The USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which maintains an archive of nearly 52,000 video testimonies given by Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, awarded stipends to three professors this summer 2011 as part of a program to support the integration of testimony into new or existing courses during the upcoming academic year.

As the 110th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide approaches on April 24, the USC Shoah Foundation is proud to announce the landmark partnership with the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, a hub of research and learning at USC dedicated to studying the contemporary Armenian diaspora and the Republic of Armenia.

Reception hosted at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, at the United Nations.

USC Shoah Foundation Institute receives significant grant.

More than 5,000 middle and high school students participate in contest.

Pinchas Gutter sits in a red chair surrounded by bright green fabric under the glare of several thousand LED lights, 53 cameras capturing his every move. This is the world's first ever full-life history captured in true 3-D. As I interview him, I perch on a stool 8 feet away at 90 degrees to Pinchas. We can see each other through a mirror angled at 45 degrees. I have 400 questions in front of me as we settle in for five days of intensive interview. This is not the fireside chat in the comfort of the interviewee's home.

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education was founded to capture the voices, emotions and faces of those who suffered, yet miraculously survived the most heinous crime ever committed against humanity by humanity. The idea was to record individual and collective memories that would be preserved in perpetuity as a seminal educational tool to inform current and future generations that incitement, hate and violence against a person or a group can ultimately lead to death, genocide and ultimately extermination.

In the fascinating short documentary The Past is Present, teachers and students share their experience going to Poland to learn from testimony and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

USC Shoah Foundation’s first Texas A&M Teaching Fellow Adam R. Seipp got to do something he doesn’t often get the opportunity to do: work uninterrupted in the Visual History Archive and fully focus on his passion for testimony for a whole week.

During the 1960s, the Guatemalan government unleashed a war against various small guerilla groups across the country. This so-called “internal conflict” turned into a 36-year genocide against Mayan populations.

Junior Intern Charlotte Masters made a very personal discovery during the trip to Poland and continues to share her experiences today.

Learning from eyewitnesses of some of history’s darkest moments, educators strive to teach the power of decency and respect.

The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, founded by USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith and James Smith, will commemorate its 20th anniversary June 26 with a service at Westminster Abbey in London.

USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith is an executive producer of the film, and most of the survivors featured in the film also gave their testimonies to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

The ties between Cornell University and USC Shoah Foundation are many, and now, they are permanent: The Cornell University Library has acquired access to the Visual History Archive in perpetuity. Cornell University became the 52nd site to provide full access to the archive on an annual basis in November 2015, and the impact on research and education has been significant. This impact can now continue for generations to come, as the witnesses who gave testimony had hoped.

In spring 1944, after losing nearly his entire family on the day they arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 22-year-old Dario Gabbai was assigned to one of the special units of Jewish prisoners required to work in the gas chambers and crematoria: the Sonderkommando.

A delegation of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education supporters and board members will travel to Hungary and Poland this October to commemorate the Institute’s 20th anniversary and learn more about its work in Eastern Europe.

Graduates of the Institute’s Master Teacher Program will debut IWitness next week at the 2012 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Conference, demonstrating how the award-winning website, now in beta, weaves together digital literacy development, online citizenship, and tolerance education based on the life stories of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

The first-ever winner of the IWitness Video Challenge has been chosen: Voices of Our Journey, by Ruth Hernandez.

The Power of Words activity is inspired by Elie Wiesel; thousands of students read his memoir Night every year to learn about the Holocaust. Students will consider the ways in which speaking and writing might empower survivors.

The new activity Growing Up Behind the Barbed Wire at Auschwitz is part of IWitness’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present content to commemorate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Professor Marion Kaplan, 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave the annual Shapiro Scholar public lecture on gender and the Holocaust.

For years, Celina Biniaz, one of the youngest people saved by Oskar Schindler, did not tell anyone – not even her children – that she was a Holocaust survivor. She feared no one could comprehend what she had been through, and she didn’t want to impose the trauma of her childhood upon her son and daughter. Celina’s reluctance to speak ended in 1994. That year, director Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List. He established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became the USC Shoah Foundation.

Echoes and Reflections—a multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust (www.echoesandreflections.org) is the result of an unprecedented partnership, combining the national outreach network of the Anti-Defamation League, the unmatched visual history resources of the Shoah Foundation, and the historical expertise of Yad Vashem. The pedagogical experience of the three organizations produced the most comprehensive curriculum on the Holocaust available to date.

It had been a long week and Renee Firestone was tired. But when a group of students showed up on Friday at the dark studio where she had spent days answering questions about her life, her mood quickly brightened, her energy restored.

The resolution was led by the Mission of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations and had the support of over 80 member countries.

Testimony clips about immigration will serve as the inspiration for students entering this year’s competition, open to grades 6-12.

Sara Cohan, USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian education program consultant, will give a presentation for educators called “Women’s Voices: Testimony as a Tool of Empowerment.”

Educators learned how Holocaust survivor testimonies from the Visual History Archive can help them teach early conflict prevention and cultural sensitivity at a workshop led by USC Shoah Foundation’s Ukrainian regional consultant, Anna Lenchovska.

USC Shoah Foundation is deeply saddened by the passing of Hannah Kent, who survived three concentration camps and a death march, but went on to live a full life filled with love, family and resolve. She was 88. Born Hanka Szarkman on Oct. 9, 1929, in Lodz, Poland, Hannah Kent was the wife of Roman Kent, a Life Member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors and a leader in the Holocaust survivor movement. Hannah and Roman Kent met in New York after World War II and married in 1957. They had two children, Jeffrey and Susan.