Stephen Smith
Stephen D. Smith is Finci-Viterbi executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation.
Remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre
For all the progress in the century since the Tulsa Race Massacre, white and Black Americans often seem to still live in different worlds.
Words Have Meaning: Ethnic Cleansing Accusation Against Israel is a Big Lie
There is no ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza. There is no ethnic cleansing going on in the West Bank.
A Little Ray of Hope in Los Angeles
What I witnessed during the next couple of hours was a beautiful expression of community spirit.
Recognizing Armenian Genocide Was Long Overdue, But It’s Not Enough
America has been on the wrong side of history for over a century.
The Memory Generation
Sidney Bernstein is the reason we know what the Nazi concentration camps looked like.
Why Passover is a Universal Holiday
What happened to the Jews can and does happen to others. The Jews are not alone.
China’s Genocide Against the Uyghurs
Genocide is a slow process. It is never made up of a single act of ethnic persecution or murder.
Hungary’s Crackdown on Artists and Academics
In Eastern Europe, people are being targeted because of who they are, what they study, the stories they tell.
The Capitol Riot Proves We Need to Educate
Education has the power to mitigate the spread of radicalization.
Why We Should Discuss Racism at Holocaust Museums
‘Uprooting Prejudice’ is doing what temporary exhibits are meant to do: exposing people to new and challenging perspectives.
Facebook’s Move on Holocaust Denialism Is Too Late
Facebook is recognizing that it is a media company that curates content. Zuckerberg was making the right business choice to keep the platform as open as possible. Now he is doing the right thing by identifying its moral and social responsibility.
Fighting Anti-Semitism on Campus, One Person at a Time
There is no question that America has been a land of opportunity for Jewish people. But there’s also a tendency in this country to ignore extreme Jew hatred on both the right and the left. To let it fester. To rationalize it. To try to explain it.
Reckoning with Race
Racism is a precondition to genocide, but genocide is not always the end point of racism.
Holocaust Survivors Teach Us ‘There Is No Forgiveness Without Rage’
My neighborhood is burning. Buildings were smoldering as I walked my dog on the morning of May 31. Shattered glass was on the sidewalk,...
New App IWalk Preserves Holocaust Survivors’ Stories, Where They Took Place
Each year since 1988, the March of the Living has brought together thousands of people from around the world — survivors, families, teens —...
As Loneliness Grows, What We Can Learn from Holocaust Survivors
Holocaust survivors know what it's like to feel helpless and alone. Here is their advice for surviving COVID-19.
Shoah Foundation Head: Bigots Prey on Coronavirus to Incite Hate
As Americans adapt to the new normal of social distancing and stay-at-home orders, videoconferencing has become our lifeline. The likes of Zoom and FaceTime...
Shoah Foundation Director: Amazon Must Cancel ‘Hunters’
“Hunters,” the heavily promoted new Amazon series about a ring of vigilantes chasing and torturing Nazis in Son of Sam-era New York, is entertaining....
Life After Auschwitz
On Jan. 27, 1945, Renée Firestone, Jack Lewin, Eva Schloss and Paula Lebovics woke up to a world after Auschwitz. Not that they knew...
Spate of Anti-Semitic Incidents Shows that ‘Action is Your Cue’
On Dec. 17, anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas and the words, “it’s time to pay,” were found spray-painted on three westside schools. On Dec. 18,...
Impressions from ADL Conference: Future, Not Fear
Last week in New York, I was the lone son of a British Methodist amid 1,800 Jews and people of other faiths at the...
What Do Jews and Kurds Have in Common?
Kurds have more in common with Jews than I had ever imagined before I arrived in northern Iraq last week to interview refugees fleeing...
Response to Halle Yom Kippur Attack: We Must Be Stronger Than Hate
While Jews around the world went to pray on Yom Kippur, once again xenocidal killers were planning a cynical and cowardly attack in Halle,...
Stopping ‘Xenocide’ in the 21st Century
Along with the recent attacks in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Christchurch, New Zealand, the Aug. 3 attack on a Walmart in El Paso appears to...
The Incredible Story of a Munich Soccer Team During the Holocaust Offers a Lesson
FC Bayern Munich soccer club is in Los Angeles to play London club Arsenal on July 17. As an avid Arsenal fan, I am...
When is it Appropriate to Draw Lessons From the Holocaust?
Recent discussion about the use of the term “concentration camp” to describe conditions facing migrants on the southern border have become mired in politically...
A Christian Killer in Poway
There has been a long history of Christians persecuting and murdering Jews. Antipathy toward the Jews began in the first few centuries of Christendom,...
New Zealand Murders: There Are No Words
In 1915, Ottoman Turks started to scapegoat the minority Armenians in their country for a war against Russia that it was losing. That year,...
Words That Kill: The Genocidal Nature of Anti-Semitism
Let’s say a young man sprays “John loves Sally” onto a wall to celebrate his new love. It may be a misdemeanor because it...
Four More Campuses Hit by Anti-Semitism
It has emerged again: A group with neo-Nazi sympathies has littered university campuses with anti-Semitic flyers that seek to sow fear and hatred of...
