Visual History Archive

     Recently, our Freshman Year Seminar Class has decided to use the Visual History Archive, a part of the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization that gives us an inside view of certain genocides that have happened in this world. The genocides that can be found on this website is the European Holocaust, Nanjing Massacre, Guatemalan Genocide, American Genocide, and Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Because our class is so focused on the Holocaust, I decided to spend my hour researching that topic rather than the other Genocides. Also, I am so interested in the idea of Altruism that I decided to look at the "Rescuer and Aid Provider" portion of the website because that is where I believed I would find someone I could consider an Altruist. The first person I decided to focus on was a woman named Irene Gut-Opdyke, a nurse who helped hide Jewish people and wasn't scared of what may become of her. Irene's story was very interesting and unlike anyone else's that I have heard before, but after doing more research on other rescuers, I have come to the conclusion that every rescue was different from each other and that is what makes it so interesting to study. After researching people from the "Rescuer and Aid Provider", I decided to look into the least common interviewee for the European Holocaust, the "Homosexual Survivor." I thought it would be interesting to study this because as a student in the Bay Area, we have access to visit the memorial in San Francisco dedicated to the Pink Triangle, or the stamp that Homosexual men had to wear during the Holocaust. I watched little bits of multiple survivors and picked up one thing in common for all them: they still were able to acknowledge the feelings they had and the good times. I thought this was very personal, and I'm excited to research this more.
     I rather enjoyed this website and I am very excited to look more into it as the semester goes on. Its interesting to watch online interviews with people who have survived such a terrible thing, and to see the emotion that they still have about it. Another function of the website that I enjoyed was the fact that they offered other genocides as something to study. I definitely hope to look more into that as I study it.