Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: CzechVěra's mother was Otylie, Franz Kafka's sister. But the family never knew what a famous writer Franz would become many years after his death.

USC Shoah Foundation is planning to record 20 new testimonies for the second phase of its North Africa and Middle East collection. Fundraising is currently underway for this phase to begin.

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.

Our longtime friend Pinchas Gutter turns 90 today! The survivor of six German Nazi concentration camps has shared his remarkable story with USC Shoah Foundation in a variety of formats over the years, including as a Dimensions in Testimony interactive biography that has been featured by media outlets including CBS 60 Minutes and the New York Times. Earlier this year Pinchas sat down with us to reflect on contemporary events and his experiences. 

Even absent this current era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” the new Polish law making it a crime to point out Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust would be alarming.  But that it is occurring in today’s climate of demagoguery, heightened nationalism and ethnic tension – an unholy trio that threatens to metastasize on a global scale – is a troubling development. Poland’s effort has come under attack by Israel and stewards of Holocaust memory.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of Betty Grebenschikoff, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and speaker, who was reunited with a childhood friend in February 2021, 81 years after the pair had last seen one other in a Berlin schoolyard. The reunion, made possible by a longtime researcher at USC Shoah Foundation, touched hearts across the world.  

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Director Wolf Gruner will give a lecture at Cornell University, as well as conduct a workshop on testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive."Defiance and Protest: Forgotten Individual Jewish Reactions to the Persecution in Nazi Germany"

Public lecture by Bieke Van Camp (PhD candidate, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France) 2018-2019 Katz Research Fellow

The Vienna native reflects on his 10-month tenure at the Institute, and the importance of the national reconciliation program that enables a select group of young Austrians to serve at organizations focused on Holocaust remembrance.

Today is International Women’s Day and this year we are honoring girls—from Holocaust Europe to Africa, from Central America to the Middle East, from occupied China to pre-war Armenia—who demonstrated extraordinary strength and resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors. Here is a selection of USC Shoah Foundation clips and films to mark the occasion.

Two museums have opened installations of Dimensions in Testimony, USC Shoah Foundation's interactive biography series.  In New Orleans, visitors to the National World War II Museum can interact with Staff Sergeant Alan Moskin, the first WWII Liberator filmed for Dimensions in Testimony. Moskin was a member of the 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division, that liberated Gunskirchen concentration camp in Austria. The exhibition runs through July 25, 2021.

We are saddened to hear of the recent passing of Selma Engel, who, after becoming one of the few people to escape Sobibor death camp in Poland during the Holocaust, immediately began telling the world what she saw. She was 96.

Over the course of 2016, testimony from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive contributed to a wide array of published texts, from studies about the methodology of the Institute’s interviewing and cataloguing, to wholly other subjects that pulled from the VHA to back a defined thesis.

It’s a story my grandfather never told me, something that I only heard and understood later, years after my mother recounted it. In 1943, after his first wife and children were killed, my grandfather, Sam Wasserman, participated in one of the only successful mass escapes from a Nazi extermination camp. He and hundreds of other prisoners, overwhelmed and killed several guards and escaped the Sobibor death camp in Poland. My grandfather eluded capture, joined a band of partisans fighting the Nazis, and shortly after surviving the war, met the woman who would become my grandmother.

April 8 is International Roma Day, an opportunity to celebrate the Romani and Sinti culture and raise awareness about the challenges faced by Europe’s largest ethnic minority. An estimated 70 to 80 percent of Europe’s Roma and Sinti population was killed by the Nazis and their Axis partners during World War Two, a genocide with impacts that reverberate through the community today.

This webinar examines the stories of Black G.I.s featured in Echoes & Reflections who liberated concentration camps, including Leon Bass and Paul Parks. It will also focus on the experience of facing the reality of Nazi genocide, while balancing the impact of discrimination and violence at home in the United States.

Freie Universität Berlin introduces multimedia archive project.

A few weeks ago, a student I was interviewing for a profile I was writing on him for USC Shoah Foundation’s website said something interesting: “Growing up Jewish, the Holocaust is pretty much always there.” I could identify. As someone who went to Hebrew school twice a week, every week, from the age of 5 to 13, the Holocaust was something I was always aware of. I was taught about it frequently, both in religious and regular school.

Through an analysis of testimony, students learn about the resistance efforts that took place in the Auschwitz camp complex and about the meaning of resistance in the context of the Holocaust in a new MiniQuest.

The Kristallnacht pogrom was a critical turning point on the path to genocide, and all of our #IWitnessChat participants agreed that using testimony is a meaningful way for students to understand and connect with the event. Hearing survivors’ detailed accounts of this night makes it much more accessible to students.

USC Shoah Foundation joined a Friday ceremony at a classroom in Cottbus, Germany that contributed 100 butterflies to the Butterfly Project, an international effort by schoolchildren to paint 1.5 million ceramic butterflies – one for every child murdered in the Holocaust.

What I’ve learned, looking back at my family history and while working at USC Shoah Foundation, is how to do resistance. That’s how you do resistance. You see injustice and you tirelessly fight against it.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Jacob Wiener recalls being taunted by his classmates during the Kristallnacht Pogrom. Gender: MaleDOB: March 25, 1917City of birth: BremenCountry of birth: GermanyGhettos: NoWent into hiding: NoFled Nazi-occupied Territory: Yes  

In this blog, the Center's 2022-2023 Greenberg Research Fellow Raíssa Alonso reflects on resistance and the roots of her research. 

On January 25, 2019, the fifth- and sixth-graders of a school in Cottbus, Germany honored all those affected during the Holocaust by unveiling a Butterfly Project memorial to the 1.5 million children murdered during this dark moment in history. This first-ever initiative in Germany introduced a new, younger audience to real stories of local children.

Much of the content is geared toward addressing some of the many conflicts that came to light during and in the wake of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 15, 2017, such as the importance of speaking out against hate, promoting tolerance and acceptance, and embracing diversity.

An award-winning feature film based on a true story of survival, produced in association with USC Shoah Foundation. My Name Is Sara shares the story of Sara Góralnik who at age 13 survived the Holocaust by passing as a Christian after her family was killed by Nazis. Now streaming. For more information on how to view the film, visit the official My Name Is Sara website.

In this event Hosted by USC Shoah Foundation, in partnership with Writer's Bloc and Holocaust Museum LA, Batalion unveils countless stories of ingenuity, ferocity, and daring by girls and young women who fought the Nazis in Hitler’s ghettos in Poland. They blew up trains. They smuggled food and guns. They distributed false papers. They built bombs from a recipe unearthed in an old Russian pamphlet. They bought munitions. They spied.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Kurt Messerschmidt, Holocaust survivor, educator and beloved cantor. He was 102. Messerschmidt was born Jan. 2, 1915 in Weneuchen, Germany, but moved to Berlin in 1918 and excelled as a linguistics scholar, gymnast and musician. He was well-respected and a leader among his classmates and teachers, but was unable to attend college because of anti-Jewish measures implemented by the Nazis.

For the second year in a row, testimony from the Visual History Archive is inspiring teenagers to illustrate true scenes of the violation of human rights during the Stalin totalitarian regime and Nazi persecution of Jews in Ukraine.