Six stories, Six faces.

In a recent conference, I was fortunate to view a short video made by the Shoah Foundation, "A Visual History" project to remember victims of the Holocaust (established by Stephen Spielberg). The presentation's goal was to help viewers understand the incredible intricacies involved in storytelling. The subject was the Sonderkommando, those Jews who were forced to run the gas chambers and crematoriums at Nazi extermination camps.

The film was comprised of perhaps six different testimonies from both men and women involved in the Sonderkommando uprising at Auschwitz. The revolt failed and as a result, many Jews were shot, hung, and/or tortured. (For more information on the sonderkommando check out the link attached at the end of this posting). The range of emotion on the film was extraordinary. Everything from pure anger to shock was reflected in the faces and testimonies of the group: memories of smells and voices, the sequence of events and moments of triumph fell within a surprisingly large range of intensity. At the end of the video, one truly grasped the power of oral testimony.

We now have the tools to make these recordings easily and efficiently. Each event, story, memory...will have numerous sides and perspectives. Sophisticated recordings allow us to hear the physical memories of particular events, through voices which can be just as powerful as the stories themselves.

http://www.hagalil.com/shoah/holocaust/greif-0.html