French educators are attending a Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century workshop today and tomorrow to learn about IWitness and using testimony in the classroom.

Growing up, it wasn’t terribly unusual to see people in our house with telltale tattoos on their arms. We kids somehow knew what those blurry inked numbers meant, but we also knew it wasn’t polite to ask about them. And so, I never did. And honestly, no one in my family had been so marked — the people with tattoos were mostly friends of my grandparents — so it wasn’t something I had a lot of interest in hearing about. And perhaps in an effort to protect our innocence, family elders showed no interest in talking about it.

Aegis Trust Rwanda, The Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace, Radio La Benevolencija and USC Shoah Foundation - the Institute for Visual History and Education are joining forces to launch a peace-building and education program in Rwanda.

USC Shoah Foundation associate director of research Dan Leshem and former Institute Fellow Jeffrey Shandler will lead a seminar about video interviews of Holocaust survivors at the Association for Jewish Scholars (AJS) conference next week.

French film director Claude Lanzmann spoke candidly about his latest film, The Last of the Unjust, at a USC School of Cinematic Arts screening hosted by USC Shoah Foundation Tuesday night.

“Time heals all wounds,” they say. It’s difficult to find any other element in our daily lives that possesses the sobering effect that time does. It tames emotions and calms nerves. It allows for much needed reflection and analysis. And, perhaps most importantly, it brings with it resolution and closure. By any account, a century would be more than enough time to heal even the deepest wound, but, surprisingly, time’s impact isn’t always as thorough as we’d expect it to be.

南加州大学与侵华日军南京大屠杀纪念馆合作扩展影像历史档案加利福尼亚洛杉矶 2013年12月13日  南加州大学纳粹屠犹基金会与侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆展开历史性的合作，为1937年南京大屠杀最后的幸存者保留证言。新的证言旨在构建起完整的个人生活史，包括他们在南京大屠杀之前和之后的社会文化生活。1937年12月13日，侵华日军占领了当时中国的首都南京，在近两个月时间内杀害了平民与大量解除武装的中国士兵达30万人以上。这些证言将为南京大屠杀历史增添新的视角与知识，并将于2014年2月归入美国南加州大学纳粹屠犹基金会下属的影像历史档案库。采访的程序是根据纳粹屠犹基金会在采集纳粹大屠杀幸存者证言以及采集柬埔寨和卢旺达大屠杀幸存者证言时所积累的经验。新采集的证言也将加入侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆已有的档案中。侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆与南加州大学纳粹屠犹基金会的合作项目超越了一般层面上对于南京大屠杀见证人的经历梳理、档案整理或是宣传报道，而是试图通过客观和规范的研究，深入到南京大屠杀见证人的生活状况、心理状态、历史意义和现实价值等层面，驳斥日本右翼势力对历史的歪曲和否定，引发学界、政界、商界和社会公众对该群体的关注，揭示创伤性记忆、悲剧文化、历史废墟对于文明进步的意义。

USC Shoah Foundation and Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall have embarked on a historic effort to preserve the testimonies of the last survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing.

As I write this, I am standing alongside 30 of the last 200 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, which began 76 years ago Friday. Sirens sound around this Chinese city as the last few eyewitnesses of a massacre gather. Starting Dec. 13, 1937, and lasting six weeks, as many as 300,000 civilians were murdered during the atrocities.

Damaged videotapes in the Visual History Archive, previously thought to be unfixable, are being restored thanks to new software developed by USC Shoah Foundation technology staff.

When I tell my fellow USC students that I’m the president of an organization called SFISA, it’s usually safe to assume that 90% of them have no idea what it is. It’s not the most elegant of acronyms and we acknowledge this. Our club’s full name – the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association – is equally as unwieldy but at least it’s descriptive, and that’s something, right? But even if they’ve heard of our less than stellar name, they still might not know who we are or what we do. So let me take this moment to enlighten you.

On the heels of USC Shoah Foundation’s new partnership with the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall to collect and preserve testimony of Nanjing Massacre survivors, the educational platform Facing History and Ourselves signed an agreement to integrate three of those testimonies into its own educational materials.

USC Shoah Foundation is excited to announce the upcoming launch of the tablet-compatible version of its award-winning educational website IWitness. Educators and students can search, watch and engage with the testimonies in IWitness on their iPads or tablet devices after January 6, 2014.   IWitness activities can also be assigned and worked on with a tablet, although video editing will need to be done on a Flash-enabled device (laptop, desktop, etc).   

Benjamin Murmelstein was the first person Claude Lanzmann interviewed on his epic journey that led to what eventually became his definitive film, “Shoah.” Lanzmann sat for a full week with the only living former Alteste Der Judenrat (a term used to describe the head of a ghetto Judenrat) and penetrated deep in to the moral labyrinth of Murmelstein's world.

The Cold War began its thaw 25 years ago, then apparently melted sufficiently for us to get on with our lives without fear. Surprisingly, the slow thaw is still in progress.

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.