In a ceremony held today in Rome commemorating the Day of Memory, the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central State Archive), together with Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, announced that the Foundation’s videotaped interviews of more than 400 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses are now available for public viewing and educational use at the Archivio. The testimonies contained in this national collection were either recorded in the Italian language or in Italy.

To commemorate the International Day of Memory that marks the 60 th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Shoah Foundation will open two national European Visual History Collections of videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. The Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central State Archive) in Rome, and the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC) in Paris will house the Italian and French Collections respectively.

Member of Ukrainian Parliament, Viktor Pinchuk, has made a generous contribution to support the production of a new documentary film that will rely upon the testimonies in the Shoah Foundation archive recorded in Ukraine. Mr. Pinchuk, who initiated the project, is the founder of Interpipe Scientific and Industrial Production Group. The 18-month project also includes the creation of a study guide for students and teachers that will be based on the film.

Steven Spielberg, founder of Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, will present the Foundation’s annual Ambassadors for Humanity Award to President William Jefferson Clinton on February 17, 2005 in Los Angeles.

Today supporters of the Shoah Foundation celebrated the dedication of the new Tapper Research and Testing Center at the Foundation’s Los Angeles headquarters. The dedication of the Center, named for benefactor Albert M. Tapper, marks a major milestone for the Foundation, making the rich resources in the Shoah Foundation archive available to students, educators and scholars.

Today, in a ceremony held at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation,
together with the Bavarian Ministry for Culture and Education, announced the distribution of the German-language educational CD-ROM, Remembering: for the Present and the Future to Bavarian secondary schools.

Today Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, the nonprofit organization that videotapes the firsthand testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses and make them accessible for educational purposes, opened a rare collection of Sinti and Roma Holocaust survivor testimonies at the Dokumentations und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma (Documentation and Culture Centre of the German Sinti and Roma) in Heidelberg.

Broken Silence, a “CINEMAX Reel Life” series of five documentary films by distinguished international directors, will debut on CINEMAX on five consecutive nights next April 15-19. This unique event is presented by Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and produced by Academy Award Winning documentary filmmaker James Moll (the Oscar-winning HBO documentary “The Last Days”), and will debut in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah.

Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, the nonprofit organization established by Steven Spielberg to videotape the firsthand testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses and make them accessible for educational purposes, is co-sponsoring legislation that will be introduced into the California State Assembly today.

The National Science Foundation awarded the Shoah Foundation a grant of $7.5 million distributed over five years, to develop speech-recognition software for cataloging more than 116,000 hours of videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and eyewitnesses, whose multilingual aspect poses special research challenges. As cataloging the testimonies is time-consuming and costly, particularly when it involves interviews in other languages, the NSF grant will support the development of a computer system that should be able to review the tapes and recognize important words and phrases.