Our thoughts are with the families and community of those who were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh -- the most deadly antisemitic attack in U.S. history. We have curated a handful of resources to help educators engage students in meaningful dialogue.

The Holocaust collection in USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive contains nearly 53,000 testimonies; however, only a mere six of those testimonies are from survivors who were persecuted by the Nazis for being gay: one in English, three in German, one in French, and one in Dutch. There are other gay survivors we have in the Archive, but they were persecuted by the Nazis for the greater sin of being Jewish; Gad Beck being one of them. The meager number says a lot about the history of the gay men who lived through the Nazi regime and who came out the other end willing and unafraid to speak about their lives.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the first integration of Armenian Genocide testimonies into the Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation will release one clip from the Armenian Genocide collection on the Institute’s website each day for the next 30 days.

A three-day seminar will be held November 22-24 in Kyiv to train Ukrainian teachers of social sciences and humanities, university tutors of law and human rights activists on the use of a new multimedia teacher’s guide titled Where do Human Rights Begin: History and Contemporary Approaches.

The Junior Interns will spend the next several months engrossing themselves in analyzing what attitudes breed hatred and intolerance, how they can spread positive moral authority and how to become an active participant in civil society, using USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness activities and the Visual History Archive.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research invites research proposals from advanced standing Ph.D. candidates for its 2016-2017 Inaugural Robert J. Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies. The fellowship provides $4,000 support for dissertation research focused on testimony from the Visual History Archive.

Historian and filmmaker Christian Delage gave a public lecture at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research about different forms of testimony — in war crimes trials, oral history repositories, and documentary - and his recent project collecting interviews about the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

The 54,000 voices of genocide survivors and eyewitnesses preserved in the Visual History Archive can inspire and guide us while we make the sometimes difficult choices to be tolerant, to become educated, to stand up and take action against the many wrongs in the world.

In 2017, Mr. Feingold recorded a more than 4 hour testimony with USC Shoah Foundation as part of the Last Chance Testimony Collection, enabling Holocaust survivors to share their stories for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive—before it is too late—where they will exist in perpetuity.

In the immediate aftermath of the Armenian genocide, thousands of Armenian survivors recorded testimonies detailing the atrocities they witnessed at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I. And yet it wouldn’t be until the 1990s before historians would begin taking these oral histories seriously.

In recognition of their longstanding commitment to humanitarian causes and support of veterans, Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks were presented the Ambassador for Humanity Award by Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, USC trustee and founder of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is a scholar of early modern history, specializing in Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, cultural, legal, and social history, as well as the history of transmission of historical knowledge in the premodern and modern periods. Dr.

"New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison" 

Polish educators shared the innovative ways they have used testimony in their classrooms since they completed USC Shoah Foundation’s Master Teacher program last year.

Czech educators are gathering at the Academy of Sciences in Prague today to attend a conference dedicated to the "Ours or Foreign? Jews in the Czech 20th Century" project from the Jewish Museum of Prague.

UCLA emeritus professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History Richard Hovannisian will meet with staff at USC Shoah Foundation on September 17.

On April 21 through 23, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute participated in an international conference, "History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture." The conference asked the question of whether ethical or aesthetic limits should be placed on how the Holocaust is represented in fiction or nonfiction.

After signing the Munich Agreement in September 1938 and under the pretext of protecting the interests of ethnic Germans who agitated for Nazi rule, Hitler annexed the Czechoslovakian borderlands. While some still hoped that giving up Czechoslovak territory would bring peace, the agreement signed by Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and France meant the beginning of occupation for the citizens of Czechoslovakia.

You never know what you will find in the Visual History Archive. You hear stories of survival, death, life, hope and even friendship amidst the chaos of genocide. Sidney Shafner and Marcel Levy have remained friends for over 70 years – since the liberation of the concentration camp Dachau.

Join the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust and the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education as we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day with the official launch of the Project on Bioethics and the Holocaust: Using Testimony in Medical and Health Professions Education.

In her public lecture on Feb. 9 at USC, Walch outlined the process by which Jews in Berlin lost their rights, access to public spaces, ability to move freely, and finally their own homes, from 1933-38. Throughout her talk, Walch referred to the testimonies in the Visual History Archive.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross.

I recently emailed a teacher to ask if he was willing to be featured in a profile story on the USC Shoah Foundation website about his experiences using IWitness in his classroom. I had never been introduced to him and he had not been expecting to hear from me.

This article is part of a newsletter series introducing librarians who are advocates for the VHA at their institutions.

LOS ANGELES, DECEMBER 18, 2014 – USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education announces Preserving the Legacy, an initiative that will use the Institute’s state-of-the-art infrastructure to digitize, index and integrate videotaped Holocaust testimony taken by other organizations around the world into the Visual History Archive. The first partner USC Shoah Foundation is working with on this new initiative is Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) of San Francisco Bay Area.

A testimony-based audiovisual resource for educators in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary is now available online.

The USC Shoah Foundation has named two key members to its senior leadership team, Senior Director of Programs Catherine E. Clark and Director of Administration Jenna Leventhal. The appointments represent a pivotal restructuring under the leadership of Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Robert J. Williams as the organization marks its 30th anniversary amid a global rise in antisemitism.

Twenty years since its founding, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains a vibrant presence in the Czech Republic to educate the next generation about genocide and tolerance through the use of its Holocaust survivor testimonies.

With the arrival of new testimonies and indexers, USC Shoah Foundation is advancing to the next stage of its Preserving the Legacy initiative.

Los Angeles, May 25, 2017 – USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education has partnered with the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) to integrate all videos from the AGBU WebTalks series—addressing both the Armenian Genocide and Armenian identity—into USC Shoah Foundation’s award-winning IWitness educational website.