116 Cameras, a New York Times op-doc by Davina Pardo featuring the inspiring work of the USC Shoah Foundation, was shortlisted for an Oscar. The Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony program works with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies to collect interactive biographies from Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide that will allow students long into the future to have personal, meaningful conversations with people who directly experienced the most horrific episodes of the 20th century.
Each survivor answers as many as 2,000 questions during the recording process, so present and future students can ask the resulting visualization practically anything and receive a natural, genuine response. The results are profoundly moving, and the interactivity enables us to learn in ways we are not likely to forget.
I urge you to watch the 15-minute film today. It features Eva Schloss, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and was a stepsister and childhood friend of Anne Frank.
We cannot allow history to erase or soften the genocides of the past and we cannot believe that genocides no longer happen. I congratulate filmmaker Davina Pardo and I thank the USC Shoah Foundation for its crucial, pioneering work to advance truth and preserve memory.
– Michael W. Quick, February 21, 2018