USC Shoah Foundation’s 30 Years of Collection, Preservation, and Knowledge

Our History
Our Impact
Most Watched Testimonies
Top News

30 Years of Preserving History

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 2024, users viewed 138 million minutes of testimony on YouTube.

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Location

Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

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 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.

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Photo Gallery

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.

Producer and Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig; Leopold Pfefferberg (Page), a Schindler Jew whose story inspired the book; and director Steven Spielberg on the set of Schindler’s List in Krakow, 1993.

Steven Spielberg and staff member Karen Kushell at the Shoah Foundation office, 1995.

Volunteers in the Shoah Foundation office on the Universal Studios lot, 1995.

Shoah Foundation staff indexing English-language testimonies, late 1990s.

The Shoah Foundation’s first feature-length documentary The Last Days wins the 1998 Academy Award for Best Documentary feature.

Holocaust survivor and producer of Schindler’s List Branko Lustig sits down with interviewer Gerald Molen to record the 50,000th Shoah Foundation testimony, 1999.

An early prototype of the interface designed to search the Visual History Archive, late 1990s.

The tape robot in the Shoah Foundation offices provides users with access to testimonies stored on large servers, 2000.

The Shoah Foundation’s Visual History in the Classroom initiative brings six educational products to 54,000 schools, reaching 1.6 million students in 11 countries, 2004.

Leaders from the Shoah Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, and Yad Vashem join to celebrate the launch of Echoes and Reflections, a comprehensive educational resource for American high school students, 2005.

The newly-named USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education moves to the USC campus as part of the David and Dana Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, 2006.

Arrival of first shipment of Beta tapes containing survivor testimonies at the USC Shoah Foundation for archival digitizing, 2008.

The Armenian Film Foundation and Dr. J. Michael Hagopian sign a historic agreement with the Institute to digitize, preserve, and disseminate filmed interviews of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, 2010.

High school students in San Diego test a pilot version of IWitness, an online educational platform that engages students using testimony from survivors and witnesses of genocide, 2011.

USC Shoah Foundation Chief Technology Officer Sam Gustman shows visitors the technology behind the preservation and restoration of testimonies, 2012.

President Barack Obama receives the USC Shoah Foundation’s Ambassador for Humanity Award, 2014.

Video Archive and Post-Production Manager Ryan Fenton-Strauss films Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon for the documentary One Day in Auschwitz, 2014.

Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone sits to record her Dimensions in Testimony interview, 2015. The interactive technology allows people to have a conversational experience with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide in a real-time format

xUSC Shoah Foundation founder Steven Spielberg meets with Holocaust survivors during an Institute visit to Poland in honor of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 2015.

Dr. Richard Hovannisian, a leading scholar of the Armenian Genocide, announces the integration of the Richard G. Hovannisian Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection into the Visual History Archive, 2018.

The USC Shoah Foundation moves into the fourth floor of USC’s Leavey Library, an office space complete with an interactive lobby and Dimensions in Testimony exhibit, 2018.

USC Shoah Foundation curator Crispin Brooks interviews Holocaust survivor Marta Eva Shemesh in a renewed effort to collect testimony, February 2020.

Holocaust survivor Joe Adamson prepares for his virtual testimony interview during the COVID-19 pandemic, September 2020.

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff speaks with the Dimensions in Testimony interactive biography of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter, 2022.

Interface of the redesigned Visual History Archive with advanced new search functions and project management tools, launched in 2022.

The USC Shoah Foundation begins to collect testimonies from survivors of the October 2023 Hamas Terrorist Attacks, 2023.

USC President Dr. Carol Folt bestows the University Medallion upon Holocaust survivors who have entrusted their testimonies to the USC Shoah Foundation, 2024.

Mickey Shapiro, long-time supporter and member of the USC Shoah Foundation executive committee of the Board of Councilors, makes a $30 million gift to our endowment campaign in 2025.

Our 30-Year Impact

208

Archive Access Sites

7,000

Scholary Citations

407,000

Educators

27 Million

Students

47 Million

YouTube Views

Our Partners

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

Viewers around the world watched 138 million minutes of testimony on YouTube in 2024. Explore some of the interviews they found most compelling.

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Top News Stories

Statement from our Executive Director on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

On April 24, we call on the world to remember the genocide of the Armenian people. 109 years ago, during the First World War, Ottoman authorities arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). At the time, the Ottoman Empire was under the control of the relatively new leadership of the Young Turks; a party that had sought to create an ethnically homogenous Turkish state – a state that would have little space for the millions of Armenians then living in that empire. Read More

Recovered Testimony Brings Light, More Questions, to an Armenian Family

Sedda Antekelian, a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s education team, never knew her own great grandmother had recorded testimony about surviving the Armenian Genocide. Hearing her great grandmother’s voice for the first time has brought Sedda closer to family, filled in gaps about her own history, and opened even more questions. Read More

Hogan’s Heroes Actor Robert Clary, 96, Survived the Holocaust and Committed Himself to Remembrance

Robert Widerman Clary was among the first 100 Holocaust survivors interviewed for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, and he conducted 75 interviews of other survivors. In his testimony, he talks about his instinct and talent for entertaining—honed while he was a child in Paris—saved and shaped his life. Read More

Olympic Race Walker Shaul Ladany Survived Bergen-Belsen and the Munich Massacre

Shaul Ladany, an 88-year-old world-record holding speed-walker, has defied death multiple times. As a small child, he survived the German occupation of Budapest and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Then, representing Israel in the 1972 Munich Olympics, he narrowly escaped the massacre that took the lives of 11 Israeli athletes. Read More

Schindler’s List Survivor Celina Biniaz Warns Against the Corrosive Power of Hatred

For years, Celina Biniaz, one of the youngest people saved by Oskar Schindler, did not tell anyone – not even her children – that she was a Holocaust survivor. She feared no one could comprehend what she had been through, and she didn’t want to impose the trauma of her childhood upon her son and daughter. Celina’s reluctance to speak ended in 1994. That year, director Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List. He established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became the USC Shoah Foundation. Read More

She Smuggled Love, Hope, and Dynamite Over the Ghetto Walls

Not long after Feigele (Vladka) Peltel’s father died of pneumonia in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, the 17-year-old found herself at a lecture about Yiddish author I.L. Peretz hosted by her social democratic youth group, Tsukunft (The Future). She doesn’t precisely remember the talk, but she does recall the energy in the room. Read More

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