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SHOAH FOUNDATION DIRECTOR DISCUSSES DIGITIZATION OF SURVIVOR TESTIMONIES
by Ara Khachatourian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/04/25/shoah-foundation-director-discusses-digitization-of-survivor-testimonies/
April 25, 2012
The University of Southern California (USC) Institute of Armenian
Studies' Leadership Council on Sun., April 15 will honor the USC
Shoah Foundation Institute for championing the Armenian Genocide
Digitization Project at a gala banquet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith The Shoah
Foundation Institute, established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, has
been a part of the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters,
Arts, and Sciences since 2006. Its Visual History Archive-one of
the largest of its kind in the world-contains nearly 52,000 video
testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
The goal of the Leadership Council is to bring together the digital
copies of every collection of interviews with Armenian Genocide
survivors and eyewitnesses, essentially creating what may become
the largest archive of genocide eyewitness interviews. With the
USC Shoah Foundation Institute's support of the Armenian Genocide
Digitization Project, the interviews will be indexed, preserved,
and made available to scholars, students, and researchers. The
J. Michael Hagopian/Armenian Film Foundation archive of nearly 400
filmed eyewitness testimonies will be the first collection in the
Armenian Genocide Digitization Project.
Asbarez Editor Ara Khachatourian recently caught up with the Shoah
Foundation Institute's executive director, Dr. Stephen D. Smith,
who discussed the foundation and detailed the partnership with the
Armenian Film Foundation.
***
ARA KHACHATOURIAN: Tell us about the Shoah Foundation and how it came
into being?
STEPHEN SMITH: The USC Shoah Foundation came into being after the
filming of "Schindler's List," when film director Spielberg realized
that many Holocaust survivors wanted to tell their own personal life
histories. And he set out the project, to enable...survivors...to
tell their own stories. And 52,000 survivors and witnesses to the
Holocaust were interviewed in 56 countries in 32 languages, creating
a vast audio-visual archive.
A.K.: What is this archive going to be used for?
S.S.: The archive has several purposes. First of all, it is about
the documentation of personal life histories, so that what we have
is not just the large scale of what genocide looks like, but also the
individual stories that make that up. It is very important to document
that. Secondly, it's about giving voice to the individual so they can
talk about their families, communities, and the things that really
matter to them, because when genocide takes place the intention is
to wipe those out. By these individuals talking about what happened
to them, they reinstate them in memory and in our lives. The third,
and most important, perhaps, is education. To give opportunity for
people around the world to have access to these vitally important
life histories and to understand what it means to them and their
lives today and to learn about their experiences.
A.K.: What about the partnership with the Armenian Film Foundation?
S.S.: The archive of the Shoah Foundation was donated to USC in 2006,
creating the USC Shoah Foundation Institute... We put together a
partnership using the USC Shoah Foundation as the basis by which the
architecture and infrastructure of the Shoah Foundation is going to
be utilized to be able to digitize, to preserve, to index, catalogue,
and disseminate the testimonies of the Armenian Film Foundation.
A.K.: Where are you in that process?
S.S.: The collection of 400 histories that J. Michael Hagopian filmed
over 30 years is being compiled so it can be digitized. That will
be done this year. Once the digitization is done, we will take each
interview and index it minute-by-minute. There are things that we
have to do, especially for this collection, and, indeed, for any
other Armenian collection we will work with. Because we have very
different geographies, all the names of the places, the languages,
and terminology need to be addressed. We are bringing in experts to
help with that, to make sure that what we do has integrity-historical
integrity-and also the integrity of ensuring that we take great care
over these testimonies.
A.K.: One of the concerns that I've heard in the Armenian community is
that by giving this archive to the USC Shoah Foundation, it might be
lost as an asset of the community. With this and with future archives,
how can the community be able to access it and use it, and how can
we ensure that it is not lost?
S.S.: The beauty of a partnership like this is that the Armenian Film
Foundation retains the ownership of the collection. What we do is we
license a copy of it-the digital copy. Then we have an arrangement
with our partner that we have permission to use that digital copy
and make it accessible to a wider public. What we are interested
in, as a research and an educational institute, is making sure that
these testimonies are given the greatest opportunity to reach the
widest public.
One of the things that we're all interested in-within the Armenian
community, within the academic community, and indeed in the Jewish
world-is how do we, who experienced these experiences, such as the
Armenian Genocide, tell the world what happened and give them a chance
to learn? The great thing here is that through this partnership the
testimonies themselves will remain as part of the Armenian community's
legacy and will remain within the Armenian community, but the power
of those testimonies will reach the world.
A.K.: How did you get involved with the Shoah Foundation?
S.S.: I was born in a mining village in the middle of Nottinghamshire,
England. My father was a Christian minister in the Methodist Church and
my mother is a religion education teacher. I had no connection to the
Jewish world at all until I went to a family holiday to Israel. We
found a fascinating experience and I got very interested in the
Christian-Jewish relationship initially. With the more I learned
about anti-Semitism within the Christian world, the more I realized
that the Holocaust did not come out of nowhere, and there are real
issues to address here.
One of the big moments in my learning experience was being in Yad
Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. There I was, a young
guy in my early 20s, coming from Britain and a Christian background
in Israel learning about the Holocaust. One of the things I learned
in Yad Vashem was about a group of people called "Righteous Among
the Nations." These were people who had rescued Jews during the
Holocaust; all of them rescued at least one Jewish person except for
one of them: His name was Armin T. Wegner. And, I was very impressed
by this individual because he had, in 1933, when the Jews were first
boycotted in Nazi Germany, written a letter to Adolf Hitler saying,
"In my name, in the name of the German people, STOP, because what you
are doing could result in the distruction of the Jews and certainly
would bring shame upon our country forever."
I was surprised to find out that the Armin Wegner who had spoken
out on behalf of the Jews was the same Armin Wegner who had taken
photographs during the Armenian Genocide, documented them, and then
tried, in the 1920's, to be a part of the legal process to bring this
to the attention of the world. So he was a man that experienced the
Armenian Genocide, and was equipped to try to prevent the genocide
happening in the rest of the world. He failed on both counts. The
Armenian Genocide happened and the Holocaust happened. But he was
the very same man that sat with Michael Hagopian in 1967 and said,
"Michael you are filmmaker. Wouldn't it be wonderful to use your art
to collect the testimonies of the Armenian Genocide survivors?"
So, this is a part of the legacy that we all share. Armin Wegner has
been a tremendous influence on my life, because he was the guy that
never stopped trying and gave us a tremendous example of why we want
to learn about these genocides. Because we want to prevent it in the
future, too.
A.K.: It's ironic, because Israel has not recognized the Armenian
Genocide officially. In fact, a couple of months ago one of the
foreign ministry officials said there cannot be a comparison between
the Holocaust and genocide, because the Holocaust was a unique
experience. What are your thoughts on that?
S.S.: Human suffering cannot be compared. How can I say that what I
suffered is greater than what you suffered? It's a travesty to do
that. However, the causes and the consequences absolutely must be
compared, if we as a human race are to be able to understand what we
are we capable of and to be able to prevent that. What we don't need
is comparison. What we do need is compassion.
A.K.: The fact that Israel has not recognized the genocide... What
do you attribute that to?
S.S.: I think this is a tragedy, that any country takes a long time
to recognize the Armenian Genocide for political reasons. This is
not about politics. This is about humanity. I think we all need to
be able to, within ourselves as human beings-political entities or as
individuals-get over those things that hinder us from recognizing the
suffering of others, and to be able to just be clear about that. It
doesn't matter where we are in the world.
A.K.: What are your thoughts on the American anti-defamation groups,
such as the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which, while not denying the
Armenian Genocide, are impeding efforts for international recognition
of the fact?
S.S.: What I can say is that the USC Shoah Foundation Institute
is very clear about this. What happened to the Armenian people was
genocide and it needs to be recognized as such by the international
community and by organizations wherever they are, so that we can work
together as communities-Armenians, Jews, Christians-wherever we are
on a very vitally important work of education for the future. That's
our mission here, and we intend to do that in very close cooperation
with the Armenian community.
A.K.: Another issue that has been talked about is the component of
funding for this project. Is there a component of fundraising that
goes on continuously in the Shoah Foundation?
S.S.: Basically, we have different collections, they are like different
projects. So for each of those projects we need to find the appropriate
people to support and fund them. And in fact, whether we talk to our
Rwandan colleagues or Armenian colleagues, we say let's think about
the best way to do this. If we have a story to tell, let's really
take ownership of that. We take our responsibility very seriously, to
think how can we best contribute in terms of our time, and our effort,
and our energy to really make this work for all of us and to share the
burden of telling the story. That's the principle that we have here.
>From the time when we manage to find the funding for the archive,
it's about an 18-month to a year process. One of the things that
we take very seriously here at USC-we are a research university-is
making sure the quality of the work that goes into this is done at
the very highest level.
We're already tackling enough as it is, in terms of denial and
obfuscation. So what we want to make sure is that we spend enough time
on the detail of the indexing and the clarity of that, so whether
people use it for research or for education, we know we've done our
work very thoroughly. If that means, that we take a little longer,
that's time well spent in my view, because we want this to be right
for the benefit of those 400 people that gave testimonies...
A.K.: How do you safeguard those interviews from being taken and
bastardized by those who want to revise history?
S.S.: Whenever we put content into the public domain we always have
that risk, that somebody will misuse it. We have to be very careful
about that and build policies around that. So, one of the policies
is that we release our content on a registration basis only. Maybe
we want to put some testimonies and make them available to the wider
public and if somebody takes it and misuses it, we do run that risk.
The greater good being served here, and the number of people that
get a great deal out of it, so vastly overwhelms that small number
that are very marginal to our work. Putting work and testimonies in
the public domain has a very beneficial value.
A.K.: As time passes, the distance between the reality of the Holocaust
or Armenian Genocide and the current generation grows wider.
For Armenians, it's been 97 years. Survivors are not here anymore.
What is your message to the new generation that might not have direct
contact with the first-person account?
S.S.: Of course, you can't replace a human being. There's nothing
more wonderful than talking to another soul about their experience
and feeling that sense of connection. But, of course, there's the
reality of time and we have to deal with it. Video does have a
very profound effect on the way in which this particular generation
understands history. We are experiencing that now with the Holocaust
survivors' testimonies. We weigh carefully how young people are using
them and they do develop a real strong sense of connection. With a
video testimony you see eyes, and the eyes are like the windows to
the soul...
And you see the face, you really get a sense of who that person is
and it's so interesting how often people-students-say, "Oh I met so
and so." And of course they never met them at all, but they saw them
on the screen and they got that sense of connection. So, I believe
that all is not lost and there is a lot to be gained from this.
One of the things that bring the Armenian Film Foundation collection in
is that in about 18 months from now, we will have Holocaust survivors
testimonies, Armenian survivors testimonies, Rwandan survivors
testimonies-all will be available to this generation. I can tell you,
from talking with teachers and students, they are really looking
forward to that because they know that while they are not going to
compare them, they are going to understand human experience in a much
deeper way, and can listen to many voices across many generations.
by Ara Khachatourian
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/04/25/shoah-foundation-director-discusses-digitization-of-survivor-testimonies/
April 25, 2012
The University of Southern California (USC) Institute of Armenian
Studies' Leadership Council on Sun., April 15 will honor the USC
Shoah Foundation Institute for championing the Armenian Genocide
Digitization Project at a gala banquet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith The Shoah
Foundation Institute, established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, has
been a part of the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters,
Arts, and Sciences since 2006. Its Visual History Archive-one of
the largest of its kind in the world-contains nearly 52,000 video
testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
The goal of the Leadership Council is to bring together the digital
copies of every collection of interviews with Armenian Genocide
survivors and eyewitnesses, essentially creating what may become
the largest archive of genocide eyewitness interviews. With the
USC Shoah Foundation Institute's support of the Armenian Genocide
Digitization Project, the interviews will be indexed, preserved,
and made available to scholars, students, and researchers. The
J. Michael Hagopian/Armenian Film Foundation archive of nearly 400
filmed eyewitness testimonies will be the first collection in the
Armenian Genocide Digitization Project.
Asbarez Editor Ara Khachatourian recently caught up with the Shoah
Foundation Institute's executive director, Dr. Stephen D. Smith,
who discussed the foundation and detailed the partnership with the
Armenian Film Foundation.
***
ARA KHACHATOURIAN: Tell us about the Shoah Foundation and how it came
into being?
STEPHEN SMITH: The USC Shoah Foundation came into being after the
filming of "Schindler's List," when film director Spielberg realized
that many Holocaust survivors wanted to tell their own personal life
histories. And he set out the project, to enable...survivors...to
tell their own stories. And 52,000 survivors and witnesses to the
Holocaust were interviewed in 56 countries in 32 languages, creating
a vast audio-visual archive.
A.K.: What is this archive going to be used for?
S.S.: The archive has several purposes. First of all, it is about
the documentation of personal life histories, so that what we have
is not just the large scale of what genocide looks like, but also the
individual stories that make that up. It is very important to document
that. Secondly, it's about giving voice to the individual so they can
talk about their families, communities, and the things that really
matter to them, because when genocide takes place the intention is
to wipe those out. By these individuals talking about what happened
to them, they reinstate them in memory and in our lives. The third,
and most important, perhaps, is education. To give opportunity for
people around the world to have access to these vitally important
life histories and to understand what it means to them and their
lives today and to learn about their experiences.
A.K.: What about the partnership with the Armenian Film Foundation?
S.S.: The archive of the Shoah Foundation was donated to USC in 2006,
creating the USC Shoah Foundation Institute... We put together a
partnership using the USC Shoah Foundation as the basis by which the
architecture and infrastructure of the Shoah Foundation is going to
be utilized to be able to digitize, to preserve, to index, catalogue,
and disseminate the testimonies of the Armenian Film Foundation.
A.K.: Where are you in that process?
S.S.: The collection of 400 histories that J. Michael Hagopian filmed
over 30 years is being compiled so it can be digitized. That will
be done this year. Once the digitization is done, we will take each
interview and index it minute-by-minute. There are things that we
have to do, especially for this collection, and, indeed, for any
other Armenian collection we will work with. Because we have very
different geographies, all the names of the places, the languages,
and terminology need to be addressed. We are bringing in experts to
help with that, to make sure that what we do has integrity-historical
integrity-and also the integrity of ensuring that we take great care
over these testimonies.
A.K.: One of the concerns that I've heard in the Armenian community is
that by giving this archive to the USC Shoah Foundation, it might be
lost as an asset of the community. With this and with future archives,
how can the community be able to access it and use it, and how can
we ensure that it is not lost?
S.S.: The beauty of a partnership like this is that the Armenian Film
Foundation retains the ownership of the collection. What we do is we
license a copy of it-the digital copy. Then we have an arrangement
with our partner that we have permission to use that digital copy
and make it accessible to a wider public. What we are interested
in, as a research and an educational institute, is making sure that
these testimonies are given the greatest opportunity to reach the
widest public.
One of the things that we're all interested in-within the Armenian
community, within the academic community, and indeed in the Jewish
world-is how do we, who experienced these experiences, such as the
Armenian Genocide, tell the world what happened and give them a chance
to learn? The great thing here is that through this partnership the
testimonies themselves will remain as part of the Armenian community's
legacy and will remain within the Armenian community, but the power
of those testimonies will reach the world.
A.K.: How did you get involved with the Shoah Foundation?
S.S.: I was born in a mining village in the middle of Nottinghamshire,
England. My father was a Christian minister in the Methodist Church and
my mother is a religion education teacher. I had no connection to the
Jewish world at all until I went to a family holiday to Israel. We
found a fascinating experience and I got very interested in the
Christian-Jewish relationship initially. With the more I learned
about anti-Semitism within the Christian world, the more I realized
that the Holocaust did not come out of nowhere, and there are real
issues to address here.
One of the big moments in my learning experience was being in Yad
Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. There I was, a young
guy in my early 20s, coming from Britain and a Christian background
in Israel learning about the Holocaust. One of the things I learned
in Yad Vashem was about a group of people called "Righteous Among
the Nations." These were people who had rescued Jews during the
Holocaust; all of them rescued at least one Jewish person except for
one of them: His name was Armin T. Wegner. And, I was very impressed
by this individual because he had, in 1933, when the Jews were first
boycotted in Nazi Germany, written a letter to Adolf Hitler saying,
"In my name, in the name of the German people, STOP, because what you
are doing could result in the distruction of the Jews and certainly
would bring shame upon our country forever."
I was surprised to find out that the Armin Wegner who had spoken
out on behalf of the Jews was the same Armin Wegner who had taken
photographs during the Armenian Genocide, documented them, and then
tried, in the 1920's, to be a part of the legal process to bring this
to the attention of the world. So he was a man that experienced the
Armenian Genocide, and was equipped to try to prevent the genocide
happening in the rest of the world. He failed on both counts. The
Armenian Genocide happened and the Holocaust happened. But he was
the very same man that sat with Michael Hagopian in 1967 and said,
"Michael you are filmmaker. Wouldn't it be wonderful to use your art
to collect the testimonies of the Armenian Genocide survivors?"
So, this is a part of the legacy that we all share. Armin Wegner has
been a tremendous influence on my life, because he was the guy that
never stopped trying and gave us a tremendous example of why we want
to learn about these genocides. Because we want to prevent it in the
future, too.
A.K.: It's ironic, because Israel has not recognized the Armenian
Genocide officially. In fact, a couple of months ago one of the
foreign ministry officials said there cannot be a comparison between
the Holocaust and genocide, because the Holocaust was a unique
experience. What are your thoughts on that?
S.S.: Human suffering cannot be compared. How can I say that what I
suffered is greater than what you suffered? It's a travesty to do
that. However, the causes and the consequences absolutely must be
compared, if we as a human race are to be able to understand what we
are we capable of and to be able to prevent that. What we don't need
is comparison. What we do need is compassion.
A.K.: The fact that Israel has not recognized the genocide... What
do you attribute that to?
S.S.: I think this is a tragedy, that any country takes a long time
to recognize the Armenian Genocide for political reasons. This is
not about politics. This is about humanity. I think we all need to
be able to, within ourselves as human beings-political entities or as
individuals-get over those things that hinder us from recognizing the
suffering of others, and to be able to just be clear about that. It
doesn't matter where we are in the world.
A.K.: What are your thoughts on the American anti-defamation groups,
such as the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which, while not denying the
Armenian Genocide, are impeding efforts for international recognition
of the fact?
S.S.: What I can say is that the USC Shoah Foundation Institute
is very clear about this. What happened to the Armenian people was
genocide and it needs to be recognized as such by the international
community and by organizations wherever they are, so that we can work
together as communities-Armenians, Jews, Christians-wherever we are
on a very vitally important work of education for the future. That's
our mission here, and we intend to do that in very close cooperation
with the Armenian community.
A.K.: Another issue that has been talked about is the component of
funding for this project. Is there a component of fundraising that
goes on continuously in the Shoah Foundation?
S.S.: Basically, we have different collections, they are like different
projects. So for each of those projects we need to find the appropriate
people to support and fund them. And in fact, whether we talk to our
Rwandan colleagues or Armenian colleagues, we say let's think about
the best way to do this. If we have a story to tell, let's really
take ownership of that. We take our responsibility very seriously, to
think how can we best contribute in terms of our time, and our effort,
and our energy to really make this work for all of us and to share the
burden of telling the story. That's the principle that we have here.
>From the time when we manage to find the funding for the archive,
it's about an 18-month to a year process. One of the things that
we take very seriously here at USC-we are a research university-is
making sure the quality of the work that goes into this is done at
the very highest level.
We're already tackling enough as it is, in terms of denial and
obfuscation. So what we want to make sure is that we spend enough time
on the detail of the indexing and the clarity of that, so whether
people use it for research or for education, we know we've done our
work very thoroughly. If that means, that we take a little longer,
that's time well spent in my view, because we want this to be right
for the benefit of those 400 people that gave testimonies...
A.K.: How do you safeguard those interviews from being taken and
bastardized by those who want to revise history?
S.S.: Whenever we put content into the public domain we always have
that risk, that somebody will misuse it. We have to be very careful
about that and build policies around that. So, one of the policies
is that we release our content on a registration basis only. Maybe
we want to put some testimonies and make them available to the wider
public and if somebody takes it and misuses it, we do run that risk.
The greater good being served here, and the number of people that
get a great deal out of it, so vastly overwhelms that small number
that are very marginal to our work. Putting work and testimonies in
the public domain has a very beneficial value.
A.K.: As time passes, the distance between the reality of the Holocaust
or Armenian Genocide and the current generation grows wider.
For Armenians, it's been 97 years. Survivors are not here anymore.
What is your message to the new generation that might not have direct
contact with the first-person account?
S.S.: Of course, you can't replace a human being. There's nothing
more wonderful than talking to another soul about their experience
and feeling that sense of connection. But, of course, there's the
reality of time and we have to deal with it. Video does have a
very profound effect on the way in which this particular generation
understands history. We are experiencing that now with the Holocaust
survivors' testimonies. We weigh carefully how young people are using
them and they do develop a real strong sense of connection. With a
video testimony you see eyes, and the eyes are like the windows to
the soul...
And you see the face, you really get a sense of who that person is
and it's so interesting how often people-students-say, "Oh I met so
and so." And of course they never met them at all, but they saw them
on the screen and they got that sense of connection. So, I believe
that all is not lost and there is a lot to be gained from this.
One of the things that bring the Armenian Film Foundation collection in
is that in about 18 months from now, we will have Holocaust survivors
testimonies, Armenian survivors testimonies, Rwandan survivors
testimonies-all will be available to this generation. I can tell you,
from talking with teachers and students, they are really looking
forward to that because they know that while they are not going to
compare them, they are going to understand human experience in a much
deeper way, and can listen to many voices across many generations.