Nathan Offen recalls when he last saw his younger sister Miriam and his mother before they were deported to a concentration camp. He also speaks about the emotional and physical toll the splitting up of the family had on his father. His testimony is featured in Lesson 5 of Echoes and Reflections

USC Shoah Foundation and ADL hosted the first session of this year’s Holocaust Education Institute Friday, Oct. 24, which was attended by an enthusiastic group of over 50 educators from the Los Angeles area.

Sunday, November 16th, 6:30-9:30 p.m.Eileen Norris Cinema Theater ComplexUSC Shoah Foundation and its Center for Advanced Genocide Research present a screening of Schindler’s List as a part of the Through Testimony 2014 International Conference, “Memory, Media, and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List.”This event is free and open to the public.

I have only known Harry Reicher for three months, and yet today I say goodbye to him as an old friend. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting to meet a devout and practicing Jew the day he first walked into the USC Shoah Foundation office, but Harry’s devotion to his religious life radiated from him the moment he said hello.

Six months after beginning its educational and cultural programming, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews celebrated the opening of its core exhibition and the official grand opening of the museum in Warsaw yesterday.

At the brand-new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Zofia Mioduszewska has perhaps one of the most rewarding jobs: helping to educate the museum’s youngest visitors about the Holocaust and Jewish life in Poland.

Elżbieta Ficowska, a Jewish survivor from Poland, speaks about her experience, so she will continue to remember her parents and other loved ones that perished in the Holocaust. Ficowska describes how there isn’t any physical trace of her parents except for a grave stone she found on a Warsaw Jewish cemetery. Her birth certificate is a silver tee spoon engraved with her name and birthdate, which her father gave to her babysitter on “Aryan side” of Warsaw.

Daisy Miller speaks on the importance of the Visual History Archive and how the collection of audiovisual testimonies to the Holocaust will be a valuable resource in education for generations to come.

The University of Southern California and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation today announced that the Shoah Foundation will become part of the university’s College of Letters Arts and Sciences, effective January 1, 2006.

In a field dedicated to organizing and preserving information, it makes sense that USC Shoah Foundation archivists Sandra Aguilar and Daryn Eller say archivists are, as a whole, a particularly helpful bunch.“That’s what we do – we share information from the archive to the public and to our users and researchers, and we also share information with each other,” Aguilar said. “It’s a really nice community to be working in because of the people and how incredibly knowledgeable they are.”“It’s true,” Eller agreed. “It’s one of the professions that are about openness.”

Thursday is #AskAnArchivist Day. Tweet @USCShoahFdn to ask USC Shoah Foundation's Sandra Aguilar and Daryn Eller about their work as archivists.

Through an analysis of testimony, students learn about the resistance efforts that took place in the Auschwitz camp complex and about the meaning of resistance in the context of the Holocaust in a new MiniQuest.

IWitness focuses heavily on the Holocaust, but the themes of tolerance and racism contained in its genocide survivor testimonies and activities help Steve Flynn teach his students important lessons about challenges they face in their own lives.

Roméo Dallaire describes how quickly violence escalated in Rwanda in 1994 and his disappointment in the lack of support from the international community.

In honor of National Archives Month, here are 10 unique facts about USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Herschel Balter describes the role that singing played for him while he was imprisoned in Auschwitz- Birkenau. Herschel’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, Auschwitz – Inner Strength, Outward Resistance.

Just in time for the holiday season, USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith will travel to four cities around the country to speak about the new book "Testimony: The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation."

Philip Markowicz describes when he and his brother were transported to Flossenburg concentration camp in Germany and the incredible act from a bystander, which saved their lives.

The Rwandan Tutsi Genocide committee at the first Trojan Model UN utilized testimony from the Visual History Archive in order to give the delegates real-life scenarios they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Liliane Bentitou reflects on hiding in Lyon, France and how she was able to conceal her identity with false papers.  

Within the Visual History Archive there are over 8,000 testimonies that reference France, over 1,600 that were conducted in the country and over 1,800 testimonies that were given in French.

David Faber recalls the anti-Semitism he experienced as a child in pre-WWII Poland. He describes numerous instances where he was abused physically and emotionally by non-Jewish children on his way to and from school.

Lili Meier describes how she found a photo album, which has become known as the Auschwitz Album, in a deserted SS barracks on the day she was liberated from the Dora concentration camp. The Auschwitz Album is the only known collection of photographs taken by the Nazi SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This testimony clip is featured in the IWitness activity Arrival at Auschwitz – Images and Individual Experiences.

Though her students are only 10 or 11 years old, Suzi Gantz jumped at the chance to introduce them to IWitness for USC Shoah Foundation’s first elementary classroom pilot of a new IWitness activity.Gantz’s fifth grade class at O. A. Thorp Scholastic Academy in Chicago is currently pilot-testing an unpublished IWitness Mini Quest activity: “Use Your Voice Against Prejudice.” USC Shoah Foundation staff reached out to elementary teachers in the Chicago area for any who would be interested in piloting an IWitness activity, and Gantz was selected after a brief screening process.

IWitness is typically used in middle- and high school classrooms and college courses, but that may change following this week’s pilot testing of a new activity intended for students as young as fifth grade.

For some people, hope is nothing but an airy dream. But for my parents, Elisabeth and George, it is a hard-won reality that they have lived every day of their lives. Their commitment is anything but naïve. They are both survivors of the Holocaust and have experienced anti-Semitism in all its forms. They’ve suffered more than most of us, God willing, will ever experience. And yet, their hope has been a source of redemption and new life.

Monday, November 17, 7:30-9:00 pmGrand Ballroom at the USC Radisson (3540 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90007)USC Shoah Foundation and its Center for Advanced Genocide Research present an evening panel discussion as a part of the Through Testimony 2014 International Conference, “Memory, Media, and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List.”Moderated by USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen D. Smith.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education is pleased to announce that Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), a university in Lyon, France, is the 51st institution, and the first in France, to gain full access to the Institute’s Visual History Archive, a repository of nearly 52,000 video testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides.

Offered by USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education in support of the official 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of the former German Nazi concentration and death camp.

The educators from 11 different countries representing four continents will attend a four-day workshop during the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 2015.