Voice of America features Dimensions in Testimony

Stephen Smith demonstrates the Dimensions in Testimony interactive biography of Pinchas Gutter for Voice of America. (Image courtesy of Voice of America)

The piece by the U.S. government-funded broadcast site emphasized how the interactive biographies will enable future generations to ask questions of and receive immediate answers from pre-recorded images of Holocaust survivors, long after the last of the living witnesses are gone.  

 “Imagine that you’re going to be able to sit down and talk with a Holocaust survivor about their life and ask them questions, just like you might do in the present, in future,” said USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith in an interview.

The two-minute segment shows a back and forth between Smith and the pre-recorded image of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter. Gutter is among 20 people who have participated in the project – 19 of them are Holocaust survivors; the other is a survivor of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.

Several of the finished interviews are exhibited at museums around the world.