Testimony in Academia

PastForward Spring 2011 The Sky’s theLimit An Interview with USC President c.l. max nikias Remembering Survival by christopher r. browning Setting theRecord Straight by omer bartov Emerging Insights: Testimony in Academia THE DIGEST OF THE USC SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE FOR VISUAL HISTORY AND EDUCATION Board of Councilors Steven Spielberg Honorary Chair Edgar M. Bronfman Honorary Co-chair Renée Crown Honorary Co-chair Lew Wasserman Honorary Co-chair in Memoriam Robert J. Katz Chair Susan Crown Vice chair Harry Robinson Vice chair Wallis Annenberg Russel Bernard Gerald Breslauer* Joel Citron Founding Executive Jerome Coben* Directors Stephen Cozen June Beallor David Eisman James Moll Phyllis Epstein Emanuel Gerard* Founding Advisory Eric Greenberg Committee Joel Greenberg Karen Kushell Marcy B. Gringlas Branko Lustig Marc Grossman Gerald R. Molen Yossie Hollander William Lauder Executive Staff Stephen Smith Lee Liberman Skip Paul Executive Director Bruce Ramer Kim Simon Michael Rutman Managing Director Mickey Shapiro Sam Gustman Tad Taube Chief Technology Officer Erna Viterbi Casey Wasserman Karen Jungblut Harold Williams* Director of Research and Documentation * Emeritus Board member Steven Klappholz Executive Director of Development Ari Zev USC SHOAH Director of FOUNDATION Administration INSTITUTE FOR VISUAL HISTORY AND EDUCATION PastForward Spring 2011 Essays 8 SCHOLAR AND SURVIVOR The Elusive Recollections By Denise Kandel 6 10 HISTORY REVIVIFIED A Pathway through Memory By Mark Baker 11 TESTIMONY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE Absent from the Records By Monika Flashka 12 THE GENOCIDE IN CAMBODIA Problems Without Passports By Kosal Path 20 18 13 THE GENOCIDE IN CAMBODIA One Student’s Perspective By Ali Battat 14 TESTIMONY AS EVIDENCE Paying Tribute to the Righteous “Character is destiny, and we can By Irena Steinfeldt all be better humans once we learn tolerance.” 15 TESTIMONIES OF DANISH JEWS USC President C.L. Max Nikias, page 20 Unearthing Stories of Deportation By Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane 16 CHILDHOOD AND TRAUMA Features Child Survivors and their Emotions By Suzanne Kaplan TESTIMONY AND HISTORY 27 REMEMBERING A FILMMAKER 18 Remembering Survival Documenting the Evidence More than 60 years after the Holocaust, the memories of survivors By Carla Garapedian shed light on what life was like inside a Nazi slave labor camp. 28 RESEARCHING RESISTANCE By Christopher R. Browning Resisting the Path to Genocide By Wolf Gruner SPECIAL FEATURE 30 TESTIMONIES IN YIDDISH 20 The Sky’s the Limit Language, Culture & Testimony USC President C.L. Max Nikias on what the Visual History Archive By Hannah Pollin-Galay means to the university. Interviewed by Stephen D. Smith Departments TESTIMONY AND HISTORY 2 Contributors 24 Setting the Record Straight 4 Leadership News Survivors’ testimonies can help us reconstruct a more accurate history of the Holocaust. By Omer Bartov 5 Executive Director’s Letter 6 Voices from the Archive 31 News & Events pastforward Spring 2011 1 Meet the authors of this issue of PastForward representations of violence, and the Holocaust, and has edited scholarly anthologies on the Holocaust, genocide, reli- gion, and war crimes. His most recent book, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present Day Ukraine, indicates the new direction of his research on in- Mark Baker is director of the terethnic relations in the border- Australian Centre for Jewish lands of Eastern Europe. Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Ali Battat is a sophmore at Studies in the School of Histori- USC majoring in international cal Studies at Monash Univer- relations and Chinese. She is sity in Melbourne, Australia. Associate Director of She He completed his PhD at Oxford Shall Go Free, an anti-human University and was twice a Fel- trafficking organization, and a low at the Hebrew University member of the USC Women’s Contributor Wolf Gruner page 28 of Jerusalem. A former lecturer Club Water Polo Team. at the University of Melbourne, Baker has taught extensively PastForward brings together many voices on modern Jewish history, the around issues related to the educational and Holocaust and genocide, the scholarly use of genocide eyewitness testimony. Arab-Israeli conflict, and terror- Whether survivors or their descendants, teach- ism in modern conflict. He is ers or students, scholars, historians, or film- the author of The Fiftieth Gate makers, the variety of their experiences and (HarperCollins, 1997), an award- winning personal account of opinions is a sample of the lively milieu of his parents' memories of the critical thought and discourse emerging around Holocaust. Christopher Browning is the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual the Frank Porter Graham Profes- History Archive. sor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category, Brown- ing has written eight books on the Holocaust and Nazi Ger- many. His most recent book, Remembering Survival: Inside Omer Bartov, the John P. a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (2010), Birkelund Distinguished Profes- is a case study of a complex of sor of European History and factory slave labors in Stara- Professor of History and Profes- chowice, Poland, based prima- sor of German Studies at Brown rily on 292 survivor testimonies. University, has a vast knowledge In 2006, he was inducted into of the Holocaust and is con- the American Academy of Arts sidered one of the world's and Sciences. leading authorities on the subject of genocide. He is the author of seven books that deal with World War II, 2011 2 pastforward Spring Ali Battat, page 13 GRUNER, BATTAT AND BARTOV PHOTOS BY KIM FOX Contributors Spring 2011 Institute Audience Award for awards from the National Best Documentary. In 2007, Institute on Drug Abuse, the Garapedian received the Armin American Society of Addiction T. Wegner Humanitarian Award Medicine, and the Society for from the Armin T. Wegner Prevention Research. She is Foundation and the Arpa Foun- married to Eric Kandel, a Holo- dation for Film, Music and Art. caust survivor and a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in the year 2000. Monika J. Flaschka is an Hannah Pollin-Galay is a instructor in the Department of PhD candidate in Jewish history History at Kent State University at Tel Aviv University and a and is affiliated with the Jewish Yiddish instructor at Ben Gurion Studies and Women’s Studies University. Her doctoral thesis, programs. She teaches courses which focuses on oral histories on women; sexuality; Holocaust of the Holocaust in Lithuania, memory, history, and film; and explores how different contem- comparative genocide. She Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini porary political environments, completed her PhD in modern Fracapane is a PhD candidate languages, and cultural frame- European history in 2009, at Zentrum für Antisemitismus- Suzanne Kaplan is a researcher works inform memory. Pollin- with a dissertation titled, “Race, forschung, Technische Univer- at the Hugo Valentin Centre at Galay is a former director of Rape and Gender in Nazi-Occu- sität, Berlin. In her dissertation Uppsala University in Sweden. Education in Los Angeles for pied Territories.” Recently, she she analyzes the everyday Her work centers on the long- Yiddishkayt, which works to has been working on a series life of the Danish Jews in term effects of extreme trauma ensure the survival of Yiddish of articles and conference pre- Theresienstadt. on children. In the 1990s, Ka- language, culture, and history sentations, utilizing the USC plan oversaw the collection of through innovative educational Shoah Foundation Institute’s Wolf Gruner is the Shapell- more than 300 interviews with and cultural programs and testimonies, and on organizing Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies Holocaust survivors and other large-scale events. an international conference and a professor of history in the witnesses in Sweden for the on democracy and violence USC Dana and David Dornsife Shoah Foundation, and she Irena Steinfeldt worked with in the Democratic Republic College of Letters, Arts and was one of the first scholars to filmmaker Claude Lanzmann of the Congo. Sciences. The author of nine conduct research in the Insti- on the documentary Shoah books, he has specialized in tute’s archive. Her study, Chil- (1985). In 1993, she joined Yad research on the history of the dren in the Holocaust: Dealing Vashem’s International School Holocaust, comparative history with Affects and Memory Images for Holocaust Studies, where of mass violence and genocides, in Trauma and Generational she developed educational materi- and racial and state discrimina- Linking, was published in 2002. als and worked with educators tion against indigenous popula- in Israel and abroad. In 2007, tions. Gruner serves on the Steinfeldt was appointed direc- International Advisory Board of tor of Yad Vashem’s Righteous the Journal of Genocide Research, Among the Nations Depart- the Editorial Board of Beitraege ment. She authored the educa- Dr. Carla Garapedian, a zur Geschichte des Nationalsozial- tional unit How Was It Humanly filmmaker and member of ismus, and the Institute’s Possible? A Study of Perpetrators the Board of Directors of the Faculty Advisory Council. and Bystanders During the Armenian Film Foundation, Holocaust (Yad Vashem, 2002), is leading a project to digitize Denise Kandel is a Professor co-authored an interactive multi- nearly 400 interviews with of Sociomedical Sciences in Psy- Kosal Path is a lecturer in the media

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