On April 6, 1994, an aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it was about to land in Kigali airport. Everyone aboard the plane was killed: Habyarimana; president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira; and a three-man French crew. While it remains unclear who fired the missile, the event is viewed as having ignited the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.Live Wesige remembers hearing the news about the president’s death and describes the violence that ensued in his neighborhood the next day, April 7, 1994.

One of Rwanda’s most prolific ambassadors of tolerance and action against genocide is Yannick Tona, who, at 24 years old, has already emerged as a powerful speaker and future leader.

April 2, 2014:  Yannick Tona, currently a student at Texas Christian University, speaks to students in the USC Shoah Foundation Student Association of his experiences during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which took the lives of most of his family, and of how he connected these horrors from his past to his humanitarian efforts of today. For more information on Yannick: http://www.yannicktona.com/

USC Shoah Foundation’s mission to Rwanda ends Tuesday after the delegation attended the Kwibuka20 commemoration ceremony and delved into USC Shoah Foundation’s work in education and archive-building.

Holocaust survivor Celina Biniaz, Cambodian Genocide survivor Sara Pol-Lim, and Rwandan Genocide survivor Edith Umugiraneza will speak together on a panel about women in genocide, to be moderated by USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith. Syuzanna Petrosyan, a USC graduate student and third-generation descendant of Armenian Genocide survivors, will introduce the event.TCC 205 (Tutor Campus Center Office of Admissions Classroom), 6:30 – 8pm.

More than 30 hours of content will be available for free through Xfinity On Demand, Xfinity TV Go app and online in conjunction with the U.S. National Days of Remembrance.

Join the USC Armenian Student Association, SFISA, and USC Shoah Foundation as they commemorate the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide.Tommy Trojan 12-2 PM

April 8 marked International Roma Day, which aims to bring attention to the marginalization and racism affecting the Roma minority in Europe. USC Shoah Foundation educational consultant and historian Mikhail Tyaglyy believes testimony is one important way of fighting against the bigotry and intolerance that still affect people decades after the Holocaust.Tyaglyy spent two years as an interviewer for the Shoah Foundation in the 1990s, conducting around 100 testimonies of Jewish Holocaust survivors, Krimchaks and rescuers in Crimea.

USC Shoah Foundation’s 2014 teaching and research fellowships have been awarded to professors and students from a diverse range of disciplines, including writing, anthropology, law and history.

Walter Absil reflects on living in Vienna, Austria during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in the 1930’s. He also recalls on returning back to Vienna to retrieve his belongings from his family home after the war. 

Forty-nine universities and museums around the world now have full access to the Visual History Archive. The Visual History Archive's 52,000 testimonies will be available to members of the University of Vienna - faculty and students - for the purposes of teaching, studying and research.

March 6, 2014: Student Voices invites all USC graduate and undergraduate students, regardless of major, to create short films that incorporate testimony from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.This year’s themes were: Preserving Humanity, Renewing Rwanda, and Risking Everything. All themes represent the coinciding 20th anniversaries of Schindler’s List in 2013 and the founding of the Shoah Foundation and the Rwanda Tutsi genocide in 2014.The video shows USC Shoah Foundation’s annual awards ceremony. 

Aegis Trust’s Paul Rukesha helped lead the USC Shoah Foundation mission to Rwanda last week, and reports that the mission was, a very meaningful and productive visit for all involved.

All over the world, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust era are giving testimony – but not for USC Shoah Foundation’s original collection of over 51,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies. Instead, they are the first participants of the new Testimonies of North Africa and the Middle East project.

Anny Walters and her family fled Nazi controlled Europe to Egypt in the early 1940's. Walters reflects on her life in Cairo after the end of World War II. 

Morris Gordon describes in great detail how his family and community celebrated Passover in their home in Poland. The eight day festival also known as Pesach in Hebrew, commemorates the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt.

When Ruth Hernandez watched testimonies of Holocaust survivors in IWitness, the stories of people who had to leave their homes inspired her to help modern-day immigrants – and helped her connect with her own family’s history.

The first-ever winner of the IWitness Video Challenge has been chosen: Voices of Our Journey, by Ruth Hernandez.

Martin Aaron describes his experience of being liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, April 1945.

April 7, 2014:  USC students in the Shoah Foundation Student Association coordinated a vigil for the 20th anniversary of the 1994  Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, structured around "Remember, Unite, Renew" -- the three themes of Kwibuka20, the international movement to commemorate 20 years since the genocide. Students read excerpts of survivor testimony, gave speeches, performed an original piano-violin duet (written by 2013 PWP Rwanda student Ambrose Soehn), and gathered for a traditional Rwandan dance performance.

David Tomkins’ students will learn about global rhetorics of survival through testimonies from the Visual History Archive following Tomkins’ teaching fellowship this summer at the USC Shoah Foundation.

Rose Kohn remembers how her mother’s life was spared during the camp selection process in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Rose and her mother, Mary were then transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Mary and her daughter survived several concentration camps together and after liberation immigrated to the United States.

Students using IWitness can now explore nearly 1,000 historical documents, photographs, publications and video testimonies to contextualize their learning about the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.