USC Shoah Foundation Institute releases multimedia educational resource.

Looking into a mirror and making sure her hair looked just so, Yevnigue Salibian didn’t notice me as I was taking her picture. It took a few seconds, but when she finally realized I had documented her act of vanity, she smiled coyly.

The 53,000 testimonies in the Visual History Archive from the USC Shoah Foundation tell a complete personal history of life before, during and after the interviewee’s firsthand experience with genocide. These testimonies are an invaluable resource for humanity, as in addition to their experience through some of the darkest chapters of human history; the testimonies also recount happy memories of childhood and successes in life including careers, children and grandchildren. 

U příležitosti Mezinárodního dne památky holocaustu, v rámci druhého ročníku programu půldenních regionálních seminářů byly českým učitelům ve dnech 21. až 23. ledna představeny informační zdroje vytvořené čtyřmi partnerskými institucemi: experti z Jad Vašem, Oddělení pro vzdělávání a kulturu Židovského muzea v Praze, Památníku Terezín a USC Shoah Foundation společně s místními aktivisty a za podpory karlovarského inspektorátu České školní inspekce představili vzdělávací materiály vytvořené jejich organizacemi. Seminář tentokrát navštívil Karlovy Vary, Ostrov nad Ohří a Plzeň.

The testimony of Holocaust survivor Raphael Zimetbaum references Elise Meyer, the aunt of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, the real-life person portrayed by Meryl Streep in the film "The Post," by Steven Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg was awarded this year's Records of Achievement Award by the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

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 hands off books on the Armenian Genocide to USC Doheny Library’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies collection. Lynn Sipe, senior bibliographer and curator for the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Collection for Doheny Library, visited the Institute June 13 to pick up books and other resources on the Armenian Genocide

For Women’s History Month, bring the unique voices of women who survived or stood up against some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century into your classroom. Facing History is partnering with USC Shoah Foundation to help educators access more than 1,500 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides using the Institute’s online learning tool, IWitness.

The recent New York Times article, The Shroud over Rwanda's Nightmare (January 9, 2014), had me perplexed at first. Michael Dobbs' enquiry centers on the character of Jean-Pierre, the informant who tipped off United Nations head of mission General Romeo Dallaire about preparations for widespread killing of civilians in Rwanda 1994 as evidenced by the training of the Interhamwe militia, the presence of arms caches and the purchase of large numbers of machetes.

The new Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw is now offering educational programming for students that uses the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

A diverse group of guests from NGOs, memory institutions and schools gathered in the heart of historical Prague at the Malach Center for Visual History at Charles University to commemorate its sixth anniversary as a full access site of the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation and Facing History and Ourselves have established a partnership in order to develop meaningful and engaging learning resources centered on Holocaust survivor testimonies.

Four researchers who are part of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative explored the Visual History Archive for the first time and were inspired by what they found.

Parks’ story is insightful, inspiring and a powerful education tool for discussing racism, intolerance and the Civil Rights Movement. IWitness includes Parks’ story and many other voices and resources that you could use in your classroom. Discover five resources from IWitness for discussing Black History Month and Civil Rights with your students.

On Thursday, Oct. 27th, I witnessed history in the making. Nanjing Massacre survivor Xia Shuqin flew from Nanjing, China to Los Angeles to record a 3-D audiovisual testimony in Mandarin for USC Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony. For those of you who watched USC Shoah Foundation’s Instagram story that day, I was the intern behind the camera.

Professor Andrea Pető of Central European University in Budapest has written an article about how to use USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in teaching students at the graduate level. The piece appears as a chapter in the seventh volume of Jewish Studies at the Central European University edited by András Kovács and Michael Laurence Miller.

Nine months into USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive Restoration project, technology staff have finished restoring nearly one third of the damaged tapes in the Visual History Archive.

This series will highlight one teaching activity per day for 10 days, pairing eyewitness testimony with standards-aligned lessons that transform learning.

The integration of the new collection means the Archive now represents nine genocidal events. USC Shoah Foundation last month added 11 Rohingya video interviews—as well as 77 testimonies from other collections—to its ever-expanding Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation’s newest testimony collection, the Nanjing Massacre, is now fully integrated and viewable in the Visual History Archive.

February is Black History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate the central role African Americans have made in the United States. In honor of this special time, we invite educators and students to remember history in their classrooms, utilizing this year’s thematic lens, “African Americans in Times of War.”

Teachers participating in Facing History and Ourselves’s “Holocaust and Human Behavior” seminar spent a day at USC last week learning how to use IWitness to teach about the Holocaust, genocide, tolerance and other topics.

Stephen Smith, USC Shoah Foundation executive director, is in North Carolina today recording Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow’s testimony for the Visual History Archive.

The Jewish Museum in Prague recently debuted a new exhibit dedicated to the Nazi-produced films about the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. The Visual History Archive is also a unique resource for Terezin remembrance.

When a select group of eight high school students learn about the Holocaust and genocide each year as part of the Manovill Holocaust History Fellowship at Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ (JFCS) Holocaust Center in San Francisco, they turn to IWitness to create one of the biggest projects of the fellowship.

A historical exhibition organized by the Czech district of Prague 2 is exploring the erased traces of Jewish presence with an exhibit in New Town Townhall, located in the former city of Kralovske Vinohrady. A reel of relevant clips of Visual History Archive testimony will complement the exhibition's content.

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.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. day, we reflect on Dr. King’s legacy, and the work that remains to be done. However long the arc of history, we continue to bend it towards justice.

Facing History and Ourselves is partnering with the USC Shoah Foundation to explore how Facing History teachers can use IWitness, the Institute’s educational website, to shape teaching and learning experiences for students in a Facing History course.