USC Shoah Foundation’s Nanjing Massacre testimony collection more than doubled in size last week when USC Shoah Foundation and Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall conducted 18 new interviews with Nanjing Massacre survivors.
nanjing survivor, testimony, collection, visual history archive, karen jungblut / Wednesday, October 8, 2014
In the first-ever teacher-authored IWitness activity, Writing in Exile, students close-read poetry as they learn about one woman’s experience during the Holocaust.
iwitness / Thursday, October 9, 2014
I recently returned to China to record audio-visual testimonies from survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. In February 2014, the Institute incorporated 12 Nanjing testimonies into its Visual History Archive, adding a new perspective to the 53,000 testimonies that we collected from the Holocaust and the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.
Nanjing Massacre, china, nanjing, GAM, op-eds / Thursday, October 9, 2014
Teachers from across the Netherlands participated in an IWitness training session Oct. 4, held as part of a new partnership between USC Shoah Foundation and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
netherlands, iwitness, educator, teacher training / Friday, October 10, 2014
USC Shoah Foundation’s academic year programming kicks off next Monday with a screening of the documentary As Seen Through These Eyes, which tells the stories of Holocaust survivors who made art during and after World War II.
screening, art, holocaust / Monday, October 13, 2014
With nearly 52,000 interviews from survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides, the archive of audio-visual testimony assembled and maintained by USC Shoah Foundation is so abundant it would take at least 12 years to watch it from beginning to end. And that’s assuming the footage would be rolling 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When I started my new job here at the Institute, I was struck by this statistic, which adequately conveys the scope of this incredible resource.
testimony, research, op-eds / Monday, October 13, 2014
For the first time, USC Shoah Foundation has published a lesson that was created by a teacher in the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program.
teaching with testimony for the 21st century, Teaching with Testimony, hungary, teacher / Tuesday, October 14, 2014
USC Shoah Foundation’s educational resources can help educators observe National Bullying Prevention Month in October by teaching students about acceptance, resilience and other relevant topics.
iwitness / Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The new activity Growing Up Behind the Barbed Wire at Auschwitz is part of IWitness’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present content to commemorate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
auschwitz, IWitness activity, past is present / Thursday, October 16, 2014
I adored my father and admired him greatly. Harold Eisenberg was a good man in every sense of the word. He spoke about his life in Opatow, Poland before World War II and even his experience during the Holocaust, but he also lived very much in the present, working hard to provide for his family.  The business he started after the war became the foundation for much of our extended family’s success. I was named for his mother and his sister, who both perished in the Holocaust, and my father would often look at me tenderly and tell me how much I reminded him of his mother. 
memory, family, testimony, op-eds / Friday, October 17, 2014
Lemkin is the subject of a new documentary called "Watchers of the Sky," now playing in select theaters. It is inspired by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book A Problem from Hell.
documentary / Friday, October 17, 2014
Senior scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies are invited to apply for the 2015-2016 Center Research Fellowship. The deadline is Dec. 1, 2014.
center, cagr / Monday, October 20, 2014
The latest evaluation of IWitness in Rwanda shows that students’ interest in civic engagement and making a difference after using IWitness has increased significantly since Phase 1 of the program.
iwitness, rwanda / Tuesday, October 21, 2014
USC Shoah Foundation, Aegis Trust Rwanda and the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) conducted a feasibility study this month to determine how case files from trials of genocide perpetrators could be digitized and preserved.
gacaca, rwanda, aegis, kigali genocide memorial, its, archive / Wednesday, October 22, 2014
The "Auschwitz – Art in the Face of Death" Mini Quest asks students to consider artwork produced as a response to the experience of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to produce their own artistic responses to what they learned.
IWitness activity, witness, auschwitz, past is present / Thursday, October 23, 2014
Pinchas Gutter stepped onto the bimah at the Kiever Synagogue in Toronto, Canada, where for the 27th consecutive time he was about to lead the Yom Kippur services.  He stood tall in his white robe breathing deeply surrounded by eight white-clad Torah scrolls, each held by a leaders of the congregation.  The scrolls appear to jostle for position, their silver shields and finials glistening as PInchas intones the ancient supplication, 'Kol Nidrei'.  But on the bimah there are more than the eight men holding Torah scrolls, because gathered around him are also the ghosts of the Gerrer Hasidim o
op-eds / Friday, October 24, 2014
USC Shoah Foundation and its partner in the Czech Republic, PANT, have been busy leading workshops and seminars about the Visual History Archive and IWitness for educators.
/ Friday, October 24, 2014
USC Shoah Foundation and ADL hosted the first session of this year’s Holocaust Education Institute Friday, Oct. 24, which was attended by an enthusiastic group of over 50 educators from the Los Angeles area.
/ Monday, October 27, 2014
I have only known Harry Reicher for three months, and yet today I say goodbye to him as an old friend. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting to meet a devout and practicing Jew the day he first walked into the USC Shoah Foundation office, but Harry’s devotion to his religious life radiated from him the moment he said hello.
Harry Reicher, Penn, Holocaust Studies, law, In memory, op-eds, cagr / Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Six months after beginning its educational and cultural programming, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews celebrated the opening of its core exhibition and the official grand opening of the museum in Warsaw yesterday.
mhpj, poland / Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Thursday is #AskAnArchivist Day. Tweet @USCShoahFdn to ask USC Shoah Foundation's Sandra Aguilar and Daryn Eller about their work as archivists.
visual history archive, its / Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Through an analysis of testimony, students learn about the resistance efforts that took place in the Auschwitz camp complex and about the meaning of resistance in the context of the Holocaust in a new MiniQuest.
iwitness, IWitness activity, past is present / Thursday, October 30, 2014
In honor of National Archives Month, here are 10 unique facts about USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.
Ask an Archivist Day, National Archives Month, #askanarchivist, op-eds / Thursday, October 30, 2014
Just in time for the holiday season, USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith will travel to four cities around the country to speak about the new book "Testimony: The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation."
testimony the book, Stephen Smith / Friday, October 31, 2014
The Rwandan Tutsi Genocide committee at the first Trojan Model UN utilized testimony from the Visual History Archive in order to give the delegates real-life scenarios they couldn’t get anywhere else.
united nations, usc, rwanda / Monday, November 3, 2014
Within the Visual History Archive there are over 8,000 testimonies that reference France, over 1,600 that were conducted in the country and over 1,800 testimonies that were given in French.
Lyon France, visual history archive / Wednesday, November 5, 2014
IWitness is typically used in middle- and high school classrooms and college courses, but that may change following this week’s pilot testing of a new activity intended for students as young as fifth grade.
IWitness activity, pilot, chicago / Wednesday, November 5, 2014
For some people, hope is nothing but an airy dream. But for my parents, Elisabeth and George, it is a hard-won reality that they have lived every day of their lives. Their commitment is anything but naïve. They are both survivors of the Holocaust and have experienced anti-Semitism in all its forms. They’ve suffered more than most of us, God willing, will ever experience. And yet, their hope has been a source of redemption and new life.
memory, op-eds / Wednesday, November 5, 2014
The educators from 11 different countries representing four continents will attend a four-day workshop during the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 2015.
past is present, teacher training, auschwitz / Thursday, November 6, 2014
In the "Arrival at Auschwitz" activity, students will consider the personal experiences of those who arrived on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau by examining historical photographs and watching testimony.
IWitness activity, past is present, auschwitz, auschwitz album / Friday, November 7, 2014

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