Summer might be a break for students, but as an educator, I know teachers are busy enhancing their skills and knowledge to improve their curriculum and students’ overall experience in their classrooms. As you contemplate lesson plans for the upcoming year, will you be planning a unit or lesson about the Holocaust? Do you feel you have enough knowledge about the topic to teach it well? How will you introduce your students to that history and experiences? What readings and resources will you use? What approach will you take with this sensitive topic?

Kari Shagena is combining poetry and Holocaust survivor testimony to inspire empathy and action in her students following an IWitness seminar in Michigan last summer. Shagena, a language arts and social studies teacher at Richmond Middle School, was one of over dozen Michigan educators who attended USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness Summer Institute in Farmington Hills this past August, a three-day seminar that introduced educators to everything they need to know to incorporate testimonies and activities from IWitness into their classrooms.

Learn about the 10 educational resources that USC Shoah Foundation will debut for the first 10 days of its "100 Days to Inspire Respect" program, launching January 20.

While translating Armenian testimonies given in rare dialects, two families made surprise discoveries about their own family history.

The foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (German acronym EVZ) is hosting an international workshop on the use of Holocaust survivor testimonies in education January 9-11.

USC Shoah Foundation’s latest quarterly stats update shows remarkable gains in its testimony access and academic and educational outreach over the past year.

In the field of genocide studies and human rights, storytelling is the most impactful way to give information weight. And the first step to doing justice to the stories and the survivors who provide their testimonies is ensuring they’re translated accurately and with context.

Director of USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research Wolf Gruner will moderate a panel at UCLA exploring the historical and cultural contexts of the works of Rabbi Joachim Prinz and composer Kurt Weill right before World War II.

At a time of heightened political uncertainty and polarization, middle and high school teachers are in need of easy-to-use resources that encourage their students to grapple with some of the most difficult but important topics: hate, racism, intolerance and xenophobia.

Kerry Washington was the special guest at the 2016 Ambassadors for Humanity gala honoring Mellody Hobson and George Lucas.

USC President C. L. Max Nikias speaking at the 2016 Ambassadors for Humanity gala honoring Mellody Hobson and George Lucas.

USC Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith speaking at the 2016 Ambassadors for Humanity gala honoring Mellody Hobson and George Lucas. Also speaking are Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter and Chicago-area students Lynette Lucero and Joshua Stone who both participate in After School Matters

Steven Spielberg, founder of USC Shoah Foundation, introducing the 2016 Ambassador for Humanity award honorees Mellody Hobson and George Lucas.

George Lucas accepting his Ambassador for Humanity award at the 2016 gala held in Los Angeles.

Mellody Hobson's acceptance speech at the 2016 Ambassadors for Humanity gala, held in Los Angeles on December 8, 2016.

USC Shoah Foundation’s soon-to-launch IWitness initiative, called “100 Days to Inspire Respect,” provides teachers of civics, history, English and other subjects with 100 thought-provoking resources that tackle hate, racism, intolerance, xenophobia and more.

A lecture by Teresa Walch (University of California, San Diego) 2016-2017 Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies    

A lecture by Katja Schatte (University of Washington) 2016-2017 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow

The conference for policy-makers, media representatives and NGOs will focus on refugee policies from 1933 to the present day.

A lecture by Lee Ann Fujii (University of Toronto / Institute for Advanced Study 2016-2017)  

Though the topic of sexual violence against women during genocide is notoriously under-researched, sexual violence against men is even more so. And that’s what USC Shoah Foundation’s 2016-2017 A.I. and Manet Schepps Foundation Teaching Fellow at Texas A&M Tommy Curry hopes to change.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research Director Wolf Gruner will speak on a panel about the seminal Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will at a screening of the film at USC School of Cinematic Arts on Thursday, Jan. 19 at 7 p.m.

Though the topic of sexual violence against women during genocide is notoriously under-researched, sexual violence against men is even more so. And that’s what USC Shoah Foundation’s 2016-2017 A.I. and Manet Schepps Foundation Teaching Fellow at Texas A&M Tommy Curry hopes to change.

Join us for #IWitnessChat on Wednesday Jan. 25, 2017 at 4pm PT/ 7pm ET to discuss how you teach with primary sources inluding testimony and diaries in your classroom. This chat will be hosted by 7th grade social studies educator Tracy Sockalosky. @tsocko

A rare collection containing hundreds of artifacts and written material brought back from Nazi Germany by an American Jewish soldier has been acquired by the USC Libraries as part of a longstanding collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research.

Max Schindler remembers the German occupation of Poland and his family’s decision to return to their grandmother’s small village to evade the Nazis. He recalls how even though there were anti-Jewish measures including expulsion from school, his family’s Jewish owned store still operated in the small town. Just weeks before the Nazis issued an edict forcing all Jews into a ghetto, Max celebrated his bar mitzvah.