Both the original exhibition and the accompanying book (published in 2015) aims to inform a new generation of learners about the horrors of the Second World War.
The book was produced in partnership with March of the Living, an organization dedicated to facilitating visits to the Polish sites of Nazi crimes and Toronto-based religious figure and Holocaust educator Eli Rubenstein.
Based on a photo exhibit launched at the United Nations in 2014, the book, released in 2015, documents experiences from Holocaust survivors revisiting concentration camps and the reactions of teenage visitors confronting the horrors inflicted by the Nazis on various groups.
Eli Rubenstein collected photos from the March of the Living Digital Archive Project and paired these with poems from teenage participants and added historical sections to explain multiple events.
The subsequent chapter is dedicated to the principal death camps located in Poland (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Belzec), where systematic extermination occurred.
The concluding chapter advocates for a dedication to fostering a new generation of witnesses through multiple avenues including Holocaust studies.
When their image is accessed with a smart phone or other device, the reader is taken to an excerpt of their video testimony on USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education (created by Steven Spielberg) or March of the Living Digital Archive Project websites.
In the new edition, each photo of a survivor, rescuer, or WWII liberator has an invisible barcode that links to their video testimony via mobile phone.
[8] The March of the Living Digital Archive Project, which hosts many of the videos linked in the book was made possible in part, through grants from the Citizenship & Immigration Canada - Multiculturalism Section, and the Claims Conference.
Avrum Rosensweig in the HuffPost summarized the book saying; " powerful aspect of Witness is that it stands on its own as a historical document and is an excellent, well laid out read for students of the Holocaust and those who are new to learning about this very complex time in history.
"[11] Canadian Jewish News described the book as " a treasure trove of photographs, poetry, commentary and history designed to enlighten a broad audience about the events of the Holocaust.
Like a drop of water falls on a stone and erodes it, so, hopefully, by telling my story over and over again, I will achieve the purpose of making the world a better place to live in.’ Those are the words of one survivor – performing that sacred duty of memory – that will echo throughout eternity.