Visual History Archive

An invaluable resource for humanity, with nearly every testimony encompassing a complete personal history of life before, during and after the subject’s firsthand experience with genocide

Visit the Visual History Archive

Watch survivor testimonies from the October 7 Terrorist Attack

These are the firsthand testimonies of those who survived the massacre, those who risked their own lives to save others, and those whose lives were changed forever when they lost loved ones.

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Visual History Archive By the Numbers

56,000
Video Testimonies
65
Countries
45
Languages
181
Access Sites Wordwide
1.966 million
Personal Names
724,228
Photographs and Images
66,237
Keywords
The Power of VHA Testimony Search
Used everyday by leading scholars in the creation of books, articles, dissertations and multi-media presentations, the Visual History Archive® is unique in its ability to advance genocide research thanks to a patented built-in search engine and carefully
Telling the Story
Our Interview Methodology
Learn about the different aspects of the interview process the Institute developed prior to recording its first testimony in 1995 and is still the foundation for current testimony capture.
Take a Deep Dive

In this video, join Badema Pitic as she introduces the Visual History Archive. Along the way, she demonstrates the search interface and offers handy tips to conduct your own search.

Watch sample clips from each of our collections in the Visual History Archive

Judah Samet, a survivor of the Holocaust and of the 2018 attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh speaks about hope in his testimony recorded by USC Shoah Foundation in 2019.

  • Language: English

    Judah Samet, a survivor of the Holocaust and of the 2018 attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh speaks about hope in his testimony recorded by USC Shoah Foundation in 2019.

  • Language: English

  • Language: English

    Freddy Mutanguha remembers saying goodbye to his mother before she was murdered during the Rwanda Tutsi Genocide.

  • Genocide: Aurora Mardiganian on the Armenian Genocide

    Language: English

    Aurora Mardiganian speaks here as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. But from 1918-1920, she was also the face of the Genocide to literally millions of Americans and to others throughout the world. Her tragic, horrific story was told through a 1918 semi-autobiographical book, Ravished Armenia, and a 1919 screen adaptation, also known as Auction of Souls. With the immediacy of a newsreel, the human side to the Genocide was brought to the screen. Working with Near East Relief and with the support of the wealthiest and the most prominent members of New York society, Aurora and her film helped raise some $117 million (the equivalent of $2 billion today) for the relief of Armenian suffering.

  • Rosalina Tuyuc's Message to the Future

    Language: Spanish

  • Shafika Begum

    Language: English

    Shafika Begum describes a massacre at her Rohingya village. On Aug. 30 of 2017, as part of a coordinated attack across the Rakhine State that had begun a few days prior, the Myanmar Army and local collaborators burned down dwellings and began gunning down inhabitants of her village, Tula Toli.

  • Language: English

  • Xia Shuqin on the Nanjing Massacre

    Language: Mandarin

    Xia Shuqin recalls the Nanjing massacre on Dec. 13, 1937 and how she hid from Japanese soldiers during the invasion.

Rohingya testimonies added to Visual History Archive
The integration of the new collection means the Archive now represents nine genocidal events
USC Shoah Foundation expands its collection of Guatemalan Genocide testimonies
In addition to indexing and archiving the testimonies, USC Shoah Foundation is continuing to use the interviews to produce learning activities about the Guatemala Genocide in IWitness, an online, no-cost resource with a wealth of classroom-ready exercises
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Your donation helps the Institute record and preserve the testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides.