What does home mean to you during this difficult time? Home doesn’t have to be four walls. Home is an idea, a concept, a place of being. Home can be a song, a person, a smell. It can be an action, a story, a dream for the future. Home isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it is challenging, maybe even frightening. Sometimes it is a place you want to run away from and sometimes it is a place from where you are forced to flee. Sometimes home moves with you and sometimes you never go back. Home may be the family you were born into, or it may be the one you create. Sometimes home is noisy or crowded, or it may be just you. Maybe you enjoy the solitude, or maybe you feel lonely.
The 55,000+ testimonies in our archive are a testament to home. They are stories of losing home, recreating home, never having had a home, or never finding the feeling of home again. Most of our testimonies were filmed in people’s homes, the place they came to as survivors.
For 25 years, USC Shoah Foundation has been collecting testimony from survivors and witnesses of genocide. Now, in an unprecedented moment, we as a global community are staying at home. As we enter Genocide Awareness Month, we want to acknowledge the importance of home in all of its emotional complexity.
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WATCH
In this clip from his testimony, Freddy Mutanguha recalls the moment he said goodbye to his mother, and her parting words of advice.
In this clip from his testimony, Jésus Tecu recounts the moment he realized that his parents would not return home.
CONTRIBUTE
Please help us collect the testimony of today with your stories of home.
Perhaps for you, family might mean the one you were born into, or it may be the one you create. Maybe family is an old photograph, a tradition, or a song. Maybe it’s an artifact, a favorite hand-me-down, or a story that’s been passed from one generation to the next.
This week, take a photo, or a short 10-15 second video, perhaps draw something or write a bit of poetry. You can even use spoken word or record the sounds of home to give us a look into your life. It can be abstract or literal. It can be something you create today or use something from your past.
Contribute by tagging #whatishomeproject and @uscshoahfoundation on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. To be considered for a final curated collection of the #whatishomeproject, please email your submission to vhi-web@usc.edu.
Your content may be shared on social media and may appear on USC Shoah Foundation’s website.
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