Omer Bartov Gives Shapiro Scholar Lecture on "Anatomy of a Genocide"
The town of Buczacz is part of Ukraine now, situated between two graveyards – two mass graves – with a living population hovering at around 12,500, if you mind the 2001 Ukrainian census. This town, in itself a synecdoche of greater World War II, was the focus of a talk given by Professor Omer Bartov of Brown University, on 8 May in his Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar Lecture at USC’s University Club.
Shapiro Scholar Lecture, Omer Bartov, May 8, 2017
Omer Bartov Discusses Research, Testimony and Future of Holocaust Scholarship in Facebook Live Interview
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research’s 2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence Omer Bartov began his residence today with a Facebook Live interview about his work.
Marisa Fox has written for the New York Times, Haaretz, Elle, InStyle, O, New York, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. She travels the globe for survivors who bear witness to her mother's unspeakable past and vows to break the silence and shame woven through generations.
Memory in Trutnov
The sun was setting when we pulled up to a fenced-in lot behind which stood a crumbling redbrick textile factory. There was a sign on the front gate that read “For Sale.” It wasn’t the kind of signage I expected to find on the site of a former women’s forced labor camp where my mother and 350 other Polish Jewish girls had been worked nearly to death, making thread used to sew Nazi uniforms. Gabersdorf survivor Sara Sliwka Bialas-Tenenberg, a resident of Berlin, had volunteered to revisit this painful spot to show me what my late mother never could.
Where “Blackout” thrives in the present, “The Last Goodbye” takes a look into the past. A co-production between Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz of Here Be Dragons, the USC Shoah Foundation, MPC VR and OTOY, the experience follows Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter as he toured the Majdanek Concentration Camp in July 2016 to cope with the loss of his family. The documentary-style piece entails the viewer visiting the camp with Gutter and exploring it in ways never seen before, all while listening to his heart-wrenching story of perseverance and loss.