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When Keith Stringfellow was about 12, he was reading a book about World War II when his great uncle, a World War II veteran, began telling him about his experiences at Normandy after D-Day. Stringfellow asked him what affected him most during the war, and he answered simply, “Dachau.”
a70, educator / Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Since graduating from USC Shoah Foundation’s Master Teacher Workshop in 2010, Hank Koransky has made IWitness an integral part of his teaching at Brentwood School in Los Angeles.Koransky is a history teacher, chair of the history department and dean of faculty at Brentwood School, and has taught courses on everything from Ancient and Medieval History to AP Comparative Government.
/ Thursday, December 18, 2014
By Cat VazquezWhen asked about what she does for a living, Judy Janec starts off with an explanation rather than a title. An average day at the office for her can take place anywhere, and at any time, but the assignment is the same: to index video testimonies from Holocaust survivors and witnesses. Often working from her laptop at a café or library, she closely watches the interviews, and using judgment and discretion, assigns key terms to each section of the testimony.
/ Friday, December 19, 2014
With the publication of her book Une vie contre une autre (One Life Against Another) historian Sonia Combe has become one of the first French scholars to extensively use the Visual History Archive in academic research – and she hopes many other researchers will follow in her footsteps.
/ Monday, December 22, 2014
Melissa Kravetz and Jenna Leventhal first met as undergraduate history majors at UC Santa Barbara over 10 years ago. Now, they are working together to introduce students to testimony through IWitness.
/ Thursday, December 25, 2014
Former Auschwitz: The Past is Present teacher Miljenko Hajdarovic announced that he has been chosen to join 300 other educators to completely reform the Croatian national curriculum.
a70, educator / Monday, January 5, 2015
As School Library Media Specialist at Clark Mills Elementary School in Manalapan, New Jersey, Gail Murray introduces not just one class each year but many to USC Shoah Foundation testimony in order to supplement their learning about the Holocaust.Murray wanted to complement the fourth- and fifth grade units on the Holocaust with age-appropriate content in the library, so she researched possible websites, literature and videos that would enhance what they are learning in their classrooms. She said she felt that she “hit gold” when she found USC Shoah Foundation and IWitness.
/ Thursday, January 8, 2015
On her first-ever trip outside North America, Barbara Fowler will join 24 other teachers from around the world to help commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland by learning new methods for teaching the Holocaust.
/ Monday, January 12, 2015
The students in Lynne Ravas’ eighth grade English class at Lower Dauphin Middle School in Hummelstown, Penn., explore topics relating to the Holocaust not through research papers, but with videos in IWitness.
/ Friday, January 16, 2015
Traveling to Poland for Auschwitz: The Past is Present will be a homecoming of sorts for Sabina Kobinski, who will return to her family’s homeland and the place where her own uncle was imprisoned during the Holocaust.
/ Monday, January 19, 2015
Marissa Roy says she didn’t quite know what to expect when she went to Rwanda on the 2013 Problems Without Passports trip – and she wants this year’s class to have the same experience.
/ Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Bobbie Downs saw firsthand how genocide affects people when she taught Sudanese refugees in Cairo, and she will expand on this knowledge when she joins survivors, educators, students and thousands of others to attend the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27.
/ Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Lyndsay Fleming teaches sixth grade social studies at East Cobb Middle School in Marietta, Georgia.I first learned about IWitness from Jane Moore during a professional learning day. I was interested in using the website in my classroom because of the primary and secondary sources and interviews of Holocaust survivors. One of the major benefits of the website is the premade lesson and activities as well as being able to create your own. 
/ Thursday, January 22, 2015
Steven Howell realized how important it is to teach the Holocaust when he encountered anti-Semitism in his own classroom.He had just begun teaching at James A. Garfield High School, a small rural school in Garettsville, Ohio, when he found that the students had not read The Diary of Anne Frank. He taught them the historical context of the book, which they knew little about, but after two weeks he walked into his classroom to find a cross with two swastikas, on which was printed “Back off.”
/ Friday, January 23, 2015
For Johanna Söderholm, an English professor at Vaasa University and Abo Akademi University in Finland, there was no better time than now to go to Poland and participate in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program.
/ Thursday, February 5, 2015
It is time for USC Shoah Foundation to welcome its next Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service Ambassador.
/ Monday, February 9, 2015
Vicki Kessler’s students watch testimonies in IWitness to practice their French, and to enhance their study of the Holocaust and genocide.
/ Thursday, February 12, 2015
Hema Panesar has just joined the USC Shoah Foundation education team as coordinator of educational programs, bringing experience in digital education, museums and history.Panesar received her bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley and master’s in museum studies from New York University. Her master’s thesis was titled “Digitize Me: Museum Educators and Their Digital Oriented Visitors,” and it focused on how museum visitors are becoming more central to the museum experience, particularly digitally and online.
/ Tuesday, February 17, 2015
USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Erna Viterbi, philanthropist and longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation.Erna Finci Viterbi, a descendant of Sephardic Jews, was born in Sarajevo but fled Yugoslavia with her family during World War II. They were deported to the Parma region of Italy and interned in the village Gramignazzo di Sissa, but were saved from deportation to the extermination camps by the townspeople. Erna and her family were able to escape to Switzerland for the rest of the war. In 1950, they moved to California.
/ Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Rosa Lamb teaches 11th and 12th grade Global Studies: Holocaust and Genocide at Lake View High School in Chicago.How do you use IWitness in your class?I used it last year to have students make an IWitness video. The students created videos used for the purpose of teaching others about a specific theme or topic of the Holocaust. What kinds of reactions do students have to watching testimony?
/ Friday, February 20, 2015
Adam Herceg, a Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century graduate from Slovakia, marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day at his school on January 27 by showing testimony of a survivor his students already felt a strong connection to.
/ Monday, February 23, 2015
Kiril Feferman’s research topic may be rarely studied now, but that may change after his fellowship at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.
cage, fellowship / Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Meg Lipstone and her son, Jack, 13, are eager to start spreading the word about IWitness as part of USC Shoah Foundation’s new IWitness Advocacy program.
/ Monday, March 2, 2015
Ian McAvoy, an English teacher at University City High School in San Diego, discovered the IWitness Video Challenge and was so impressed that he invited staff from USC Shoah Foundation to give a presentation on IWitness to the other teachers at his school. One of those teachers, Susan Bristol, found it such a powerful experience that she adopted IWitness in her own classroom.
/ Thursday, March 5, 2015
While most scholars listen to testimony for what survivors say about historical events and personal experiences, Isaac Bleaman studies how they say it.
/ Monday, March 9, 2015
Tenth grade world history teacher Joseph Christensen, from Northwest Career and Technical Academy in Las Vegas, is an avid user of IWitness after discovering it a year ago.Last year he attended a professional development program about teaching Holocaust in the classroom. One of the presenters showed the IWitness website and database and explained how he used it in his classroom. After searching through the website, Christensen decided to also give it a try.
/ Thursday, March 12, 2015
Rob Kuznia joined the communications department of USC Shoah Foundation as publicist last fall. Today, he is celebrating a major accomplishment from his previous life as a journalist: a Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.
/ Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Diane Wohl first visited USC Shoah Foundation when it was housed in trailers on the Universal Studios backlot nearly 20 years ago, and her support for its mission and programs has only continued to grow over the years.
/ Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Alice Herscovitch first became Executive Director of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre in 2007, and it didn’t take long for her realize the incredible untapped resource that was the MHMC’s collection of 550 Holocaust survivor testimonies.“I knew we had an extraordinary collection, but for what?” Herscovitch recalled. “Why did we record these if we’re not going to do something with them?”
/ Monday, March 23, 2015
Dawn Skorczewski started out studying the role of the interviewer in Holocaust survivor testimony, but before long, she was captivated by the Visual History Archive’s great wealth of material on survivors from the Netherlands.
/ Wednesday, March 25, 2015

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