One would think that the grandson of four Polish Holocaust survivors would have an in-depth knowledge of the Shoah, but it was quite the contrary. The Holocaust was a topic that was never discussed when I was growing up. When it was introduced, it was in the most unconventional way, through satire film and television. I knew this was just a facade draped over the painful truth.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with Journeys in Film to provide, on its educational website IWitness, 11 clips of testimony from the Visual History Archive relevant to the documentary film Defiant Requiem, along with Journeys in Film’s Defiant Requiem curriculum guide.

Museum visitors can now interact with the testimonies of Holocaust survivors Sam Harris, Aaron Elster and Fritzie Fritzshall, in addition to Pinchas Gutter, three weekends a month from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with The Memory Project Productions to debut a new IWitness activity and incorporate testimony into the organization’s curriculum.

Drag Queen, talented businessman and my icon RuPaul once stated, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”

A set of new activities on the IWitness activities page are all in Hungarian, part of the Institute’s efforts to globalize the education of students and their teachers about hatred and intolerance using USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

I had interviewed dozens of Gabersdorf survivors, discovered there had been 10 other women’s slave labor camps in Trutnov, then Trautenau, Sudetenland and that the 5,000 Polish Jewish women trafficked to Trutnov were among the first to be imprisoned in Nazi camps and the last to be liberated, on May 8th--9th, 1945. Didn’t they deserve to be honored, too?

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence Omer Bartov began his residence today with a Facebook Live interview about his work.

Bartov centered his discussion on how the East Galician town of Buczacz was transformed from a site of coexistence – where Poles, Ukrainians and Jews had all lived side-by-side for centuries – into a site of genocide during World War II.

Holocaust survivor Zenon Neumark and Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido shared their stories of survival and their messages for the next generation at a Genocide Awarenes Month event hosted by DEFY, USC Shoah Foundation’s student organization.

Each webinar focuses on a specific aspect of teaching using genocide survivor and witness testimonies from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

The first-ever recipient of USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s Genocide Prevention Research Fellowship is Vanessa Belén Dorda Meneses, a PhD candidate from the University of Chile.

USC Shoah Foundation will present its interactive media projects to some of the brightest minds in technology at the prestigious Code Conference, hosted by Vox Media, in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., May 30-June 1.

USC Shoah Foundation recorded two testimonies of Italian Jewish survivors who have memories of champion Italian cyclist Gino Bartali and his resistance activities.

Six distinguished University of Southern California faculty participated in a series of videos released during USC Shoah Foundation’s 100 Days to Inspire Respect program in which they watch clips of testimony and offer their thoughts on the clip’s themes and message.

More students and teachers than ever before are doing the IWitness Video Challenge.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life invite proposals for their 2018 International Conference “New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison”.

Amazon customers around the world have the opportunity to support USC Shoah Foundation even as they shop online.

One of USC Shoah Foundation’s fiercest supporters will be honored with a leadership award from Hillel at Drexel University this Monday, May 22.

The 23rd annual Inforum conference in Prague, Czech Republic, next Tuesday will feature a presentation on IWitness, given by Martin Šmok, USC Shoah Foundation’s Senior International Program Consultant.

This program introduces learners to classroom-ready comprehensive print and online resources, sound pedagogy for teaching about the Holocaust and instructional pathways to help students learn about the complex history of the Holocaust.

Marthe Twizeyimana and Philippe Samvura both completed IWitness training workshops in the past and are now two of nine total “IWitness ambassadors” in Rwanda, dedicated to introducing other educators to IWitness.

The course will increase the Institute's ability to train globally and significantly scale up indexing capacities.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research staff will be traveling around the world this summer to host academic workshops about the Visual History Archive.

Such topics as raising awareness and support for the deaf community, combatting stereotypes and bullying throughout their schools, and helping the homeless were just a few of the worthy ventures students took on this year.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life invite proposals for their 2018 International Conference.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens, a wartime hero who became a well-known character actor when he moved to the United States. He was 91. Born Curt Lowenstein on Nov. 17, 1925 in Germany, Lowen and his family had planned to emigrate to the United States as World War II was starting, but they were stopped from leaving the Netherlands when the Germans invaded that country. He was briefly deported to the Westerbork concentration camp in 1943, but he was released because of his father’s business connections.