Scott Spencer was flying from Philadelphia to Los Angeles last May to meet up with his wife, who had just gotten a new job as the cantor of University Synagogue in Brentwood, when he struck up a conversation with the young girl sitting next to him.He asked her why she was traveling to Los Angeles. To his surprise, she said she was going to meet President Obama and present a documentary she had made for school.

After a career spent producing live events for television, working on Auschwitz: The Past is Present allowed Leslie Wilson to return to her early passion for history in what she calls a life-changing experience.

In order to commemorate the genocides of the 20th century, Tigranna Zakaryan wants to start where many survivors ended up: Los Angeles.

Watch Shony Braun’s full testimony from the Visual History Archive as part of Comcast’s Days of Remembrance: PastFORWARD broadcast April 15-June 1, 2015.In the forests of Romania in 1934, four-year-old Shony Braun was out for a walk with his babysitter when he wandered off and became lost. A gypsy woman, hearing his cries and not knowing who he was or where he belonged, took him to the gypsy camp for safety. Upon their arrival, Shony’s attention was utterly transfixed by something: a violin. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Julie Picard’s students in Sens, France, may have a future in journalism.

Caroline Friend’s journey to becoming the winner of the Student Voices Short Film Contest first began two years ago – when she entered the contest and lost.That didn’t deter her from entering again this year, and her dedication paid off. The jury awarded her film Helen Lewis: A Survivor’s Story first place for the 2015 competition, putting Friend well on her way to her goal of becoming a historical filmmaker.

Professor Roy Schwartzman is proof that you don’t need to be a historian to make full use of the Visual History Archive in teaching and research.

Watch Henry Rosmarin’s full testimony from the Visual History Archive as part of Comcast’s Days of Remembrance: PastFORWARD broadcast April 15-June 1, 2015. The sound of a harmonica usually brings to mind playfulness, joy, a sense of merriment. For Henry Rosmarin, it is also conjures the darkest chapter of his life, when his talent for music earned him favor with a Nazi commandant and kept him alive in a German concentration camp.

Growing up, Addison Sandoval worked in his dad’s diesel repair shop in Compton, Calif., driving and delivering parts during the summers. It was there, encountering different people and places, that he learned to appreciate the values of humility, treating people with respect, and embracing people’s differences, he says.

When you use indexing terms to search through USC Shoah Foundation’s first 60 Armenian Genocide interviews in the Visual History Archive, or rely on the subtitles to understand the Armenian-language interviews, think of Hrag Yedalian.

Michael Amerian is in Yerevan, Armenia, this week with staff of USC Shoah Foundation to commemorate the 100th anniversary the greatest tragedy in the country’s history.

Most students give their teachers gifts of coffee mugs, chocolate, or flowers. This year, Eden Strunk’s students pooled their resources and found her a Cambodian genocide survivor to speak to the class.Strunk had inspired them to care about human rights and genocide just as she inspired Ruth Hernandez, a ninth grader at Esperanza Charter Academy in Philadelphia who won USC Shoah Foundation’s first-ever IWitness Video Challenge last year. Strunk had assigned the challenge to her “advisory” class – a course devoted to getting students more engaged in their school and community.

One night last week, Megan Maybray was panicking.A Holocaust survivor named Rita Ross was visiting her school, Kennett Middle School near Philadelphia, the next day, but Maybray was having trouble teaching her ESL students about the Holocaust. Her students are new arrivals to the United States and most know little English. Maybray had never really taught the Holocaust before and could tell that her previous attempt to introduce them to the basics had not had much of an impact.