William talks about his experiences as a young German boy attending school in Scotland without knowing how to speak English, and how a teacher set aside time to work with him privately. He also talks about the education system in Scotland, specifically the "Eleven-plus exam."
clip, education / Friday, November 13, 2015
Paris. The way we think of that beautiful city has changed. That's what they want. They want us to think about things differently, to use Paris as a symbol of bloodshed and fear, not the one we know and love of liberty and culture. That is the nature of extremism: It tries to change who we are, how we see the world, to change our habits and our patterns of thought, to enjoy our freedoms less, to exert control.
Paris, education, Extremism, résistance, op-eds / Monday, November 16, 2015
Aleksandra Visser started out as an aspiring cellist. Now, she’s researching Holocaust survivors for USC Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony project.Visser majored in music performance as an undergraduate at USC – she started studying cello at age seven – but when she realized she didn’t want to be a professional cellist, she decided to return to USC for a second bachelor’s degree in history.
/ Monday, November 16, 2015
Karen Kim is the senior researcher and evaluator for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was previously a faculty member at CSU Fullerton; education director for a National Science Foundation funded center at UCLA; researcher and evaluator of several large-scale, multi-institutional grant projects; and research administrator for the Directors Guild of America. Dr. Kim earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.
/ Monday, November 16, 2015
Finding Your Seat on the Bus, the IWitness activity piloted by students as part of the IWitness Detroit program, is now published on IWitness.
IWitness activity, detroit / Monday, November 16, 2015
100 Days to Inspire Respect Doba Apelowicz reads a poem she wrote in Yiddish about Goldela, a young woman she knew in Birkenau.
clip, birkenau / Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Shandler’s talk will focus on Yiddish performances of Holocaust survivors in the Visual History Archive of USC Shoah Foundation.
jeffrey chandler, Yiddish language / Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Famed musician and Holocaust survivor Victor Borge describes how he was targeted by Nazi sympathizers in Denmark. They harrassed him at his concerts, attacked him in the street, and published articles about him in their papers.
clip / Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Survivors and witnesses of the 2015 synagogue attack in Copenhagen were interviewed for a new collection on contemporary anti-Semitism.
anti-semitism, copenhagen, Denmark, testimony, antiSemitism / Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Wolf Gruner is the founding director of the Center. He developed the vision and main features of its now internationally recognized innovative academic program.
speakers bureau / Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Though they haven’t entered high school yet, Lauren Fenech is making sure her students understand the steps that can lead to genocide.In her eighth grade language arts class at Inverness Middle School in Florida earlier this week, Fenech led her students in USC Shoah Foundation’s Pyramid of Hate activity. The activity integrates first-person testimonies from the Institute's Visual History Archive with the Pyramid of Hate, a curricular tool developed by the Anti-Defamation League for its A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute.
/ Wednesday, November 18, 2015
At a time when antisemitism is on the rise, USC Shoah Foundation’s Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony program aims to push back against its spread. Over the past two years, the Institute has been recording video testimonies of people whose lives have been disrupted by contemporary acts of violent or virulent antisemitism, as well as experts on the matter and advocates who have made a dedicated effort to counter the hate.
clip / Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Martha Stroud manages the day-to-day operations of the Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which advances innovative interdisciplinary research on the Holocaust and other genocides and promotes use of the Visual History Archive in research and teaching. She joined the Center in 2015 after earning her PhD in Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley.
/ Thursday, November 19, 2015
Klara Adler describes her family's orthodox religious practices before the Holocaust and says her religion is still very important to her today.
clip, religion / Thursday, November 19, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation and the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) came together on Monday to introduce the IWitness-CIJE partnership in New York.
cije, New York City, michael berenbaum / Thursday, November 19, 2015
The stories are truly harrowing.One man watched as his house was burned down – with his baby brother inside. Another man’s grandfather literally died protecting him from attacking soldiers, and women tried to make themselves “ugly” so they wouldn’t be raped.These are survivors of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre that USC Shoah Foundation interviewed for its Nanjing Massacre collection in the Visual History Archive. Since 2014, a total of 30 interviews have been collected and integrated into the Visual History Archive.
/ Friday, November 20, 2015
Director of Research and Documentation Karen Jungblut hosted a visit from several Nanjing Massacre scholars this week to introduce the work of the Institute and discuss future partnerships.
Nanjing Massacre, nanjing, karen jungblut / Friday, November 20, 2015
Thom Melcher, the managing director of the Glenmede Trust Company, co-chairs USC Shoah Foundation's Next Generation Council.
/ Monday, November 23, 2015
Like many of you, I sat in front of my television on the evening of Friday, November 13, 2015 and watched in horror as news of the terrorist attacks in Paris flooded the airways. "Not again," I thought to myself. My heart ached for people whom I had never met and for a city and country thousands of miles away.
MyGivingStory, GivingTuesday, beginswithme, op-eds / Monday, November 23, 2015
On November 19, 2015, visiting scholar Maximilian Strnad gave a lecture on the role that intermarriage played in the survival of German Jews during World War II.
presentation / Monday, November 23, 2015
Marione describes how her non-Jewish father was pressured to divorce her mother, who was Jewish, in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. He was severely beaten, but still refused to divorce his wife.
clip, nazi germany / Monday, November 23, 2015
Peter Komor remembers his first Thanksgiving in the United States.
clip, thanksgiving / Monday, November 23, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research welcomed the University of Munich’s Maximilian Strnad to USC last week.
cagr, visiting scholar, lecture / Monday, November 23, 2015
The workshops, titled “Advanced Use of Multimedia in Peace Education,” were held at the University of Rwanda’s College of Education in Kigali Nov. 19-20 and 24-25.
rwanda, kigali genocide memorial, kigali / Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Special education teacher Andra Coulter shares how testimony inspired her students in unprecedented ways.
appeal, advancement, andra coulter, Paula Lebovics / Monday, December 14, 2015
Leslie Rheingold uses IWitness to teach one of the only yearlong Holocaust studies courses offered in her school district in south Florida.At Cypress Bay High School, Rheingold teaches five Holocaust studies classes, made up of 10th-12th graders. She uses IWitness, Echoes and Reflections, literature and other media to teach about the Jewish experience throughout the year, but her students are currently doing research in IWitness on a different unit: groups other than Jews who were persecuted during the Holocaust.
/ Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Spielberg was honored for his historic filmmaking career as well as his efforts to overcome intolerance and hate through the use of visual history testimony as the founder of USC Shoah Foundation.
/ Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor David Karasira describes the discrimination and violence he faced as a Tutsi at school.
clip / Tuesday, November 24, 2015
A lecture by Dr. Kiril Feferman (Israel/Russia)2015-2016 Center Fellow at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research USC Doheny Memorial Library, Room 240
cagr / Monday, November 30, 2015

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