USC Shoah Foundation to Lead Panel at USC Global Conference in Shanghai

USC Shoah Foundation will return to China, where it has collected some of its newest testimonies, to participate in University of Southern California’s Global Conference 2015.

Leaders of the USC community will gather in Shanghai Oct. 29-31 to examine cutting-edge innovations that are already changing the world and the opportunities they present for the future. USC Shoah Foundation will lead a panel discussion on “Nanjing: The Power of Survivors’ Stories and Why Capturing them Matters.”

USC Shoah Foundation’s Nanjing Massacre collection was initiated in 2012 by a partnership with Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in China with funding provided by the Siezen Foundation. The collection now includes 30 testimonies of survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, will moderate the panel, which will explore why telling stories matters more than you might think and why digital communications are an increasingly essential part of our storytelling oeuvre. The panel will also include conversation with special guest Ron Meyer, NBCUniversal Vice Chairman. Meyer’s mother fled Nazi Germany in 1938 to live with relatives in California, and she gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1995.

The panel will also include Xia Shuqin, a well-known survivor of the Nanjing Massacre whose testimony is in the Visual History Archive. Seven members of her family were murdered on December 13th, 1937, when the Japanese army looted her family’s belongings and home. Chengshan Zhu, curator of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall and one of the most internationally prominent scholars of Chinese history, will share historical perspective on the Nanjing Massacre, its survivors, and their stories.

The continued preservation of Nanjing Massacre survivors’ stories is made possible thanks to generous donations by Cecilia Chan, Eve By Eve's, Golden Eagle, Tony Mok, Sophia and Johnny Anqiang Zhang, Eric L. Sorkin and John Zhao and family.