1:00 pm PST/4:00 pm EST/8:00 am AEDT (+1)  Join USC Annenberg for a conversation about combatting anti-Semitism in the United States.

On April 20, at Los Angeles City Hall, Councilmember Paul Krekorian, together with co-host Councilmember Eric Garcetti, recognized the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the Armenian Film Foundation for working jointly to preserve memories of survivors and other witnesses of the Armenian Genocide.

USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education participated in USC's Genocide Awareness week with a series of events, including an evening of dramatic arts on April 9, 2013.

First in a series, aimed at middle and high school educators.

"The archive has nearly 52,000 interviews and they are as varied as human beings are....  The scope of information really mirrors the scope of differences between people."

Echoes and Reflections reaches 10,000th educator.

“Назви своє ім’я”, повнометражний документальний фільм про Голокост в Україні, був показаний під час Міжнародного Історичного Форуму 22 червня 2011 р. в Києві. Присвячений 70-й річниці нападу німецького вермахту на Радянський союз 22 червня 1941 р., форум під назвою “1941 рік: німецька нищівна війна в Україні та її учасники” був організований Інститутом Глобальних та Європейських Студій м. Лейпцига в рамках програми “Історична Майстерня Європи” фонду “Пам’ять, відповідальність і майбутнє” (Die Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft).

Visitors to the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim, Poland, will view USC Shoah Foundation testimony in the center’s permanent exhibit beginning in May.

Educators who are planning to assign the IWitness Video Challenge to their students this year are invited to attend a free webinar on Thurs., Jan. 15 at 4 p.m. PST.

Every once in a while, I have a moment when seemingly disconnected ideas collide in peculiar relief, bringing clarity and making sense – admittedly sometimes only to me. I had one of those days recently when I was looking at the calendar and realized that International Women’s Day on March 8 was approaching.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites proposals for its three research fellowships for advanced-standing PhD candidates: the 2018-2019 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship; the 2018-2019 Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies; and the 2018-2019 Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellowship.

Historian Boris Adjemian gave a public lecture cosponsored by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Institute of Armenian Studies about the making of Armenian archival collections of survivors’ testimonies after the Armenian genocide and the evolution of their historiographical uses.

Any individual testimony of a Holocaust survivor tells a story that is personalized and unique. But a new Jewish Studies class at the University of Toronto is encouraging students to watch USC Shoah Foundation’s testimonies in another way – using applied statistics – to test hypotheses and find broader stories that often aren’t detectible in any single interview. The aim for the course – called Jews: by the numbers – is to take a quantitative approach to studying the humanities.

 

Today, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a complex of concentration and extermination camps, we take the time to honor the millions of victims of the Holocaust by listening to those who survived these atrocities, and using their remarkable testimonies of survival and loss to cultivate empathy and respect in future generations so that these atrocities may never happen again. “History shows that the only way to stop genocide is to sound the alarm before it is too late.” 

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn about the passing of Max Glauben, a child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek and Dachau concentration camps, and a veteran of the United States Army. In 2018, Max was interviewed by USC Shoah Foundation, in association with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum—a center he helped found—for the interactive Dimensions in Testimony exhibit. He recorded his original video testimony for USC Shoah Foundation in Dallas, Texas in 1996.

As we mark the one-year anniversary of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, the devastation and human suffering continue to be staggering.

Historical memory is dangerous. In times of crisis, its demons emerge, ugly, toxic, and potentially lethal. We saw it in Donetsk last week. Jews emerging from synagogue during Passover found themselves the target of a despicable anti-Semitic attack – new crisis, old anti-Semitism, which this time accused the Jews of acts of collaboration as far back as 1941.

Los Angeles, Aug. 10, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, in collaboration with the USC Thornton School of Music, will be hosting scholars from around the world for two days of programming on Oct. 10 - 11 to highlight the use of music as a tool to resist oppression and spread awareness.

As the first anniversary of my life-changing trip to Poland is upon me, I take time to reflect on the impact that trip has made on me both personally and professionally.  I have learned so much from my experiences as a teacher in USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present program.

What are the pillars of modern democracy and how can democracy be defended in days of crisis? These questions keep coming to me these days, when Poland faces a really serious crisis that so far has caused a huge polarization in Polish society that divides neighbors, colleagues, friends, even families. Being an educator for almost 30 years, teaching first young students, then teenagers and finally teachers about history, civil rights and human rights, I have realized what a huge setback the Polish educational system has suffered.

“Challenging the Shame Paradigm: Jewish Women’s Narratives of Sexual(ized) Violence During the Holocaust” Lauren Cantillon (PhD candidate in the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London, UK) 2020-2021 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies March 25, 2021

In 1985, when Dr. Sharon Aroian-Poiser was a graduate student, she accompanied her grandfather to Washington D.C., to a conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Between 1915 and 1918, the Turkish government systematically expelled or massacred an estimated 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Aroian-Poiser watched as elderly survivors at the conference rose to tell their stories before microphones and video recorders, many of them for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time that Aroian-Poiser learned that her grandfather was a survivor.

East Coast dance artist Rachel Linsky combines movement and testimony to create a novel form of Holocaust education.  Rachel directs and choreographs ZACHOR, an initiative that honors Holocaust survivors through dance. Her latest work in the project is Hidden, a dance film and production based on the story of Aaron Elster, a Jewish boy who from 1943 to 1945 hid from Nazi persecution in the attic of a Polish family. 

The inaugural 2020-2021 Scholar Lab program focuses on the topic of antisemitism. A cohort of academics was invited to explore antisemitism from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and to use the collaborative meetings to guide and hone their work. The results of their research, presented in both traditional and non-traditional formats, will be accessible to the public later this year.

Alexa Dollar flings open her arms and spins across the stage, relishing the moment as if she’s just arrived at a party thrown in her honor. She kicks out her leg and flutters back across the floor, chasing the piano’s tantalizing lilt. Drew Lybolt comes next, taking over the stage with powerful leaps and commanding twirls set to an insistent, almost argumentative, piano vignette.

Sam Gustman has been chief technology officer (CTO) of the Shoah Foundation since 1994. Gustman is also associate dean and CTO at the USC Libraries where he oversees IT for the Libraries and started the USC Digital Repository.

“Being together with Dita - We did it together. [...] Neither of us would have survived without the other, and we both realize that.”⠀⠀ Margot Heuman was born in Hellenthal, Germany in 1929. In 1942, she and her family were sent to Theresienstadt ghetto, where Margot and her sister were put into a youth home. ⠀

Sam Gustman has been chief technology officer (CTO) of the Shoah Foundation since 1994. Gustman is also associate dean and CTO at the USC Libraries where he oversees IT for the Libraries and started the USC Digital Repository.

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.