Rather than ameliorate a developing humanitarian nightmare, the Evian Conference that began on July 6, 1938 was a display of self-interest. Nearly every country – including the United States – refused to raise their refugee quotas as the onset of the Holocaust drew closer. Only the Dominican Republic offered to relax its restrictions.

Kimberly Cheng, a PhD candidate in the Joint PhD Program in Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History at New York University, has been awarded the 2018-2019 Breslauer, Rutman and Anderson Research Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Cheng is the second recipient of the Breslauer, Rutman and Anderson Research Fellowship, and will be in residence at the Center from September to October 2018 to conduct research for her dissertation, which examines central European Jewish refugee life in Shanghai from 1937 to 1951.

Ildikó Barna, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Social Sciences and Program Director of the department’s Ethnic and Minority Policy MA Program at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest has been awarded the 2018-2019 International Teaching Fellowship at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. The International Teaching Fellowship bestowed by the Center provides support for faculty at institutions that subscribe to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) to integrate testimonies into new or existing courses.

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.

Virginia Bullington, a sophomore at USC from Nantucket, Massachusetts majoring in American Studies and Narrative Studies, has been chosen as the first-ever Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Sanna Stegmaier, a second-year joint PhD student in German Studies and Cultural Studies at King’s College, London and Humboldt University, Berlin, has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2018-2019 Center Graduate Research Fellowship competition at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She will arrive at the Center for her two-week residency near the end of August and in addition to conducting research in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, she will consult with staff from the Dimensions in Testimony team.

This article is part of a newsletter series introducing librarians who are advocates for the VHA at their institutions.

This summer, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is hosting three visiting scholars, who have traveled from across the country to conduct research in the Visual History Archive and consult with the staff and other researchers at the Center, as well as staff as across the Institute.

As a court reporter who helped transcribe the historic trial against doctors accused of performing vile experiments, Vivien Spitz was struck by the resentment in the eyes of the defendants.

Included within the course’s syllabus is the testimony of Holocaust survivor Eva Slonim, who was depicted in an iconic photo of a group of children standing behind the barbed wire at Auschwitz. Slonim composed a poem along with a group of other children while imprisoned in Auschwitz.