Joseph Thiriot is a longtime Las Vegas resident who served the community as an educator. He was born in 1906 in Provo, Utah; one of five sons bom to George W. and Elvira Thiriot. He has vivid memories of moving about, including living in Idaho where his father sold a typing machine , a forerunner to the typewriter. Eventually the family moved to a ranch in Pahranagat Valley, Nevada, where the limits of educational opportunities compelled his paients to send him back to Provo to finish his education while living with family there. Gaining a teaching certificate enabled Joseph to teach in rural Nevada. He completed his degree at the University of Utah and after meeting Las Vegas Superintendent Maude Frazier he relocated to Las Vegas to become a teacher. He reminisces about his life and the changes that have occurred over the years in Las Vegas.

One day in 2012, UNLV student Lyn Robinson spied a posting on the bulletin board for a photographer for the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center. She was an art major with a concentration on photography. She was also had a deep appreciation of the horror of the Holocaust and what the survivors she would take photos of had endured. Thus began a two year project, during which she took photos of over sixty survivors. Her images are preserved at UNLV Special Collections & Archives. Prints are displayed at the Sperling Kronberg Mack Holocaust Resource Center. On September 18, 2014, Lyn shared her work for this oral history recording. She is a native of Florida, daughter of a horticulturist father and pianist mother.