On Sunday, February 22, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute presented a screening of its most recent documentary, Spell Your Name, followed by a discussion addressing issues of cultural stereotypes and the complexity of the public memorialization of massacres that took place during the Holocaust in Ukraine.

The Institute has begun preliminary work with partners in Belarus to introduce testimony to local educators and encourage the development of testimony-based classroom materials.

One hundred educators recently attended Lessons of the Holocaust and Contemporary Russia, a three-day seminar in Kaliningrad organized by the Russian Research and Holocaust Education Center.  Svetlana Gorbacheva, an educator who has visited the Institute and created an educational lesson which incorporates testimony, modeled the lesson during the seminar.

Album posted on:  December 19, 2008

The Institute is working with the Holocaust Documentation Center (DHS) in Slovakia to assist the development of additional lessons based on testimony from the archive.  At a DSH-organized seminar in Bratislava, Martin Šmok presented clips of testimony from local survivors, and two lesson authors–Eva Kizáková and Alica Virdzeková–demonstrated their lessons to the participants.

Geared toward Ukrainian educators of students ages 14-18, Encountering Memory is a teacher's guide to accompany the film, Nazvy svoie im'ia (Spell Your Name), a documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine, that incorporates testimony from the Institute's archive.  Encountering Memory training is a national program aimed at preparing approximately 3,000 educators throughout Ukraine to use the multimedia kit in the classroom.  By November 2008, the training team conducted more than 25 seminars with more than 700 educ

The preservation of one of the largest digital video archives in the world got underway the Fall of 2008 at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, where staff began converting more than 100,000 hours of videotaped Holocaust testimonials to a new digital format.

Album posted on:  December 17, 2008

On October 22, 2008, Steven Spielberg, Honorary Chair of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, presented this year's Ambassadors for Humanity Award to legendary actor and humanitarian Kirk Douglas.  Douglas was recognized for his long history of support to humanitarian causes.