Yad Vashem has collected approximately 4.8 million pages of testimony that restore the personal identities and record the brief life stories of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis. In honor of Yom HaShoah—Israel’s Day of Holocaust Remembrance—this webinar, led by a Yad Vashem educator, will highlight survivor testimony from Echoes & Reflections, and pages of testimony from Yad Vashem’s archive, to examine the importance of memory and how it serves us and future generations, to create a better world. This webinar is open to teachers and their students.

Yehuda Bauer, a pioneer of Holocaust studies, and Xu Xin, who introduced the subject to universities in China, will participate in a discussion on Thursday hosted by USC Shoah Foundation.

Los Angeles, Jan. 9, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism will present an advance screening on Jan. 15 of “Voices of Auschwitz,” a new CNN documentary telling the stories of four survivors from the Nazi German Concentration and extermination camp. The hour-long special is hosted by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, himself the son of Holocaust survivors.The 6 p.m. event at the newly opened Wallis Annenberg Hall is free and open to the public.

USC Shoah Foundation has published a new online exhibit and two new IWitness activities that expand the Institute’s educational offerings in terms of language and subject matter.

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, award-winning storyteller and photographer Rachael Cerrotti joins live via Zoom from her home in Maine to share her grandmother’s story using photographs, video, testimony, and clips from her critically-acclaimed podcast We Share the Same Sky.

“New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison” was an international conference held at USC. Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute, the conference convened 22 scholars from all over the world — the United States, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua grew up never knowing that her mother was a Holocaust survivor. That is, until a series of discoveries after her mother’s death led her to the truth: her mother had survived Gabersdorf, a slave labor camp for Jewish girls and young women, for four and a half years – and had never said a word about it.

The story of Leon Bass, who took part in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps only to later face discrimination in the United States, inspires a group of dormitory RAs at the Massachusetts campus to share their own experiences of feeling excluded.

The IWitness team has added 52 new clips to the Watch page. These clips cover a wide range of topics, from the Armenian Genocide to the Nanjing Massacre.

Wolf Gruner, director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, will present a paper on the effect of the Armenian Genocide on the Third Reich at the "Gender, Memory and Genocide" conference at the Berlin Institute of Technology this week.

USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education will host an interactive virtual experience for middle- and high-school students worldwide to provide a deeper understanding of the Holocaust.

In 1964, America’s first Holocaust memorial was unveiled in central Philadelphia at the head of Benjamin Franklin Parkway. More than 50 years later, the location surrounding this historically significant monument houses an interactive plaza, the Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial Plaza, a living monument to the 6 million lives lost in the Holocaust. The new plaza opened in October 2018 with onsite installations to inspire visitors to remember and reflect.

The Visual History Archive enables its users to observe the history of political utilization of anti-Jewish prejudice since the beginning of the 20th century until the century's end. Teaching about the mechanisms of hatred and the real goals of the propagandists is of utmost importance especially in what used to be the Soviet Block, where the liberation from Nazi regime did not necessarily mean the end of anti-Jewish propaganda.

We at USC Shoah Foundation are saddened to hear of the passing of our beloved friend, Holocaust survivor and renowned artist Alice Lok Cahana, who passed away on November 28 at age 88. Through her internationally acclaimed artwork, writings, and public speaking, Alice put forth a message to the world that both memorialized those who perished during the Holocaust and celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

We at USC Shoah Foundation are saddened to hear of the passing of our beloved friend, Holocaust survivor and renowned artist Alice Lok Cahana, who passed away on November 28 at age 88. Through her internationally acclaimed artwork, writings, and public speaking, Alice put forth a message to the world that both memorialized those who perished during the Holocaust and celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor will be in Los Angeles next week to film an interview for New Dimensions in Testimony, USC Shoah Foundation’s three-dimensional, interactive virtual encounter with Holocaust survivors.

On the occasion of the commemoration of Kristallnacht, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Holocaust survivor and gifted cellist, along with her children Raphael and Maya, grandson Abraham and niece Michal, will offer an intimate glimpse inside their family history. Letters from the family archive, photographs and musical pieces tell the story of her love-filled childhood home in Breslau, the Nazis seizure of power and the subsequent fate of her family.

Cesarani died last year just weeks after being named the Center's inaugural Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence.

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary and recent rerelease of “Schindler’s List,” USC Shoah Foundation has produced a suite of learning activities connected to the film. The engaging activities encourage critical thinking; all feature clips of testimony from Holocaust survivors who were saved by Oskar Schindler.

Michigan student Brandon Bartley shares how testimony inspired him when he participated in the IWitness Detroit program last summer.

The young boy was walking down the street in Łodz, Poland, when he spotted the treasure. He could not believe his luck! He picked up the belt admiring its beautiful etchings and the decorative metal buckle. With his chest out, he proudly continued walking down the street with his new treasure rolled up and safe in his pocket. Now he would be able to wear long pants instead of the short pants and suspenders young boys wore. His new belt would rocket him from boyhood to manhood status! What a monumental find!

Painter David Kassan has sat with survivors of the Holocaust for countless hours during the past five years, carefully listening to their stories of pain, grief, resilience and quiet victory.

The man who carried out one of the most extraordinary missions of World War II is the subject of a new documentary that will screen at select theaters in Los Angeles and New York City throughout November.

Visitors to the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim, Poland, will view USC Shoah Foundation testimony in the center’s permanent exhibit beginning in May.

Students and teachers from all over the Bay Area will attend a workshop about USC Shoah Foundation testimony and IWitness at Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) of San Francisco’s annual Day of Learning on Sun., March 23.

Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture. Even before the end of the Shoah, survivor historians in parts of Eastern Europe liberated from Nazi occupation collected testimonies and conducted interviews with fellow survivors.

Join the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust and the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education as we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day with the official launch of the Project on Bioethics and the Holocaust: Using Testimony in Medical and Health Professions Education.

The other morning I checked the BBC News website like I always do only to discover that French film director Alain Resnais had passed away at the age of ninety-one. Resnais’s films frequently explored the relationship between memory, consciousness, and the imagination in a non-linear manner and his innovative method of filmmaking won him numerous awards and prestige throughout his prolific career.

       

USC Shoah Foundation’s soon-to-launch IWitness initiative, called “100 Days to Inspire Respect,” provides teachers of civics, history, English and other subjects with 100 thought-provoking resources that tackle hate, racism, intolerance, xenophobia and more.