This documentary chronicles the Holocaust as experienced in Italy, from the racial laws Mussolini enacted in 1938 through the German invasion in 1943 and the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. The experiences are made personal through the use of testimony from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. Nine Italian citizens, all survivors of Auschwitz, share their stories; their testimonies are woven among personal and historical photographs and additional archival footage.

Explore the ways that our lives can be shaped by the experiences of our ancestors through the power of firsthand testimonies.

Tisha B'Av (The Ninth of Av) is a day of mourning and fasting. The holiday commemorates various tragedies that befell the Jewish people throughout history, particularly the destruction of the first and second Temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE. In her testimony, Holocaust survivor Edith Reifer recalls fasting on Tisha B’av while imprisoned at Krakau-Plaszow labor camp.

Anita Pace, Director of Technology for the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California, is responsible for overseeing the technical network design and operations of the Institute. She is also responsible for the operation, preservation and cataloging of the Institute’s 105,000 hours of video testimony, the Visual History Archive, Access and IWitness websites as well as support and planning for new collections.

As a part of Yad Vashem's 8th International Conference on Holocaust Education taking place in Jerusalem, Martin Šmok, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's Senior International Program Consultant, will present the IWitness educational platform on June 20, 2012.

On February 11, Dr. Howard Gardner, best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, engaged in a public conversation on the art science of 21st-century education with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, an award-winning behavioral and social scientist and faculty member at the University of Southern California.

On February 2, we commemorated the 70th anniversary of the decisive WWII Battle of Stalingrad. That battle changed the course of the war, leading to the final victory over Nazi Germany. As many as two million lives may have been lost at Stalingrad. We invite you to watch edited and subtitled clips from testimonies of three Red Army veterans who participated in the frontline fighting. The Visual History Archive of USC Shoah Foundation contains interviews with hundreds of Allied liberators and Jewish war veterans from all fronts of WWII.

You’re invited to the USC Shoah Foundation! Free and open to the public, our monthly tours give visitors a chance to explore the life stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and to discover how their memories are being used to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry.

USC Shoah Foundation educator workshops continue increasing in number and reach. This summer, the program Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century convened new seminars in Budapest and Prague. In addition, another workshop in Poland is scheduled for November. The program’s offerings draw participants from all across their respective nations.

The Institute has updated its Visual History Archive (VHA), which now integrates Google Maps for a new way to search the testimonies.

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute is pleased to announce the formation of the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association (SFISA), a student-led organization comprised of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Southern California.

Located northwest of Drohobycz in the Lwów voivoship in Poland (after the war Drogobych, Ukraine), the Bronica Forest was the site of massacres of the local Jewish population by the Nazis in 1942 -1943. The Jews were taken from the Drohobycz ghetto to the Bronica forest to be killed until the closing of the ghetto in June 1943. Nearly 11,000 Jews were killed on that site, including Al’fred Shraer’s mother and maternal grandfather. He speaks in Ukrainian about the history of the monument standing on the site and explains how the executions took place.

The Holocaust is inarguably the most heinous crime against a group of people we have seen in modern times. Despite decades of wrestling with how such an atrocity could have occurred and the postwar generation promising never again, history keeps repeating itself. Therefore, the collection and the custody of testimonies from those who bear witness remains a necessary task for as long as inhumanities keep occurring. Genocide and crimes against humanity transcend religions, cultures, languages, geographic regions, socioeconomics, gender, age, etc., making testimony collection across all cultures not only a moral responsibility, but imperative given the mission of USC Shoah Foundation. We know for sure that under a certain set of circumstances, genocide could happen anywhere, and again.

December 15 will mark the beginning of a pilot for a new professional development offering from Echoes and Reflections: a three-hour, self-guided course that teaches educators everything they need to know about using Echoes and Reflections to teach about the Holocaust.

With 21 participants and one observer, USC Shoah Foundation’s Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century Master Teacher program in Budapest got off to its biggest start yet earlier this month.

Acclaimed writer and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt will be a special guest at an evening of conversation with USC Shoah Foundation at Aspen Jewish Community Center Wednesday, August 9 at 5 p.m. The program is complimentary and open to the public. Lipstadt will open the evening with remarks about Holocaust denial and its role in global antisemitism.

The initiative will support educators by providing them with tools and training to responsibly engage their students now and into the future.

A public lecture by Vaclav Masek (PhD student in Sociology, University of Southern California) 2022 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

A public lecture by Vaclav Masek (PhD student in Sociology, University of Southern California) 2022 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Thursday, December 9, 2010. Steven Spielberg, Founder of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, presented DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s highest honor, the Ambassadors for Humanity Award.

A közép-kelet-európai régióban elsőként, a Közép-európai Egyetem (CEU) könyvtárában elérhető immár a Soá Intézet a Vizuális Történelemért és Oktatásért Vizuális Történelmi Archívumának (USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education) teljes anyaga. 

His Excellency Ilan Mor, Israeli Ambassador to Hungary, observed a lesson taught by a Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century graduate at Berzsenyi Dániel High School, a USC Shoah Foundation partner school in Budapest, Hungary.

After several postponements due to the political turmoil in their country, the 2012 Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century Ukrainian cohort finally came together this month for a follow-up session about the lessons they created over the last two years.

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.

April is Genocide Awareness Month, a time to reflect on atrocities of the past while ensuring that we avoid acts of mass murder in the future. The urgency of this mandate was highlighted just weeks ago when the U.S. House of Representatives and the State Department officially recognized that ISIS is committing genocide in the Middle East.

Paula Cuellar Cuellar, the 2016-2017 Center Graduate Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave a public lecture focusing on her dissertation research about whether scorched earth operations in El Salvador and Guatemala constitute genocidal practices.

Julien Zarifian (University of Cergy-Pontoise, France) 2017-2018 Visiting Fulbright Scholar  “The United States and the Question of the Armenian Genocide” April 19, 2018

On November 24 at 8AM PST/11AM EST, USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith will moderate a panel of experts convened by UNESCO to launch UNESCO and OSCE's latest publication on antisemitism. Addressing Anti-Semitism in Schools: Training Curricula, a new four volume resource for teacher and school director trainers is UNESCO's second publication dedicated to antisemitism since 2018. The resource and event are designed to engage in meaningful discussions about effective ways to address antisemitism through education.

There is gratitude deep inside of grief. A feeling of, how lucky was I to have this friendship at all. That’s how I feel about my dear Rabbi Bent Melchior who passed away in Copenhagen on July 28, 2021. He was 92-years-old.