In just a few short months I will be holding a new born baby in my arms. The depth and complexity of emotion that I feel as this time approaches is multiplied by the experiences I have had working at USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. New acquaintances who inquire about what I do for a living often respond by saying, “Gosh, that must be depressing.” And my response has always been the same, “Actually, it is amazing and inspiring.” And it truly is.

The second IWitness educator workshop in Rwanda will be held next week, and will incorporate new elements to provide an experience unique from the first workshop last November.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, USC screenwriting professor Ted Braun discusses Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing and what it brings to our understanding of violence.

Alexovics Ingrid írása a vizuális archívumok oktatási célú felhasználásának lehetőségeiről

Kizito Kalima speaks on how he received an athletic scholarship while living in a refugee camp, which eventually led to his immigration to America. He also describes how playing basketball was a positive outlet for him as a young man.  

Hank Schwab describes the structure of his primary and high school in Germany. He also reflects on the close relationships he formed with his Jewish and gentile classmates. Schwab and fellow survivors returned to Germany for the first time since WWII, for their 50th high school reunion.

Students may still be enjoying their summer vacation, but the new school year is just around the corner. USC Shoah Foundation has prepared a convenient one-stop-shop of all its educational resources to help educators plan to teach with testimony this year.

Joel Citron is CEO of Tenth Avenue Holdings. Citron has served on the Board of Directors of several public and private companies in Europe and the U.S. Citron is also actively involved in philanthropy. He is currently President of the Board of Trustees at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York (N-12th grade), a board member of USC Shoah Foundation and Starfall Education Foundation. Citron holds an MA in Economics and a BSc in Business Administration from the University of Southern California.

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.

A series of Croatian-language Holocaust lessons commissioned in 2006 by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports is now available on USC Shoah Foundation’s website. The lessons draw on testimony to teach various aspects of the Holocaust in Croatia.

USC and UCLA may be rivals on the football field, but they came together for a very important cause last week - the Armenian Genocide collection.

Jewish survivor Felix Flicker joined the Soviet Armed Forces in 1943. Flicker recalls arriving at Majdanek concentration camp after it was liberated in July 1944. He describes the prisoners looking like skeletons and the arrests and executions of the camp guards.

On August 2nd, 1944 the Zigeunerlager (known as the Gypsy famliy camp) in Auschwitz- Birkeanau was liquidated and about 3,000 Sinti and Roma men, women and children were sent to the gas chambers. In honor of the Sinti and Roma victims in the Holocaust, survivors Wladyslaw Gunman, Anna Kwiatkowska and Marianna Koniak speak about their experiences with discrimination, restrictions, deportations and mass murder.

A group of men is placed in several trucks. They are driven through the streets and out of town into an open area surrounded by trees. They are beaten around the head with rifle butts, made to run in a group towards an open mass grave. A mere handful of armed guards make them lie in the grave like sardines. Then they are shot one by one in broad daylight. The horrific spectacle, highly reminiscent of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen Aktions in the Soviet Union in 1941, was, in fact, the mass murder of some 30 men that took place in Iraq just this week. 

July 24, 2014: Harry Reicher, Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania and USC Shoah Foundation's inaugural Rutman Teaching Fellow, utilized his fellowship to collect Holocaust survivor testimony content he could utilize in his classes, which currently make liberal use of multimedia content.Featuring historical footage, Nazi propaganda film, modern cinema clips, and Visual History Archive testimony, Reicher's lecture provided an overview of the Nazi legal system and demonstrated the value of film in teaching this subject.

Leo Hymas, United States Armed Forces and Buchenwald camp liberator speaks only for the second time in his life about a particular combat operation in Düsseldorf, Germany. This testimony clip was featured in the lesson, Heroes, from Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century.

One year after learning how to incorporate testimony into their lesson plans, the 2013 Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century graduates in Hungary returned for a follow-up session to share the lessons they have now piloted in their classrooms.

Ingrid Alexovics is the head of the Foreign Language Department at Radnóti Miklós Economic Secondary School in Pécs, Hungary. She holds a master’s degree in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts, University of Pécs. She has taught English as a foreign language and English for specific purposes for over 20 years to high school students and adults. She worked as a Fulbright exchange teacher in Atlantic City High School, New Jersey during the academic year of 2009/2010.

For years now I have noticed that my students are especially interested in the information from non- traditional educational channels; visual and auditory information are often more welcome than academic texts from their books. The reason, we have experienced a shift in the methods that young people process information these days. 

The Spring 2014 issue of PastForward includes an excerpt of director Joshua Oppenheimer’s talk, which he gave in Los Angeles on the eve of the Oscars, describing his own journey of discovery as he encountered perpetrators willing to describe, even boast about, their acts of killing.

Throughout August 1944 the Lodz ghetto was liquidated until almost all the ghetto inhabitants were finally deported to Auschwitz. Philip Ravski recalls the liquidation and how his family evaded deporation until the end of August.

Dario Gabbai, whose testimony is in the Visual History Archive, stopped by the USC Shoah Foundation last week to donate World War II era documents and artifacts for preservation and research.

Dario Gabbai recalls his experiences as a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. He was forced to usher people into gas chambers, and then haul out the bodies, take them to the crematorium, and clean up the room for the next group of victims.

USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with its first Jewish day school – Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Jersey – to introduce teachers to methods of teaching with testimony and incorporate the Institute's educational materials into the school curriculum.

USC Shoah Foundation’s international conference Nov. 16-18 will begin with a panel that brings together experts in using digital archives in education.

Rita Feder was a young girl during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and remembers how desperately she wanted to attend the games but was unable to because she was Jewish. Feder recalls how dangerous it was for Jews during that time even though there was an international audience in Berlin.

Emberek egy csoportját teherautókra rakják. A városon keresztül egy erdei tisztásra hajtanak velük, leszállítják őket, és puskatussal kergetik az előre megásott tömegsír felé. Őrök kényszerítik, hogy szardínia módjára helyezkedjenek el a gödörben. Azután egyenként végeznek velük.

Art engages broader audiences and raises awareness of genocide in Rwanda, says Kwibuka20 international creative director Stacie Chaiken in the spring 2014 issue of PastForward.

Herbert Achtentuch remembers when he and other Jewish school children were expelled from their school and forced to attend a school in the Jewish district of Vienna. He also recalls the anti-Semitism and violence from former gentile students.