Director Steven Spielberg founded Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1994 to videotape and preserve interviews with Holocaust survivors.
By 2001, we had collected 52,000 testimonies. Our Visual History Archive now contains almost 57,000 searchable testimonies, the largest such collection in the world.
We started digitizing our collection in 2008 and we constantly update our preservation systems. We hold 12 patents on digital collection management technologies that we developed.
In 2023, users viewed 223 million minutes of testimony across all our platforms, including our Visual History Archive, YouTube channel, website, and IWitness educational platform.
In January 2006, the Shoah Foundation moved from Universal Studios to the USC campus in Los Angeles, joining the vibrant and engaged community of faculty, researchers, and students. In 2023, we opened offices at USC’s Washington, D.C., campus.
Expanding Research Horizons
Researchers, students, journalists, policymakers, storytellers, and the public turn to our Visual History Archive to enrich and expand their understanding of history. With its wealth of testimonies, tools, and resources, the archive is vital for deepening knowledge and fostering meaningful insights.
A walk through our history, from VHS tapes in the backlots of Universal Studios to our state-the-art technology center and elegant headquarters at USC.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in cooperation with USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, hosted the 12th Southern California Teacher Forum on Holocaust Education, “Teaching about the Holocaust,” at the University of Southern California. Approximately 90 educators from the greater Los Angeles area attended the three-day program. Read More
Contest challenges secondary school students to honor the legacy of Schindler’s List by engaging in community service inspired by survivors’ testimonies and showcasing their action in an IWitness video essay Read More
Three professional-development videos for secondary-school teachers are now available on the Institute’s website. The videos, which average 25 minutes in length, delve into the theory and practice of using testimony for education and digital tools such as IWitness. Read More
The weekend before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, experts from Yad Vashem, the Department for Education and Culture of the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Terezin Memorial, and USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education held training seminars for teachers in the Czech Republic. The Institute presented its Czech-language educational resources, which are based on the testimony of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses; the seminars reached teachers in the cities of Karlovy Vary, Ostrov nad Ohří and Plzeň.
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After being honored as one of this year’s “Best Websites for Teaching and Learning” by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), the Institute’s IWitness website continues to receive major education endorsements. Read More
When the Institute sent teams around the world to gather video testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses of the Holocaust, more than 2,500 Australians came forward. Nearly 20 years later, the Institute is once again in Australia; this time, the focus is on students.
In partnership with Education Services Australia Limited (ESA), the Institute is exploring the possibility of integrating its award-winning website IWitness (currently in beta) into the Australian national curriculum. About IWitness Read More
