For Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon, last summer’s Problems Without Passports trip to Rwanda was an opportunity to take the study of post-genocide society one step further. Sassoon ’14 is an international relations major at the University of Southern California, concentrating on foreign policy analysis and security studies. After growing up in New York and Paris and completing a study abroad trip to Sweden, Finland and Russia, Sassoon was excited to visit central Africa for the first time.

The Cold War began its thaw 25 years ago, then apparently melted sufficiently for us to get on with our lives without fear. Surprisingly, the slow thaw is still in progress.

While deployed in France, US armed forces liberator Jules Barrash remembers asking a French farm couple to cook him and a group of about 15 soldiers a dinner for Christmas in exchange for sea rations and food from the army.

Harold Alexander fled Nazi controlled Germany to the United States and then joined the United States Army. He returned to Germany towards the end of WWII as an American soldier and met a Jewish woman who was still in hiding. He remembers helping the woman and her family by bringing them a truck full of food and connecting them to family in the United States.

Recalling his time held in different concentration camps where he met several inhabitants who were not Jewish, Simon Wiesenthal addresses the need to provide a united front in fighting against another recurrence.

Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat helped thousands of Jews flee to Japan by issuing them Japanese transit visas. Abraham Brumberg and his family were saved because of Sugihara’s brave efforts. Brumberg remembers the journey from Europe to Japan and recalls his first impression of the islands of Japan. 

Esther Bem desires future generations to know there were some virtuous individuals during the Holocaust, who sacrificed their security and life, in order to help others.