Coinciding with Inauguration Day, USC Shoah Foundation debuts an initiative developed to quell some of the divides and intolerance exacerbated by the election. The 100 Days to Inspire Respect campaign starts today, its first week focusing on hate, and the power of storytelling and testimony in stopping it.

Professor Omer Bartov, considered one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of the Holocaust, will serve as the 2016-2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center May 4-11, 2017, and will give a public lecture at USC on May 8.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Margaret Lambert describes how she experienced hate as a consequence of stories that turned people against Jews and broke human connections.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Researchers have studied hate in order to deepen their understanding of how people develop the emotions and actions associated with hate. Learn more about their findings by watching the video, "What is Hate?"

100 Days to Inspire Respect Ursula describes an incident at a hospital social function that was typical of the xenophobia she experienced as a refugee in the UK.

For a historian, using a top-down approach is standard – you use government records, archives of primary and secondary sources to fulfill your research; you undress the documents and make sure they stand up, factually, and you stop there. But a bottom-up approach can provide a more complete image of an event, allowing those who lived through the time a voice in history.

As an educator you might be thinking how to get started with the IWitness Video Challenge. How do you encourage your students to make a difference? How do you incorporate video editing? Well, we have the answers to these questions from actual IWitness educators.

Personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Europe before and during World War II will be brought to light during Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel’s semester in residence at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research this fall.

One of the world’s leading experts on the subject of the Holocaust is coming to USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research, where he will further develop his current project about Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and Palestine, the Center announced today.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Rwandan Tutsi Genocide survivor Freddy Mutanguha describes the hate Tutsi children experienced at his school at the hands of fellow students - both verbal taunts and physical attacks.

On Monday, faculty were invited to participate in three workshops in USC Shoah Foundation’s office in Leavey Library as part of Diversity and Inclusion week activities.

100 Days to Inspire Respect In this clip Holocaust survivor Peter Prager describes an example of how he and his Jewish classmates were made to feel inferior, or less than his non-Jewish classmates.

Three hundred and ninety-six testimonies were added to the Visual History Archive as part of the archive’s latest update on January 23, including new collections and features.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Floyd reflects on how his experiences as a Holocaust liberator shaped his views on hate.

New Dimensions in Testimony will be on display at Holocaust Museum Houston until May 30 as part of the museum’s artistic exhibit “A Celebration of Survival.”

The Holocaust is inarguably the most heinous crime against a group of people we have seen in modern times. Despite decades of wrestling with how such an atrocity could have occurred and the postwar generation promising never again, history keeps repeating itself. Therefore, the collection and the custody of testimonies from those who bear witness remains a necessary task for as long as inhumanities keep occurring. Genocide and crimes against humanity transcend religions, cultures, languages, geographic regions, socioeconomics, gender, age, etc., making testimony collection across all cultures not only a moral responsibility, but imperative given the mission of USC Shoah Foundation. We know for sure that under a certain set of circumstances, genocide could happen anywhere, and again.

Nancy Fudem and her son Jonathan have long been admirers of USC Shoah Foundation. Now, they have made it their mission to support its work from their home in San Francisco.

On Thursday, January 19, 2017, after a screening of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Dr. Wolf Gruner, Center of Advanced Genocide Research Director and Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, joined a panel with Dr. Michael Renov, Haskell Wexler Endowed Chair in Documentary, Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Dr. Steven Ross, Professor of History and Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Victor Borge, an actor in Denmark in 1939, talks about experiencing hate at the hands of Nazis and the press. He shares how he was threatened with violence and described as repulsive.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Learn about how students had an impact on their communities after finding inspiration and insight from the testimonies in IWitness.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Paula, who was born in America, remembers her first encounter with antisemitism.

Students will explore racism through close reading of testimony, they will learn how racism is promoted through the idea of Us v. Them and they will learn about the power of protest and identifying ways to counter racism, equipping students with the knowledge, skills and capacities to create positive change and inspire respect.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Wellesina discusses being targeted by the Ku Klux Klan while living with her black adopted daughter in Rialto, California.

A group of over a dozen educators representing the so-called Visegrad countries – a bloc of Central European countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – met for a second time to experience and discuss the power of the IWalks and IWitness activities developed by USC Shoah Foundation.

100 Days to Inspire Respect Armenian Genocide survivor Elise Taft reads from the preface of her book about why she decided to tell her story.

At a first glance The Yellow Spot: The Extermination of the Jews in Germany is a book about the Holocaust. But in fact, it was published in 1936, after just three years of Nazi rule — and a full five years before the first gas chambers were commissioned for the murder of European Jewry. The authors spend 287 pages detailing a series of laws and actions taken against the Jews. Their conclusion was that the “legal disability” being imposed by the Nazis upon the Jews ultimately would result in their elimination. (Originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.)

Join us for #IWitnessChat on Wednesday Feb. 8, 2017 at 4pm PT/ 7pm ET to discuss how you teach with testimony to increase your students' digital citizenship for upcoming Digital Learning Day. 

The one-day training will introduce Detroit area educators to IWitness and strategies for using testimony in the classroom, including how to integrate testimony across the curriculum and how to create testimony-curriculum plans for their individual classrooms.