The footsteps of Holocaust survivors come to life in IWalks, USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive testimony-based educational program.

Home to several of USC Shoah Foundation’s most innovative educational programs, Hungary is a crucial site for the Institute’s work outside the United States.

The footsteps of Holocaust survivors will come to life in IWalks, USC Shoah Foundation’s new interactive testimony experience in Czech Republic now available on the USC Shoah Foundation website.

Just one month after IWalk launched in Czech Republic, a second resource is already being developed. The city of Brno, in the Southern Moravia region of the country, will join Prague in offering downloadable testimony clip reels of Holocaust survivor testimonies that students may watch as they visit relevant historical sites.

Hungarian ethics teachers and Polish educators were introduced this spring to IWalk, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational program that combines testimony with real-life locations, and are interested in incorporating it into their teaching.  

For the third consecutive year, a new group of teachers gathered in Hungary for the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program to learn how to create their own testimony-based lessons and classroom activities.

These resources make it possible for anyone to embark on the IWalks and hear the stories of survivors in the authentic locations where they experienced the Holocaust.

Educators in Hungary were busy last weekend. USC Shoah Foundation hosted three of its programs for teachers: an ITeach seminar, an IWalk through the Budapest Jewish district, and the first-ever Hungarian IWitness Educator workshop.

Five more IWalks are in development in Hungary as part of a new initiative led by teachers who have graduated from USC Shoah Foundation’s Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century professional development program.

Across the United States and in Europe, USC Shoah Foundation is helping to commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on May 4 and 5.

The Ukrainian high school students were trained to lead the new IWalk on Babi Yar.

The IWalk went along one of the busiest streets in Warsaw which used to be part of the Warsaw Ghetto.

This seminar was a part of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies’ "Protecting Memory" project.

Marcel Mahdal, a graduate of the USC Shoah Foundation Master Teacher program in Czech Republic launched a project last week in which students from two schools work together to create their own local IWalk.

“Pastrami, Tacos, Burgers: Continuity and Change in Boyle Heights” is now published on IWitness, incorporating Holocaust survivor testimony clips into a guided walk through the historic immigrant community of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

USC Shoah Foundation’s IWalk at the site of the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine is helping students gain a deeper understanding of the tragedy in commemoration of its 76th anniversary this week.

In my role as part of USC Shoah Foundation’s Education Department, I have the honor of working with our team members both in the United States and around the world to create localized educational content using genocide survivor testimony. As a former classroom teacher and a lifelong believer in the importance of experiential learning, I was fortunate to take part in three IWalks in Budapest, Hungary, Prague, Czechia, and Warsaw, Poland while on a recent vacation.

USC Shoah Foundation’s annual Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century program is a one-year professional development initiative for educators that begins with a six-day seminar for educators.

The app by USC Shoah Foundation guides visitors as they move through the plaza, providing explanations about each interpretive element, as well as personal stories by survivors, maps, photos and other multimedia.

After months of beta testing with educators around the globe, USC Shoah Foundation is launching the brand new IWalk app, which offers 29 IWalks in seven countries and eight languages.

How best to fuse compelling testimony with the latest innovative technologies to produce the most effective instructional materials for students and educators around the world?

USC Shoah Foundation has added a tour of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument in Montebello, California to its IWalk mobile application, making it the first Armenian Genocide site of memory to be featured on the innovative educational platform.

USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive IWalk mobile app has been named a finalist in the Cool Tool Mobile App Solution category in the 2022 EdTech Awards, the world's largest recognition program for education technology.

USC Shoah Foundation today launches its 500th IWitness activity with release of In Lisa's Footsteps, a primary level IWalk based on Mona Golabek’s acclaimed The Children of Willesden Lane books. In Lisa's Footsteps tells the story of Golabek’s mother, Lisa Jura, a young Holocaust survivor who in 1938 escaped from Vienna to London on the Kindertransport.

USC Shoah Foundation with its partner the Schindler’s Ark Foundation has added a tour of Oskar Schindler’s former factory in what is now the Czech Republic to its mobile IWalk application, enabling smartphone users to explore the site where the German businessman sheltered more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.