Living Historians Program recorded on film
The program gives students the chance to meet survivors on campus, interview them in groups, research their stories and then depict them in forms including script, drama, artwork and music.
The Living Historians Program has been running for more than 25 years at Masada College, but for the first time, the school documented it by producing a video.
Footage was recorded last term, of the year 10 cohort, teachers and participating Holocaust survivors, sharing their perspectives.
The program gives students the chance to meet survivors on campus, interview them in groups, research their stories and then depict them in forms including script, drama, artwork and music.
This time, the survivors taking part were Richard Haber, Egon Sonnenschein and Mimi Wise, while a child of survivors, Roland Gridiger, was also included.
Program facilitator and Masada College history teacher Marion Seftel said, “The students fulfilled the maxim that unto each person there is a name, an identity and a universe.”
She added, it was important to film the program, “to have a record of that to share with generations to come”.
The students’ projects were presented at a special assembly.
Student Ben McNeil, when thanking Sonnenschein, said, “His help has been invaluable [to me], in understanding everything he experienced, because we are the next generation of people that have to tell the story.”
For his part, Sonnenschein described the experience as emotional.
“It affected me … It is important that we speak about what happened [to us in the Holocaust], so that things like this should never happen again.”
Wise reflected, “There’s a need for me to tell people … [I feel] I’m speaking for the many victims of the Holocaust.”
comments