Harry Reicher, USC Shoah Foundation’s first-ever Rutman Teaching Fellow, wrapped up his four-day fellowship today with a talk that revealed how exceptionally valuable the Visual History Archive will become to his teaching.

In just a few short months I will be holding a new born baby in my arms. The depth and complexity of emotion that I feel as this time approaches is multiplied by the experiences I have had working at USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. New acquaintances who inquire about what I do for a living often respond by saying, “Gosh, that must be depressing.” And my response has always been the same, “Actually, it is amazing and inspiring.” And it truly is.

The second IWitness educator workshop in Rwanda will be held next week, and will incorporate new elements to provide an experience unique from the first workshop last November.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, USC screenwriting professor Ted Braun discusses Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing and what it brings to our understanding of violence.

Alexovics Ingrid írása a vizuális archívumok oktatási célú felhasználásának lehetőségeiről

Students may still be enjoying their summer vacation, but the new school year is just around the corner. USC Shoah Foundation has prepared a convenient one-stop-shop of all its educational resources to help educators plan to teach with testimony this year.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was founded to capture the voices, emotions and faces of those who suffered, yet miraculously survived the most heinous crime ever committed against humanity by humanity. The idea was to record individual and collective memories that would be preserved in perpetuity as a seminal educational tool to inform current and future generations that incitement, hate and violence against a person or a group can ultimately lead to death, genocide and ultimately extermination.

A series of Croatian-language Holocaust lessons commissioned in 2006 by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports is now available on USC Shoah Foundation’s website. The lessons draw on testimony to teach various aspects of the Holocaust in Croatia.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

As USC Shoah Foundation commemorates 20 years of collecting genocide survivor testimony, the “Early Mediations of the Holocaust” panel will delve into some of the first narratives ever shared about the Holocaust.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, Professor Peter Kreko says education is necessary to combat Hungary’s troubling rise in antisemitism.

After several postponements due to the political turmoil in their country, the 2012 Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century Ukrainian cohort finally came together this month for a follow-up session about the lessons they created over the last two years.

After a successful test run, the educational website IWitness is coming out of beta with new functionality, additional languages, as well as a faster and easier way for educators to create accounts so they can begin using IWitness in their classrooms without delay.

The testimonies of Holocaust survivors were recorded for the Visual History Archive 50 years after the Holocaust took place, but testimonies of more recent genocides are increasingly being collected. The Dynamics of Oral History of War and Genocide panel will examine the challenges, implications and responsibilities that modern testimony collections have for communities that have experienced war and genocide.

From the spring 2014 issue of PastForward: French film director and documentarian Claude Lanzmann visited USC Shoah Foundation for the first time this December, bringing with him his latest film and a simple request for the future.

The fast pace of globalization with all of its benefits is also accelerating the viral spread of hatred. Where once regional enmities brewed for centuries with sporadic outbursts of warfare and imperial powers that waxed and waned, the truly global speed and scale of ideological hatred and international conflict was not possible until recently for many practical reasons.

Educators can now access three of USC Shoah Foundation’s Ukrainian-language lesson guides and modules for free on the USC Shoah Foundation website. Each lesson includes everything teachers need including testimony and film clips.