Using video diaries and workshop discussions, today’s teens explore issues of bias and tolerance in their own lives. Giving Voice weaves interviews with this diverse group of teenagers with the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
Equipped with mini-DV cameras, seven young people document their surroundings at school and at home, with friends and family, and share their emotional responses to viewing survivor testimony. In the process, they make candid and poignant observations about the examples of intolerance and bigotry they see every day and offer eloquent examples of how each of them strives to take responsibility for building a better, more tolerant world.
When young adults see the faces and hear the voices of men and women who suffered what others can only imagine, they make the connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives, opening up the possibilities for profound change.
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
After completing the Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. Ten years later, the Shoah Foundation has created Giving Voice, a new educational product for students. This is the legacy of Schindler’s List: a vehicle for facilitating a "dialogue" between students and the testimonies, this extraordinary three-part set is an immensely powerful tool for launching a meaningful discussion about the causes and effects of hatred and prejudice.
Student Video Diaries & Workshop
This half-hour reality TV-style video illustrates how the participants grew, changed, and rethought their own closely held assumptions over the course of the filming project and the daylong workshop that brought it all together. The video weaves student video diaries with first-person, primary-source interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses. (25 minutes)
Survivor & Witness First-Person Testimonies
This video, a compilation of the actual testimonies the students watched, can be used as a part of an in-class re-creation of the workshop—or on its own to deliver a transformative experience that will open eyes, minds, and hearts. (43 minutes)
Standards-Driven Teacher’s Guide
This modular, standards-driven teacher’s guide provides educators with all the materials they will need to utilize both videos to maximum effect—and, if desired, to conduct the entire student workshop in their own classrooms. Ideal for curriculums involving character development, conflict mediation, and human rights. (36 pages)