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.
USC Shoah Foundation will next week launch the U.S. premiere of The Tattooed Torah, an animated film that tells the inspirational story of a Torah rescued and restored after the Holocaust.
The film, based on Marvell Ginsburg’s beloved children’s book of the same name, recounts the true story of the rescue and restoration of a small Torah from Brno, Czechoslovakia.
In the film, the Torah is described as the most “precious possession” of the Jewish people and is a symbol that represents memories tied to cultural heritage, family, hope and resilience. Read More
In January 2017, USC Shoah Foundation launched 100 Days to Inspire Respect to provide teachers of civics, history, English and other subjects new thought-provoking resources for the first 100 days of the incoming administration. Read More
Two new books published today capture the extraordinary story of Lisa Jura, an Austrian Jewish refugee who survived the Holocaust and then pursued her dream to become a concert pianist. Read More
This summer, USC Shoah Foundation education team hosted their annual Leadership Workshop—Action and Values presented by the William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program.
The workshop calls for applicants who are preparing themselves to be in leadership positions in their communities. The focus is to cultivate, through the power of testimony, the confidence and courage to be an upstander. Testimonies, with their powerful universal messages, instill in students the importance of personal stories, values, and agency. Read More
USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education announced the winners of the 2020 Stronger Than Hate Challenge. The Challenge and the 2020 winners exemplify the power of youth voices to connect communities and the role of social and emotional learning in empowering students to overcome hate. Read More
A new national survey administered by Lucid Collaborative LLC and YouGov shows that Holocaust education in high school reflects gains not only in historical knowledge but also manifests in cultivating more empathetic, tolerant, and engaged students. Read More
