News from Mardigian Library: Digicam available; upcoming events with Voice/Vision Archive

Video Equipment Now Available for Checkout at the Library
Need to make a video for a class project and don’t have the equipment? The library has a solution for you. Campus Media Services has purchased Kodak Playtouch digicams, which are now available for check out at the library circulation desk. The Playtouch is the size and shape of a smartphone and will take HD videos in 1080p resolution. One-touch uploading provides easy sharing through email, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and other sites. You may also connect the Playtouch to your computer and transfer the files. If you want to edit the video, the library’s Campus Media Services has a multimedia editing room for student and faculty use. The editing room is equipped with the best audio and video editing software, including Avid, Final Cut Pro, and the suite of Adobe and Microsoft applications.

The digicam comes in a carry bag with an extra battery, an external microphone, connecting and charging wires, and the manual.  Ask for it at the library circulation desk. Digicams have a three-day checkout period.

Sponsored Events at Jewish Book Fair
The Mardigian Library and the Voice/Vision Archive are co-sponsoring the Kristallnacht Day of Remembrance at the 61st Annual Jewish Book Fair on Friday, November 9. The three authors and books highlighted on November 9 are:

10 a.m.  “Sidonia’s Thread” by Hanna Perlstein Marcus. Hanna and her mother, Sidonia, come to the United States after World War II. Their lives are defined by Sidonia’s talents as a seamstress as well as her ability to keep secrets. Many years later, Hanna begins reading her mother’s old letters, making an unexpected discovery that leads to a completely new understanding of who Sidonia really is.

11:30 a.m.  “Judgment Before Nuremberg: The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crime Trial” by Greg Dawson. In December 1943, two years before the famous Nuremberg Trials, three Nazis and one Russian collaborator are tried in the Ukraine during the Kharkov Trial. The author tells the story from both a historical and personal perspective—his own ancestors were murdered in Kharkov.

1:15 p.m.  “Beyond Courage: the Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust” by Doreen Rappaport. The author tells of the courage of the many Jews who organized to sabotage the Nazis or to help other Jews escape. Among the 21 stories are accounts of Marcel Marceau’s cousin, Georges Loinger, who smuggled thousands of Jewish children out of France, and a 12-year-old boy who played his violin for German officers, and then set off a bomb.

The Jewish Book Fair runs from November 7 to 18, 2012, at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield. More information can be found at: http://bookfair.jccdet.org/

Holocaust Memoir Published by the Voice/Vision Archive and UM-Dearborn
The Voice/Vision Archive recently worked with Irene Miller to publish her Holocaust memoir, “Into No Man’s Land: A Historical Memoir.” Ms. Miller recounts her family’s efforts to survive during World War II. Robbed and stranded in a frozen field outside Warsaw by the man hired to help them escape to Soviet-occupied territory, the family must separate in order to cross the border. When Irene’s mother is rounded up with other families abandoned in the field, she must make a desperate and daring escape from the train of Jews being sent “who knows where.” The family is reunited, but then is shipped off to forced labor camps in Siberia where years of hard work and near starvation take a toll on the family.

Miller will be a highlighted local author at two upcoming events in the area:

• Sunday, November 11, 9 a.m., local authors brunch, Jewish Book Fair at the JCC of Greater Ann Arbor: http://www.jccannarbor.org/cultural-arts-education/jewish-book-festival/
• Sunday, November 18, 10 a.m. to noon, Jewish Book Fair at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield: http://bookfair.jccdet.org/

“Into No Man’s Land” is available for sale at Amazon.com.