Essentials
The Holocaust Living History Workshop strives to overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry through Holocaust education. The Workshop:
* Trains the UCSD and San Diego communities to use the Visual History Archive on the UCSD campus
* Arranges meetings and presentations among local survivors, schools and community groupsAccesses helpful, related educational materials
* Provides a venue for Workshop participants to share what they have learned.
Holocaust
Living History Workshop
The Holocaust Living History Workshop at University of California, San Diego, connects undergraduate students with local survivors of the Holocaust to train the community in using the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive--a database of 52,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies founded by film maker Steven Spielberg--to experience the history told in the Archive.
According to the university, "Student volunteers have received special training on how to search through the testimonies in the massive Archive, and then teach survivors and their families—from multiple generations—how to use the database. These families can then use the archive to conduct their own searches in order to learn about other people, and in some cases relatives, who had similar Holocaust experiences. Since its inception in 2007, more than 1000 people have attended Workshop presentations and events at UCSD."
The Workshop also brings local survivors to the library to speak to students. The "Witnessing History" series in 2012, for example, included the events: "Andrew Viterbi Remembers Fleeing Fascism," "Robert Nichols Recalls German Tragedies," and "Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund and the Ghosts of Nuremberg."
The Workshop is directed by Professor Deborah Hertz of the UC San Diego History Department and Judaic Studies Program.
January 25, 2012 - Andrew J. Viterbi speaks at the Holocaust Living History Workshop. Viterbi was born in the Italian town of Bergamo in 1935. When life became more and more difficult for Jews in Mussolini’s Italy, his family decided to emigrate to the United States. Starting out as a virtually penniless refugee who could hardly speak English, Viterbi later rose to prominence as an electrical engineer, the inventor of the Viterbi algorithm, and the co-founder of Qualcom
March 7, 2012 - After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism, Ehrenfreund joined the US army and took part in the Allied reconquest of Western Europe under General Patton. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a reporter for the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. His experience in Nuremberg later resulted in the successful book The Nuremberg Legacy, written from the perspective of the eyewitness to history and of the Superior Court judg
January 25, 2012 - Andrew J. Viterbi speaks at the Holocaust Living History Workshop. Viterbi was born in the Italian town of Bergamo in 1935. When life became more and more difficult for Jews in Mussolini’s Italy, his family decided to emigrate to the United States. Starting out as a virtually penniless refugee who could hardly speak English, Viterbi later rose to prominence as an electrical engineer, the inventor of the Viterbi algorithm, and the co-founder of Qualcom
"As a son of Holocaust survivors, I greatly admire the Holocaust Living History Workshop's efforts in educating the community of San Diego about the Holocaust. The workshop has great educational speakers, and teaches the community how to use the Visual History Archive (VHA) available for viewing at UCSD. With an aging survivor community, many of their voices have been silenced. The workshop is a powerful educational resource."
--Michael Bart,
author of Until Our Last Breath
"As a son of Holocaust survivors, I greatly admire the Holocaust Living History Workshop's efforts in educating the community of San Diego about the Holocaust. The workshop has great educational speakers, and teaches the community how to use the Visual History Archive (VHA) available for viewing at UCSD. With an aging survivor community, many of their voices have been silenced. The workshop is a powerful educational resource."
--Michael Bart,
author of Until Our Last Breath
"... it was so much fun to pull away from traditional sources! I will honestly say, watching two VHA videos probably got me learning more than doing a research paper on a stack of books... Watching the videos, I could jump to the segments I was interested in AND learn a massive amount of details just in that one segment!"
--UCSD undergraduate