the testimonies of those imprisoned at an internment camp. Another wrote about people stranded in the middle of the ocean attempting to escape the genocide in the Congo. Two others will act out a scene where two inmates of a concentration camp dream of the food they would eat if they were elsewhere. The class will read excerpts of the 10 plays at the Parkside Performance Cafe 3 p.m. Friday.

USC Shoah Foundation partners with CNN to share voices of Rohingya refugees.

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.

Shortly after I saw Schindler’s List for the first time, I had an argument with my father about the value of such Hollywood blockbusters for teaching people about the Holocaust. We debated the following question: If Schindler’s List was the only source of information for people about the Holocaust would it perhaps be better if they did not see it at all? That is, is Schindler’s List better than nothing if what it shows is all you know about what happened to nearly six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe? My dad said (or shouted) yes, but I was unconvinced.

The other morning I checked the BBC News website like I always do only to discover that French film director Alain Resnais had passed away at the age of ninety-one. Resnais’s films frequently explored the relationship between memory, consciousness, and the imagination in a non-linear manner and his innovative method of filmmaking won him numerous awards and prestige throughout his prolific career.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was founded to capture the voices, emotions and faces of those who suffered, yet miraculously survived the most heinous crime ever committed against humanity by humanity. The idea was to record individual and collective memories that would be preserved in perpetuity as a seminal educational tool to inform current and future generations that incitement, hate and violence against a person or a group can ultimately lead to death, genocide and ultimately extermination.

Two months after her Auschwitz: The Past is Present trip to Poland, Karen Wells is more committed than ever to sharing what she learned and making sure the stories of survivors are not forgotten.

In the fascinating short documentary The Past is Present, teachers and students share their experience going to Poland to learn from testimony and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites proposals for its 2016 International Conference: “A ‘Conflict’? Genocide and Resistance in Guatemala.”

Tracy Sockalosky left Poland inspired by new ways she can incorporate testimony and the lessons she learned from "Auschwitz: The Past is Present" (APIP) into her courses at Wilson Middle School in Natick, Mass.

Junior Intern Charlotte Masters made a very personal discovery during the trip to Poland and continues to share her experiences today.

Chair/Moderador: Douglas Carranza, Central American Studies, CSU Northridge

Martha Stroud, PhD, is the Associate Director and Senior Research Officer of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Center, which advances innovative interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides and promotes use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. She joined the Center in 2015 after earning her PhD in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

On August 24, 2017, scholars from Latin America presented their initial findings on their use of the Visual History Archive and mapped out potential avenues of inquiry focusing on Holocaust survivors who eventually settled in Latin America. This presentation is one of the outcomes of a "scholar in residence" fellowship that brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to collaborate on a research project at USC for Interdisciplinary Research Week.

Held on November 16, 2022, this moderated discussion features Dr. Mehnaz Afridi of Manhattan College and Dr. Sara Lipton of Stony Brook University, who are members of USC Shoah Foundation’s Scholar Lab on Antisemitism program. As part of the discussion, Dr. Afridi and Dr. Lipton 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.

Modern methods of analyzing thousands of Holocaust survivor testimonies contained in collections such as the Visual History Archive present a challenge that is at once ethical and technological: how to listen to thousands of testimonies of Holocaust survivors as an integral body of voices and stories rather than a collection of fragmentary items in a database. In this talk, Hebrew University Researchers Renana Keydar and Eitan Wagner will examine the meeting point between testimony and computation, the new possibilities inherent in such an encounter, and the challenges and risks involved.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research organized a symposium in the Fall to honor the work of leading Holocaust scholar David Cesarani from Great Britain, who died just weeks after being named by the USC Shoah Foundation the inaugural Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence. These are the remarks made by David Silberklang at the event.

This December marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award™-winning film that brought Holocaust remembrance to the forefront of popular culture. To commemorate the anniversary, the USC Shoah Foundation and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City are hosting a special panel discussion on November 5 to examine the impact and legacy of the film and its influence on the evolution of Holocaust history and memory.

Today, the Shoah Foundation launched a new online exhibit on its website at sfi.usc.edu/survivingauschwitz. Surviving Auschwitz: Five Personal Journeys introduces students to five men and women who survived one of the darkest periods of human history. Through a dynamic use of their first-person video testimony, the exhibit shows how the shared experience of the Holocaust affected individuals from disparate backgrounds.

On last year’s Giving Tuesday, the USC Shoah Foundation community raised $7,000 to support programs and initiatives to help the Institute change the world through testimony. This November 29, USC Shoah Foundation is counting on you to help reach its goal of $10,000.

A new IWitness activity focuses on the complex situation in Hungary after liberation. Students interpret and evaluate different behaviors exemplified through the testimony and film clips and think about their past and present correlations.

Virginia Bullington, a sophomore at USC from Nantucket, Massachusetts majoring in American Studies and Narrative Studies, has been chosen as the first-ever Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Public lecture by Bieke Van Camp (PhD candidate, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France) 2018-2019 Katz Research Fellow

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students and USC graduate students for the 2020 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship.

A public event with Nicholas Bredie (PhD candidate, Literature and Creative Writing, USC) and Atharva Tewari (USC undergraduate student, Global Studies and Journalism major) 2021 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellows (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom)  Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

USC Shoah Foundation last week joined President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden for a screening of HBO’s new Holocaust film The Survivor—the first official showing of a film in the White House theater since the president assumed office.