In October 1942, when Nathan Drew and his wife Helen heard rumors that Nazis would liquidate the Łomźa Ghetto in Poland in which they lived, they escaped to Warsaw, avoiding by mere hours the forced removal of over 8,000 Jews to the Zambrow transit camp. In Warsaw, Nathan and Helen used false identification documents to live in the open as “counterfeit Poles,” hiding their Jewish heritage while navigating the harsh realities of Nazi occupation.

Throughout the nearly 150 interviews she conducted of Holocaust survivors for USC Shoah Foundation, Nancy Fisher’s philosophy was simple: “I did my best to be a human being connecting with another human being.”

Like memory itself, the video testimony within the Visual History Archive is not permanent. Data degradation resulting from the gradual decay of storage media can result in the eventual breakdown of video and audio, rendering a testimony worthless, even in digital form. The Institute’s newly-launched Forever Fund will provide means to ensure that testimonies will live on in whatever form the future may necessitate.

For producer Richard Hall, supporting USC Shoah Foundation’s efforts to collect testimony related to the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda is a natural extension of his work as a documentary filmmaker. “A good interview really connects you to the humanity of others. We are all the same, but we don’t really feel it until we have the chance to bridge the language barrier and understand context for another’s experience.”

As a longtime donor to USC Shoah Foundation, Pennsylvania-based The Snider Foundation has supported a variety of Institute programs, including the Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony initiative. According to Jay Snider, President of The Snider Foundation, “Our Dad [founder Ed Snider] grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and the survival of the Jewish people was of utmost importance to him.