Watching testimony and participating in the Student Voices Film Contest helped Mariana Aguilar heal from an experience with racism.

Summary: Free and open to the public, monthly Institute visits give guests a chance to explore the life stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and to discover how their memories are being used to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry. Description:

A group of dedicated USC students is reviving the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association (SFISA).

Giulia Spizzichino, who gave her testimony in Italian on March 25, 1998, speaks about the Ardeatine Caves Massacre that took place outside Rome on March 24, 1944. In one of the worst massacres in Italy during World War II, over 300 Italian men were shot, in retaliation for an attack on SS personnel by resistance fighters. The previous day, the Patriotic Action Group (Gruppi d'Azione Patriotica, or GAP) set off a bomb that killed 33 German soldiers marching on Via Rassella. Hitler made an order that within 24 hours, 10 Italians were to be shot for each dead German.

Board members, senior staff and other supporters of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education are traveling throughout Hungary and Poland this week on the Institute’s mission to Eastern Europe.

Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest is now the second Visual History Archive access site in Hungary and the 45th in the world.

A budapesti Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Magyarországon a második és a világon a 45. hozzáférési pont, ahonnan a Vizuális Történelmi Archívum összes interjúja elérhető. Az első hozzáférési pont 2oo9-ben nyílt meg a Közép-európai Egyetemen (CEU).

Sol Liber explains his involvement as a resistance fighter during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which took place beginning April 16, 1943. Along with his fellow ghetto inhabitant, Hakiva Leifer, he fought in the Warsaw ghetto until his capture and eventual deportation to the Treblinka II Death Camp, Poland, in May 1943.

Ernest James speaks of his participation as a United States soldier in the battle for Aachen, Germany, in October 1944. He explains how the United States armed forces surrounded Aachen and forced the German armed forces to surrender. It was October 21, 1944.  

Our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series continues with Lesson 6: Jewish Resistance.

Freddy Diament remembers participating in the revolt at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. He recalls hearing rumors that SS personnel were going to gas Jews in the camp. So a group of prisoners decided to fight the Nazis, rather than just be killed by them.

A USC Shoah Foundation evaluation consultant discusses the positive effects IWitness had on students who piloted the program from February to April 2011.

USC Shoah Foundation’s newest partner school is Daniel Berzsenyi High School in Budapest, Hungary.

USC Shoah Foundation's first co-sponsored academic event of the year was a discussion about how atrocities can be stopped by governments and individuals.

USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith delivered the keynote address at The Aladdin Project’s International Seminar on Holocaust Education today in Istanbul, Turkey.

As USC Shoah Foundation celebrated the launch of the 45th Visual History Archive full access site in the world at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Hungary last week, ELTE presented George Schaeffer with its most prestigious award, the Senate Medal. Through his philanthropic organization, the George W. Schaeffer Family Foundation, Schaeffer donated the Visual History Archive’s subscription fee, allowing the archive to be accessible to students, faculty and researchers at ELTE for the next three years.

In 1941 more anti- Jewish measures were implemented and intensified in Nazi Germany including ration cards, forbidding Jews to emigrate and deportations of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. Gerda Haas was a nurse at a hospital in Berlin  when her mother was deported to the Riga ghetto in Latvia in late 1941.

USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith will accept Peace Over Violence’s Media Award on behalf of USC Shoah Foundation at the nonprofit’s annual Humanitarian Awards on Friday.

Agnes Adachi speaks about peace and how we must speak to our children because they are so important in creating a peaceful world.  

In between attending classes together and posing for pictures in front of Tommy Trojan, USC students and their families can get to know USC Shoah Foundation in a special exhibit at this year’s Trojan Family Weekend.

Arie Van Mansum was only in his early 20’s when he helped rescue Jews in the Netherlands. He describes why he chose to risk in life in order to hide and rescue Jews. Arie was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

We continue our 10-part Echoes and Reflections series with Lesson 7: Rescuers and Non-Jewish Resistance.

Fred Ostrowski talks about the arrest and deportation of Jews of Polish origin from Germany to Poland on October 28, 1938. He remembers the journey from his hometown, Essen, Germany, to Zbaszyn, a border town in Poland. He relates that he and his mother were placed in the home of a Polish family shortly after their arrival Zbaszyn and notes that his father was in Lódz, Poland, at the time.  

Andrea Szőnyi tells the story of her father, who survived Auschwitz as a boy with the help of a man named Ernő Spiegel.

USC Shoah Foundation’s director of education, Kori Street, will give two presentations this week in Montreal.

Tania Fink was only five years old when she and her family were captured by German soldiers and sent to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. She remembers what the camp looked like including the prisoner bunks and barbed wire fencing that surrounded the camp.  

Holocaust education advocate Rhonda Fink-Whitman interviews a dozen Pennsylvania college students about the Holocaust. Their answers show what happens when states do not make Holocaust education mandatory.