Eger launches UCSD lecture series on Shoah

ucsd logoLA JOLLA, California (Press Release)–During the 2014/15 academic year the Holocaust Living History Workshop offers a series of lectures titled “Forgotten Stories: Legacy of Pain.” The series is intended to broaden understanding of the past and to foster tolerance in the present and future.

All events are free and open to the public. The Holocaust Living History Workshop is a joint project of the Judaic Studies program and the UC San Diego Library. The Workshop was launched in 2007 to connect students, local survivors and interested individuals, and to increase the visibility and use of the Visual History Archive, a database of approximately 53,000 survivor and witness testimonies. The UC San Diego Library is one of only three university libraries on the West Coast to have access to the archive.

The archive, which is administered by the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, includes testimonies recorded in 56 countries and 32 languages. Students and members of the public can access the videos from any computer on the UC San Diego campus.

To find out more about UC San Diego’s Holocaust Living History Workshop, contact the program coordinator Susanne Hillman at hlhw@ucsd.edu or 858-534-7661, or visit our website at libraries.ucsd.edu/hlhw. Training in the use of the Visual History Archive is available for individuals and groups upon appointment.

The first lecture of the winter quarter, held at 5 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 21, featured Dr. Edith Eger, a Holocaust survivor, discussing “how one deals with the wreckage of one’s life in the aftermath of catastrophe?”

As a young girl Edith Eger of Kosice, Hungary, was deported to Auschwitz where both of her parents were murdered. At war’s end, she moved to the United States and became a clinical psychologist with her own practice in La Jolla. While she could have chosen to remain a permanent victim, she realized early on that true freedom can only be found by forgiving, letting go, and moving on.

Upcoming events include:

Feb. 25: Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp – with Christopher Browning

March 11: Archival Footprints: In Search of the Grishavers – with Herman Grishaver

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Preceding provided by UCSD’s Holocaust Living History Workshop