Amanda Castillo
Amanda Castillo is a fourth-year student at UCLA, majoring in Anthropology B.A. and minoring in Ancient Near East & Egyptology. She is completing a senior honors thesis about the volunteer docents at the local museum: Holocaust Museum LA. Amanda was an intern at this museum during her first year-of college, and her experiences inspired this project.
Holocaust Museum LA was founded in 1961 by a group of holocaust survivors who each possessed an artifact from the Holocaust. They believed that these artifacts needed to be displayed permanently in memoriam of the lives lost in the Holocaust. This museum is the first survivor-founded Holocaust museum in the United States and has always provided completely free access to the Holocaust education. This research project explores how docents volunteering at Holocaust Museum LA educate the museum’s visitors through discussing Holocaust history in conjunction with story-telling of their personal experiences. The docents at Holocaust Museum LA have a variety of backgrounds such as being a Holocaust survivor, a child or relative of a survivor, or being an educator of Holocaust history. This project analyzes each docent's lived experiences while volunteering at Holocaust Museum LA and their impact on visitors and students. The docents at Holocaust Museum LA are central to the facilitation of education at the museum and serve as a critical part of visitor experience. Their experiences speak to the importance and relevance of Holocaust history and preserving survivor testimony in the present-day.
Amanda Castillo is a fourth-year student at UCLA, majoring in Anthropology B.A. and minoring in Ancient Near East & Egyptology. She is completing a senior honors thesis about the volunteer docents at the local museum: Holocaust Museum LA. Amanda was an intern at this museum during her first year-of college, and her experiences inspired this project.
Holocaust Museum LA was founded in 1961 by a group of holocaust survivors who each possessed an artifact from the Holocaust. They believed that these artifacts needed to be displayed permanently in memoriam of the lives lost in the Holocaust. This museum is the first survivor-founded Holocaust museum in the United States and has always provided completely free access to the Holocaust education. This research project explores how docents volunteering at Holocaust Museum LA educate the museum’s visitors through discussing Holocaust history in conjunction with story-telling of their personal experiences. The docents at Holocaust Museum LA have a variety of backgrounds such as being a Holocaust survivor, a child or relative of a survivor, or being an educator of Holocaust history. This project analyzes each docent’s lived experiences while volunteering at Holocaust Museum LA and their impact on visitors and students. The docents at Holocaust Museum LA are central to the facilitation of education at the museum and serve as a critical part of visitor experience. Their experiences speak to the importance and relevance of Holocaust history and preserving survivor testimony in the present-day.