United States Armed Forces veteran Leonard Lubin fought on the western front and liberated concentration camps in Austria. After war ended in Europe he waited along with his comrades to be deployed to the Pacific. He describes hearing about the atomic bombing of Japan and that war had ended in WWII when Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945.

Former congresswoman and war crimes trial participant Elizabeth Holtzman remembers working with Julian Bond during the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960’s.

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.

Educators are invited to participate in a free IWitness webinar Thurs., Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. PST, to learn more about integrating IWitness into their curriculum.

Rita Berger describes what happened to her father and older brother during the Polenaktion, Oct. 27-30, 1938. The Polenaktion was the expulsion of 1,500 to 6,000 Jews from Berlin, who were then forced to go to Poland.

Jan Karski recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking his life in order to alert the world about the Holocaust. For World Humanitarian Day Karski speaks on the importance of standing up against intolerance.

Armin T. Wegner was in the German Sanitary Corps and was posted to Eastern Turkey during WWI.  There he was witness to the genocide of the Armenian people. Seeing the devastating consequences of the deportations he documented the genocide in photographs, keeping meticulous notes at great personal risk.Wegner was arrested for his covert documentation, but was able to smuggle his photographs back to Germany. These photographs were later used in German Court as evidence that genocide had indeed taken place in Eastern Anatolia against the Armenian people.

After watching testimony in the Visual History Archive, many students say they feel like they really “met” the survivors they watched. Véronique Mickisch actually did.

Esther Fiszman immigrated to Australia after the Holocaust and found the people she met there to be kind, helpful and accepting. There were very few Jewish people in her town but she never experienced any anti-Semitism there.

USC Shoah Foundation Australia Regional Consultant Sarah Warby will speak about the power of teaching with testimony at Knox Grammar School’s Practicing Positive Education conference in Sydney, Aug. 28-29.

Fay Aronowicz talks about the Poligon Massacre in Lithuania in October 1941, in which 8,000 Jews were murdered. A Lithuanian police officer allowed her to leave the site of the impending massacre, but her mother had to stay behind.

The four undergraduates working with USC Shoah Foundation during the summer Research in Industrial Projects for Students (RIPS) program at UCLA presented their new method for achieving more relevant search results in the Visual History Archive to staff on Wednesday.

Testimony clip of Norma Dimitry was subtitled into Czech, for a presentation in Czech Republic on teaching about the refugee crisis with testimony.

I invite you to view a clip of Norma Dimitry’s testimony. The clip is subtitled into Czech, just in case some of my fellow Czechs were interested in learning more about the last time our country provided at least a safe transit route if not a safe haven to a mass of people.

The President of the Republic went on record to tell the prospective immigrants “nobody invited you here!” Refugees escaping from a murderous regime are regarded as agents of that very regime. Concerned citizens who never saw a refugee discuss them with great fear: refugees will take our jobs, kill our wives, rape our daughters. “We may take a few of those who can prove they are and always were Christians,” some interior ministry clerk declared.

When watching a testimony in the Visual History Archive, Liliane Weissberg pays close attention to the words the survivor is saying, and, just as importantly, to the silences in between those words.

Harold Brand describes how his family was one of the last to be deported to the Tarnów  ghetto in Poland. He continues to describe the last time he saw his parents and sister.

For the second year in a row, testimony from the Visual History Archive is inspiring teenagers to illustrate true scenes of the violation of human rights during the Stalin totalitarian regime and Nazi persecution of Jews in Ukraine.

Aaron Rosenfeld describes how he and others survived the attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine, by sharing food and resources with local farmers.

Nechama Ariel describes the different schools for Jewish children and Christian children in her town in Poland before the war. She explains the different subjects that were taught in each school.

With the first day of school already behind many students and teachers, USC Shoah Foundation is debuting several new educational materials that can help educators teach about genocide, civil rights, tolerance and other topics.

Alex Biniaz-Harris is a recent USC graduate, with Bachelor degrees in business and music. Alex has worked for USC Shoah Foundation for three years, as a communications and social media marketing intern. His grandmother, Celina Biniaz, and her parents Phyllis and Irwin Karp are survivors of Schindler’s List. Both Celina and Phyllis’s testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation hosted a special event titled The Digital Future of Holocaust Memory and Education in Aspen, Colorado, yesterday, to introduce new supporters to the work of the Institute.

Jona Goldrich discusses the roots of his charitable personality and giving. Growing up in Lviv, Poland, his family was considered well-off because they were able to put food on the table. His family would invite neighbors to eat dinner at their house on Saturday nights as tradition.

Tracy Sockalosky left Poland inspired by new ways she can incorporate testimony and the lessons she learned from "Auschwitz: The Past is Present" (APIP) into her courses at Wilson Middle School in Natick, Mass.

The Junior Intern Program at USC Shoah Foundation is entering its second year and looking for young people who are passionate about human rights and tolerance to be part of it.

IWitness regional consultant, Brandon Barr has been a Language Arts teacher in Chicago Public School district for the last ten years. This year, he will be teaching 6th grade Language Arts at Mark Twain Elementary. In January 2015, he participated in the "Past is Present" commemoration that marked the 70th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz in Poland.

As I start a new school year in a new school teaching a new grade level, I find it slightly ironic that the first theme that my textbook series addresses is courage. As I start another school year, I have thought deeply about courage and mix of emotions that come into play that very first day of school. Many may not readily admit it, but the first day of the school year for both teachers and students is filled nervousness and unease. A first impression is extremely important, and a good first day can set the tone for a very productive school year.