June 18 saw the U.S. premiere of a set of piano variations on a Polish patriotic theme composed in the Dachau concentration camp by prisoner of war Leon Kaczmarek (1903–1973). Kaczmarek’s composition was performed by 17-year-old pianist Nicholas Biniaz-Harris, winner of the National Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 Young Soloists’ Competition.
Testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide added to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive have resulted in 500 new search terms for the archive’s indexing system.
The index is a controlled vocabulary of more than 50,000 terms that make up the Shoah Foundation’s Thesaurus and that allow detailed searching of the testimonies in the archive.
USC Shoah Foundation and the Armenian Film Foundation have announced a new joint goal: By the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 2015, they will integrate into the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive the more than 400 interviews of survivors of the genocide that were filmed by the late Dr. J.
A key USC Shoah Foundation partner’s mission of upgrading public school access to broadband Internet has earned a boost from President Obama. The nonprofit organization EducationSuperHighway works to ensure that every K-12 school in the nation has the necessary capacity to fully leverage the possibilities offered by digital education and online learning. EducationSuperHighway’s advocacy was instrumental in the president’s announcement of ConnectED, an initiative to connect 99 percent of U.S. students to high-speed Internet within the next five years.
The Swedish Embassy today announced funding for an ambitious new Rwanda-wide peace-building program. The Rwanda Peace Education Programme is designed to counter behavioral risk factors for genocide by promoting social cohesion, pluralism, personal responsibility, empathy, critical thinking and action to build a more peaceful society.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) held its semiannual Plenary meetings in Berlin, Germany from 11-14 June 2013 under the Canadian Chairmanship.
USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with the American Sephardi Federation and other organizations to undertake the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish Testimony Collection, a new initiative to document the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience during World War II and the Holocaust.
Kori Street, PhD, director of education for USC Shoah Foundation, will deliver a presentation about its IWitness Program at the University of Miami’s 12th annual Holocaust Teacher Summer Institute on June 13, 2013. Street’s talk, “Learning to Use Holocaust Survivor Testimony in the Classroom,” will address the program’s value in teaching eyewitness history, as well as its ability to help build digital literacy. The Holocaust Teacher Institute is sponsored by the University of Miami School of Education & Human Development and the Miami Dade County Public Schools.
Holocaust survivors from the Bay Area of California who have shared their experiences on video, and in numerous in-person appearances, were recognized for their contributions at a ceremony in San Francisco on June 9, 2013.