USC and UCLA may be rivals on the football field, but they came together for a very important cause last week - the Armenian Genocide collection.

She may be a Bruin, but Natalie Kalbakian is committed to working with the USC Shoah Foundation and its Armenian Genocide collection as one of the Institute’s newest interns.Kalbakian is a junior at UCLA majoring in political science and minoring in film studies. She is also the vice president of the UCLA Armenian Students’ Association, which supports the Armenian student community and various Armenian causes.

On August 2nd, 1944 the Zigeunerlager (known as the Gypsy famliy camp) in Auschwitz- Birkeanau was liquidated and about 3,000 Sinti and Roma men, women and children were sent to the gas chambers. In honor of the Sinti and Roma victims in the Holocaust, survivors Wladyslaw Gunman, Anna Kwiatkowska and Marianna Koniak speak about their experiences with discrimination, restrictions, deportations and mass murder.

A group of men is placed in several trucks. They are driven through the streets and out of town into an open area surrounded by trees. They are beaten around the head with rifle butts, made to run in a group towards an open mass grave. A mere handful of armed guards make them lie in the grave like sardines. Then they are shot one by one in broad daylight. The horrific spectacle, highly reminiscent of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen Aktions in the Soviet Union in 1941, was, in fact, the mass murder of some 30 men that took place in Iraq just this week. 

July 24, 2014: Harry Reicher, Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania and USC Shoah Foundation's inaugural Rutman Teaching Fellow, utilized his fellowship to collect Holocaust survivor testimony content he could utilize in his classes, which currently make liberal use of multimedia content.Featuring historical footage, Nazi propaganda film, modern cinema clips, and Visual History Archive testimony, Reicher's lecture provided an overview of the Nazi legal system and demonstrated the value of film in teaching this subject.

Ingrid Alexovics has graduated from USC Shoah Foundation’s Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century program armed with a brand-new lesson about heroes to teach her students about empathy and responsibility while also learning English.

Leo Hymas, United States Armed Forces and Buchenwald camp liberator speaks only for the second time in his life about a particular combat operation in Düsseldorf, Germany. This testimony clip was featured in the lesson, Heroes, from Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century.

One year after learning how to incorporate testimony into their lesson plans, the 2013 Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century graduates in Hungary returned for a follow-up session to share the lessons they have now piloted in their classrooms.

Ingrid Alexovics is the head of the Foreign Language Department at Radnóti Miklós Economic Secondary School in Pécs, Hungary. She holds a master’s degree in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts, University of Pécs. She has taught English as a foreign language and English for specific purposes for over 20 years to high school students and adults. She worked as a Fulbright exchange teacher in Atlantic City High School, New Jersey during the academic year of 2009/2010.

For years now I have noticed that my students are especially interested in the information from non- traditional educational channels; visual and auditory information are often more welcome than academic texts from their books. The reason, we have experienced a shift in the methods that young people process information these days. 

The Spring 2014 issue of PastForward includes an excerpt of director Joshua Oppenheimer’s talk, which he gave in Los Angeles on the eve of the Oscars, describing his own journey of discovery as he encountered perpetrators willing to describe, even boast about, their acts of killing.

Throughout August 1944 the Lodz ghetto was liquidated until almost all the ghetto inhabitants were finally deported to Auschwitz. Philip Ravski recalls the liquidation and how his family evaded deporation until the end of August.

Dario Gabbai, whose testimony is in the Visual History Archive, stopped by the USC Shoah Foundation last week to donate World War II era documents and artifacts for preservation and research.

Dario Gabbai recalls his experiences as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He was forced to usher people into gas chambers, and then haul out the bodies, take them to the crematorium, and clean up the room for the next group of victims.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with its first Jewish day school – Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Jersey – to introduce teachers to methods of teaching with testimony and incorporate the Institute's educational materials into the school curriculum.

Henry Jenkins will bring his expertise in media studies, pedagogy and activism to USC Shoah Foundation’s Memory, Media and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List conference this November.

USC Shoah Foundation’s international conference Nov. 16-18 will begin with a panel that brings together experts in using digital archives in education.

Rita Feder was a young girl during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and remembers how desperately she wanted to attend the games but was unable to because she was Jewish. Feder recalls how dangerous it was for Jews during that time even though there was an international audience in Berlin.

Emberek egy csoportját teherautókra rakják. A városon keresztül egy erdei tisztásra hajtanak velük, leszállítják őket, és puskatussal kergetik az előre megásott tömegsír felé. Őrök kényszerítik, hogy szardínia módjára helyezkedjenek el a gödörben. Azután egyenként végeznek velük.

Art engages broader audiences and raises awareness of genocide in Rwanda, says Kwibuka20 international creative director Stacie Chaiken in the spring 2014 issue of PastForward.

Herbert Achtentuch remembers when he and other Jewish school children were expelled from their school and forced to attend a school in the Jewish district of Vienna. He also recalls the anti-Semitism and violence from former gentile students.

My “mormor” (literally mother's mother) Greta exuded love and her heart burst for my sister and me. Along with my “morfar” (mother's father) Ingvar, they ensured us an innocent and idyllic childhood in a small town in Sweden. Greta's pork chops with cream sauce were my favorites and I later learned my father would devour when given the opportunity.

Yehudi Lindeman reflects on his childhood in Holland and recalls the anti-Semitism he experienced from other children.

Carl Wilkens speaks on recording audio memoirs while living in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. His reasoning for recording the messages wasn’t necessarily to document what was happening but the recording would be an audio diary for his family in case he didn’t survive.

Three years after helping Aristotle University of Thessaloniki become a Visual History Archive access site in Greece, Paris Papamichos Chronakis will continue his relationship with the USC Shoah Foundation by presenting at its international conference in November.

To help combat the stresses of working with genocide, USC Shoah Foundation hosted a Trauma Education workshop for Aegis Trust and Kigali Genocide Memorial staff in Rwanda last week.

As the new school year begins, USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness consultants are busy introducing teachers to IWitness and teaching with testimony at seminars and workshops around the country.

Herman Cohn speaks on the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany and how it affected his family. This testimony clip is featured in the educational resource Echoes and Reflections.

After two months working with the USC Shoah Foundation, the 2014 Research in Industrial Projects (RIPS) team made great strides in finding a way to link an outside archive to video segments in IWitness. The team presented their findings to USC Shoah Foundation staff on Wednesday.

Luisa Haberfeld remembers the selection process at Majdanek including being separated from her brother and father. Her testimony is feature in the IWitness Activity:Chance & Choice: A survivor's story.