Carli Snyder is the 2022-2023 USC Shoah Foundation Robert J. Katz Research Fellow in Genocide Studies. Since the beginning of January, she has been in Los Angeles conducting research with Visual History Archive (VHA) testimonies. A PhD candidate in History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, she is conducting research as part of her larger dissertation project that is provisionally entitled ‘Flesh of the Facts’: Toward a Feminist Holocaust Consciousness.

Suzette Sheft first recognized the importance of recording family history when it was already too late. As a young child, the New York City student had regularly listened to her father’s stories, but when he died of pancreatic cancer when she was just 13, she realized she was unable to remember many of them.

“When he was alive, he would tell me stories about his life while tucking me in each night, but in the months following his death, I found myself forgetting many of his recollections,” Suzette said.

January 27 is designated by the United Nations General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Tied to the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the day commemorates the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and seeks to promote Holocaust education throughout the world.