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. 

The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series concludes with Lesson 10: The Children.

Jared McBride, the first-ever Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, says testimony isn’t just an important aspect of his upcoming book manuscript. It can help prove that the controversial history he studies even happened.

Trudy Elbaum Gottesman keeps her family tree in her purse, close to her at all times, so she will always remember the names of relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wolf Gruner, Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, has published two new books about discriminatory policies against two distinct groups: the Jews in the annexed territories of the Third Reich and the indigenous people of Bolivia in the 19th century.

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."

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.

Kari Shagena is combining poetry and Holocaust survivor testimony to inspire empathy and action in her students following an IWitness seminar in Michigan last summer. Shagena, a language arts and social studies teacher at Richmond Middle School, was one of over dozen Michigan educators who attended USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness Summer Institute in Farmington Hills this past August, a three-day seminar that introduced educators to everything they need to know to incorporate testimonies and activities from IWitness into their classrooms.

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.

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.

We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 4: The Ghettos.

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.

At the University of the Aegean in Greece, Pothiti Hantzaroula says IWitness helps her students understand the impact of the Holocaust on their own lives and the lives of others.

A public lecture by Geraldien von Frijtag (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 2017-2018 Center Research Fellow

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison" 

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.

Jerome Nemer Lecture & Film Documentary Flyer.pdf

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.