I was laying in bed one day scrolling through Instagram, lost in the endless stories that have me so addicted to my phone. I skipped some and lingered on others, navigating the echo chamber of social media like a pro before coming across my local bookstore’s account. They were sharing books to read while their doors were temporarily closed due to Coronavirus. A vibrant yellow and blue cover with the words, A Nail The Evening Hangs On, caught my eye; it was a book of poetry — a rare purchase for me, but the nod to the poet’s Cambodian history pulled me right in.

Listen to Poet Monica Sok read her poem, Self-Portrait as War Museum Captions. Photo is a helicopter from the War Museum Cambodia in Siem Reap / Courtesy Monica Sok

Featuring testimony clips and a conversation with special guests highlighting the interviewer experience moderated by Stephen D. Smith, PhD

The Anne Bernard Interviewer Collection comprises more than 250 hours of survivor testimony. “It is ennobling to be in their presence,” reflected Anne. I’ve thought about all those interviews and how they truly changed my life. And how they touched me, each one of them, in so many ways. I was, and still am, grateful to the Shoah Foundation for giving me one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.”

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Sol Gringlas, who survived both the Nordhausen and Auschwitz concentration camps. Sol passed away in May of 2020. He was 100.

We join a worldwide community to celebrate the recent 100th birthday of Ludmila Page, a Holocaust survivor who helped bring the story of Oskar Schindler to light together with her late husband Paul (Poldek Pfefferberg). The two of them and more than 1,200 other Jews survived the Holocaust thanks to Schindler.

Sol Gringlas's work as a tailor allowed him to receive extra portions of food he could share with his brother.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Immersive Innovations team headed to Mexico in March of this year to spend a week with Holocaust survivors Dolly and Julio Botton. The couple, who have been together for more than 50 years, were part of the Institute’s first collection of videotaped testimonies back in the 1990s.

10AM – 11AM PDT | 1PM - 2PM EDT Internationally acclaimed scholar and historian, Professor Yehuda Bauer, joins the Echoes & Reflections community from Israel for a special presentation on the Holocaust and other genocides. While the Holocaust is a unique historical event, the study of this history can inform the study of other mass atrocities. During this webinar, Professor Bauer will talk about similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, and what can be learned and applied from a study of the Holocaust to a study of other genocides.

This webinar features We Share The Same Sky, USC Shoah Foundation’s first podcast, which tells the personal story of a granddaughter’s decade-long journey to retrace her grandmother’s story of survival and the impact it has on her understanding of self and the present world.

Julia remembers her family's prewar life as nomadic Roma in Germany.

As the world shelters in place and struggles for justice, the arts are more important than ever. Join Visions and Voices as they kick off the 2020–21 academic year and their 15th season with a dynamic and inspirational evening of music, dance, spoken word, comedy, and more. This special event will amplify the role of the arts as a means of connection, resilience, healing, and social change. Attendees will also be invited to join the artists “backstage” for an epic virtual dance party starring you.

Past President of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2018) Colleen Kraft is best known for her advocacy for humane treatment of migrant children at the border. Her work to explain to the public the harms to young children caused by the “zero tolerance” policy, which included separation of children from parents, helped to mobilize advocates across the political spectrum to end this policy.

Scholar, activist, playwright, artist, and one of the original organizers of Black Lives Matter Funmilola Fagbamila will perform The Intersection: Woke Black Folk, her acclaimed one-woman stage play about the complexities of Black political identity and how humans navigate difference. The Intersection premiered at the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles in 2018 and has toured across the Netherlands, England, France, and Brazil.

Safer at Home is an online exhibition of objects from the ONE Archives Collection at the USC Libraries organized by its curator, Alexis Bard Johnson. Safer at Home is an invitation to examine the many facets of home as well as what safety means and looks like for LGBTQ populations—both past and present. The selected items resonate with and reflect on the idea of “safer at home.” They act as a mirror—bringing the past into the present and offering perspective on what is happening today.

Asian communities in Los Angeles abound with diversity. A multitude of ethnicities and nationalities from across the Asian continent are present here. Residents have sought fresh new opportunities, arriving as refugees, economic migrants, students, or professionals. In celebration of these communities, USC PAM presents seven dynamic female contemporary artists who embody the vitality of our city’s Asian populations. Each of these artists speak to the fluidity of an individual’s sense of place and self.

This interactive, 65-minute comedic performance mashes up campaign rallies, church revivals, and solo theater shows to uncover the history of voting, what it means to run for local office, and the impact artists can have on democracy.

There are few artists who possess as sophisticated an understanding of the music business, the entertainment industry, and racial politics in America as Chuck D, and even fewer speakers who can command an audience like he does while breaking it down. Sharing his powerful experiences, observations, and advice, the leader and co-founder of the legendary rap group Public Enemy, author of two critically acclaimed books, political activist, publisher, radio host, and producer will address politics, rap and soul music, race, technology, and more.

Join us for a livestream discussion with Sheryl Cababa (VP of Strategy, Substantial) & Jenna Leventhal (Deputy Director of Education, USC Shoah Foundation) via Zoom. USC Shoah Foundation collaborated with Substantial to design and build IWalk, a digital educational platform to bring in-person historical locations to life. We will discuss:

From visiting family in China during summer breaks growing up, I became acutely aware of the devastation and suffering that occurred during the Japanese occupation of our hometown of Nanjing. Museums, movies, television programs, and commemorative art kept the Nanjing Massacre alive in public memory. But what I also noticed, from visits to museums, shuffling through television channels, and discussions with family, was the seeming absence of Chinese resistance.

Lucy Sun will be a senior in the Fall 2020 semester. She is majoring in History and minoring in Psychology and Law.

In this talk, Chad Gibbs will discuss how Jewish prisoners created what he terms “spaces of resistance” at Treblinka and how studying these locations can provide revelations about the roles of women prisoners in resistance.

An online lecture by Allison Somogyi (Yale University and University of Southern California) 2019-2020 USC-Yale Postdoctoral Research Fellow Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Supported by the USC Libraries Collection Convergence Initiative