The staff of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research had a dilemma on their hands. They could only choose one applicant to award the 2016 Graduate Summer Research Fellowship – but they couldn’t bring themselves to turn away their runner-up, Piotr Florczyk, because his proposal was so fascinating.

It’s easy to see why. Florczyk, a PhD candidate in the USC Literature and Creative Writing program, intends to write poetry inspired by the testimonies of Polish Holocaust survivors in the archive.

Maya Montell, Allison Vandal and Caroline Waters’ video about the creation of a poetry group at Readington Middle School has won USC Shoah Foundation’s 2016 iWitness Video Challenge.  The eighth-graders’ newly created Poets Undercover Guild provides an opportunity for their peers to express their feelings and appreciation for each other by using the power of words in the sharing of poetry.