On Thursday evening, March 28, 2013, USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education held its third annual Student Voices Film Contest awards ceremony and screening. The event took place at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

The Student Voices Film Contest challenges USC students to “join the conversation about genocide and human rights” by producing a five- to seven-minute film using testimony from the Institute’s Visual History Archive, which contains video interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses of the Holocaust.

On March 19, USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education gave a presentation about education based on Holocaust survivor testimony to more than 100 students, faculty, and staff of the University of Szeged, one of Central Europe’s foremost institutions of higher learning.

Rachel Hanan was only a little girl at the time, but she will never forget the day in 1938 when newspapers in her home country of Italy published an ugly caricature intended to represent a Jewish face. Along with the illustration came the announcement of new legislation that applied only to Jewish citizens. Rachel’s life would never be the same.

After signing the Munich Agreement in September 1938 and under the pretext of protecting the interests of ethnic Germans who agitated for Nazi rule, Hitler annexed the Czechoslovakian borderlands. While some still hoped that giving up Czechoslovak territory would bring peace, the agreement signed by Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and France meant the beginning of occupation for the citizens of Czechoslovakia.

In spring 1944, after losing nearly his entire family on the day they arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 22-year-old Dario Gabbai was assigned to one of the special units of Jewish prisoners required to work in the gas chambers and crematoria: the Sonderkommando.

2013. március 19-én a Szegedi Tudományegyetem JGYPK Alkalmazott Társadalomismereti Tanszéke, a Belvedere Meridionale (történelem és társadalomtudományok) szerkesztősége és Oral History munkacsoportja nevében Jancsák Csaba főiskolai adjunktus  meghívására Szőnyi Andrea, a USC Soá Alapítvány nemzetközi oktatási főtanácsadója és magyarországi képviselője A személyes emlékezet szerepe – Videó-interjúk az oktatásban címmel tartott előadást a Juhász Gyula Pedagógusképző Kar Dísztermében.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was one of a select few organizations invited by the Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) Holocaust Center to lead a workshop at the Day of Learning. The JFCS organizes the Day of Learning to help young people gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and patterns of genocide, and to inspire moral courage and social responsibility in the future. Its many workshops are enhanced by testimonies of Holocaust survivors and survivors of other genocides.

Seventy-five years ago this week, Nazi Germany entered Austria. With most Austrians in support of the move, the country was incorporated into Germany on March 13, 1938.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education co-sponsored a March 7 lecture by Dr. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials on the memory work of Cambodian Americans whose films, memoirs, and music represent a largely unexamined site of critique on Cambodian memory in the aftermath of genocide.