A lot of pain is firmly attached to stories and testimonies of genocide. This in mind, Zhenya Bilotsky, a high school student from a Jewish school in Ukraine, yearned to do the stories of the survivors of the Babi Yar ravine massacre in Ukraine justice with his involvement in the new Babi Yar IWalk - an educational program that put on a walk around the ravine guided by testimony clips from the Visual History Archive.

He’s not a household name, but the man who invented the term ‘genocide’ and then embarked on a mission to secure legislation against the terror now has a movie to further the story of his life.

Peter Tillen was so inspired by his high school Holocaust and Genocide Studies elective course last year that he wanted to make sure his whole community celebrated the teacher responsible. Peter nominated his teacher Jennifer Goss for the Dawbarn Education Award, awarded every year to 10 local teachers by the Community Foundation of Central Blue Ridge in Virginia. Last week, Goss was announced as one of the winners of the 2016 awards, which comes with a $10,000 prize. 

Among many things that are hard to imagine, a site of massacre and mass murder is one of them. Even when that site is not that far away. As one of the youngest interns with the new Babi Yar IWalk - an educational program that put on a walk around the Babi Yar ravine in Ukraine guided by testimony clips from the Visual History Archive - 14-year-old Sofia Daragan did not know much about the ravine until she was invited to help lead the walks.

Danish historian Therkel Straede spent three days at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research this week watching testimonies in an attempt to understand the truth about one of the most gruesome and taboo aspects of the Holocaust: cannibalism in the Nazi concentration camps.

The reaches of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are unparalleled, attracting researchers and professors from such places as Sydney, Australia and enabling them to further their work with the testimonies available online.

Through IWitness, Justin Loeber helps inspire in his students a personal connection to the Holocaust as well as the knowledge that they have the power to make a positive difference in the lives of the people around them.