Eva Kor and her twin sister Miriam were experimented on by infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. She describes how one experimented had nearly killed her but she promised herself she would survive. Eva’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity Growing Up Behind the Barbed Wire.

The new activity Growing Up Behind the Barbed Wire at Auschwitz is part of IWitness’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present content to commemorate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

I adored my father and admired him greatly. Harold Eisenberg was a good man in every sense of the word. He spoke about his life in Opatow, Poland before World War II and even his experience during the Holocaust, but he also lived very much in the present, working hard to provide for his family.  The business he started after the war became the foundation for much of our extended family’s success. I was named for his mother and his sister, who both perished in the Holocaust, and my father would often look at me tenderly and tell me how much I reminded him of his mother. 

Kaja Finkler speaks admirably of her mother, a student of modern thought despite her orthodox Jewish background. Kaja recalls how her mother studied law in pre-war Poland with Raphael Lemkin, who later coined the term genocide.

Lemkin is the subject of a new documentary called "Watchers of the Sky," now playing in select theaters. It is inspired by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book A Problem from Hell.

Elena Nightingale speaks how life changed for her family in the late 1930’s when anti-Jewish laws were enforced in Italy. She describes how her father was forced out of his job and she felt like a second class citizen.

While re-watching Schindler’s List before applying to present at USC Shoah Foundation’s upcoming international conference “Memory, Media and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List,” Peg LeVine was struck by the numerous examples of “ritual annihilation” perpetrated against the Jews in the film, such as the ransacking of synagogues and homes and the destroying of religious objects.

Senior scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies are invited to apply for the 2015-2016 Center Research Fellowship. The deadline is Dec. 1, 2014.

The latest evaluation of IWitness in Rwanda shows that students’ interest in civic engagement and making a difference after using IWitness has increased significantly since Phase 1 of the program.

Ildephonse Gasana reflects on life after genocide including learning how to forgive and to be more tolerant of one another. Gasana’s testimony is featured in the IWitness activity, The Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

USC Shoah Foundation, Aegis Trust Rwanda and the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) conducted a feasibility study this month to determine how case files from trials of genocide perpetrators could be digitized and preserved.

Theoneste Karenzi recalls the Gacaca courts and the perpetrators he testified against.

This video reel from the IWitness activity Art in the Face of Death is a collection of artworks, including poetry, song, drawings, paintings and sculpture created by survivors in response to the Auschwitz-Birkenau experience. Some of the art pieces throughout this video are courtesy of Yad Vahsem and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

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:

The students in Leslie Schaffer’s Holocaust studies elective last semester didn’t visit a Holocaust museum – with the help of IWitness, they created their own.Schaffer, a guidance counselor at Abbeville High School in Greenville, SC, who also teaches an interdisciplinary Holocaust elective course, said because the school isn’t located close enough to a Holocaust museum for the students to visit, her class came up with the idea to make their own museum at their school. She discovered IWitness while brainstorming for the project and thought immediately that it would be “perfect.”

The public Institute visit for December 10, 2014 is canceled. The next scheduled monthly public visit will be on February 11, 2015 from 11am – 1pm, click here to RSVP.

Buchenwald liberator David Pollock describes why he decided to work at the United Nations after he was discharged from the Canadian military. Pollock worked for the United Nations for nearly thirty years.  

The "Auschwitz – Art in the Face of Death" Mini Quest asks students to consider artwork produced as a response to the experience of Auschwitz-Birkenau and to produce their own artistic responses to what they learned.

Pinchas Gutter stepped onto the bimah at the Kiever Synagogue in Toronto, Canada, where for the 27th consecutive time he was about to lead the Yom Kippur services.  He stood tall in his white robe breathing deeply surrounded by eight white-clad Torah scrolls, each held by a leaders of the congregation.  The scrolls appear to jostle for position, their silver shields and finials glistening as PInchas intones the ancient supplication, 'Kol Nidrei'.  But on the bimah there are more than the eight men holding Torah scrolls, because gathered around him are also the ghosts of the Gerrer Hasidim o

USC Shoah Foundation and its partner in the Czech Republic, PANT, have been busy leading workshops and seminars about the Visual History Archive and IWitness for educators.

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.

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.