Today, October 1st, marks the day in 1990 that Rwandan Patriotic Front troops crossed into Rwanda from neighboring Uganda and the beginning of a sequence of events that culminated in the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi that claimed as many as one million lives over the course of approximately 100 days.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Rwanda Archive and Education Program, a landmark initiative in partnership with Aegis Trust and the Kigali Genocide Memorial, has been at the forefront of recording and preserving testimonies related to the genocide.

USC Shoah Foundation today launches a redesigned IWitness website reimagined to make teaching with testimony more effective, approachable and cutting-edge.

The new site features all of the functionality educators have praised in IWitness—only better, faster, and more user-friendly.

A four-year initiative to bring together the expertise of USC Shoah Foundation and the Azrieli Foundation—Canada’s leading nationwide Holocaust education program—has culminated with the release of a robust new destination for teachers and students with a variety of bilingual educational materials based on the memoirs and testimonies of Canadian Holocaust survivors.

USC Shoah Foundation is looking for 40 students across the country in 7th– 11th grades representative of diverse backgrounds and academic skills who are interested in participating in its highly competitive William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program. The program provides a dynamic and unique learning opportunity to engage with testimonies – personal stories – from survivors and witnesses of genocide to develop their own voice.

Claire Denault’s Southern California private high school had a problem with classism. So she decided to approach the issue in a way she knew would resonate with her peers: through story.

As the student government leader who facilitated a weekly school-wide forum, she invited students to anonymously submit testimonies and personal accounts about how they had been disenfranchised or marginalized because of their socioeconomic status. Claire and other students read those narratives at town hall, and intense dialogue followed—that day and for weeks after.