Linda Ziskind

If we're lucky, we get to spend our lives doing something that we're good at and we love. If we're really lucky, a project will come along that gives us an opportunity to do more than that. It gives us a chance to make a difference. Two years ago that kind of project grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention. It came in the form of 500 documents, letters, and photographs from the Holocaust. They belonged to my family and for 70 years they had been hidden away in boxes. Over the past 24 months I've had the letters translated; digitized and organized them chronologically in a spreadsheet; and donated the originals to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Now comes the hard part. I'm using the collection to create an interactive educational program to illustrate the similarities between the attitudes, behaviors, and political climate that enabled the Holocaust, and similar contemporary behaviors, attitudes, and legislation, in the U.S. and around the world. Because when we say "never again," it should mean "never again" for human suffering anywhere.