Every year, some of Angela Gottesburen’s high school seniors enter an essay contest held by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. This year, the students are using testimony from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to help craft their responses.The 2016 prompt for the Midwest Center’s annual White Rose Student Essay Contest, open to 8th-12th graders, asks students to explore how one Jewish survivor was affected by the Nazis’ anti-Jewish propaganda.

The newest activity in IWitness draws on testimonies of Holocaust survivors to spark students’ reflection on how identity, and the struggle to hide it, can affect people from all walks of life.