Patti Giggans has been the executive director of Peace Over Violence since 1985, but her passion for social justice began before she even got her high school diploma. “As a sophomore in high school geometry class I remember reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” Giggans said. “I read it on my lap... I flunked geometry.”

Miriam Lichterman talks about the celebration of the Jewish Holiday, Simhat Torah, at her synagogue and at her home in prewar Warsaw, Poland. She remembers the cooking and especially the baked goods prepared by her mother for Simhat Torah following the observance of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

The first Jewish culture festival in Milan, Italy, will feature testimony clips about Shabbat from Italian Holocaust survivors and a Polish survivor in an online exhibit.

We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 3: Nazi Germany.

Faculty from the University of Pennsylvania will teach courses using the Visual History Archive for another three years following a new grant from the Fife Foundation.

Régine Jacubert est née le 24 janvier 1920 à Zagorow (Pologne). La famille part pour la France en 1930 et s’installe à Nancy. Réfugiée à Bordeaux avec les siens en 1940, elle rentre seule à Nancy où elle travaille. Le reste de sa famille est arrêté et interné. A Nancy, elle échappe à la grande rafle du 19 juillet 1942 et passe clandestinement en zone Sud. A Lyon, où elle a trouvé un travail, elle entre dans le mouvement de résistance Combat, en janvier 1943. Arrêtée en juin 1944, elle est interrogée à la Gestapo, notamment par Klaus Barbie.

Adolphe Kornman est né le 18 octobre 1927 à Paris. Il grandit dans le Marais. Il assiste à la rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver en juillet 1942 et, en octobre, la famille trouve un passeur qui l’achemine en zone non occupée. Un temps réfugié avec son père en zone italienne, à Nice, il finit par quitter la ville quand celle-ci est envahie par les Allemands en septembre 1943. Grâce au réseau de la Sixième, Adolphe Kornman franchit la frontière suisse en mai 1944. Il y demeure quelques mois, dans différents camps, avant de rentrer en France, après la libération du territoire.

High school teacher Peter Cook discusses the importance of character education, and putting "culture before content," in today's classrooms.

Kurt Messerschmidt remembers reciting a challenging piece of Latin in the classroom making his Hebrew teacher and Non-Jewish teachers very proud and surprised.

A knight of the British Empire and an Olympic athlete recorded two of the newest testimonies for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Liz Bommarito has been using IWitness in her English classes at Midwood High School in Brooklyn for the past two years. Her senior class is currently working on the IWitness Video Challenge, and this year each student has an extra incentive to win: The top five students, as voted by the class, will attend USC Shoah Foundation’s annual Ambassadors for Humanity Gala on Thursday.

Eva Hayman remembers when her family found out about the Kindertransport orchestrated by Sir Nicholas Winton. Eva and her sister were a part of the 669 children who were rescued by Winton from Czechoslovakia in 1939.

Dutch rescuer and aid provider Jacobus Van Der Geest worked with the US armed forces as an interpreter and provided medical care to wounded American soldiers returning to the USA. Van Der Geest remembers helping a wounded soldier see the Statue of Liberty.

USC Shoah Foundation's annual benefit gala will be held Thursday at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, hosted by Jon Stewart with a special appearance by Sandra Bullock and a musical performance by Norah Jones.

USC Shoah Foundation will toast the humanitarian work of actor George Clooney at its Ambassadors for Humanity gala on Thursday, but it will also offer two unique showcases of its educational work in schools around the world.

Stephen Smith, executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, has been named the inaugural UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education.

Even after the Holocaust, other genocides and ethnic cleansings have occurred and still continue. Peter Wolfram reflects on the importance of tolerance to prevent such atrocities from happening, and so people around the world can one day live peacefully together.

On October 5th 1938 German law required all Jewish passports to be stamped with a large and red letter “J,” for Jude, Jew in German.  M. Austein remembers having to exchange his Austrian passport for a German passport with the letter, “J.”

We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 4: The Ghettos.

The Jewish Museum in Prague recently debuted a new exhibit dedicated to the Nazi-produced films about the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. The Visual History Archive is also a unique resource for Terezin remembrance.

Livia Bitton-Jackson remembers arriving to Auschwitz as a young girl with her mother and an aunt. Before they entered the camp Livia was stopped by infamous SS physician Josef Mengele.

George Clooney is well known as an actor, director, producer and writer. But it was his global humanitarian efforts that received the attention on Oct. 3 when he was honored with the Ambassador for Humanity Award by Steven Spielberg.

Lyndell Higgins wanted to teach people about the Holocaust. So, she started to dance. Higgins is the founding director of the Los Angeles-based Stretch Dance Company, which she created in 2010.  The company recently debuted its first full-length dance production, I Have Lived A Thousand Years, based on the popular memoir of Holocaust survivor Dr. Livia Bitton-Jackson. Bitton-Jackson’s testimony is in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation’s associate director of research, Dan Leshem, participated in Cardozo School of Law’s Law and Film course taught by documentary filmmaker/historian Christian Delage on Sept. 29.

The creators of a transmedia novel that has captivated students around the world have entered into a partnership with USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive and educational website IWitness.

In October 1943 the Danish underground helped transport over 7,000 Danish Jews to Sweden. Esther Chalupovitsch remembers the night her family escaped Nazi controlled Denmark on a fishing boat to Sweden.

Even though they were surrounded by members of Hollywood elite and New York society, a group of teenagers seemed to steal the spotlight at the Oct. 3 Ambassadors for Humanity gala.

Holocaust and genocide experts and representatives from Holocaust organizations around the world are gathering in China this week for the 2013 Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) conference. USC Shoah Foundation’s director of education, Kori Street, will present a session called “Global Testimony-Based Education.”