LOS ANGELES—The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation launched its Armenian Genocide Collection in the Visual History Archive in April. Now, a new information Quest Activity about the Armenian Genocide is available for students and educators to view in IWitness.

The Armenian Genocide Information Quest introduces students to the context of the Armenian Genocide and includes clips of survivor testimonies about deportation, forced marches, hiding and perpetrators. Students engage with the testimonies using a built-in tool that enables each to construct a word cloud, a fitting title, a meaningful quotation, and a personal response to reflect individual feelings and perceptions about the story.

Through this activity, students will learn about the history of the Armenian Genocide, learn to identify the differences between sources of information on the same topic, and recognize the value of multiple perspectives in the learning process.

Weeks after the first 60 testimonies of the Armenian Genocide Collection were incorporated in the Visual History Archive, 12 of those testimonies were added to IWitness. The 12 full testimonies include survivors such as Samuel Kadorian and Haroutune Aivazain, as well as witness Nium Sukkar and Henry Morgenthau III, grandson of U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau.

All the testimonies are fully indexed. IWitness now includes 26 new indexing terms that are used in the Armenian testimonies, such as “Young Turks,” “Tehcir Law,” “gendarme,” and “Euphrates River.”