After signing the Munich Agreement in September 1938 and under the pretext of protecting the interests of ethnic Germans who agitated for Nazi rule, Hitler annexed the Czechoslovakian borderlands. While some still hoped that giving up Czechoslovak territory would bring peace, the agreement signed by Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and France meant the beginning of occupation for the citizens of Czechoslovakia.

The weekend before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, experts from Yad Vashem, the Department for Education and Culture of the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Terezin Memorial, and USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education held training seminars for teachers in the Czech Republic. The Institute presented its Czech-language educational resources, which are based on the testimony of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses; the seminars reached teachers in the cities of Karlovy Vary, Ostrov nad Ohří and Plzeň.

Holocaust survivor testimony has made possible a Czech-language resource for education that illuminates the wartime history of the Czech government-in-exile.

USC Shoah Foundation’s online exhibit Born in the City that Became Auschwitz is now available in French, Italian, Russian, Slovak, Hungarian, Spanish, Arabic, Polish and Czech. All versions are available here on the USC Shoah Foundation website.

Twenty years since its founding, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains a vibrant presence in the Czech Republic to educate the next generation about genocide and tolerance through the use of its Holocaust survivor testimonies.

In partnership with Charles University in Prague, ITS has developed software that enables Czech users to search the Visual History Archive in their own language.

USC Shoah Foundation has published a new online exhibit and two new IWitness activities that expand the Institute’s educational offerings in terms of language and subject matter.

The Czech project Ours or Foreign? Jews in the Czech 20th Century delivered materials and training to 600 educators in the last fiscal year and added a new unit on the Terezín family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau featuring testimony clips from the Visual History Archive.

Students at the Ronald Lauder Jewish School in Prague debuted the short films they made using testimony from the Visual History Archive.

IWitness is expanding its offerings for non-English speakers.

In order to properly educate more Czech teachers on how to fully utilize IWitness programs, Senior International Program Consultant and Regional Consultant in the Czech Republic Martin Šmok is holding two teacher training sessions in August.