USC University Club at King Stoops Hall Michael Ignatieff, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Centennial Chair, will then give a public talk at USC, “In Search of a Global Ethic: Lessons from the Big Cities” from 4-6 PM on the 21st where he discusses the “lessons

USC Shoah Foundation has published two Polish-language lessons about the Holocaust, complete with clips from the Visual History Archive, on the USC Shoah Foundation website. They are available for free to educators around the world.

Tu be-Shevat is called “New Year of the Trees” and is also known as Jewish Arbor Day. It is celebrated, especially in Israel, by planting trees and also marked by eating fruit on this day. Ela Weissberger remembers someone sneaked in a small plant of an oak tree into Theresienstadt (Terezin) and planted the tree in honor of the holiday.

Dozens of college students conduct research in the Visual History Archive for their thesis projects at the USC Shoah Foundation every year. One student, however, is writing her senior thesis on the Shoah Foundation itself.

USC Shoah Foundation added a new country and language to the Visual History Archive and surpassed 20,000 IWitness users in the last quarter of 2013.

During his visit to Los Angeles, Ignatieff will visit and speak at institutions across the city, with an emphasis is on faith-based and community-based leadership in areas of racial tension.

Davis Wamonhi’s own students at Kagarama Secondary School in Kigali, Rwanda, inspired him to use IWitness in his classroom.Wamonhi’s history students were invited to attend an IWitness pilot at Gisozi Genocide Memorial, where they were introduced to learning history through video testimonies through USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive educational website.

Edith Englander speaks of the kindness and assistance she received from non-Jews who took care of what used to be her father’s wine business upon her post-liberation return to her hometown in Czechoslovakia.

Erika Breier-Vadnai remembers the day she was liberated from the Budapest ghetto, Hungary, by the Soviet armed forces. She states it was on January 18, 1945.

After working as an undergraduate intern at USC Shoah Foundation, Gabby Sharaga is now using testimony in her own classes as a student teacher. Sharaga interned in external relations and education (where she helped develop the IWitness website) at USC Shoah Foundation after conducting a research project using testimony for Genocide and Terrorism, a political science course at USC.

Leon Bass, US military veteran, reflects on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and how he was inspired by King’s message of non-violence. Leon was at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 for the March on Washington and he describes his experience of watching Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream,” speech. 

Gitow will consult on a variety of topics and initiate collaborations between the Shoah Foundation and the UN.

Miriam Adler speaks on the camp intake procedures at Auschwitz concentration camp after being separated from her father. Miriam reflects that she didn’t recognize herself after seeing her reflection in a broken piece of glass.

Twenty years after her family fled the Rwandan genocide, Rose Twagiramariya has returned to Rwanda to work for USC Shoah Foundation.Twagiramariya was born in Rwanda and left with her family in July 1994 during the genocide, when she was six years old. The family lived in a refugee camp in the Congo, Senegal, and Maryland before settling in Louisville, Kent., in 1999.

Jeffrey Shandler, professor at Rutgers University and the 2012-13 USC Shoah Foundation Institute Scholar, published a multimedia article that examines the impact of "Schindler’s List" on Holocaust survivors in the December 2013 issue of American Literature.

Henny Paritzky speaks on how her family escaped deportation with the help of a nun and a policeman in a hospital in Lyon, France.

Interviewing Holocaust survivors for the Shoah Foundation in the 1990s was a “second film school” for filmmaker Rafael Lewandowski, and an experience he still draws on today.

This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.

The existence of the city dates back at least to 12th century. Following the partition of Poland in 1772, the city was annexed to the Habsburg Austrian Empire, returning to Polish rule only after the end of WWI. During that time, Oświęcim became an industrial center and an important railroad junction. Jewish population in 1921 was 4,950. On the eve of World War II, there were about 8,000 Jews in the city, over half the whole population. Oświęcim was occupied immediately at the beginning of WWII. By October 1939, it was annexed into Greater Germany.

Bella Arnett (née Froman) was born on September 6, 1917 in Warsaw, Russian Empire (now Poland). She had three brothers and two sisters. Bella’s father, Chaim,was a shoikhet, performing the ritual slaughter of animals according to Jewish tradition. He observed Ger Hasidism and was a respected member of the local community. Before the war, Bella attended a Polish school and received Jewish education at home.

John Baer was born to Bernhard and Marta Baer on April 26, 1917 in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, Poland). His father was a sales representative for fur and textile manufacturers and his mother owned a millinery store. John had an older sister, Lilly. He received his elementary and secondary education in public schools in Breslau, and also attended a Hebrew school.

Betty Berz (née Sagal) was born on June 22, 1926 in Kyiv, USSR (today, Ukraine). The family—Betty, her mother Marie, her father Boris, and her younger sister Rachel—immigrated to Paris in 1929.

Maurice Blindt was born on February 20, 1924, to Samuel and Fajga Blindt, both of whom were originally from Poland. He had a sister, Lucia, born in 1919, and abrother, Henri, born in 1926. On the eve of World War II, Lucia left Paris to live in Algiers. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, the Blindts fled Paris. In the process of fleeing, they encountered heavy gunfire and arial bombings, and Fajga had a nervous breakdown.

Lajos Cséri (name at birth Lajos Klein) was born on January 22, 1928 in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary, in a secular Jewish family. Lajos had a brother, Gyula, and a sister, Anna. He attended a Protestant school in Sárrétudvari, where he spent most of his childhood.

Howard Cwick was born in the Bronx, New York, on August 25, 1923, to Samuel and Sarah Cwick, both Polish immigrants. Howard had an older sister, Sylvia. TheCwick family spoke both English and Yiddish, kept a kosher home, and attended synagogue three times a week. Howard went to school at P.S. 100 in the Bronx beforegoing on to Brooklyn Technical High School. When he was seven years old, Howard received his first camera and became interested in photography.

Simon Drucker was born in 1924 in Paris, France, in a Jewish family of Polish origin. His parents, Abraham and Thérèse, left Poland in 1921. Simon had a youngerbrother, Isidore. Engaged in the French Foreign Legion during the outbreak of the war, Abraham was arrested in June 1942 and deported first to Pithiviers, and later to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.

Paul Engel was born into a middle-class Jewish family on May 4, 1922 in Vienna, Austria. He had a younger brother, Robert. When World War I broke out in 1914, his father, Eduard, was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. Captured as a prisoner of war, he spent six years in Siberia working in a coal mine, finally reuniting with his family in 1920. In Vienna, Eduard owned a perfume wholesale business. Before the war, Paul attended a primary school and was accepted to a Gymnasium in the 14th district of Vienna.

Bella Barouch remembers sneaking food out of the kitchen when imprisoned at Wüstegiersdorf concentration camp. She reflects that she and other female prisoners would dream about the food they would eat if they were ever liberated.

Movie theatres throughout the Midwest will screen Schindler’s List Jan. 24-30, with proceeds benefiting USC Shoah Foundation.