USC Shoah Foundation’s student association, DEFY, is working with other University of Southern California student groups to produce several on-campus events in observation of April’s Human Rights and Genocide Awareness Month.

The A.I. and Manet Schepps Foundation will fund the three-year, $75,000 initiative for a USC Shoah Foundation teaching fellow and intern at Texas A&M University.

Haig Baronian’s testimony touches on two important and interrelated dimensions of the Armenian Genocide: the gendered nature of forms and patterns of violence, and the Islamization and incorporation of Armenian women and children into Muslim households and society.

The murder of extended families, the targeting of community leaders, the critical role of eyewitnesses--each of these factors surfaces in Haigas Bonapart’s interview. These tactics are all too familiar to those of us who study the crime of genocide and the strategies employed by its perpetrators. By destroying communal ties and eliminating those individuals who might rally a group in self-defense, civilians under systematic assault are made much more vulnerable to isolation and mass violence.

Dirouhi Haigas was a young Turkish-Armenian girl of 7 when she and her family were abruptly uprooted from their home and deported on foot to the southern desert. A native of Konya, Turkey, she had lived an idyllic life up to that time with her parents, grandparents, aunt, and uncles. Her father was in the family business as a leather merchant, and her uncles were amateur musicians who loved nothing more than to get together with friends and relatives to enjoy folk music and dancing.  This life came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War I.

Doug Ballman, manager of external relations of the online archive at USC Shoah Foundation, paid a visit to North Carolina’s three Visual History Archive access sites earlier this month to receive feedback from librarians and give public presentations about the archive.

To view the entire Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, log into the  Visual History Archive to explore the full-length eyewitness testimonies.

Music is the purest form of communication. It transcends language and ignores the passage of time. It can be euphoric and elegiac, subtle and sublime. It joyously welcomes life and mournfully greets death. It can provide glimmers of hope and comfort in a world devoid of hope and comfort.

Google Translate is now embedded in the IWitness website, making it possible, for the first time, for non-English speaking users to view the site in their own language.

Henry Rosmarin sings a lullaby that his mother would sing to him as a child. He recalls his mother singing around the house a lot during his youth.

Klara Benjamin-Belkin was liberated from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 and after the war she pursued her passion in music and became the principle cellist in a symphony for 20 years. In this testimony clip she plays one of her favorite pieces.

Victor Borge was originally born in Copenhagen, but fled to Sweden once Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II. He managed to escape to the United States in 1940 on one of the last neutral ships leaving Europe. While in the U.S, Borge went on to become a famous comedian, conductor, and pianist. In this clip, he is playing a lullaby written by one of his father’s friends.

Anita Lasker Wallfisch recalls how she came to be the cellist in the female orchestra in Auschwitz. She talks extensively about the orchestra's conductor and music instructor, Alma, painting her in a positive light.

"Notes of Survival" provides a powerful introduction to the rest of the content in Days of Remembrance: PastFORWARD.

Levon Giridlian was born in Ottoman Empire, in Kayseri (Armenian: Kesaria) in the region of Cappadocia. Kayseri had once been a major Christian center, as attested by the numerous chapels hewn into the mountainous terrain. Although not a part of the historic Armenian highlands to the east, the county of Kayseri at the end of the nineteenth century had about 70,000 Armenian inhabitants, active in agriculture, the crafts and trades, and, among them, a significant number of regional and international merchants.

Wolf Dieter Bihl is a famous Austrian historian, with a number of published works on Austria-Hungary and the First World War. In this clip, he is touching upon two important issues pertaining to the history of the Armenian Genocide. The first is his assertion that representatives of the allies of the Ottoman Empire during the war, i.e. that other Central Powers, and Germany and Austria-Hungary in particular, reported extensively in their internal, confidential correspondence that what the Young Turk government was up to was actually a determined attempt to exterminate the Armenian race.

This brief clip reveals a number of significant points about the early stage of the Armenian Genocide (spring-summer 1915) in many areas. The first is that although one reads in memoirs and accounts of Armenians who were expecting “something bad to happen,” many, if not most, Armenian villagers believed that they were going to be relocated in a peaceful manner.

Judith Goldstein recalls music that was composed in the ghetto. She attended a music conservatory and remembers an older student composing a song. She then performs the Yiddish song on the guitar. She has translated one verse into English.

Alice Herz Sommer recalls life after the Holocaust. She discusses how she reached out to her sisters. In order to prove she was still alive, she wrote asking that they listen to her play the piano on the radio. Her sister would talk about the experience for the rest of her life.

Paula Lebovics remembers arriving to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival she was asked to sing for everyone in her block. She was nervous, but felt obliged to do so. Luckily for Paula, everyone loved her voice and afterwards she was given special privileges. She remembers getting extra rations of food that she would take back to her mother.

Roman Kent talks about the songs he would sing for resistance in camps and how these songs create a sense of community.

Kurt Messerschmidt passionatley sings a song from his childhood.

Auschwitz: The Past is Present has left Australian teacher Christine Cole with a new motto and new motivation for imparting the lessons of the Holocaust on her students.

Mihran Andonian is describing an experience that was common during the Armenian Genocide.  Some Armenian mothers, certain that they would not survive the death marches into the desert, let their children be taken by Muslims (Turks, Arabs, Kurds), hoping to guarantee survival. Other Armenian mothers on the caravans died while still with their children leaving these orphans to fend for themselves. Indeed, thousands of Armenian children were left homeless by the end of World War I and were either taken in by locals or rounded up by missionaries and brought to orphanages.