Mackenzie Westman
Now several months into her USC Shoah Foundation Junior Internship, Mackenzie Westman, junior at Eagle Rock High School Highly Gifted Magnet, has come to understand how you can counter all of the elements that can fuel hate. The monthly meetings at the Institute, and concurrent viewings of testimony from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, have been paramount in shaping her perception.
IWitness Partners with Journeys in Film for “Defiant Requiem” Educational Resources
USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with Journeys in Film to provide, on its educational website IWitness, 11 clips of testimony from the Visual History Archive relevant to the documentary film Defiant Requiem, along with Journeys in Film’s Defiant Requiem curriculum guide.
Their Legacy, Our Responsibility
One would think that the grandson of four Polish Holocaust survivors would have an in-depth knowledge of the Shoah, but it was quite the contrary. The Holocaust was a topic that was never discussed when I was growing up. When it was introduced, it was in the most unconventional way, through satire film and television. I knew this was just a facade draped over the painful truth.
Shael Rosenbaum works in real estate development and management and is the President of Fremont Street Holdings. Shael served as the National Chair of the Canadian Young Adult March of the Living and is currently the Chair of the UJA Federation Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto. Shael was also the Master of Ceremonies at the largest rally against antisemitism in Canadian history. Most recently, he graduated from the Joshua Institute. Shael obtained a degree in Biological and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Western Ontario.
Perhaps the most powerful piece at this year’s Storyscapes, the Tribeca Film Festival’s annual survey of the biggest and best in new virtual reality work, was The Last Goodbye. The pieces’s concept is both simple and ambitious: to have a Holocaust survivor guide the viewer in a tour of the concentration camp where he was interned over seven decades ago.