When I tell my fellow USC students that I’m the president of an organization called SFISA, it’s usually safe to assume that 90% of them have no idea what it is. It’s not the most elegant of acronyms and we acknowledge this. Our club’s full name – the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association – is equally as unwieldy but at least it’s descriptive, and that’s something, right? But even if they’ve heard of our less than stellar name, they still might not know who we are or what we do. So let me take this moment to enlighten you.

Helena Jonas Rosenzweig reflects on how generous her parents were to those in need. She remembers when her father was deported from the Krakow (Cracow) ghetto in Poland to a concentration camp and how his deportation affected her mother.

On the heels of USC Shoah Foundation’s new partnership with the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall to collect and preserve testimony of Nanjing Massacre survivors, the educational platform Facing History and Ourselves signed an agreement to integrate three of those testimonies into its own educational materials.

Irene Klass reflects on the horrible living conditions in the Warsaw ghetto. She remembers her family would sing together in the evening for entertainment since they didn’t have any radio or newspapers available.

USC Shoah Foundation is excited to announce the upcoming launch of the tablet-compatible version of its award-winning educational website IWitness. Educators and students can search, watch and engage with the testimonies in IWitness on their iPads or tablet devices after January 6, 2014.   IWitness activities can also be assigned and worked on with a tablet, although video editing will need to be done on a Flash-enabled device (laptop, desktop, etc).   

Ian McAvoy teaches English and Film Arts at University City High School in San Diego, Calif. He learned about IWitness after visiting the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust with his class. He said the IWitness Video Challenge appealed to him because his students could use the website’s editing tools largely independently, and it would require them to synthesize their diverse learning about the Holocaust (via testimony, the museum trip, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and history classes) while encouraging altruism.

For Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon, last summer’s Problems Without Passports trip to Rwanda was an opportunity to take the study of post-genocide society one step further. Sassoon ’14 is an international relations major at the University of Southern California, concentrating on foreign policy analysis and security studies. After growing up in New York and Paris and completing a study abroad trip to Sweden, Finland and Russia, Sassoon was excited to visit central Africa for the first time.

Anoush Krikorian was interviewed by the filmmaker J. Michael Hagopian over 10 years ago about his experiences as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Now, Krikorian’s granddaughter is working to make sure his voice, and the voices of over 400 other survivors, are preserved in one of USC Shoah Foundation’s newest collections.

By the time Lorry Black finishes his dissertation, the music of the Holocaust may very well be brought back to life. Black is finishing his first semester as a doctoral student in sacred music at the USC Thornton School of Music. He was one of USC Shoah Foundation’s summer 2013 research fellows, conducting research in the Visual History Archive for his dissertation about the music of French concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Benjamin Murmelstein was the first person Claude Lanzmann interviewed on his epic journey that led to what eventually became his definitive film, “Shoah.” Lanzmann sat for a full week with the only living former Alteste Der Judenrat (a term used to describe the head of a ghetto Judenrat) and penetrated deep in to the moral labyrinth of Murmelstein's world.

The Cold War began its thaw 25 years ago, then apparently melted sufficiently for us to get on with our lives without fear. Surprisingly, the slow thaw is still in progress.

Executive director Stephen Smith highlights just a few of USC Shoah Foundation's 2013 achievements.

Ingeborg Kantor worked at a German ammunition factory in Berlin under forced labor. She remembers a forelady who would sneak her and the other female workers pieces of food. Ingeborg states that she was the only one out of that group of woman to survive the Holocaust and after the war she connected with the forelady.

Izchak Goldblatt remembers the food rations at the Wolfsberg concentration camp, which was a sub-camp of Gross Rosen. He reflects that as the months went on the conditions at the camp worsen including less food portions and the spread of diseases.

While deployed in France, US armed forces liberator Jules Barrash remembers asking a French farm couple to cook him and a group of about 15 soldiers a dinner for Christmas in exchange for sea rations and food from the army.

Harold Alexander fled Nazi controlled Germany to the United States and then joined the United States Army. He returned to Germany towards the end of WWII as an American soldier and met a Jewish woman who was still in hiding. He remembers helping the woman and her family by bringing them a truck full of food and connecting them to family in the United States.

Recalling his time held in different concentration camps where he met several inhabitants who were not Jewish, Simon Wiesenthal addresses the need to provide a united front in fighting against another recurrence.

Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat helped thousands of Jews flee to Japan by issuing them Japanese transit visas. Abraham Brumberg and his family were saved because of Sugihara’s brave efforts. Brumberg remembers the journey from Europe to Japan and recalls his first impression of the islands of Japan. 

Esther Bem desires future generations to know there were some virtuous individuals during the Holocaust, who sacrificed their security and life, in order to help others.

Nora Snyder is a senior International Relations and Middle East studies double major and USC Shoah Foundation intern. She has worked as a research intern since her sophomore year, after attending the Problems Without Passports trip to Cambodia. She has also participated in the trip to Rwanda and recently became president of the Shoah Foundation Institute Student Association (SFISA).

Aegis Trust Rwanda, The Institute of Research and Dialogue for Peace, Radio La Benevolencija and USC Shoah Foundation - the Institute for Visual History and Education are joining forces to launch a peace-building and education program in Rwanda.