Alan Rose was repeating himself. He was stuck in a particularly difficult part of his story about being deported from a labor camp to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Josh Turnil and the guests he had invited to hear Alan’s story in Josh’s Paris living room that January 2019 evening – about 20 people of all ages tucked into sofas and folding chairs – gently helped Alan along. After Alan had finished speaking, Josh’s teenage son sat at the piano and played a slow, jazzy melody with a repeating refrain that reflected the circularity of memory.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Max Eisen, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau more than 20 times as an educator and testified at the trials of two SS guards in 2015, more than 70 years after his entire family was killed in Nazi concentration camps. Max’s memoir, By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz, was the 2019 winner of Canada Reads, a Canadian Broadcasting Company “battle of the books” program, and was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize in 2017. 

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual history and Education embarked on a new chapter on Tuesday when it unveiled its new global headquarters on the USC campus. The event also marked the start of the Institute’s 25th anniversary, a time that will propel its work into new frontiers as it continues its mission of sharing the 55,000 testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides to foster empathy and respect.

“My father is Jewish.  My mother is Jewish. And I am Jewish.”  Those were the words I kept repeating to myself as I boarded my flight from JFK to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the USC Shoah Foundation announced today at AJC Global Forum their newly formed partnership to give voice to, document, and map modern-day antisemitism around the world. 

A conversation with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

During the weekend of October 10-11, the University of Southern California gathered international academics, musicians and members of the Los Angeles community for a symposium and series of events, collectively called Singing in the Lion’s Mouth: Music as Resistance to Genocide. Hosted by Professor Wolf Gruner of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and Professor Nick Strimple of the USC Thornton School of Music, the symposium, film screening and concert were also sponsored by USC’s Vision and Voices arts and humanities initiative. The following paragraphs are a reflection on the individual events that made up the weekend, and an exploration into the larger ideas raised in discussions over the course of the weekend.

USC Shoah Foundation staff are currently in Nanjing, China, to record about 20 more testimonies of Nanjing Massacre survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation education staff are once again on the road this week to introduce educators in Texas and Massachusetts to IWitness.

USC Shoah Foundation responds to the stifling of freedom in Turkey following the failed coup attempt July 15-16, 2016.

USC Shoah Foundation staff members are in Rwanda this week participating in a colloquium about peace education, hosted by the Institute’s partner in Rwanda, Aegis Trust.

The group visiting the Institute’s office on Tuesday were students in Robert Hernandez’ digital journalism class at USC.

An estimated 43,000 students participated in 100 Days resources and activities from January 20-April 29.

"We'll Meet Again," the PBS series that featured a Holocaust survivor who came to USC Shoah Foundation in hopes of reconnecting with the family of another Holocaust survivor he met at a displaced-persons camp in the waning days of World War II is now available for streaming.

An online lecture by Mehmet Polatel (University of Southern California) 2019-2020 Center Junior Postdoctoral Research Fellow Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Cosponsored by the USC Institute of Armenian Studies

We are very saddened at the USC Shoah Foundation to learn that our friend and Holocaust survivor Cantor Moshe Taube has passed away at age 93. Cantor Taube was among 1,200 Jews saved by Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust and led in the chanting of prayers at Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh.

The documentary Two Sides of Survival just landed Winner of Best Documentary Short at the Angeles Film Festival. Produced by USC Shoah Foundation, Two Sides of Survival brings together stories from the East and West, chronicling how Jews who fled the Nazis in Europe, and Chinese who were threatened by Japanese occupation, improbably found refuge close to one another in the 1930’s and during World War II.

Modern day Kentucky and WWII-era Austria may seem worlds apart, but the far-flung locales and distant timeframes came together last month at a series of educational workshops at the Iroquois Branch Library in south Louisville. Over the course of five weeks, a group of young children and their caregivers gathered each Saturday morning for a special educational series sponsored by the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) and The Willesden Project, a program of USC Shoah Foundation and Hold On To Your Music Foundation, with support from the Koret Foundation. 

A public lecture organized by Holocaust Museum LA Join author Wolf Gruner as he discusses his new book, a highly original and compelling account of individual Jews who resisted Nazi persecution, challenging the traditional portrayal of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust.   RSVP here

Gitow will consult on a variety of topics and initiate collaborations between the Shoah Foundation and the UN.

J. Michael Hagopian's prized 16mm Ariflex camera, which he used to record testimonies of Armenian Genocide survivors, is now in the possession of the USC Shoah Foundation.

June 20 is World Refugee Day, dedicated to raising awareness about refugees throughout the world, a day on which I inevitably always look back on the formative years of my life. In 1991, my family and I were forced out of our home in Croatia because of our ethnic origin, and we began a life of exile, torn from everything known and dear to us and forced to swim in the uncharted waters of life as a refugee. Our lives had been changed drastically; a life of abundance had become a life of misery. 

To help combat the stresses of working with genocide, USC Shoah Foundation hosted a Trauma Education workshop for Aegis Trust and Kigali Genocide Memorial staff in Rwanda last week.

Three IWitness educators have authored an article about IWitness for the National Council for the Social Studies’ journal Social Education.

Educators gave hundreds of presentations on behalf of USC Shoah Foundation during the 2014-2015 fiscal year, introducing thousands of teachers and members of the public to testimony and IWitness.

Musician and music scholar Alexandra Birch will discuss the resistance demonstrated by one of the 20th century’s most renowned composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, in her presentation at the Music as Resistance to Genocide academic symposium.

In an effort to create a deeper engagement with educators online, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational website IWitness hosts monthly Twitter chats.

Carson Sizemore is already bracing for the tough conversations she will have in her 10th grade government class at her private high school in Albany, a small city on the banks of the Flint River in southwest Georgia. “I kind of have conflicting ideas with a lot of people in my family and my school. They’re more conservative, and I’m more in the middle somewhere,” Carson said. “I know there will be some debates in my government class.”

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2015 – Longtime USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro has given a gift to fund an endowed research fellowship program at the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in honor of his parents, Sara and Asa Shapiro, who both survived the Holocaust.

Michigan student Brandon Bartley shares how testimony inspired him when he participated in the IWitness Detroit program last summer.