Three IWitness educators have authored an article about IWitness for the National Council for the Social Studies’ journal Social Education.

Over the last few days I’ve overheard my grandmother and father talk endlessly about Celia Tiano, an Auschwitz survivor from Salonika, Greece, their next-door neighbor on 7th Avenue -- a quiet block in the Hyde Park area of L.A., during the 1950s and 60s. After more than 40 years, my family has reconnected with Celia -- through testimony. We were able to make this connection because of a film project I had been working on for the Student Voices Short Film Contest.

Over the last several years, I’ve had the distinct privilege to work with the recorded materials collected by the late Dr. J Michael Hagopian. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide himself, Michael had the foresight to capture the voices of those who witnessed the atrocities first hand.  Later this month, the USC Shoah Foundation will make a group of 60 of these interviews available through the Visual History Archive, ensuring that these recollections will be preserved in perpetuity, for future generations.  Michael would have certainly been proud to witness this accomplishment.

After the disastrous Balkan wars of 1912-13, the Turks lost most of their European possessions. To dilute the Armenian presence and create a homogenous Turkish and Muslim population that would unequivocally support the Turkish state, the Young Turks decided on a policy of resettling Muslim refugees from the Balkan wars in Armenian areas and deporting the indigenous population.  These early measures led to the impoverishment and death of thousands; then came the First World War with Turkey taking the side of Germany against Russia and its allies.

The noted Armenian hero General Antranig Ozanian, was born on February 25, 1865, and died on August 31, 1927. He spent the final years of his life living quietly with his wife in Fresno, California. General Antranig was the most well-known of Armenian freedom fighters in the twentieth century, and his exploits are remembered by Armenians throughout the world. General Antranig is buried today at the Yerablur cemetery in Yerevan, Armenia.

Johanna Söderholm has been in high demand since she returned from Auschwitz: The Past is Present.

In order to commemorate the genocides of the 20th century, Tigranna Zakaryan wants to start where many survivors ended up: Los Angeles.

Historians continue to debate the extent of German responsibility for the Armenian Genocide in 1915. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany during WWI (1914- 1918). During the war, Germany was blamed for the Armenian Genocide. Historian Arnold Toynbee in his widely read pamphlet Armenian Atrocities published in 1915 “indicted” Germany for what he called a “shameful and terrible page of modern history” in Armenia.

Sam Kadorian was born in 1907 in Hussenig, a small village in the province of Kharpert, in the eastern plains of Anatolia. He survived the Genocide in 1915 at the age of 8 when the Turkish gendarmes grabbed all the young boys of the village ages 5 to 10 and threw them into a pile on the sandy beach of the shores of the Euphrates River and starting jabbing them with their swords and bayonets. Fortunately, they only nipped his cheek and his grandmother later found him and nursed him back to health.

Wolf Gruner, director of USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, will spend two months in residence at the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Jewish Studies this summer researching Jewish resistance against the Nazis.

Watch Shony Braun’s full testimony from the Visual History Archive as part of Comcast’s Days of Remembrance: PastFORWARD broadcast April 15-June 1, 2015.In the forests of Romania in 1934, four-year-old Shony Braun was out for a walk with his babysitter when he wandered off and became lost. A gypsy woman, hearing his cries and not knowing who he was or where he belonged, took him to the gypsy camp for safety. Upon their arrival, Shony’s attention was utterly transfixed by something: a violin. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

One Day in Auschwitz is an hour-long documentary produced by USC Shoah Foundation and originally broadcast on Discovery on Jan. 27, 2015. It follows Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon as she returns to Auschwitz-Birkenau with two high school students.

Shony Braun a violnist, recalls being selected to play music for the SS officers at Dachau. He believes that he would’ve been killed if not for his ability to play music. 

Roman Ferber explains why it is so important for him and other Holocaust survivors to speak about their experiences.

Alice Muggerditchian Shipley was 11 years old when in autumn of 1914 Turkey entered the war alongside Germany against the Allied Powers, and the atrocities against Armenians began. The Ottoman government took advantage of the war years to realize its premeditated and systematically implemented annihilation of the Armenian population. In this short clip, Alice describes the horrors of the first few months before her family was forced to take the route of deportation out of Harpout (Kharbert).

Born into an affluent German Jewish family, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was raised in New York, where he attended school and received his training as an attorney at Columbia. An early supporter of Woodrow Wilson, Morgenthau was tapped by the then newly-elected president to become the United States Ambassador for the Ottoman Empire.

         Trzy tygodnie temu USC Shoah Foundation zorganizowała w Polsce obchody 70. rocznicy wyzwolenia Nazistowskiego obozu Auschwitz. A w ubiegłym tygodniu pracownicy Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN odwiedzili nas.

Dr. Ugur Üngör began his lecture yesterday at The Forum in USC’s Tutor Campus Center by asking a question that has plagued genocide researchers for generations.

Через військовий і політичний конфлікт, що триває, багато українських школярів знаходять спільне з тими, хто пережив Голокост: вони переживають страх і непевність війни. 

Vahram Morookian describes an experience that in some ways was typical and in at least one way unusual for the Armenian Genocide.  He was from Everek, a town in central Turkey near the well-known center of Kayseri.  The Armenian population of his town was deported, which was the common form the genocide took in the months and years after the early 1915 extermination of the 250,000 Armenian men in the Ottoman army and the national Armenian political, cultural, and religious leadership beginning April 24, 1915.  With most potential defenders and organizers removed, the deportations meant to d

Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen.

When Michael Hagopian made his first classic acclaimed documentary on the Armenian Genocide in 1975, nominated for two Emmys, he titled the film “The Forgotten Genocide.” Since then decades have passed and hundreds of publications in a variety of languages have been written on the subject. The Armenian Genocide has now taken its rightfully important place within the field of genocide studies. It is not a “forgotten genocide” anymore, despite the existence of a denialist State - Turkey, which has developed denialism into an Industry.

Stephen Smith and Hayk Demoyan, directors of USC Shoah Foundation and the Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute, respectively, came together today to sign a memorandum of understanding that paves the way for future collaboration between the two organizations.

Julie Picard’s students in Sens, France, may have a future in journalism.

Caroline Friend’s journey to becoming the winner of the Student Voices Short Film Contest first began two years ago – when she entered the contest and lost.That didn’t deter her from entering again this year, and her dedication paid off. The jury awarded her film Helen Lewis: A Survivor’s Story first place for the 2015 competition, putting Friend well on her way to her goal of becoming a historical filmmaker.

USC Shoah Foundation’s student association, DEFY, is working with other University of Southern California student groups to produce several on-campus events in observation of April’s Human Rights and Genocide Awareness Month.

The A.I. and Manet Schepps Foundation will fund the three-year, $75,000 initiative for a USC Shoah Foundation teaching fellow and intern at Texas A&M University.

Haig Baronian’s testimony touches on two important and interrelated dimensions of the Armenian Genocide: the gendered nature of forms and patterns of violence, and the Islamization and incorporation of Armenian women and children into Muslim households and society.

Professor Roy Schwartzman is proof that you don’t need to be a historian to make full use of the Visual History Archive in teaching and research.

The murder of extended families, the targeting of community leaders, the critical role of eyewitnesses--each of these factors surfaces in Haigas Bonapart’s interview. These tactics are all too familiar to those of us who study the crime of genocide and the strategies employed by its perpetrators. By destroying communal ties and eliminating those individuals who might rally a group in self-defense, civilians under systematic assault are made much more vulnerable to isolation and mass violence.