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Gerald Szames chokes up easily, especially when talking about his mother. So for years, his daughter has taken it upon herself to tell her father’s story of surviving the Holocaust as a small boy. She speaks to audiences at schools, houses of worship and community centers, often with her father by her side to answer questions. 
lcti, GAM / Thursday, January 19, 2023
Within the Visual History Archive there are over 8,000 testimonies that reference France, over 1,600 that were conducted in the country and over 1,800 testimonies that were given in French.
Lyon France, visual history archive / Wednesday, November 5, 2014
During her lecture as the 2014-15 Center Fellow of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research on Thursday at USC Doheny Memorial Library, Peg LeVine shared her experiences studying a unique form of violence during the Cambodian Genocide.
cagr, center fellow / Friday, February 27, 2015
Like many of you, I sat in front of my television on the evening of Friday, November 13, 2015 and watched in horror as news of the terrorist attacks in Paris flooded the airways. "Not again," I thought to myself. My heart ached for people whom I had never met and for a city and country thousands of miles away.
MyGivingStory, GivingTuesday, beginswithme, op-eds / Monday, November 23, 2015
Through this set of resources, students learn about the immigrant and refugee experience, including specific definitions for migrant groups, the processes by which newcomers settle into their new home countries and the complex and difficult experience it can be.
100 days to inspire respect / Friday, March 10, 2017
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.
restoration / Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Like many countries around the world, we commemorated Labor Day on May 1 here in Germany. The day also coincided with the beginning of a new government position – commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and to fight antisemitism, but everyone refers to it as the “Antisemitism Commissioner.” The inaugural holder is Felix Klein, a career diplomat with an international law degree, who coincidentally happens to come from the same town I grew up in.
op-eds, antiSemitism / Friday, May 4, 2018
Fifteen hours of interviews describing the actions of a group of World War II-era diplomats who defied official policies to save tens of thousands of lives during the Holocaust have been added to USC Shoah Foundation’s 55,000-strong Visual History Archive (VHA) thanks to a collaboration with the Andrew J. & Joyce D. Mandell Family Foundation.
/ Wednesday, November 2, 2022
When Deborah Long was a teenager, she often came home to find her mother sitting with the latest issues of Life or Look magazine, quietly tearing out pages. “You see this picture?” her mother would say. “She looks a little like my older sister Ryfka.” Or, “This movie star right here? He reminds me of my father. So handsome.”
/ Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Echoes and Reflections—a multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust (www.echoesandreflections.org) is the result of an unprecedented partnership, combining the national outreach network of the Anti-Defamation League, the unmatched visual history resources of the Shoah Foundation, and the historical expertise of Yad Vashem. The pedagogical experience of the three organizations produced the most comprehensive curriculum on the Holocaust available to date.
/ Thursday, July 28, 2005
After watching testimony in the Visual History Archive, many students say they feel like they really “met” the survivors they watched. Véronique Mickisch actually did.
Berlin, teaching fellow, teaching fellowship, visual history archive / Wednesday, August 19, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation) announced today the appointment of Lee Liberman as Chair of its Board of Councilors and Joel Citron as Vice Chair effective July 1, 2019. 
board of councilors / Thursday, June 27, 2019
“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
cagr / Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Suzy Ressler, a survivor of Auschwitz who parlayed her family’s old-world recipes into the Philadelphia-based Mrs. Ressler’s Food Products, died July 3, 2021, at the age of 93. She was remembered for her business savvy, her warmth and generosity, and her impeccable elegance.
in memoriam / Monday, July 26, 2021
The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research organized a symposium in the Fall to honor the work of leading Holocaust scholar David Cesarani from Great Britain, who died just weeks after being named by the USC Shoah Foundation the inaugural Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence. These are the remarks made by David Silberklang at the event.
cagr / Wednesday, February 1, 2017
For the last four years, I have had the incredible opportunity to share the story of USC Shoah Foundation. I joined the communications team in July 2013 to manage the social media accounts for the Institute. I was excited to work at such an esteemed institution that was making a difference in the world.
op-eds / Monday, August 28, 2017
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, in collaboration with the USC Thornton School of Music, will be hosting scholars from around the world for two days of programming on Oct. 10 - 11 to highlight the use of music as a tool to resist oppression and spread awareness.
cagr, musical performance, wolf gruner / Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Educators from Ukrainian conflict areas attended two seminars led by USC Shoah Foundation Ukrainian consultant Anna Lenchovska and education author Olexander Voitenko.
Donetsk Ukraine, Ukraine, anna lenchovska / Monday, December 5, 2016
For the first time in two years, USC Shoah Foundation welcomed students to its international headquarters at USC for the fifth annual Leadership Workshop-Action and Values.  Eighteen rising ninth to 12th-grade students, selected from across the country, participated in the July 10 to 15 seminars, field trips, discussions, and group projects while based in USC dorms. 
/ Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Steve Kay, dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, believe that the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive holds many keys to unlocking the enigmatic conditions that have led to genocides throughout history.
pastforward, steve kay / Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Kathryn Brackney, the 2017-2018 Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies, gave a public lecture on the research she conducted during her month in residence at the Center.
cagr / Monday, April 2, 2018
USC Shoah Foundation today presents the first of two events in Aspen, Colorado hosted by Melinda Goldrich, a prominent member of the Aspen philanthropic community who serves on USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors’ Executive Committee.
/ Monday, August 8, 2022
East Coast dance artist Rachel Linsky combines movement and testimony to create a novel form of Holocaust education.  Rachel directs and choreographs ZACHOR, an initiative that honors Holocaust survivors through dance. Her latest work in the project is Hidden, a dance film and production based on the story of Aaron Elster, a Jewish boy who from 1943 to 1945 hid from Nazi persecution in the attic of a Polish family. 
/ Thursday, October 20, 2022
Educators share how they teach with eyewitness testimony for April's Genocide Awareness Month.
iwitness, GAM, teaching, op-eds / Friday, March 31, 2017
USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with Discovery Education, the leading provider of digital content and professional development for K-12 classrooms, on education components of Auschwitz: The Past is Present.
past is present, discovery, iwitness / Tuesday, September 16, 2014
A friend asked me whether I could help her with something. She knew I work with testimonies of Holocaust survivors in education and thought I could help her. We met over a coffee in a hipster place. There, she told me that her son suddenly started talking about Hitler. He talked about him all the time. Hitler and Nazis became a permanent conversation topic at their home, and she did not know what to do. “But he is too young for what I do,” I heard myself saying.
op-eds / Thursday, July 20, 2017
Poland’s new right-wing government wants to change the way children in that country learn about the Holocaust, casting Poles as only victims or heroes. In this new narration, the Polish people were always helping the weak, were good neighbors and cared about minorities.
education, poland, Kielce, Jedwabne, GAM, op-eds / Monday, August 15, 2016
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.
Auschwitz70, reflection, op-eds / Monday, January 25, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith delivered remarks Friday at a special event at the United Nations marking the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the international law that defined genocide and held perpetrators accountable. The observance also featured a demonstration of the Institute’s Dimensions in Testimony interactive biographies that enable people to ask questions and instantly receive pre-recorded responses from Holocaust survivors.
united nations, Genocide Convention, Pinchas Gutter, Stephen Smith / Friday, December 7, 2018
At this time of remembrance, I hope I am incorrect in thinking that public awareness of the Shoah is eroding. Information about this act of atrocity is still proliferating, so unawareness clearly cannot be attributed to absent knowledge. There is, in fact, an incredible amount of knowledge … and a growing reluctance to understand it.
yom hashoah, Stephen Smith, op-eds / Friday, April 21, 2017

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