LOS ANGELES (USC Shoah Foundation)—All testimonies from USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian Genocide collection have been indexed and will be integrated into the Visual History Archive (VHA) in the coming months.

Indexer Manuk Avedikyan completed the last 88 of the 333 testimonies in the collection last week. The collection was first introduced with 60 testimonies that were added to the VHA on April 24, 2015, the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Another 185 indexed testimonies were added to the collection in April of this year.

Fifth Annual Master Teacher Program in Poland Inspires Educators

The fifth annual Master Teacher program in Poland (formerly called Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century) introduced thirteen educators to the Visual History Archive, sparking new ideas for teaching their students about the Holocaust and current events in their country.

Benjamin Biniaz is a sophomore at Yale University. During his 2016 summer break he is interning with USC Shoah Foundation’s communication department. His family has been involved with the Institute for many years since his grandmother Celina Biniaz and great- grandmother Phyllis Karp gave their testimonies to the Visual History Archive in 1996.  

The Memory of a Hero: Aristides de Sousa Mendes' Legacy Preserved in Testimony

By: Benjamin Biniaz

Earlier this summer, Eleanor Beardsley of NPR met with a group of Holocaust survivors and relatives gathered in Bordeaux, France. They were beginning a 10-day trek, tracing a specific escape route from France to Portugal by way of Spain. These survivors were brought together by the memory of one man: Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

Benjamin Biniaz

Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux in the late 1930s who issued tens of thousands of visas to Jewish families, in direct violation of anti-Jewish laws instituted by Portugal’s fascist government at the time. For this act of resistance, Sousa Mendes faced trials and conviction, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in poverty and disgrace, and his 15 children scattered all over Europe and the U.S.

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