The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear.

A new anthology "From Testimony to Story: Video Interviews about Nazi Crimes: Perspectives and Experiences in Four Countries" includes two chapters about USC Shoah Foundation, written by its regional consultants in Czech Republic and Poland.

Betty Grebenschikoff and Ana María Wahrenberg were inseparable best friends before the Holocaust. Separated when their families each fled the Nazis, they each believed the other had perished. They were reunited just a few short months ago thanks to a combination of international partnerships, astute research, and the power of survivor testimony.

Another year dominated by the ongoing pandemic draws to a close. From producing animated films to conducting interviews, forging new partnerships and sharing incredible testimonies, 2021 was a year to remember. Here are some of the highlights of the work the Institute has accomplished.

January 18, 2012: Resistance during the Holocaust is still mostly seen in terms of organized or armed group activities, yet this perspective overlooks individual acts of opposition. Up to now, the availability of sources for analyzing the behavior of German Jews has been limited. Historians used reports originated by the Nazi state and/or written post-war testimonies. In those sources individual acts of opposition barely emerge. However, a closer analysis of the micro level of Nazi society challenges the common image of German Jews as passive victims.

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce its cooperation with a German government funded multi-institutional Holocaust research project entitled #LastSeen - Pictures of Nazi Deportations.

In this clip, Henry Sinason, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, recalls how widespread Nazi antisemitic propaganda was all over the city where he lived.

USC Shoah Foundation and the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust are partnering to develop new and innovative educational programing on medical ethics and the Holocaust. The Holocaust marked a profound and sadistic deviation from traditional notions of medical ethics, with medical and scientific communities in the Third Reich actively participating in the labeling, persecution and eventual mass murder of millions deemed “unfit.”

Staff and scholars of the USC Shoah Foundation will participate in discussion about the latest in Holocaust studies at the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO)’s 29th annual conference this week in St. Petersburg, Fla.

This clip reel features several Holocaust survivors talking about the antisemitism they experienced in relation to the sports they played during the Nazi era in Germany.

As part of the program, 100 survivors of Auschwitz, the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, will travel to Poland to attend and participate in the official observance of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 2015.

Making DiT accessible at no-cost to educators and students through IWitness provides students anywhere in the world with the opportunity to have a conversational experience with survivors of the Holocaust and other witnesses to history. And at the Holocaust & Genocide Centres in Johannesburg and Durban, that’s exactly what students did, with a total of 400 learners interfacing with an interactive recorded video of Pinchas, a Jewish survivor of six Nazi concentration camps.

Teresa Walch, the 2016-2017 Inaugural Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the calculated and gradual exclusion of Jews from public spaces and ultimately from their own homes that began in the 1930s.

 In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of AuschwitzJoin us for the US film premiere of "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" Museum of Tolerance9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los AngelesTuesday, January 27 at 7 p.m. Presented by Museum of Tolerance, USC Shoah Foundation with the support of the British Council

Today marks the launch of #BeginsWithMe, a social media campaign led by USC Shoah Foundation that encourages people to share what they will do to learn from the Holocaust and help fight prejudice and intolerance.

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.   - Zygmunt Bauman 2018 Polish-Israeli Crisis: History, Trauma, and Politics of Cultural Memory The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear. 1968-2018

Professor Marion Kaplan, 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave the annual Shapiro Scholar public lecture on gender and the Holocaust.

Maximilian Strnad, a young German scholar who is currently a fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s research center, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the experiences of the last remaining Jews under the German Reich — intermarried Jews.

Kurt, an American soldier, and Gerda, a Holocaust survivor, recall how they met the day Kurt liberated her from a derelict factory where Nazi soldiers abandoned her and other women during a death march.

Holocaust survivor Gloria Lachman remembers Nazi soldiers appearing at her house and physically forcing her grandmother to vote for Hitler, an experience that caused her to deeply value the right to vote.

There is a current controversy about the allegation that the great mufti of Jerusalem instigated the final solution of the Nazis. While there is no doubt that Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a virulent anti-Semite, history shows that the Final Solution was conceived and implemented by Nazis and nobody else.

In the 1980s, a tiny woman in her 50s named Ruth Westheimer shocked and delighted the world with her blunt advice – delivered in a grandmotherly German accent – about sex. She became a media sensation and remains a household name as “Dr. Ruth.” Less known is her perilous journey to get there – a story that includes her survival of the Holocaust and immigration to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, where she briefly became a sniper in a Jewish paramilitary force.

"During the Holocaust I was living in a cocoon, with blinders. I lived completely in the present moment, because at any second, any Nazi, any German, any Kapo, could do away with me. You were like a gnat that they could squash. So, you lived inside a cocoon and hoped that one the day the butterfly would come out."

Jean-Marc Dreyfus, PhD, Reader in Holocaust Studies in the History department at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) has been awarded the 2018-2019 Center Research Fellowship.

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.

Famed musician and Holocaust survivor Victor Borge describes how he was targeted by Nazi sympathizers in Denmark. They harrassed him at his concerts, attacked him in the street, and published articles about him in their papers.

Edith Lowy describes how her family hid during the Holocaust and after a series of event, the family decided to voluntarily march into the nearby labor camp to avoid the consequences of being caught by the Nazis.

Elizabeth Holtzman, who is the subject of an IWitness activity, is among four Homeland Security advisory council members who resigned in protest of the U.S. government’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Holocaust survivor testimony to enhance education initiative in the Czech Republic In the Czech Republic, Holocaust survivors’ eyewitness testimonies will soon be used to teach a different aspect of local history: the imprisonment of Czechoslovak citizens in the Soviet Gulag.

The ethics of studying Holocaust medical experiments will be the topic of conversation at the first-ever Zygo Student Lunchtime Series panel Friday at 12:30 p.m in USC Doheny Memorial Library room G28.