Clara Isaacman (née Heller) was born in Borsa, Romania, before WWII. Due to rampant anti-Semitism, her family left Romania and moved to Antwerp, Belgium inthe late 1920s, when Clara was a child. Clara’s father, Shalom, was in the diamond business and owned a soda factory. Clara attended a Hebrew school and a publicschool in Antwerp.
female, jewish survivor, clip, unesco / Thursday, January 23, 2014
Karen Painter, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities will be visiting the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research for one week this summer as Honorable Mention for the Center’s 2018-2019 International Teaching Fellowship.
cagr / Friday, June 29, 2018
Ukrainian educators can teach about the Roma using the Institute's resources and teacher's guides "Giving Memory a Future," "Encountering Memory," and "Where Do Human Rights Begin."
Ukraine, Roma Sinti, anna lenchovska / Monday, October 10, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Director of Strategy, Partnership and Media Andi Gitow will join a panel discussion and show selected clips of the film, Who Will Write Our History, at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. Joining Gitow will be writer, director and producer Roberta Grossman; Executive Producer Nancy Spielberg; and Holocaust survivor Natalie Gold.
/ Tuesday, February 5, 2019
We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 4: The Ghettos.
echoes and reflections, testimony, education, teaching / Friday, October 4, 2013
The conference’s first roundtable discussion will bring together four panelists from all over the world who will engage in a discussion about how digital archives can be used both to engage and inform the public and also aid scholars in their research.
international conference / Friday, September 26, 2014
LOS ANGELES - Aug. 22, 2017 – The violent antisemitic and racist hatred seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month combined Nazi ideology with white supremacy and drew from the dark historical legacies of the Holocaust and slavery. This hatred revealed the fissures of a long-standing American cultural and identity crisis that requires long-term strategies to provide safe ways to explore identity and difference.
/ Tuesday, August 22, 2017
A public lecture by Geraldien von Frijtag (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 2017-2018 Center Research Fellow
cagr / Saturday, September 2, 2017
The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series concludes with Lesson 10: The Children.
echoes and reflections, holocaust, children, teaching, visual history archive / Thursday, November 21, 2013
At age 4, Morris Dancyger witnessed the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces. In his 2008 testimony held by the Calgary Jewish Federation and part of the USC Shoah Foundation archive, Morris recalled the moment he and his family realized Soviet troops had entered their barracks. Shortly after liberation, a Soviet military crew filmed Morris revealing his concentration camp tattoo. This historic footage later appeared in the 1945 documentary "Oswiecem" (Auschwitz), which documented evidence of Nazi crimes and atrocities.
/ Friday, January 24, 2025
This video focuses on the theme of diplomats and rescue and relates some of the best-known cases of aid provided by consulates and embassies including the efforts of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Raoul Wallenberg, and Chiune Sugihara. Diplomats in countries throughout Europe helped Jews escape persecution by issuing visas and other travel paperwork that allowed Jews to flee Nazi-occupied territory. Featured in the video are the testimonies of Israel Kipen, Per Anger, and Henri Deutsch who recount their personal experiences of rescue during the Holocaust.
unesco, rescue, wallenberg, sugihara, holocaust, clip reel, clip / Friday, February 1, 2013
Jewish Holocaust Survivor Mr. Strauss remembers the observance of Shabbat in Buchenwald as a form of spiritual resistance. The prisoners continued to chant the Jewish prayers even under the threat of death.
religion, religious, observance, shabbat, shabbos, clip, male, Manfred Strauss / Sunday, May 5, 2013
Featuring testimony on Aristides de Sousa Mendes, this video focuses on the theme of diplomats and rescue and relates some of the best-known cases of aid provided by consulates and embassies including the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg, and Chiune Sugihara. Diplomats in countries throughout Europe helped Jews escape persecution by issuing visas and other travel paperwork that allowed Jews to flee Nazi-occupied territory. Featured in the video are the testimonies of Israel Kipen, Per Anger, and Henri Deutsch who recount their personal experiences of rescue during the Holocaust.
/ Thursday, July 11, 2013
The Canadian collections consist of 1,250 testimonies taken by nine organizations in Canada, the three biggest of which are the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, and McGill University.
canada, visual history archive / Thursday, September 29, 2016
We mourn the passing of Dana Schwartz, 89, a Holocaust survivor and dedicated interviewer for the USC Shoah Foundation, who died on May 9 in Los Angeles. Dana, who later became a teacher and marriage and family therapist, was four when the Second World War started. She and her mother escaped the Lwów ghetto and survived in hiding.
30th anniversary, tribute, collections / Wednesday, July 3, 2024
"New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison" 
cagr / Wednesday, May 30, 2018
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research staff are in Australia this month for several presentations and a workshop centered on the Visual History Archive and testimony-based research.
cagr, australia / Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Jerome Nemer Lecture & Film Documentary Flyer.pdf
cagr / Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: HungarianÉva explains how she survived a roundup of Jews by Hungary’s Arrow Cross party members in Budapest in winter 1944. A young Hungarian Nazi came to take Eva, but spared her at the last minute due to Eva's father's quick thinking. Years after the war, she encountered the man again, this time as a high-ranking political police officer in then-Communist Hungary.
clip, subtitled, female, jewish survivor, arrow cross, sports / Friday, May 24, 2013
The award-winning French documentarian Claude Lanzmann will present his latest film and participate in a discussion with USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith at the USC School of Cinematic Arts Tues., Dec. 10.
claude lanzmann, documentary, screening, usc / Monday, November 25, 2013
This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.
auschwitz, clip reel, prewar / Thursday, January 23, 2014
The app by USC Shoah Foundation guides visitors as they move through the plaza, providing explanations about each interpretive element, as well as personal stories by survivors, maps, photos and other multimedia.
iwalk, Philadelphia, Holocaust Memorial Plaza, plaza / Monday, October 22, 2018
During a well-known case involving German industrialists who reaped enormous profits providing armaments to the Nazi regime with the help of slave labor at concentration camps, the defendants faced Cecelia Goetz -- the only woman ever to deliver an opening statement at the Nuremberg Trials.
Women at Nuremberg, Nuremberg Trials, Cecelia Goetz / Friday, May 18, 2018
Join the Montreal Holocaust Museum, USC Shoah Foundation, and Paragraphe Bookstore for a special event with author Rachael Cerrotti about her latest book “We Share the Same Sky” based on her award-winning podcast.
/ Monday, November 29, 2021
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has constructed a new IWitness activity in conjunction with the museum’s Some Were Neighbors exhibit.
/ Tuesday, September 8, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, whose story of survival and will to share it has inspired thousands of people. She was 91. Always hopeful and optimistic, Fritzie’s understanding of where hate and intolerance can lead if left unchecked has driven her her whole life to educate and empower everyone she meets. She will be dearly missed.
in memoriam / Monday, June 21, 2021
A pioneering moment for Holocaust education, the world’s first virtual reality film to take audiences through a concentration camp, launches as immersive experience at four museums in New York, California, Illinois and Florida for limited-engagement exhibit.
the last goodbye, museums / Wednesday, September 5, 2018
English Translation: “If I made the decision to speak is because I think -- not just for me since it is very difficult [to speak] and I thought about it but not for long-- because I believe that like me, all those who went through the Holocaust should not remain silent. We must speak for the sake of future generations and to prevent this from happening again. And we are not so far from it because, lately, skinheads [Neo-Nazis] are lifting their heads. It is also being said that what we are telling is happening only in the movies, such as in Schindler's List.
jewish surivor, male, subtitled / Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Ralph Leeser and his family fled to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1939. A few years later he joined the United States armed forces and helped liberate Buchenwald concentration camp. After the liberation Leeser and his fellow soldiers went to Braunau, Austria and entered Hitler's home.
clip, male, liberator, jewish survivor, Ralph Leeser, Braunau / Monday, June 9, 2014
Renowned Holocaust scholar and former USC Shoah Foundation Yom HaShoah Scholar Professor Yehuda Bauer has given his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
testimony, yehuda bauer, karen jungblut, Israel / Tuesday, July 21, 2015

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