Explore South Africa’s tumultuous history from the early interactions between white European settlers and native African tribes to the implementation of apartheid and the long struggle for democracy.
Explore South Africa’s tumultuous history from the early interactions between white European settlers and native African tribes to the implementation of apartheid and the long struggle for democracy.
Explore the website of our core resource to get online readings, primary sources, and short documentary films on the challenging history of the Holocaust.
Explore our online resource on the Indian Residential Schools and their long-lasting effects on Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.
Explorez nos ressources en ligne sur les pensionnats autochtones et leurs effets à long terme sur les Peuples Autochtones au Canada.
This map of the Middle East shows the area presently inhabited by the Kurds. At the end of World War I, the Kurds were promised their own independent homeland under the Treaty of Sèvres. The treaty was never ratified, and the Kurds were divided mainly between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
Arch Oboler’s 1938 radio play, performed by Katharine Hepburn, pleaded with American audiences to offer more aid to Jewish refugee children. It aired as the country debated over the Wagner-Rogers Bill (Joint Resolution 64).
In 1971 British journalist Gitta Sereny interviewed former SS officer Franz Stangl — the commandant of the death camp Sobibor and later Treblinka. The responses to the questions Sereny posed are excerpted in this audio reading. Stangl was arrested in Brazil in 1967, tried and found guilty in West Germany in 1970. His sentence was life imprisonment and he died of heart failure six months into his term in the Düsseldorf prison.
Amin Maalouf, a French writer and author, believes that violence can be a result of tensions between identity and belonging. He writes about the need to find new ways to think about identity.
In this audio clip, an actor reads an excerpt from Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1940 work “The Moral Basis of Democracy,” which is featured in the resource book Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this clip, Roosevelt emphasizes the importance of equal opportunities and economic security for the strength of democracy.
In this audio clip, an actor reads a 1928 essay written by Eleanor Roosevelt titled “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” which is featured in the resource book Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this clip, Roosevelt explains some of the challenges facing women and defines success for women in politics.
In February 1946, following the end of WWII, Eleanor Roosevelt visited displaced persons camps in Germany where she met Jews who had survived the Holocaust. In this audio clip, featured in the resource book Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and read by an actor, Roosevelt reflects on her visit.
In this audio recording, an actor reads Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech delivered at the University of Paris, or the Sorbonne, in 1948, which is featured in the resource book Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the speech, Roosevelt describes the differences in the ways that people in the United States the and Soviet Union understood human rights.