USC Shoah Foundation is sorry to learn of the death of Andrzej Wajda, Poland’s preeminent filmmaker and the director of the 2002 USC Shoah Foundation documentary Pamiętam (I Remember). Wajda died October 9, 2016, at age 90. Wajda survived World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland with his mother and brother after his father, a captain in the Polish infantry, was killed in the Katyn massacre. He joined the Polish resistance at 16 and served in the Polish Home Army until the end of the war.

Nearly every day since she first received her teacher’s resource guide from Echoes and Reflections this spring, Becky Henderson-Howie has used it to teach her students in northern New York about the Holocaust. The middle- and high school English, Holocaust and Public Speaking teacher met Echoes and Reflections educator Jennifer Goss at the Belfer National Conference for Educators at USHMM in November 2015, and Goss encouraged her to sign up for Echoes and Reflections’ free online professional development courses.

Despite living and going to school near Kiev, 11th grader Angelina Verbovskaya knew very little about the 1941 Babi Yar massacre when she started her training to lead the new Babi Yar IWalk. “I’m ashamed that I even did not know that Babi Yar is located in Kiev,” Verbovskaya said.

Arizona State University Professor Anna Holian visited USC on October 10 to give a lecture at the USC Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. While she was here, she spent two days at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research watching testimony for her new project on Jewish merchants in Munich and Frankfurt after World War II.

Empathy and concern over her city’s slipping memory of what happened at the Babi Yar ravine colored National Polytechnic University student Svetlana Polkovnikova’s decision to intern with the new Babi Yar IWalk, an educational program that put on a walk around the area guided by testimony clips from the Visual History Archive. “I joined the young interns program because it is very important for me to spread information about the events that happened in Babi Yar,” Polkovnikova said. “I would like modern society to know what happened here not so long ago.”

Since 2011, Jayne Perilstein has worked hard to make a difference at two organizations: USC Shoah Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. And this month, she was formally recognized by Penn with an award that encompasses her work with both.

Michael Levesque helps his students at After School Matters in Chicago develop the skills they will need to succeed in college and beyond. Two weeks ago, those lessons included a brand new activity from IWitness that inspired his students to think about the world and their place in it.

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.

Susan Davenport’s English students at John S. Battle High School in Virginia demonstrated just how deeply they have been affected by testimony from the Visual History Archive when they participated in the Institute’s #BeginsWithMe Giving Tuesday campaign.

Samantha Shapiro has a personal connection to USC Shoah Foundation, but she has begun using IWitness in her own educational work at a Detroit-area synagogue. Shapiro signed up to receive update emails about IWitness after learning about USC Shoah Foundation through her husband, whose uncle is its Board of Councilors Executive Committee member Mickey Shapiro.

Three years ago, USC Shoah Foundation launched the IWitness Video Challenge, hoping to inspire students to create positive change in their communities by watching the testimonies of genocide survivors and documenting their service projects in an original video.