Thanks to the worldwide success of the Oscar-winning film, the history of the Holocaust has been fundamentally opened to the public. As Rena Finder says “It seemed like the wall of silence fell down”. Many witnesses and survivors, after watching the film, decided for the first time to talk about what they had gone through.
Steven Spielberg, therefore, in 1994, founded the organization now called USC Shoah Foundation: The Institute for Visual History and Education, which collects testimonies of witnesses from around the world. Today, the visual archive includes over 55,000 testimonies that capture the memories of not only Holocaust survivors, but also witnesses of other genocides and incidents of mass violence.
Pause a moment, and imagine the ring being given to Oskar Schindler by the Jews here in this place at the end of the war.
- Then, write a sentence on what you think this phrase means: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”