Wilma Bulkin Siegel was seven years old in 1945 when her father took her to the movies to watch newsreels of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. “Why couldn’t I have done something about it?” she whispered to her father. Decades later, Siegel, a retired New York City oncologist and a pioneer in hospice care, has discovered a new tool for making an impact: a paintbrush.

Panama’s Jewish community is commemorating Yom HaShoah virtually this year with a week-long series of thematic Instagram posts that will integrate clips from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. In memory of the six million killed, Panama Friends of Yad Vashem coordinated a six-day campaign focused on survivor families in Panama, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and community commemorations of Yom HaShoah.

The elderly population is among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the victims include a large and growing number of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans.

USC Shoah Foundation has launched a path-breaking online teaching tool to enable students and educators to ask questions that prompt real-time recorded responses from Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter. The tool will be available at no cost through a new activity in the Institute’s flagship educational website, IWitness.

In October 1942, when Nathan Drew and his wife Helen heard rumors that Nazis would liquidate the Łomźa Ghetto in Poland in which they lived, they escaped to Warsaw, avoiding by mere hours the forced removal of over 8,000 Jews to the Zambrow transit camp. In Warsaw, Nathan and Helen used false identification documents to live in the open as “counterfeit Poles,” hiding their Jewish heritage while navigating the harsh realities of Nazi occupation.

Florian Zabranksy, a PhD candidate at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center in Spring 2021 in order to conduct research for his dissertation, which examines male Jewish intimacy during the Holocaust.

In 2017, Mr. Feingold recorded a more than 4 hour testimony with USC Shoah Foundation as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection, enabling Holocaust survivors to share their stories for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive—before it is too late—where they will exist in perpetuity.

My recent stay at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career.  From the remarkable power and content of the Visual History Archive, to the welcoming and helpful nature of the staff and donor community, I leave my term as the Breslauer, Rutman, and Anderson Research Fellow strengthened by new friendships and enriched by new findings for my work. 

As a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Sarah Sternklar, PhD, recognizes the powerful healing effects of words - how important and therapeutic it can be for people to tell their story. "This is a wonderful benefit for the survivors."

The portrait I have been working on of Dario isn’t complete yet, but what an honor it was to have met him and is now to engage with his testimony through the act of painting,” said David Kassan of hi

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.

As we wrap up a very challenging year for many across the globe, we want to share highlights of just some of the work our Institute team and our partners have accomplished during the ongoing pandemic. Thank you for your support.

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.

On November 24 at 8AM PST/11AM EST, USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith will moderate a panel of experts convened by UNESCO to launch UNESCO and OSCE's latest publication on antisemitism. Addressing Anti-Semitism in Schools: Training Curricula, a new four volume resource for teacher and school director trainers is UNESCO's second publication dedicated to antisemitism since 2018. The resource and event are designed to engage in meaningful discussions about effective ways to address antisemitism through education.

Alan Auyeung pulled on a pair of latex gloves and a N95 face mask. For good measure, he placed a pair of protective goggles over his eyes too. A trip to the supermarket? In these Covid-19 times, it could have been but, in fact, Auyeung was preparing for a task of quite a different nature: saving the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, whose eye witness accounts of Nazi atrocities were at risk of being eaten away by mold.

“Walking a Fine Line: Hungarian-Jewish Survivors and the Discourse Surrounding Sexual Violence in Postwar Testimonies” Allison Somogyi USC-Yale Postdoctoral Research Fellow August 27, 2020

Please join us for an exclusive event featuring a moderated conversation and selected scenes from 'My Name Is Sara,' an award-winning feature film based on a true story of survival, produced in association with USC Shoah Foundation.

Part of a series that will examine genocide and the law, this moderated discussion will explore why eyewitness testimony matters in preventing genocide. USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith will lead the conversation with witnesses and experts in the field to tackle this urgent challenge from multiple perspectives.

On April 17, 1975, the city of Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, triggering a four-year genocide. In commemoration, USC Shoah Foundation is spotlighting its Cambodia-based learning activities for high school students.