Peace Week is a series of events to commemorate the conclusion of the four-year program.

"Silence is not an option" became the motto of over 100 guests who learned about USC Shoah Foundation’s mission to fight against hatred and intolerance through genocide survivor and witness testimony.

Students will explore the relationship between media and indifference through the work of Elie Wiesel, documentary film, personal responsibility and advocacy.

The first-ever recipient of USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s Genocide Prevention Research Fellowship is Vanessa Belén Dorda Meneses, a PhD candidate from the University of Chile.

Three graduates of USC Shoah Foundation’s Master Teacher program in Central Europe traveled to Los Angeles this week for additional training to take their use of IWitness and testimony to the next level.

New Dimensions in Testimony has been a work of passion for USC Shoah Foundation since 2010. After years of development at the University of Southern California including with USC Institute for Creative Technologies and with content developer Conscience Display, the program is now reaching audiences in museums around the world.

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.

A public lecture by Anna Lee (USC undergraduate, English major, Spanish and TESOL minor) 2019 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow  Deaths by guns is not unique anymore in American contemporary culture. And mass executions by guns were prevalent during the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. In America today, mass shootings, particularly in schools, have caused devastation.

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Cosponsored by the Center for Visual Anthropology at USC, the USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

On this day, 27 years ago, my city of Sarajevo became a besieged city, and remained such for the following four years. A seven-year old at the time, I remember those first days of April of 1992 well. On one of them, my family’s Yugo 45 – an iconic car model of the former Yugoslavia – broke down right next to the Kasarna Maršala Tita (military barracks), where the U.S. Embassy is located today. Without a car, we could not go home that night, so we returned to my grandparents’ house. Later that night, the Bosnian Serb forces took away all the Bosnian Muslim men from our street and killed them. That Yugo 45, which we sold for some firewood months later, saved my father. This is how I remember that April of 1992.

An online lecture by 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 Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Cosponsored by the USC Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies

3:00 PM PDT/6:00PM EDT/8:00 AM AEST (+1)  Over the past year, budding bakers sought refuge and comfort in their kitchens, learning to bake bread. Loaves of sourdough and challah forged connections between families and cultures when we could not physically be together. These connections build on deep traditions in cultures around the world, often discussed in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive of 55,000 testimonies of genocide survivors and witnesses.   

Graduates of the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program came together last month to celebrate the program's 10th anniversary in Hungary. The event took place June 28-30th to commemorate the program's success and chart new opportunities for its graduates.

USC Shoah Foundation today launches a new Virtual IWalk web app that enables students and teachers to tour historic sites online while watching and listening to witness testimonies from the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation with its partner the Schindler’s Ark Foundation has added a tour of Oskar Schindler’s former factory in what is now the Czech Republic to its mobile IWalk application, enabling smartphone users to explore the site where the German businessman sheltered more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

Testimony has always posed challenges for educators: for example, whether to treat it as historical source or personal memory; how testimony transform over time; the trauma-literacy of recipients and the well-being of testimony-givers. Nevertheless, digital technologies introduce further complications, especially concerning access, provenance, ownership, and agency.

A public lecture by Raíssa Alonso (PhD candidate in Social History, University of São Paulo, Brazil) 2022-2023 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow (Join us in person for this lecture or attend virtually on Zoom) Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

USC Shoah Foundation and USC Rossier School of Education and its Centers EDGE and CANDLES yesterday held a special public convening to recognize the Mickey Shapiro Endowed Chair in Holocaust Education Research. At a time of surging antisemitism in the United States and around the world, the new research chair will ensure the continuation of groundbreaking academic research into how testimony-based education can deepen and expand the study of Holocaust education worldwide.

Two USC Cinematic Arts professors, a former Student Voices winner and two independent filmmakers will judge this year’s Student Voices Short Film Contest.

As I write this, I am standing alongside 30 of the last 200 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, which began 76 years ago Friday. Sirens sound around this Chinese city as the last few eyewitnesses of a massacre gather. Starting Dec. 13, 1937, and lasting six weeks, as many as 300,000 civilians were murdered during the atrocities.

A special delegation of staff and supporters of the USC Shoah Foundation arrived in Rwanda yesterday to begin a weeklong mission to learn about the Institute’s work in Rwanda, reinforce their commitment, and share the experience with others.

I look at the picture and realize this is why I’m working at the USC Shoah Foundation. This is what it’s all about. The photo shows two women standing in a field of green grass dotted with dandelions. The younger of the two has her arm wrapped around the other. The older woman smiles at the camera, while the other’s attention is focused only on her friend. The bond between them comes through; the love they share is unmistakable.

USC Shoah Foundation’s education staff have published an article revealing IWitness’s profound effect on high school students around the world in an annual publication by UNESCO.

Four of the conference’s educators will discuss how human rights and violence can be taught using digital technology and other innovative methods at the “Digital Pedagogy, Education, Human Rights and Violence Studies” roundtable, moderated by USC Shoah Foundation’s director of education, Kori Street.

Music is the purest form of communication. It transcends language and ignores the passage of time. It can be euphoric and elegiac, subtle and sublime. It joyously welcomes life and mournfully greets death. It can provide glimmers of hope and comfort in a world devoid of hope and comfort.

In January 2015, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Poland with other students from across the country for USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: Past is Present program. We toured various sites in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, with teachers and our friend Paula Lebovics, a survivor of the Holocaust. Each point in the trip was remarkable and extremely inspiring. However, the visit to the Auschwitz-Birkeanu Memorial Museum impacted me the most.

Over the course of their stay, the team built six IWitness activities focused on peace building in Rwanda. The first to go online will focus on Propaganda and Social Cohesion, which will be available for teachers and students by Tuesday, Feb. 13.

A handful of witnesses in the genocide trial against former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt appear in Pamela Yates’ film “500 Years,” but her cameras captured the entire proceeding. The case is considered a landmark in human rights law.

As a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who survived the tragedy on Feb. 14, 2018, I have spent the past year grappling with this question.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Ruth Pearl, mother of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl and co-founder and CFO of The Daniel Pearl Foundation, which promotes cross-cultural understanding through journalism and music.