Leading up to the one-year anniversary of the deadly synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, USC Shoah Foundation staff members trained educators in that metro area last week about how to use video testimonies of Holocaust witnesses as a tool to teach empathy, understanding and respect.

The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum this month became the second in the world to install a permanent theater to display Dimensions in Testimony – an interactive, holographic project developed by USC Shoah Foundation that will allow visitors to interact with a Holocaust survivor long after they are no longer with us.

When Ursula Martens was a little girl living in Germany, she was happy to be forced by law at age 10 to join the Hitler Youth.  “Everything was free,” she said. “You could go to theaters. … They would send you on vacations with other children at nice resorts.”  It wasn’t until she was a little older that she realized something was wrong.