Jewish survivor Elaine Siegel discusses her schooling throughout her childhood and teenage years. Her various teachers were Nazis, but only some would include their ideologies into lessons. As she grew up, she was labeled as "Jewish" and faced antisemitism in school.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Anita talks about her experience in gymnasium, and the multiple classes she took. She also fondly remembers a teacher of hers.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Tutsi survivor Daniel Ndamwizeye describes the difficult time he had at school and what a typical school day was like. 
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Tutsi survivor Live Wesige remembers his time spent at school and even being punished for being left-handed. 
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Juliane Heyman remembers experiencing antisemitism throughout her schooling years.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Rita Childs discusses her schooling and remembers how pleased she was that her great reputation as a student allowed her to skip an entry test for a school she wished to attend.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Ester Fiszgop remembers the prevelant antisemitism throughout her years of schooling.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Herbert Spiro remembers when Hitler came to his city on campaign and his class was tasked with attending Hitler's visit and writing an essay about it. The Jewish boys of the class were allowed to write about something different but Herbert secretly watched as Hitler arrived and wrote about the visit in great detail. 
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Victoria Blank discusses her difficulty adjusting to school as a young girl.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Jewish survivor Max Epstein discusses the structure of his schooling from age 6 to 18. He remembers his strong skills in math and the difficulty he had learning languages in school, until he was able to travel and master the languages on his own.
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
/ Wednesday, July 13, 2016
As the sun sets on the Danube River, I felt the need to pinch myself. I am really here in Budapest? It doesn’t feel so far away from my home in Los Angeles. But looking at the architecture and the castle in the distance, I fall in love with the romance of this old European city.
master teacher, budapest, History, holocaust, op-eds / Thursday, July 14, 2016
More than 900 Holocaust testimonies recorded over four decades by the Jewish Family and Children Services Holocaust Center of San Francisco (JFCS) are now fully integrated into USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive as part of the Preserving the Legacy initiative – an ambitious plan to save recorded eyewitness testimony and bring voices of genocide survivors to a wider audience.
JFC, vha / Monday, May 16, 2016
New Dimensions in Testimony from USC Shoah Foundation captured two top honors this week at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, the third-largest documentary festival in the world.
/ Thursday, June 16, 2016
Twenty years after a civil war and genocide in Guatemala, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will host an international conference that will shed light on this little-known atrocity.
Guatemala, cagr, conference, international conference / Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Initial evaluations from the pilot exhibition of USC Shoah Foundation's New Dimensions in Testimony – a groundbreaking project that enables audiences to have a "virtual conversation" with projected images of Holocaust survivors – is proving the new technology is a valuable tool to ensure future generations will be able to have personal interactive experiences with Holocaust survivors long into the future.
ndt, New Dimensions in Testimony, Sheffield, Pinchas Gutter / Tuesday, June 21, 2016
A trio of eighth-graders from New Jersey who created a poetry group that has enabled students at their school to express their hardships and appreciation for one another has won the 2016 IWitness Video Challenge sponsored by USC Shoah Foundation.
iwitness, education, iwvc / Thursday, June 30, 2016
Lesly Culp, USC Shoah Foundation Senior Education Specialist and Trainer, delivered an introductory IWitness workshop for the participants during the week-long program.
echoes and reflections, iwitness, Lesly Culp, adl / Thursday, July 14, 2016
George Szegö describes the difficult conditions inside the Békéscsaba concentration camp in Hungary. The town of Békéscsaba recently commemorated the 72nd anniversary of the deportation to Auschwitz with a new memorial.
clip / Thursday, July 14, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation records the testimonies of genocide survivors so the world will never forget their stories. Eighth-grade student Andrea Chang decided to do something similar for her community: document the stories of the elderly. As part of the third-annual IWitness Video Challenge, Andrea created a video demonstrating her project, in which she spoke to the elderly and shared their stories. Her video, “Tell Me Your Story,” took third place in the national competition, landing her a $500 scholarship.
/ Friday, July 15, 2016
/ Friday, July 15, 2016
Every year on July 18, the world celebrates Nelson Mandela International Day, a day that honors the work and legacy of the South African leader and asks people to spend time fighting for social justice as Mandela himself did.
/ Friday, July 15, 2016
Jewish survivor Dennis Urstein explains the importance of learning from the past, which is why he dedicates a lot of his time speaking with young children. He also describes a difficult situation he handled when speaking with a group of young people.
clip / Friday, July 15, 2016
Nineteen educators gathered at Central European University Budapest the first weekend in July to share the activities they piloted in the classroom after being initiated into the Master Teacher program in Hungary last year.
master teacher, Teaching with Testimony, budapest, Andrea Szőnyi / Monday, July 18, 2016
In a new French book about the deportation of Jews from France during the Holocaust, authors Alexandre Doulut, Serge Klarsfeld, and Sandrine Labeau used USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to help identify survivors. The book, 1945, les rescapés d'Auschwitz témoignent (which roughly translates to 1945, Auschwitz survivors testify), the authors document the testimony of one survivor from each of the 82 deportation convoys that departed from France.
/ Monday, July 18, 2016
Jewish survivor Rafael Lewin discusses his transfer from the internment camp Drancy, in France, to Auschwitz. The train was delayed once it arrived outside of Auschwitz and Rafael was lucky enough to go to a work camp rather than continue inside the death camp with the families still on the train.
clip / Monday, July 18, 2016
/ Monday, July 18, 2016
In this clip series, survivors and other witnesses to genocide recall the various ways they individually or collectively resisted injustice and discrimination during wartime, sometimes at great personal risk. What are the circumstances in which resisting authority becomes a moral duty? What forms can resistance take? What does the face of resistance look like?
résistance, discrimination / Friday, July 19, 2019
The 22 new testimonies will bring the total number in the Nanjing Massacre collection to 72.
nanjing, Nanjing Massacre, nanjing survivor / Wednesday, July 20, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation interviewed Nanjing Massacre survivor Xie Guiying on June 4, 2016, in Nanjing, China, where she currently lives in a senior home. Xie is now 92 years old and in very good health. Xie never received a proper education, however, she is a wonderful storyteller and still has a very vivid memory.
/ Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Pages