As an intern at the USC Shoah Foundation and a student on the Problems Without Passports trip to Rwanda this summer, I’m more than familiar with the phrases “Never Forget” and “Never Again.” Sometimes the two seem like tired mottos. They’re valid and true, but oftentimes I think I miss the full impact of those few words.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, USC Professor of neuroscience Antonio Damasio discusses how personal stories can evoke deep empathy for human tragedy.

Educators attending the International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE) Conference and Expo this weekend will explore IWitness at an interactive “playground” – a showcase awarded to select educational resources.

Echoes and Reflections, the multimedia Holocaust education program of which USC Shoah Foundation is a founding partner, introduced a brand-new website and updated teacher’s guide that includes new content and reflects the most current pedagogy for teaching about the Holocaust.

The Problems Without Passports class hit the ground running in Kigali, Rwanda, spending their first four days in the country visiting genocide memorials and meeting with survivor support groups.

USC Trustee Andrew Viterbi PhD ’62 and his wife, Erna, have given $5 million to USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. It is the largest gift the Institute has received since it became part of USC in 2006.

In January 2014, four scholars from the “Holocaust Geographies Collaborative”—an international, interdisciplinary group of researchers evaluated the link between personal testimony, the index of the archive and geography.

I was born and brought up in a university town in the Czech Republic called Olomouc. It had a small Jewish community.   My father is a writer and academic.  Five years ago he interviewed Milos Dobry who was a prominent member of the Olomouc Jewish community and a long-term Holocaust survivor.  His story was fascinating - about how he and his brother had survived Terezín and Auschwitz and how Milos had gone on to have a successful career as an inventor and sports personality.  I went to meet Milos Dobry personally to further interview him about his history.

High school students from Sopron, Hungary, have created a traveling exhibition to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the deportations of Jews from Hungary during World War II, drawing from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive for their research.

June 20 is World Refugee Day, dedicated to raising awareness about refugees throughout the world, a day on which I inevitably always look back on the formative years of my life.

In 1991, my family and I were forced out of our home in Croatia because of our ethnic origin, and we began a life of exile, torn from everything known and dear to us and forced to swim in the uncharted waters of life as a refugee. Our lives had been changed drastically; a life of abundance had become a life of misery.