The Visual History Archive: Change and Education in the Palm of Our Hands at CU ****************************************************************************************** * The Visual History Archive: Change and Education in the Palm of Our Hands at Charles Uni ****************************************************************************************** “The Institute’s Visual History Archive preserves history as told by the people who lived testimony is a unique source of insight and knowledge offering powerful stories from histo be explored and shared. In this way we will be able to see their faces and hear their voic to teach, and inspire action against intolerance“ - USC Shoah Foundation Charles University in Prague is in possession of one of the most valuable databases of ora Europe. The Visual History Archive (VHA), created through the University of Southern Calif by the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a rich tapestry of primary research: witnesses, testimonies, confessions of genocide survivors. The Shoah Foundation was founded by Steven Spielberg, director of Schindler’s List, in 199 finances and filming equipment gave momentum to something incredible. With the intentions consolidating the stories of genocide survivors in video format, 52,000 interviews were co recorded of initially Holocaust and later, Rwandan genocide survivors. The end result was capturing 32 languages, touching on the conflict pasts and lives of 56 countries and still Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organisation, was born, bringing together the accounts of s all walks of life including Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti survivo prisoners, camp liberators, doctors, aid givers and eye witnesses of Nazi rule, trials and this was agreed to be preserved and pioneered by the USC, explaining the link between the includes Charles University in Prague, who host the VHA at the Malach Centre of Visual His beautiful Faculty of Mathematics and Physics building at Malostranské Square. The VHA’s oc lives up to the digitilised nature of the archive, as you can watch the testimonies on spe with headsets.  Our university has established various co-operations with USC through the VHA including a electronic information licensing agreement, giving Charles University the literal ability valuable resource with all students and lecturers. The partnership has also introduced our exciting participation in the annual “Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century“seminar, place in the Malach Centre in both 2012 and 2013, with an audience of thirty Czech teacher and sixteen Ukrainian. Jakub Mlynář, the VHA’s co-ordinator, briefed me on the interesting of Charles University and the University of Southern California: “On a scientific level, t a long tradition of co-operation between CU and USC, starting over 10 years ago with the p - Multilingual Access to Large Spoken Archives. Note the Malach Center was created after t finished. There is also an actual follow-up project AMALACH: ASR and MT-based Access to a Cultural Heritage; ASR meaning Automatic Speech Recognition, MT meaning Machine Translatio is being solved in partnership of CU and the University of West Bohemia, and is supported Ministry of Culture”. It was clear to me after talking with him and visiting the Centre that the VHA can only st international and educational ties, an objective which as an iForum writer, I have noted t university’s philosophy. The Shoah Foundation’s mission may be obvious, but is more than meets the eye. One intenti desperate need for the voices of the Holocaust to speak up years after 1945 and to tell th stories. I myself spent substantial time exploring the archive, which can be accessed at t facilities of the Malach Centre and can be utilised by all Charles University students upo reoccurring comment in the many interviews that I watched was the survivor’s necessity for and healing, consequentially meaning that their tales have not reached our ears until deca Holocaust. Now we are ready to hear them, and we are lucky enough that someone stood up to manage such a task. I urge all students to make use of such a compellingly educational and facility at our university. The interview style of Spielberg has molded every testimony to be conducted in a simultane methodology, making them incredibly accessible and understandable – the survivor shares th chronological way but is asked provoking questions to jog their memory or dig further into interviewer, who I noted was appropriately behind the camera and invisible to the viewer, focus onto the interviewee. In an electronic age, the VHA’s technological platform is also permitting global accessibility to all levels of learners: researchers, teachers, students alike. This is my favourite characteristic of the archive: it depicts how alive history is facts and the statistics and the textbooks and presenting a dynamic, raw historical experi oral history has its accuracy flaws, but only in this manner will we come across important that conveys aspects of “everyday life” that modern history lacks. According to the Charles University VHA’s coordinator, Jakub Mlynář, the most useful featu is its narrowed search tools, which will be explained to you upon visiting the Malach Cent a techno-phobe like me, don’t be scared) and allow the researcher to filter thousands of t against 60,000 keywords including language, country and religion to name a few, which can refined to incredible detail, such as religious denomination (Orthodox or Reformed Jewish Typing in any tag word you wish like “Auschwitz”, “Anti-Semitism” or ‘Prague” for instance people and testimonies that relate exactly to the inquiry. Following my trip with Charles the Terezín ghetto and concentration camp, I simply typed “Theresienstadt” into the VHA se came across an array of fascinating interviews of prisoners and occupants of the ghetto. I of the intimate and moving footage, where I gained a greater emotive and humanistic insigh and horrors of Terezín – everyday details like the names of inmates, their jobs, birthplac clothes they wore, what they ate, who they talked to, what they saw. I also spent time researching women of the Holocaust, as I believe that classroom history we are exposed to little-if any of the distinctly different experiences of women during ou path to understanding genocide. In this respect, the VHA takes a step further than institu as it uncovers real female victims and their first-hand opinions of life as a woman in per conflict and oppression: as mothers, sisters, survivors of sexual assault and abuse, discr systematic rape. For the first time, I was exposed to the shocking conditions of life unde Nazi ideology of women, which my education so far had refused to address. The VHA succeeds to spread worldwide awareness of such topics and in celebrating the bravery and vocality o The flexibility of the VHA serves the interdisciplinary conception of the Malach Centre an University, which is why, Jakub commented, our university is a suitable facilitator for su “VHA as data resource serves a great variety of disciplines and research fields, from hist sciences to linguistics, psychology or law… even connecting it with the "hard sciences" li linguistics and computer science“. The supervisor also believes that the VHA has aided the relationship between facilities at which can give rise to new projects and opportunities: “For the largest university in Czec see the cooperation across different faculties and disciplines as something very important Using VHA is not necessarily limited to Jewish history or Holocaust studies, which is anot for making this archive available to the students and educators”. So, it would be fair to Visual History Archive has thus far integrated the university not only with others, but st internally. Genocide and war studies are controversial and sensitive topics to discuss and research. T objections the film industry, politicians and society need to undertake when implementing commercial modes such as novels, films, documentaries and tourism as we need to be aware o and inaccuracy. Jakub gave me a wonderful response as to why the VHA is different and nece opinion, there are two main reasons why archives of eye-witness and survivor accounts are genocides are – unfortunately – a non-negligible aspect of modern history, and human memor history, is quite often the only resource available. Secondly, if we understand genocides that should have no place in human society, it is essential to understand the mechanisms o precursors, indicators, causes and different stages, to identify ‘pre-genocidal’ discourse contemporary social phenomena.” I couldn’t have phrased it better. I highly recommend a visit to the Malach Centre, whether it’s for keen, in-depth assignmen of curiosity. We are privileged as students in Prague (not just for the cheap beer, studen abundant resources at our fingertips. By utilising the VHA, you will be accessing an exclu of Charles University that you will not otherwise find on the internet or in the majority institutions. Such compact, primary, unique research is a treasure to our university and b efforts have allowed us to enjoy such contemporary and stimulating education. Besides this message: we must remember, we must learn and we must educate. The Visual History Archive is located at Malostranské náměstí, at the Informatics Building "mlynar(zavinac)knih.mff.cuni.cz"] for more information or to book a session. Visit also http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/grants/amalach [ URL "http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/grants/am ufal.mff.cuni.cz/malach/"]   Poppy Gerrard-Abbott is an Erasmus student studying BA write for the iForum to build on her journalism skills Czech culture and life in Prague through attending loc Poppy saw the iForum as an exciting opportunity to pur experience that has brought some exciting opportunitie such placements to future students.