As we look ahead in 2018, we offer a few moments of joyful music from the Visual History Archive.

Barbara Reichmann survived the Holocaust by going into hiding and concealing her identity. In order to survive, she volunteered to work as a Polish forced laborer, which brought her eventually to Ulm, Germany. She was liberated by French armed forces. In Munich, she met her husband, Leon Reichmann, and had a daughter. They eventually emigrated to the United States.

Davina Pardo is a determined woman. For two years, the Emmy award-winning filmmaker had reached out to USC Shoah Foundation and Conscience Display, asking again and again for access to create a documentary about the New Dimensions in Testimony program. A native Canadian residing in Brooklyn, Pardo was no stranger to grappling with memories of mass murder. She had previously spent time in Rwanda filming a documentary about the 1994 genocide.

Division among people continues to be a root cause of conflict. Students need a relevant perspective to help them recognize how continued reinforcements of stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination play a role in this division. This webinar will focus on ways to contextualize present day manifestations hate through IWitness resources. Register for the Webinar

Students need to think critically about the implication of bystanders' choices, the reasons behind those choices, and the reasons why they should have acted. We want to encourage our students to always do the right thing and stand up for those in need. To do this, they need to understand the consequences of bystander behavior. This webinar will focus on first-hand stories from victims to help students think critically about inaction and indifference.

Students are aware of injustices around them, especially in today's political climate. Providing them a way to contribute to the solution validates their social responsibility and activates their learning. With service learning and community service becoming essential parts of curricula we as educators can inspire our students to do good in the world. This webinar will focus on the IWitness Video Challenge, an activity that gets students working for positive change in their communities.

In a world filled with counter examples, students need our guidance to find real examples of responsible, empathetic behavior. Examining ways in which people care for others by highlighting individuals who had courage to take a stand against prejudice, discrimination, and hate will provide a new authentic perspective of good. Bringing in voices of those who have helped and been helped by others is a powerful way for students to be introduced to these role models.

To help students become active civil participants of society, they need to discover and define their voice. Cultivating communication skills and digital literacy are critical to supporting students as they attempt to magnify their voices in support of others. In this webinar, resources that cultivate these skills in students will be featured. Register for the Webinar

A love of old movies drew Shiraz Bhathena into the moving image archive field. As an archivist and post-production specialist at USC Shoah Foundation, he supervised the process of restoring the Institute's testimonies with video and audio problems. The herculean task is finally complete.

The testimony of Holocaust survivor Raphael Zimetbaum references Elise Meyer, the aunt of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, the real-life person portrayed by Meryl Streep in the film "The Post," by Steven Spielberg.

In this clip, Holocaust survivor Raphael Zimetbaum recounts how Brazilian ambassador Luis Martins de Souza Dantas granted him and his family diplomatic visas, allowing them to eventually escape to Brazil. The ambassador also happened to be married to Elise Meyer, sister of Washington Post owner Eugene Meyer, Katharine Graham's father.

Institute staff is attending this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to demonstrate New Dimensions in Testimony, the Institute’s interactive biographies that enable people to have conversations with pre-recorded video images of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide.

Testimony brings to life why we join World Jewish Congress and communities everywhere for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the #WeRemember campaign.

The world will observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday, which is the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. It’s a day of somber reflection, but also a time for education so the world can be better protected from the evils of the past. Among its many programs, USC Shoah Foundation offers IWitness, a free online platform that teachers and students can use to navigate this difficult subject. Among its nearly 200 activities, IWitness has many that focus on Auschwitz, liberation and other topics of relevance to the day’s message.

The top stories of 2017 including media coverage of the Institute's work throughout the year.

"Nothing compares to eyewitness accounts," said teacher Ivy Schamis of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. "The students get a better feel for the survivor or liberator when they hear their own words and see their body language. It is very inspiring."

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC faculty members and graduate students for its Summer 2018 Research Fellowships.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from USC undergraduate students for its 2018 Summer Research Fellowships.

The IWitness Video Challenge is a 21st century skill builder - teaching students how to use digital tools such as video editors to craft multimedia essays. Most importantly, the challenge provides students the opportunity to positively enhance their digital citizenship as they network and collaborate with others to deal with real world problems.

Drawing on USC Shoah Foundation oral history videos, personal papers, and other sources, Dr. Diane Marie Amann's lecture situates stories of the unsung women who played vital roles at Nuremberg in the context of the Nuremberg trials themselves, international law, and the postwar global society. Diane Marie Amann is the inaugural 2017-2018 Breslauer, Rutman and Anderson Research Fellow.

This lecture is part of the series "Hidden Archives - Public Sturggles: Events Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." Presented by Doheny Memorial Library and co-sponsored by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Inaugural Breslauer, Rutman & Anderson Research Fellow Diane Marie Amann gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research about her research on the little-known women involved in the Nuremberg Trials.

Jean-Marc Dreyfus, PhD, Reader in Holocaust Studies in the History department at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) has been awarded the 2018-2019 Center Research Fellowship.

Christopher R. Browning, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been chosen as the 2017-2018 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence.

This series will highlight one teaching activity per day for 10 days, pairing eyewitness testimony with standards-aligned lessons that transform learning.

We are saddened to learn of the recent passing of Arkadii Vaispapir, one of few people ever to have survived the Sobibór death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. He was 96.

The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.   - Zygmunt Bauman 2018 Polish-Israeli Crisis: History, Trauma, and Politics of Cultural Memory The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear. 1968-2018

Maria Zalewska is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, a 2016-2018 Mellon Ph.D. Fellow in the Digital Humanities and an affiliated scholar of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Her research interests include cinematic representations of the Holocaust; documentary film; national and transnational modes and media of memorialization; digital humanities; politics of technologized memory; place and space in cinema; history as film/film as history; and political economy of film.

The future of Polish-Israeli relations can be driven by compassion and forgiveness, or a retreat behind walls of fossilized antisemitism, essentialist prejudice, nationalistic egotism, and fear.