Kori Street is Educator-in-Residence at Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre’s Holocaust Education Week

USC Shoah Foundation Senior Director of Programs and Operations Kori Street is in Toronto this week to serve as the 2017 Educator-in-Residence at the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre’s annual Holocaust Education Week.

Street will lead presentations and workshops throughout the week-long event, which this year is centered on the post-Holocaust period and the specific events, or “pivotal moments,” that have shaped our understanding of the Holocaust.

On Friday, Nov. 3, Street will present “The USC Shoah Foundation and the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre: Providing Transformative Learning Tools for Today’s Learners,” sharing insights into USC Shoah Foundation’s innovative developments in using recorded Holocaust survivor testimonies to engage new generations of learners. Examining such tools as the IWitness platform, New Dimensions in Testimony, the Canadian Collection of the Visual History Archive and other projects, Street will discuss how the ongoing partnership with the Neuberger offers students and teachers unprecedented access not only to leading edge technology, but to pedagogically effective methods. The keynote will be followed by an interactive Q&A. The talk is at 2:30 p.m. at the Prosserman JCC Room 123, 4588 Bathurst Street, Toronto.

On Nov. 6, Street will present “My Story Matters: The Power of Story.” Street will demonstrate how the recorded testimonies of Holocaust survivors have the power to strengthen our human connection and inspire us to make the world better. Through listening to personal stories told by survivors and witnesses of genocide, students will deepen their understanding of how testimony counters stories of hate that isolate and dehumanize. The talk is at 10:30 a.m. at Sanderson Public Library, 327 Bathurst Street, Toronto.

Later that night, Street will also participate in a session on "Recognizing the LGBTQ+ Experience in the Holocaust and Beyond." This panel discussion will be moderated by CTV News anchor Todd van der Heyden, featuring Street; Kimahli Powell, Executive Director of Rainbow Railroad; and Bassel, an LGBTQ+ refugee from Syria. The talk is at 7 p.m. at Miles Nadal JCC room 318.

In the days leading up to the official start of Holocaust Education Week, Street also led an educators’ workshop and spoke at Hillel at York University. She is set to give a lecture at Blessed Cardinal Newman Catholic High School on Nov. 7.

In 2015, USC Shoah Foundation partnered with the Neuberger Centre to digitize, index and integrate its collection of over 400 Holocaust survivor and witness testimonies into the Visual History Archive along with approximately 800 other testimonies from collections across Canada.

The Neuberger Centre also offers local educators, scholars, and members of the public full access to the Visual History Archive, and it piloted New Dimensions in Testimony (an interactive testimony of Toronto resident and Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter) in 2016.