LOS ANGELES – April 26, 2012 – Arnold Spielberg, father of USC Shoah Foundation Institute Founder Steven Spielberg, was honored today with the Institute’s inaugural Inspiration Award at a private luncheon in Los Angeles. Arnold was recognized for his many years of mentorship and support of the Institute’s work, especially in the area of humanity through technology.

On April 21 through 23, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute participated in an international conference, "History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture." The conference asked the question of whether ethical or aesthetic limits should be placed on how the Holocaust is represented in fiction or nonfiction.

On April 20, at Los Angeles City Hall, Councilmember Paul Krekorian, together with co-host Councilmember Eric Garcetti, recognized the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the Armenian Film Foundation for working jointly to preserve memories of survivors and other witnesses of the Armenian Genocide.

The University of Haifa has become the first university in Israel with access to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive, a searchable repository of nearly 52,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

La 51ème édition du Concours national de la Résistance et de la Déportation avait retenu pour l’année scolaire 2011-2012 le thème suivant : “Résister dans les camps nazis”. Un groupe de huit élèves de 3ème du collège de Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) a choisi de traiter ce thème à travers un projet audiovisuel portant sur la révolte des Sonderkommandos d’Auschwitz-Birkenau le 7 octobre 1944. Ce travail s’est appuyé sur les récits de onze témoins des événements, récits issus de la collection de témoignages du Shoah Foundation Institute.

On June 23, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) named IWitness, the Institute’s new online resource for teachers and students, one of the “top 25 Internet sites for enhancing learning and curriculum development” for school librarians and teachers.

Award-winning blog Free Technology for Teachers featured the Shoah Foundation Institute's new online educational resource, IWitness, citing its archive of videos, interactive activities, and teacher-moderation tools.

As a part of Yad Vashem's 8th International Conference on Holocaust Education taking place in Jerusalem, Martin Šmok, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's Senior International Program Consultant, will present the IWitness educational platform on June 20, 2012.

Are you an educator? What question would you like to see incorporated into an IWitness activity? Share your voice.

In July 2012, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute convened the inaugural workshop of “Teaching with Testimony for the 21st Century,” a professional development program for teachers in Europe centered on the educational use of Holocaust eyewitness testimony.

The exhibit is part of UNESCO’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2013 activities; commemorated annually on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, International Holocaust Remembrance Day pays tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education has added a collection of testimonies of survivors and rescuers from the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide to its Visual History Archive. This marks the first integration of testimonies outside of Holocaust survivors and witnesses into the Visual History Archive.

In the nineteen nineties, videotape was the most effective format on which to record the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. But like all physical storage media, tape has a shelf life, and in 2008 the Institute and USC Information Technology Services (ITS) started a multimillion-dollar project to digitize the entire Visual History Archive.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—Echoes and Reflections, a groundbreaking multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust, has been honored for its use of visual history testimony and its educat

L'USC Shoah Foundation – Institut pour l’histoire visuelle et l’éducation, a organisé une exposition qui a été présentée au siège de l’UNESCO, à Paris. Cette exposition fut l’un des volets de la Journée internationale du souvenir de l’Holocauste pour l’année 2013. Chaque année, le 27 janvier – date anniversaire de la libération d’Auschwitz-Birkenau –, il est rendu hommage aux victimes de l’Holocauste.

U příležitosti Mezinárodního dne památky holocaustu, v rámci druhého ročníku programu půldenních regionálních seminářů byly českým učitelům ve dnech 21. až 23. ledna představeny informační zdroje vytvořené čtyřmi partnerskými institucemi: experti z Jad Vašem, Oddělení pro vzdělávání a kulturu Židovského muzea v Praze, Památníku Terezín a USC Shoah Foundation společně s místními aktivisty a za podpory karlovarského inspektorátu České školní inspekce představili vzdělávací materiály vytvořené jejich organizacemi. Seminář tentokrát navštívil Karlovy Vary, Ostrov nad Ohří a Plzeň.

Tři roky po zřízení Centra vizuální historie Malach na Karlově Univerzitě v Praze coby přístupového místa k Archivu vizuální historie je jeho význam pro výzkumné a vzdělávací aktivity založené na zkoumání svědectví pamětníků neustále potvrzován.  

http://www.moderni-dejiny.cz/clanek/vola-londyn/

Over 70 new testimonies have been added to IWitness to increase the scope of experiences students can engage with. IWitness now features 1,321 video testimonies from the Visual History Archive that allows teachers and their students to search, watch, and learn directly from the eyewitness to history. IWitness activities allow students to construct multimedia projects that integrate testimony clips together with footage from other sources, as well as photographs and maps, voiceover audio, music and text.

Dr. Kori Street, Director of Education for USC Shoah Foundation, will be participating in a panel at the upcoming International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference in San Antonio, Texas from June 23 through June 26. The annual ISTE conference and exposition is the premier conference for educators and education leaders from around the world who are engaged in advancing excellence in learning and teaching through the innovative and effective uses of technology.

Dr. Dan Leshem and Dr. Amy Carnes of USC Shoah Foundation will be leading a course to Rwanda this summer that will allow USC students to study post-genocide reconstruction.  The course, Rebuilding Rwanda: Memory, Testimony, and Living Together after Genocide, was developed in conjunction with Dr.

Facing History and Ourselves is partnering with the USC Shoah Foundation to explore how Facing History teachers can use IWitness, the Institute’s educational website, to shape teaching and learning experiences for students in a Facing History course.

The students came to the Institute to search for and extract 10 video clips to use for a project in IWitness, the Institute’s award-winning educational website. Explore IWitness

The USC Shoah Foundation organized an April 25 lecture by Marianne Hirsch, its 2013 Yom Hashoah scholar-in-residence, who discussed her work on postmemory: the relationship that children of Holocaust survivors have with the personal, collective and cultural trauma of their parents.

Monika Koszynska, the USC Shoah Foundation’s regional coordinator in Poland, has been appointed as Chief Specialist in Education at the newly inaugurated Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Stephen Feinberg remembers always finding the study of history to be interesting and exciting. During his studies as an undergraduate and graduate student, he was introduced to the history of the Holocaust. “I became increasingly aware that this was a watershed event in history,” he recalls. “Therefore, I felt that it should be taught in schools.”

Called Gypsy, Tsigan, Gitane, Cygane, Zigeuner, the Roma people have wandered the world for a thousand years—their mysterious origins a source of fascination as well as suspicion. They’ve been romanticized but also brutally persecuted by the more settled and orderly cultures they’ve traveled through and enriched.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education invites proposals for its 2013 Teaching Fellows program. Teaching faculty from all 43 VHA access sites are encouraged to apply. The fellowship provides summer support for instructors interested in creating a new course or modifying an existing course to incorporate testimony from the Visual History Archive. There are no restrictions with respect to the disciplinary approach or methodology of the proposed courses. 

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was among the participating organizations at an open house for the USC-Max Kade Institute, home of the university’s German Studies and European Studies programs. The open house took place on April 12, 2013. Guests watched testimony at a computer station connected via Wi-Fi to the Foundation’s Visual History Archive, which is available at USC and more than 40 other institutions around the world.

USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education participated in USC's Genocide Awareness week with a series of events, including an evening of dramatic arts on April 9, 2013.