Los Angeles, Sept. 3, 2015 – On Sept. 10, 2015, Steven Spielberg will present William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, with USC Shoah Foundation’s highest honor — the Ambassador for Humanity Award –– at the organization’s annual gala. Ford will be recognized for his leadership and corporate citizenry around education and community.

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.

Screenings will debut in Philadelphia, highlighting the re-opening of the city's iconic Prince Music Theater

One hundred survivors from nations around the world to participate in official observance on January 27, 2015

Los Angeles, Jan. 9, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism will present an advance screening on Jan. 15 of “Voices of Auschwitz,” a new CNN documentary telling the stories of four survivors from the Nazi German Concentration and extermination camp. The hour-long special is hosted by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, himself the son of Holocaust survivors.The 6 p.m. event at the newly opened Wallis Annenberg Hall is free and open to the public.

Contest challenges students to honor the legacy of Schindler’s List by engaging in community service inspired by survivors’ testimonies and showcasing their action in an IWitness video essay.

LOS ANGELES - Aug. 22, 2017 – The violent antisemitic and racist hatred seen in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month combined Nazi ideology with white supremacy and drew from the dark historical legacies of the Holocaust and slavery. This hatred revealed the fissures of a long-standing American cultural and identity crisis that requires long-term strategies to provide safe ways to explore identity and difference.

Los Angeles, Sept. 28, 2017 – USC Shoah Foundation is announcing the release of Lala, a virtual reality film and educational resource that tells the true story of a dog that brightened the lives of a family interned by the Nazis in a ghetto in Poland during the Holocaust.

Offered by USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education in support of the official 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of the former German Nazi concentration and death camp.

Customized Education Activities, Once-In-A-Lifetime Teacher Professional Development Program in Poland and Exclusive Virtual Field Trip will be Part of Auschwitz: The Past is Present Initiative

Los Angeles, March 26, 2015 –  Echoes and Reflections, a comprehensive Holocaust education program that provides professional development and an array of resources for middle and high school teachers, is marking its 10th anniversary in 2015 with a strong trail of success behind it and ambitious goals for the future.

Los Angeles - July 28, 2015 - USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education has joined forces with La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization, to collect video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide, which killed some 200,000 civilians in the early 1980s, mainly indigenous Mayans, at the hands of a military junta whose leader was convicted of genocide and war crimes in May 2013.

LOS ANGELES – Aug. 31, 2016 – In preparation for the new school year, USC Shoah Foundation unveils its annual update of IWitness, a free online resource that is among the world’s foremost education tools for teaching compassion.

LOS ANGELES - June 26, 2017 – While students across America enjoy their summer vacation, the education department at USC Shoah Foundation is busily making major new features to its award-winning IWitness educational website for educators and their students that will be ready by the time school resumes in the fall. Coming on the heels of a successful initiative, 100 Days to Inspire Respect, these new offerings will further support educators around the world by building new and innovative ways to inspire respect and empower students to take positive action in the world.

Program by Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, USC Shoah Foundation and World Jewish Congress in partnership with Discovery Education

Los Angeles, June 13, 2017 – A group of students from Chicago who inspired their fellow students to embrace each other’s unique identity has won the 2017 IWitness Video Challenge sponsored by USC Shoah Foundation.

New Dimensions in Testimony from USC Shoah Foundation captured two top honors this week at the Sheffield Doc/Fest, the third-largest documentary festival in the world.

Los Angeles, Nov. 15, 2016 – USC Shoah Foundation is offering one member of the public and a guest the chance to attend its Ambassadors for Humanity Gala in December. The gala is a crucial part of the Institute’s efforts helping to forge partnerships that sustain the organization into the future. The gala raises much-needed general funds to support its educational programs including expansion of the Institute’s award-winning IWitness website, professional development for educators globally, the Center for Advanced Genocide Research, academic conferences, expanding access to the Visual History Archive and testimony preservation, to name a few.

Los Angeles, February. 13, 2018 – “The Last Goodbye,” a virtual-reality film that brings the viewer inside a Nazi concentration camp with Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter, won a top prize at the 2018 Lumiere Awards hosted Monday by The Advanced Imaging Society. The film was honored with the Creative Arts Award, VR – Documentary Jury Prize, at the awards ceremony held at the Warner Bros. Studio in Hollywood.

Initial evaluations from the pilot exhibition of USC Shoah Foundation's New Dimensions in Testimony – a groundbreaking project that enables audiences to have a "virtual conversation" with projected images of Holocaust survivors – is proving the new technology is a valuable tool to ensure future generations will be able to have personal interactive experiences with Holocaust survivors long into the future.

A trio of eighth-graders from New Jersey who created a poetry group that has enabled students at their school to express their hardships and appreciation for one another has won the 2016 IWitness Video Challenge sponsored by USC Shoah Foundation.

In light of the heated rhetoric that has come to characterize this historically polarized presidential campaign, USC Shoah Foundation has released a new activity on IWitness – its free online education platform for secondary students – called “Skittles, Deplorables and ‘All Lives Matter’: Leadership and Media Literacy.”

Kicking off this week, the challenge, which will award $10,000 in prizes overall, invites students to positively contribute to their communities, and submit short videos explaining the inspiration behind their actions and extraordinary impact. The IWitness Video Challenge is open to all secondary school students in the United States and Canada (except for Quebec) who attend public, private or home schools. Participants can access resources and submit entries at iwitness.usc.edu.

More than 100 Auschwitz survivors from at least 17 countries will travel to Poland to participate in the observance of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz on 27 January 2015, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The official event will be organized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the International Auschwitz Council. The World Jewish Congress and the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education will be among the organizations supporting this commemorative event.

Los Angeles, Aug. 10, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, in collaboration with the USC Thornton School of Music, will be hosting scholars from around the world for two days of programming on Oct. 10 - 11 to highlight the use of music as a tool to resist oppression and spread awareness.

LOS ANGELES – Sept. 6, 2016 – USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research is gearing up to host an international conference on the genocide that ravaged Guatemala at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s. It will be the first gathering of its kind ever held.

Auschwitz: The Past is Present will support official activities of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2015 – Longtime USC Shoah Foundation board member Mickey Shapiro has given a gift to fund an endowed research fellowship program at the Institute’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research in honor of his parents, Sara and Asa Shapiro, who both survived the Holocaust.

First-person testimonial of the Holocaust, co-created by United Nations senior creative advisor Gabo Arora and produced by executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, Stephen Smith, is an official selection of festival’s Tribeca Immersive, in Storyscapes, presented by AT&T, April 21-29, 2017.