The Institute took the audience and jury prizes in the Alternative Realities Interactive categories for its New Dimensions in Testimony (NDT) project.

Priscilla Hefley, a master’s student in the USC School of Social Work, knew she wanted to do research on trauma and its impact on the brain, but she had no idea where to start – until her professor Hazel Atuel suggested she look in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation presents 24 stories of genocide survivors who recall their experiences as refugees in their testimonies preserved in the Visual History Archive. Each clip of testimony to inspire, inform and shed light on the impact of war, genocide and massacre forcing individuals from their homes.  

Jewish survivor Rita Kuhn discusses her interest in speaking with her Nazi cousin to learn a lot more about her experiences in the Holocaust. She says that her past did not exist to her until she openly discussed it in 1985, and she was finally able to share her experiences publicly in Berlin in 1988.