As the son of two survivors of the Shoah and the husband of a daughter of two survivors, identifying as the Next Generation has been the essence of who I am. It is the prism through which I see and evaluate all worldly events. It was particularly my father’s life that affected me the most. He truly was a “survivor." He survived the war running for his life through Russia, Siberian labor camps and other lands in Asia. He survived losing his parents, five of his sisters their husbands and children. He escaped from his hometown in the Russian sector to a displaced person camp in in the American sector. He survived as a refugee in Belgium and then as an immigrant in the United States. He survived the loss of his wife at a young age raising three children as a single parent in a foreign land.
yom hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Next Generation, beginswithme, op-eds / Thursday, May 5, 2016
I recently was an expert witness from October 11-13, 2016, at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh, the so-called Khmer Rouge Tribunal that was established in 2001. When I mention this to colleagues, a typical response is, “That’s still going on?”  Indeed. Many forget the train that runs direct from USC to Long Beach takes you to the largest concentration of Cambodian survivors in the United States, where elders make daily offerings to ancestors in their homes or Buddhist temples.
GAM, cambodia, Cambodian Genocide, UN tribunal, center for advanced genocide research, cagr, op-eds / Monday, February 13, 2017
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015, the USC Center for Advanced Genocide Research hosted a lecture from Dr. Peter Hayes who spoke before a packed room at USC on the complex relationship between anti-Semitism and homophobia exerted in Nazi-occupied territories during World War II. The Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor at Northwestern University specializes in 20th-century German History, writing extensively on German industry under the Nazis. Monday's lecture, however, focused on the evolution of his views on a comparison that he was previously reluctant to address.
cagr, lecture, homophobia, homosexuality, anti-semitism, Peter Hayes / Wednesday, March 11, 2015
We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 3: Nazi Germany.
echoes and reflections, testimony, teaching, student, iwitness / Friday, September 27, 2013
Shortly after I saw Schindler’s List for the first time, I had an argument with my father about the value of such Hollywood blockbusters for teaching people about the Holocaust. We debated the following question: If Schindler’s List was the only source of information for people about the Holocaust would it perhaps be better if they did not see it at all? That is, is Schindler’s List better than nothing if what it shows is all you know about what happened to nearly six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe? My dad said (or shouted) yes, but I was unconvinced.
#TTIC14, conference, Schindler's List, op-eds / Sunday, December 1, 2013
The news about a group of teenagers throwing a Nazi salute at a party in Orange County is a startling reminder that knowledge of the Holocaust is fading. Here are four free online classroom-ready activities on IWitness that address the topics of antisemitism, bystanders and hatred.
Nazi salutes, swastikas, IWitness Spotlight / Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Elizabeth Holtzman, who is the subject of an IWitness activity, is among four Homeland Security advisory council members who resigned in protest of the U.S. government’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
child separation, immigration, refugees, Elizabeth Holtzman, Homeland Security, Nazis, war crimes / Friday, July 20, 2018
The award-winning author of ‘In the Name of Humanity: the Secret Deal to End the Holocaust’ was an interviewer for USC Shoah Foundation.
In the name of Humanity, book / Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Just one month into his four-month tenure as USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2016-2017 Center Fellow, Alexander Korb has already made new discoveries about how the Holocaust played out outside Germany from testimony in the Visual History Archive.
cagr, center fellow / Monday, April 24, 2017
Educators share how they teach with eyewitness testimony for April's Genocide Awareness Month.
iwitness, GAM, teaching, op-eds / Friday, March 31, 2017
As the first anniversary of my life-changing trip to Poland is upon me, I take time to reflect on the impact that trip has made on me both personally and professionally.  I have learned so much from my experiences as a teacher in USC Shoah Foundation’s and Discovery Education’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present program.
Auschwitz70, reflection, op-eds / Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Jean-Marc Dreyfus, PhD, Reader in Holocaust Studies in the History department at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) has been awarded the 2018-2019 Center Research Fellowship.
cagr, jean-marc dreyfus / Monday, February 5, 2018
New University of Southern California graduate Bijou Nguyen focused on the testimonies of one of the least well-known groups persecuted during the Holocaust for her USC Libraries Award second-place research paper The Paradoxical Treatment of Male Homosexual Prisoners During the Holocaust.
/ Friday, June 13, 2014
At a time of heightened political uncertainty and polarization, middle and high school teachers are in need of easy-to-use resources that encourage their students to grapple with some of the most difficult but important topics: hate, racism, intolerance and xenophobia.
100 Days / Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Music is the purest form of communication. It transcends language and ignores the passage of time. It can be euphoric and elegiac, subtle and sublime. It joyously welcomes life and mournfully greets death. It can provide glimmers of hope and comfort in a world devoid of hope and comfort.
days of remembrance, comcast, Xfinity, op-eds / Wednesday, April 15, 2015
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 Rob Rozett at the event.
cagr / Wednesday, February 1, 2017
For the third year, USC Shoah Foundation is providing testimony clips that French high school students can use in the essays and audiovisual works they submit to the National Contest on Resistance and Deportation (CNRD).
CNRD, france / Tuesday, December 9, 2014
The University of Southern California has established the Center for Advanced Genocide Research to study how and why such instances of mass violence occur, and how to intervene in the cycle that can lead to them.
center for advanced genocide research, cagr, Max Nikias, Steven Spielberg, Stephen Smith / Friday, April 25, 2014
The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series continues with Lesson 9: Perpetrators, Collaborators and Bystanders
echoes and reflections, education, teaching, visual history archive, testimony, holocaust / Friday, November 15, 2013
USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend Max Eisen, a Holocaust survivor who returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau more than 20 times as an educator and testified at the trials of two SS guards in 2015, more than 70 years after his entire family was killed in Nazi concentration camps. Max’s memoir, By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz, was the 2019 winner of Canada Reads, a Canadian Broadcasting Company “battle of the books” program, and was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize in 2017. 
/ Thursday, July 7, 2022
We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 4: The Ghettos.
echoes and reflections, testimony, education, teaching / Friday, October 4, 2013
About a month before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, sparking World War II, a desperate Jewish father in Germany penned a letter in broken English to a friend in England, Mrs. Wolf.  “I beg to inform you that we have got a refuse from the Aid Committee in London, owing to our high waiting number for America. … We are very discouraged by this answer and are now forced to get out our children as quick as possible.” Alfons Lasker, an attorney in Breslau, was on a mission to get his two daughters – Anita and Renate – out of Germany. He did not succeed.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, kristallnacht / Tuesday, December 17, 2019
The 10-part Echoes and Reflections series concludes with Lesson 10: The Children.
echoes and reflections, holocaust, children, teaching, visual history archive / Thursday, November 21, 2013
My father was born and raised in Sighet, Romania, just down the road from the Elie Wiesel's simple blue childhood home. When the Nobel laureate's house was spray-painted with antisemitic slurs this summer, it felt like an attack on my own familial history.
elie wiesel, Lauren Deutsch, blog, romania, op-eds, antiSemitism / Monday, September 17, 2018
In October 1942, when deportations from the Warsaw ghetto paused, more than 20 youth groups and underground units coalesced into a united front. Vladka Meed channeled her despair at losing her family into fighting the Nazis.
/ Friday, June 11, 2021
Gabor Toth, 2018-2019 Center Postdoctoral Research Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on his project to find, represent, and reflect on victims’ experiences during the Holocaust. 
cagr / Wednesday, May 1, 2019
In this blog, the Center's 2022-2023 Greenberg Research Fellow Raíssa Alonso reflects on resistance and the roots of her research. 
cagr, op-eds / Friday, May 5, 2023
November 9 and 10 marks the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom, the first major public and government-sanctioned display of antisemitic violence against Jews in Germany. Orchestrated by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth named Herschel Grynzspan, 1,400 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed, almost 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
/ Friday, October 29, 2021
Middle and high school students around the world are exploring the themes of resistance, solidarity and resilience using an innovative new film-based curriculum produced by the USC Shoah Foundation and The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in Israel, one of the first Holocaust museums in the world. 
/ Tuesday, August 1, 2023
As Hannah, in the novel The Devil's Arithmetic, needed to have a first-hand experience to fully understand the Holocaust; my students must be equipped with first-hand information, too. While they cannot "time travel" as Hannah does, they can hear from survivors to have a greater understanding of the Holocaust.
education, iwitness, Information Quests, op-eds / Thursday, September 17, 2015

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