The nearly 52,000 videotaped testimonies of the Shoah Foundation Institute's Visual History Archive were recorded primarily between 1994 and 1999 in 56 countries and in 32 languages. While the majority of the interviews are with Jewish Holocaust survivors, the archive also includes the testimonies of political prisoners, Sinti and Roma (Gypsy) survivors, Jehovah's Witness survivors, survivors of eugenics policies, and homosexual survivors as well as rescuers and aid providers, liberators, and participants in war crimes trials.

Each testimony discusses the interviewee’s prewar, wartime, and postwar life experience, in his or her home country and country of immigration, such that the archive covers a significant part of the history of the 20th century around the world. At the conclusion of the testimony, the interviewee displays photographs, documents, and artifacts pertaining to his or her life story. Finally, the interviewee introduces family members and friends on camera. During some interviews, the interviewee performs literary or musical works or displays original works of art. Approximately 150 interviews feature walking tours, in which a portion of the interview was conducted at sites of former concentration camps, ghettos, mass graves, or in front of prewar family homes.

Each interview averages over two hours in length. To learn more about how the interviews were conducted, please see Collecting Testimonies.