Junior Intern Charlotte Masters made a very personal discovery during the trip to Poland and continues to share her experiences today.

Learning from eyewitnesses of some of history’s darkest moments, educators strive to teach the power of decency and respect.

The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, founded by USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith and James Smith, will commemorate its 20th anniversary June 26 with a service at Westminster Abbey in London.

USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith is an executive producer of the film, and most of the survivors featured in the film also gave their testimonies to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

The ties between Cornell University and USC Shoah Foundation are many, and now, they are permanent: The Cornell University Library has acquired access to the Visual History Archive in perpetuity. Cornell University became the 52nd site to provide full access to the archive on an annual basis in November 2015, and the impact on research and education has been significant. This impact can now continue for generations to come, as the witnesses who gave testimony had hoped.

11:30 am PST/2:30 pm EST/6:30 am AEDT (+1) The film will be available to stream for a fee of $12 between Jan. 25-28.  Live Virtual Conversation event is free and features:  Zuzanna Surowy, Lead Actress  Steven Oritt, Director/Producer Mickey Shapiro, Executive Producer, USC Shoah  Foundation Board of Councilors Exec. Committee Member Moderated by Stephen D. Smith, Co-Producer and Finci-Viterbi Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation 

Join Dr. Ruth Westheimer in conversation with Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein after a screening of her animated short film "Ruth: A Little Girl's Big Journey," told in her own voice as she recounts how she survived the Holocaust as a young girl.

In spring 1944, after losing nearly his entire family on the day they arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 22-year-old Dario Gabbai was assigned to one of the special units of Jewish prisoners required to work in the gas chambers and crematoria: the Sonderkommando.

A delegation of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education supporters and board members will travel to Hungary and Poland this October to commemorate the Institute’s 20th anniversary and learn more about its work in Eastern Europe.

Graduates of the Institute’s Master Teacher Program will debut IWitness next week at the 2012 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Conference, demonstrating how the award-winning website, now in beta, weaves together digital literacy development, online citizenship, and tolerance education based on the life stories of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

The first-ever winner of the IWitness Video Challenge has been chosen: Voices of Our Journey, by Ruth Hernandez.

The Power of Words activity is inspired by Elie Wiesel; thousands of students read his memoir Night every year to learn about the Holocaust. Students will consider the ways in which speaking and writing might empower survivors.

The new activity Growing Up Behind the Barbed Wire at Auschwitz is part of IWitness’s Auschwitz: The Past is Present content to commemorate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Professor Marion Kaplan, 2018-2019 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, gave the annual Shapiro Scholar public lecture on gender and the Holocaust.

For years, Celina Biniaz, one of the youngest people saved by Oskar Schindler, did not tell anyone – not even her children – that she was a Holocaust survivor. She feared no one could comprehend what she had been through, and she didn’t want to impose the trauma of her childhood upon her son and daughter. Celina’s reluctance to speak ended in 1994. That year, director Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List. He established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became the USC Shoah Foundation.

Echoes and Reflections—a multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust (www.echoesandreflections.org) is the result of an unprecedented partnership, combining the national outreach network of the Anti-Defamation League, the unmatched visual history resources of the Shoah Foundation, and the historical expertise of Yad Vashem. The pedagogical experience of the three organizations produced the most comprehensive curriculum on the Holocaust available to date.

It had been a long week and Renee Firestone was tired. But when a group of students showed up on Friday at the dark studio where she had spent days answering questions about her life, her mood quickly brightened, her energy restored.

The resolution was led by the Mission of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations and had the support of over 80 member countries.

Testimony clips about immigration will serve as the inspiration for students entering this year’s competition, open to grades 6-12.

Sara Cohan, USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian education program consultant, will give a presentation for educators called “Women’s Voices: Testimony as a Tool of Empowerment.”

Educators learned how Holocaust survivor testimonies from the Visual History Archive can help them teach early conflict prevention and cultural sensitivity at a workshop led by USC Shoah Foundation’s Ukrainian regional consultant, Anna Lenchovska.

A public lecture by Mélanie Péron (University of Pennsylvania) 2016 Rutman Fellow for Research and Teaching This event will take place at the University of Pennsylvania.

USC Shoah Foundation is deeply saddened by the passing of Hannah Kent, who survived three concentration camps and a death march, but went on to live a full life filled with love, family and resolve. She was 88. Born Hanka Szarkman on Oct. 9, 1929, in Lodz, Poland, Hannah Kent was the wife of Roman Kent, a Life Member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors and a leader in the Holocaust survivor movement. Hannah and Roman Kent met in New York after World War II and married in 1957. They had two children, Jeffrey and Susan.

We mourn the murder of George Floyd and join the outcry for justice in his name. He is now linked to countless others who have suffered systemic violence, injustice and hate perpetrated against African Americans throughout a 400-year history in this nation. This legacy and manifestation of hate is still present today.

In this program, Stephen D. Smith, the Finci Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, and Mary Pat Higgins, President, and CEO of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, will discuss the cutting-edge new technologies in storytelling and virtual reality and how they are being implemented in the museum space.

Presented as part of USC’s Genocide Awareness Week, three events organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute will explore artistic responses to genocide, highlighting the ability of creative expression to shine light in the darkness and give voice to silence. The events will reveal the power of the arts to communicate messages of survival and hope in the face of great tragedy. The series is sponsored by the USC Visions and Voices initiative.

Holocaust survivor testimony to enhance education initiative in the Czech Republic In the Czech Republic, Holocaust survivors’ eyewitness testimonies will soon be used to teach a different aspect of local history: the imprisonment of Czechoslovak citizens in the Soviet Gulag.

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.

USC Shoah Foundation is hosting staff of the Guatemalan nonprofit La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG) in Los Angeles this week so that the two organizations may learn from each other and take steps toward future collaboration.

Students are introduced to a Holocaust survivor named Roman Kent, who survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz and being separated from his family, in this Information Quest.