Testimony: The Legacy of Schindler's List and the USC Shoah Foundation

by Steven Spielberg

Overview

This illustrated, large-format book, Testimony: The Legacy of Schindler’s List and the USC Shoah Foundation—A 20th Anniversary Commemoration combines, for the first time, the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Schindler’s List with the history of the remarkable organization inspired by that landmark film. Steven Spielberg’s encounters with Holocaust survivors who visited the set and personally told him their stories set him on a quest to collect and preserve survivor testimony for generations to come. In 1994, he established the Shoah Foundation, and in the following four years nearly 52,000 eyewitness interviews were video recorded in 56 countries and 32 languages. This commemorative book relates how the foundation accomplished this feat through a worldwide network of dedicated people, pioneering interview methods, and state-of-the art technologies.

A special 140-page section tells the riveting story of the film in photos, script excerpts, and the words of the cast and crew, including Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and Spielberg. Drawing from the Universal Pictures archives and exclusive interviews, here are details on Spielberg’s struggle to bring Oskar Schindler’s story from novel to script to screen, the casting, cinematography, and especially what happened during the difficult shoot in Poland in 1993—on locations where actual events of the Holocaust occurred. 

Partnered with the University of Southern California since 2006, the USC Shoah Foundation has broadened its mission and now collects and preserves testimonies from other genocides, including those in Armenia, Cambodia, and Rwanda, while expanding its educational outreach, especially to young people. Its Visual History Archive—digitized, fully searchable, and hyperlinked to the minute—has become the largest digital collection of its kind in the world.  As Spielberg writes in his introduction, “I believe the work of the USC Shoah Foundation is the most important legacy of Schindler’s List.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062285195
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	614
Sales rank:	364,841
File size:	46 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Steven Spielberg (Introduction)
The renowned director and producer of Schindler's List has also directed, among other acclaimed films, Lincoln, War Horse, Saving Private Ryan, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Amistad, and Jaws. He established the Shoah Foundation in 1994, inspired by his experience while filming Schindler's List.

Stephen D. Smith (Preface)
The executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, Smith is one of the world's foremost experts on genocide prevention and the inaugural holder of the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education at USC. His books include Forgotten Places: The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction and The Holocaust and the Christian World.

The USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education
In its first decade, the Shoah Foundation accomplished its worldwide project of interviewing nearly 52,000 survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, and making their tes-timonies widely available for scholarship and education. Now part of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (VHA) currently encompasses 107,000 hours of video testimonies, and is an invaluable resource for education, research, and scholarship. Through innovative online tools, resources, and programs, the institute is teaching the world through testimony.

Editorial Reviews

An informative coffee table book for film buffs and those interested in Jewish history. — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2014-03-06
The story behind the making of Schindler's List and the development of a foundation dedicated to sharing Holocaust testimonies. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the foundation and the film, this commemorative work is divided into two sections. After an introduction from Steven Spielberg, the first part recounts the process of making Schindler's List. The material in this section is wide-ranging and includes an account of the maturation process of Spielberg's directorial ability, the chance encounter that sparked the book behind the movie, certain cinematographic techniques utilized in the film and the experience of having Holocaust survivors visiting the movie set in Poland. The Schindlerjuden, "Schindler Jews," interacting with the cast and crew inspired Spielberg to initiate the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which works from the premise that the "last act of genocide is always denial and silence"; the foundation collects and catalogs oral histories of the Holocaust. The second part of the book discusses the process of building, developing and expanding this foundation. Initially, Spielberg aimed for narratives from 50,000 Holocaust survivors and rescue-worker witnesses. However, once that goal was reached and exceeded, the foundation used these testimonies in their production of documentaries. More recently, this foundation, which grew out of a desire to ensure that the Holocaust will never happen again, expanded into collecting accounts from the Armenian, Rwandan and Cambodian genocides. With the connection to USC, these eyewitness stories serve as educational tools that will elicit the strong emotive response necessary for the prevention of future attempts at genocide. This general history of the film and the foundation has a promotional feel as it also discusses exciting new technological directions for the foundation. An informative coffee table book for film buffs and those interested in Jewish history.

Kirkus Reviews