William recalls the joyful celebration of Simchat Torah-the holiday marking the completion of weekly Torah readings- with Rabbi Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, holding a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) - in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. The celebration took place even though the barrack was surrounded by German soldiers.

Please join USC Shoah Foundation as it co-hosts a lecture with the USC Gould School of Law International Human Rights Clinic.Professor David Crane, former Chief Prosecuter at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, will discuss the effort he has led to seek justice for the hundredsof thousands killed and millions displaced since 2011 in Syria’s ongoing civil war. Crane will detail his tireless advocacy before the UN Security Council, General Assembly, and the US Congress in hopes of establishing a Syrian Extraordinary Tribunal to Prosecute Atrocity Crimes.

Judy LaPietra was one of the first to learn about USC Shoah Foundation’s new educational website, IWitness, and from then on she has remained one of its most avid users.LaPietra teaches eighth grade history at St. Mark Catholic School in Huntersville, NC, and also created and teaches three courses in the global studies department at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte: “The Legacy of the Holocaust,” “Bearing Witness to the Past:  A Journey to Auschwitz” and “Representations of the Holocaust.” She has even taken her college students on trips to Poland to visit Auschwitz.

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.