Public lecture by Gabór Tóth (University of Oxford, History) 2018-2019 Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Holocaust survivor David Fertig was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922 to Polish parents. He escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport at age 16 to live with cousins in England, where he joined the Royal Air Force. (02:04:22)

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.

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.

May 18, 2016 5 -6:30 p.m. UC Irvine, Merage School Auditorium (SB1, First Floor, Room 1200) Speaker: Stephen Smith, Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation

The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series continues with Lesson 9: Perpetrators, Collaborators and Bystanders

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor whose passion for sharing his story through lectures, recorded interviews, and educational trips back to concentration camps in Europe taught and inspired people everywhere. He was 96.

A rare collection containing hundreds of artifacts and written material brought back from Nazi Germany by an American Jewish soldier has been acquired by the USC Libraries as part of a longstanding collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

A newly published article in the peer-reviewed journal Social Education focuses on the potential of virtual reality in the classroom, and highlights USC Shoah Foundation’s virtual reality film 'Lala.' The 6-minute film centers on Holocaust survivor Roman Kent, who shares the story of his time in Nazi-occupied Poland alongside his beloved dog Lala.

Holocaust rescuer/aid provider Bertram Schaeffner describes how gay people in Nazi Germany had to hide their relationships in public. They could be punished for speaking to each other on the street if they couldn't prove how they knew each other.

“Recovering Victims’ Voices,” a lecture series on marginalized victims of the Holocaust, highlights new and emerging scholarship on often un- or underexplored victims of Nazi persecution. The series shows how historical identity-based hate influences contemporary discourse about race, gender, sexuality, and disabilities.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, listen to the testimonies of 70 Holocaust survivors, drawn from the Visual History Archive at USC Shoah Foundation, as they recall their personal experiences in the Nazi extermination camp.

Leading American and international businessmen and philanthropists are joining forces to support the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 2015.

The opening panel of the second day of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s Digital Holocaust Studies conference will focus on the innovative ways researchers are representing the Holocaust visually, using the latest data visualization techniques and tools.

Max Glauben was 13 when his family’s apartment was destroyed in the historic battle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Eva Kuper was 2 when her mother’s cousin rescued her from a train in the frantic moments before it headed to the Treblinka death camp. Both lost parents and other relatives in the Holocaust. And both are among the four Holocaust survivors whose testimonies USC Shoah Foundation is recording this week using cutting-edge, 360-degree filming techniques at the physical locations of their pre-war and wartime experiences, as well as their places of liberation.

Listen to Jewish survivors and other eyewitnesses to the Holocaust describe watching the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In preparation for the start of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Nazis in power decided to minimize the presence of antisemitism in the city.

“Who Will Write Our History” tells how ghetto inhabitant Emanuel Ringelblum, a historian, spearheaded an effort to collect what became one of the most important caches of eyewitness accounts to survive World War II. USC Shoah Foundation is a screening-event partner.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Director Wolf Gruner will give a lecture at Texas A&M University entitled "Defiance and Protest: Forgotten Individual Jewish Reactions to the Persecution in Nazi Germany."  

“Filming the Camps” explores the World War II experiences of Hollywood directors John Ford, George Stevens and Samuel Fuller.

Early this year, when the Swedish History Museum opened its exhibit about the Holocaust – an exhibit that includes USC Shoah Foundation testimonies and some of its interactive biographies – it marked the state-funded museum’s first foray into the topic. The exhibit has been a major success, say two Swedish museum professionals who played a prominent role in the installation, and who came to USC Shoah Foundation’s headquarters in Los Angeles last week to discuss taking the partnership to the next level.

Jean describes leaving his sister with her non-Jewish friend from school, while he and his younger brother left Paris and crossed enemy lines, fleeing Nazi-occupied France by spending a night in the forest. This clip is part of the Visual History Archive's Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre collection.

As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, it falls to future generations to ensure their stories remain vibrant and strong.

Auschwitz was one of five death camps established by the Nazis in Poland where Jews were taken to be murdered during the so-called “Final Solution,” a euphemism for the their genocide. We know it through the horrific photos of trains filled with Jews, of men being split from women, parents from children, of the uniformed Nazi wagging his finger, and of the brick chimneys billowing smoke. But there is a much more intimate story still to be heard.

What makes Gad Beck’s story so remarkable, however, was that not only was he a “Mischling” but he was also a gay teenager living in Nazi Berlin, the epicenter of a military power antagonistic to both Jews and gays.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened by the recent loss of Walter P. Loebenberg, a friend of the Institute and a Holocaust survivor who, after finding refuge in the United States, went on to open the Florida Holocaust Museum, one of the largest Holocaust museums in the nation. He was 94.

USC Shoah Foundation and Delirio Films in association with Neko Productions have completed an animated short film that brings to life the remarkable childhood journey of Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer escaping Nazi Germany, as she faced the choices that made her who she is today.


Broken Silence, a “CINEMAX Reel Life” series of five documentary films by distinguished international directors, will debut on CINEMAX on five consecutive nights next April 15-19. This unique event is presented by Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and produced by Academy Award Winning documentary filmmaker James Moll (the Oscar-winning HBO documentary “The Last Days”), and will debut in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah.

Jewish survivor Rita Kuhn discusses her interest in speaking with her Nazi cousin to learn a lot more about her experiences in the Holocaust. She says that her past did not exist to her until she openly discussed it in 1985, and she was finally able to share her experiences publicly in Berlin in 1988.

Holocaust survivor Gena Turgel was known in the British press as the “Bride of Belsen” for marrying a British liberator of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she was a prisoner. She gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1998.

Even absent this current era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” the new Polish law making it a crime to point out Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust would be alarming.  But that it is occurring in today’s climate of demagoguery, heightened nationalism and ethnic tension – an unholy trio that threatens to metastasize on a global scale – is a troubling development. Poland’s effort has come under attack by Israel and stewards of Holocaust memory.