For several months now I have been interning with USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, working with the educational programming department. The Shoah-the Hebrew word meaning ‘catastrophe’- Foundation has catalogued over 50,000 holocaust survivor’s testimonies from Jews, to Gypsies, to Jehovah’s Witness, from survivors, to liberators, to prosecutors, to nurses. Endowed by Steven Spielberg after his research for ‘Schindler’s List,’ the foundation works on online exhibits, teaching materials, cataloguing/indexing, interviewing, and does work to prevent further genocides.
My first project with the department was to work on an online exhibit for Yom Hashoah, the international day for Holocaust remembrance, called “Witnesses for Change: Stories of Liberation.”
"He held the door open for me and let me proceed in and restored me to my humanity again."-Gerda Klein, Holocaust survivor, on her liberation experience.
This exhibit takes snippits of testimony speaking of their experience being liberated from and liberating concentration camps. I did research about the people who gave the testimonies in this exhibit, and helped choose/edit the clips featured, wrote the biographies of the people.
Learning something from the Holocaust is a cause near and dear to my heart, not only because of the people I know but because the only way we can atone for the passive inaction of our past is to take action for the future. Nothing is more humbling than hearing these amazing stories of making good out of one of the most horrible acts of human existence. I am really, really proud of this exhibit, probably more proud of it than anything I have done in a while. So…you should check it out.
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