Samantha Shapiro has a personal connection to USC Shoah Foundation, but she has begun using IWitness in her own educational work at a Detroit-area synagogue.

Shapiro signed up to receive update emails about IWitness after learning about USC Shoah Foundation through her husband, whose uncle is its Board of Councilors Executive Committee member Mickey Shapiro.

An administrative assistant and teacher at a religious education program at a conservative synagogue, Shapiro then learned about the two-day IWitness Summer Institute for Detroit-area educators in August 2016 through her coworker, and they decided to attend the seminar in order to learn how to incorporate IWitness into their curriculum.

The IWitness Summer Institute introduced Detroit-area educators to the Visual History Archive and IWitness, including the Activity Library, Watch page, how to search, and how users can construct their own activities and assign them to students. The teachers also learned about the methodology of teaching with testimony and how to incorporate testimony clips into their lesson plans.

Shapiro said she particularly enjoyed learning about the pedagogy and intention behind IWitness.

“The idea that allowing students to explore testimony in order for students to make truer, more meaningful connections to the Holocaust is a very important part of our program and for Holocaust education,” Shapiro said.

Moving forward, Shapiro will work with the synagogue’s education team to determine how to incorporate IWitness activities into their curriculum. They will also review testimonies in order to complete a biography project with the students.

Shapiro said that while students tend to learn a lot of facts about history, they are often missing the personal element behind historical events. However, testimony provides immediate access to the many different voices and stories of the Holocaust.

“Students, and teachers, are able to make connections not just to this piece of history but to other eras and struggles,” Shapiro said. “Students are able to learn through history that there are still injustices in the world and the students become empowered to make a change.”

Students can learn so many lessons from the Holocaust, Shapiro said, from the history of their grandparents or great-grandparents to the dangers of racism and prejudice. She’s also witnessed firsthand how the importance of the Holocaust spans all people, not just those that were personally affected.

On a recent student trip to the Children’s Holocaust Memorial in Whitwell, Tennessee, Shapiro was amazed to see how passionate the town was about Holocaust remembrance, even though no one in the town had any connection to the actual events.

“This shows students and me that you do not have to be Jewish to learn or care about the Holocaust,” she said. “This message transcends into the idea that learning about the Holocaust empowers students to stand up for what is right no matter who the victim may be.”