When Michael Russell joined the USC Shoah Foundation staff in 2008, it wasn’t the first time his family had crossed paths with Holocaust survivors.His dad, Sonny, worked with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration after World War II, helping child Holocaust survivors get settled in England. Sonny even got to know Mayer Hersh, a well-known Holocaust survivor whose testimony is in the Visual History Archive.

Giving his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1998 literally changed Hyman Schwartzblatt’s life.Schwartzblatt’s grandson, Jewish music producer and composer Eli Gerstner, said Schwartzblatt told his family almost nothing about his experiences during the Holocaust. And when he did happen to make an offhand comment about his survival, they never knew what to make of it. What was the truth?

Around the world, students are exploring genocide survivor testimony in IWitness – even in Pakistan.

Just a few months after he started working at USC Shoah Foundation, Clarence Leung was on his way to Shanghai for the 2015 USC Global Conference.Leung, who has a background in accounting, joined the staff as a budget analyst in the executive administration department, where he helps track the Institute’s expenses and other financial processes.

With the partnership of Arnold Mittelman, students can now exercise their creativity in a brand new way when learning about the Holocaust in IWitness.Mittelman is a theater producer, director, educator and administrator who has created almost 300 productions of plays, musicals and special events. He helped found and lead not-for-profit theaters including the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. He is founder, president and producing artistic director of the National Jewish Theater Foundation (NJTF), which celebrates creativity and preserves Jewish culture in the performing arts.

Last spring, as the world observed its annual commemorations of genocides like the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide and the Holocaust, the staff of The Hollywood Reporter got to talking about how many Holocaust survivors had Hollywood connections, and how many of them were still alive.

Jerquila Slaughter’s students were inspired to make a real difference in their community after watching testimony in IWitness.After learning about IWitness at the Dallas Holocaust Museum Center for Education and Tolerance’s summer workshop for teachers, Slaughter began assigning IWitness activities to her students at Gilliam Collegiate Academy this semester.She used IWitness in her elective course that covers topics such as genocide and gentrification this semester and plans to also use IWitness in her Advanced Research course this spring.