Roma-Sinti Survivor Julia describes how her family’s lack of awareness of war events led to their incarceration at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. 

After his arrest in September 1942, Stefan Kosinski was incarcerated while awaiting his trial. In this clip, he recounts the conditions in the jail and his memory of seeing his mother out the window of his jail cell keeping vigil. She is also present during his trial before the Nazi court, which sentences Stefan to five years hard labor. Foreign words in this clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory term for a gay personschwul (German): gay, homosexualZuchthaus (German): penitentiary

Nina Kaleska talks about how she responds to people that say the Holocaust never happened. She says it is not worth arguing about because it only gives their ideas more attention and the evidence of the Holocaust is overwhelming. 

Martin Becker talks about having various people walk through the concentration camp in Dachau and overhearing a man explaining that the various corpses lying around were brought in from Russia to "scare everyone." He says that responses like that are contagious when you are under stress and caught "red-handed."

Holocaust liberator Ed Carter Edwards on how his eyewitness testimony along with others helps combat Holocaust denial.

Guatemalan Genocide survivor Aracely Garrido reflects on the seemingly eternal suffering endured by indigenous civilian non-combatant populations in a Guatemalan village who practiced their own limited form of resistance during the war.

Dario Gabbai recalls his experiences as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He was forced to usher people into gas chambers, and then haul out the bodies, take them to the crematorium, and clean up the room for the next group of victims.

When Zach Larkin was 13, he sat down with his great-grandfather to interview and record his stories about his experiences as a Hungarian Jew during the Holocaust. Larkin didn’t know that this would begin his journey researching this time period and interacting with survivor testimony.“[My great-grandfather] was a Holocaust survivor who didn’t like to talk about his experience with anyone, not even USC Shoah Foundation,” Larkin said. “But when I was 13, for some reason he talked to me and let me interview him and told me about his experience in Budapest in 1944.”

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Jean Greenstein describes the three months he spent with two other men and a woman hiding in an underground bunker. At one point the German troops came into the town and made their headquarters directly above the bunker where Jean and the others were hiding.

Tracy Sockalosky teaches 7th Grade Social Studies at Wilson Middle School in Natick, Mass. In January 2015, Sockalosky was one of the 25 educators who participated in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program in Poland.

This year I focused on eyewitness testimony to the Holocaust and it changed the experience for my students and for me.

At a training led by USC Shoah Foundation education staff, Rwandan teachers learned how to build IWitness activities and incorporate IWitness into the new Rwandan national curriculum.

Emily Kocontes is a junior at USC studying Popular Music Performance with a minor in Music Industry. Emily has been interning with USC Shoah Foundation for the communications department since September of 2015. 

I attended the event “Melodies of Auschwitz” at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington D.C. on Thursday, March 10, 2016, hosted by PNC Bank to recognize USC Shoah Foundation for its work in genocide education and preserving testimony of genocides around the world. The event was educational and meaningful, bringing together PNC clients, employees, and all other guests into a conversation about the importance of preserving testimony and what USC Shoah Foundation is all about.

When Luis Hernandez got to USC, he noticed something: Unlike in his native Brooklyn, now when he looked around he didn’t often see people who looked or acted like he did.“Being a person of color has been an interesting experience for me,” Hernandez said. “I’m the first person in my family to graduate high school and also go to college, so it was a big jump for me coming here to USC. Although USC is a very beautiful place and I love my school, you also notice the inconsistencies and the lack of inclusion sometimes.”

In his lecture at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research March 29, Professor Dan Stone offered a global perspective of the origins and history of concentration camps.

Adela Ackerman describes seeing her sister for the first time after liberation.

Louis Micheels describes the conditions inside Mechelen concentration camp in Belgium.

Zovaira Rodriguez is the Procurement Specialist for the USC Shoah Foundation and has been with the institute for 3 years.  She works within our Operations Department overseeing and managing all purchasing requests along with vendor intake, setup, and requesting payments. Prior to the Institute, Zovaira received her Bachelors in Criminal Justice with a Minor in Anthropology from the California State University of Los Angeles.

USC Shoah Foundation partner Echoes and Reflections is launching a three-week online professional development webinar series for educators on Tuesday, April 4, 2016.

Alina Bothe, PhD, the 2015-2016 USC Shoah Foundation Teaching Fellow, gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research focusing on the way users experience and relate to the testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

April is Genocide Awareness Month, a time to reflect on atrocities of the past while ensuring that we avoid acts of mass murder in the future. The urgency of this mandate was highlighted just weeks ago when the U.S. House of Representatives and the State Department officially recognized that ISIS is committing genocide in the Middle East.

Starting today and continuing each Friday throughout the month of April, IWitness will publish a new activity geared for Rwandan students.

Never forget. Never again. These are common phrases used in Holocaust and genocide education. These are important statements especially when they evoke the real reason to study, learn, and teach about genocide. We must bring this content to students to empower them and encourage them to see beyond themselves. If done right, students become aware of the steps that lead to such atrocities. Teaching about genocide is the only way to have a lasting impact on our students, to affect their worldview, to help them understand that they can make a difference.

Postgraduate scholar Yuri Radchenko is focusing his research on the Holocaust in Ukraine – something he says he would have trouble doing if he didn’t have the Visual History Archive.

Sarra talks about the state of the Ukraine during the Holocaust and the many people who were killed at the Babi Yar ravine outside of Kiev.

The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University are each hosting presentations about USC Shoah Foundation, the Visual History Archive and its possibilities for research this week.

To watch the entire connection video register for IWitness. Connection videos are available in the user dashboard.

Eric Flagg speaks of his landlady being scared of hiding Jews for fear of risking her own life. Eric continued to do so secretly, but was concerned about this ethical dilemma. He sought the advice of a rabbi and a priest and both told him that as long as he was saving people's lives and not just his own, then it was ethical.Ethics and Genocide Watch Page Description: Reflections on the issues of human morality and the roles of complicity and involvement of ordinary people, raised by genocide.