Looking into a mirror and making sure her hair looked just so, Yevnigue Salibian didn’t notice me as I was taking her picture. It took a few seconds, but when she finally realized I had documented her act of vanity, she smiled coyly.

USC Shoah Foundation hosted a special event titled The Digital Future of Holocaust Memory and Education in Aspen, Colorado, yesterday, to introduce new supporters to the work of the Institute.

With the first day of school already behind many students and teachers, USC Shoah Foundation is debuting several new educational materials that can help educators teach about genocide, civil rights, tolerance and other topics.

For the second year in a row, testimony from the Visual History Archive is inspiring teenagers to illustrate true scenes of the violation of human rights during the Stalin totalitarian regime and Nazi persecution of Jews in Ukraine.

When watching a testimony in the Visual History Archive, Liliane Weissberg pays close attention to the words the survivor is saying, and, just as importantly, to the silences in between those words.

The President of the Republic went on record to tell the prospective immigrants “nobody invited you here!” Refugees escaping from a murderous regime are regarded as agents of that very regime. Concerned citizens who never saw a refugee discuss them with great fear: refugees will take our jobs, kill our wives, rape our daughters. “We may take a few of those who can prove they are and always were Christians,” some interior ministry clerk declared.

The four undergraduates working with USC Shoah Foundation during the summer Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program at UCLA presented their new method for achieving more relevant search results in the Visual History Archive to staff on Wednesday.

USC Shoah Foundation Australia Regional Consultant Sarah Warby will speak about the power of teaching with testimony at Knox Grammar School’s Practicing Positive Education conference in Sydney, Aug. 28-29.

After watching testimony in the Visual History Archive, many students say they feel like they really “met” the survivors they watched. Véronique Mickisch actually did.

Educators are invited to participate in a free IWitness webinar Thurs., Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. PST, to learn more about integrating IWitness into their curriculum.