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.

Kim Simon, Managing Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, will be awarded an Alumni Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from her alma mater, Colorado College, during the opening convocation ceremony on Monday, September 5, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education brought its series of events for Genocide Awareness Week to a close on Thursday, April 11, 2013 with a screening and discussion with filmmaker Elida Schogt.

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.

Three years after Charles University’s Malach Center gained access to the Visual History Archive, its importance as a destination for testimony-based research, educational activities and discourse on the Holocaust continues to grow.

The Institute has updated its Visual History Archive (VHA), which now integrates Google Maps for a new way to search the testimonies.

Eva Schloss, stepsister and childhood friend of Anne Frank, spoke to a capacity-crowd at USC on January 22, in an event sponsored by Chabad @ USC and USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

Representatives from more than 30 Holocaust museums and centers in the United States and Canada came to Los Angeles this week for the 2013 Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) Winter Seminar, hosted for the first time by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

After being honored as one of this year’s “Best Websites for Teaching and Learning” by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the Institute’s IWitness website continues to receive major education endorsements.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education and the Anti-Defamation League held a workshop in November where nearly 50 Southern California teachers learned to use Echoes and Reflections, a multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust.

Holocaust survivor testimony has made possible a Czech-language resource for education that illuminates the wartime history of the Czech government-in-exile.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education received the Arpa Foundation Award of the 2012 Arpa International Film Festival. The Institute was recognized for "its outstanding achievement in Holocaust education and preservation of testimonies of survivors." Executive Director Stephen D. Smith accepted the award on behalf of the Institute at the December 2 gala awards banquet in Los Angeles.

The Institute and Yad Vashem are reaching out to teachers in Slovakia who have shown a commitment to Holocaust documentation and tolerance education. On November 18, Martin Šmok, the Institute’s Senior International Program Consultant, presented at a Yad Vashem seminar hosted by the Holocaust Documentation Center. Nineteen activist-teachers attended the seminar, where Šmok gave an overview of the Institute and its mission to make survivor testimony a compelling voice for education and action.

Teachers across Poland traveled to Hungary last week to attend a workshop organized by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education (the Institute). The workshop, part of the Institute’s Teaching with Testimony for the 21st Century program, took place at Central European University in Budapest from November 11 to November 16. During the workshop, the teachers learned how to use interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses for education.

Podczas warsztatu odbywającego się na Uniwersytecie Środkowoeuropejskim Fundacja Shoah Uniwersytetu Południowej Kalifornii dopełnia pierwszy rok realizacji nowego projektu edukacyjnego w Europie

The Institute is featured in the Fall 2012/Winter 2013 issue of USC Dornsife Magazine ("The Memory Issue"), which includes content accessible through smartphones using the Dornsife Augment Reality (AR) app. Readers can use their smartphones to scan pages for additional content, including a short clip from the testimony of Freddy Mutanguha, a survivor of the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide. Freddy's entire testimony is viewable on the Institute's website. Watch

Actress, activist speaks at international symposium convened by USC Shoah Foundation and Remember the Women Institute

The Institute invites you to a lecture by Dr. Sean Field, Director of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Popular Memory, which documents the oral histories of refugees, victims of violence and displacement, and others who suffered under apartheid and its legacy. Dr. Field will evaluate the outcomes of various methodologies oral history researchers have used to preserve memories of apartheid; his lecture will take place this Thursday, November 15 at 6:00 pm, in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, Room 227.

Graduates of the Institute’s Master Teacher Program will debut IWitness next week at the 2012 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Conference, demonstrating how the award-winning website, now in beta, weaves together digital literacy development, online citizenship, and tolerance education based on the life stories of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education will present its Web application IWitness, now in beta, at the 2012 National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention. The convention will take place from November 15–18 at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

Kori Street receives Tikkun Olam Award

When the Institute sent teams around the world to gather video testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses of the Holocaust, more than 2,500 Australians came forward. Nearly 20 years later, the Institute is once again in Australia; this time, the focus is on students. In partnership with Education Services Australia Limited (ESA), the Institute is exploring the possibility of integrating its award-winning website IWitness (currently in beta) into the Australian national curriculum. About IWitness