About the project

The project “Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future: Research-Based Digital Learning from Testimonies of Survivors and Rescuers of the Holocaust” (ID 740639658) is hosted at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (Research Group 6 on Translation and Reception Studies). The project was funded for 15 months between 5 April 2021 and 4 July 2022 by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) via the Program Portugal and the Holocaust: Research and Memory, Special Support for R&D with the total funding of 33,656 EUR. 

Via the international partnership (USC Shoah Foundation, Zachor Foundation, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, and the University of Luxembourg), we have developed a suite of materials for educators and the general public and carried out related activities using testimonies from witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust through digital tools, and with innovative pedagogical methodology. The major achievements and key dissemination activities of the Project include:

1) Research was conducted in the Visual History Archive of the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation (an archive that contains 54,975 video testimonies of survivors and rescuers of the Holocaust); 

2) 6 digital testimony-based educational activities were developed and published on the IWitness platform in Portuguese; 

3) A Portuguese-language microsite was created on the IWitness platform for all developed content containing all resources;

4) 3 teacher training courses have been held (with an innovative methodology of teaching about the Holocaust with testimonies)

5) The teaching materials were evaluated and tested (with students)

6) 2 testimony-based local history programs were created and published in the international free-of-charge mobile application of the USC Shoah Foundation (IWalk). The app allows a self-guiding conduct, but it can be guided by experts; 

7) 2 dissemination events were held for the local history walk programs.