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."
