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WHERE ON THE WEB

Holocaust survivors share their stories

Ten years ago, Steven Spielberg gave us "Schindler's List," a galvanizing portrait of the Holocaust, to remind us of the horrors that hate can cause. But the movie, which came out on DVD last month, was just the start.

Over the past decade, Spielberg's non-profit educational organization, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, has traveled to 56 countries to videotape the eyewitness accounts of nearly 52,000 actual survivors, some of whom inspired the film. At the foundation's newly revamped Web site, vhf.org, you can watch testimonies. Teachers can click on the "Education" menu to access lesson plans and reading materials about intolerance and bias.

Many of the tales are "pretty gruesome," says foundation president and CEO Douglas Greenberg. But middle schoolers can go to the special "Children Speak" section to hear the less graphic story of a 14-year-old who was transferred from Auschwitz to a work camp, never to see her parents again. "We think of ourselves as a bridge between these remarkable old people, who were teenagers during the Holocaust, and young people today," Greenberg says.

Other sites devoted to 20th-century genocides have similar goals. At visiontv.ca/RememberRwanda/main_pf.htm, a new project is underway to interview victims and document the mass killings that took place in Rwanda in 1994.

Genocide Watch, an international campaign at genocidewatch.org, breaks down the stages of "ethnic cleansing" -- such as classification ("us and them") and preparation (victims are identified and separated out) -- and pinpoints problem areas around the world today.

These Web sites go a long way toward making intolerance a thing of the past.

-- Frappa Stout