In honor of National Archives Month, here are 10 unique facts about USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Early this year, when the Swedish History Museum opened its exhibit about the Holocaust – an exhibit that includes USC Shoah Foundation testimonies and some of its interactive biographies – it marked the state-funded museum’s first foray into the topic. The exhibit has been a major success, say two Swedish museum professionals who played a prominent role in the installation, and who came to USC Shoah Foundation’s headquarters in Los Angeles last week to discuss taking the partnership to the next level.

As the sun sets on the Danube River, I felt the need to pinch myself. I am really here in Budapest? It doesn’t feel so far away from my home in Los Angeles. But looking at the architecture and the castle in the distance, I fall in love with the romance of this old European city.

A few weeks ago I went shopping at one of my favorite bookstores in Los Angeles. However, I wasn’t picking out a few books that would sit on my metro-read shelf. I was with a few USC Shoah Foundation colleagues—picking out an entire collection of Armenian Genocide History resources for the Doheny Library. A few of my colleagues and I were tasked with picking out resources to expand the library’s collection. We were shopping for the future genocide researchers, scholars, and educators.

In this activity, students will examine the impact that personal stories can have in inspiring others to action. They will listen and reflect on genocide survivor testimonies, discuss the concept of leadership and form belief statements about how they can become leaders in their communities.

USC Shoah Foundation has granted the Istituto Centrale per i beni sonori ed audiovisivi headquarters in Rome full remote access to its Visual History Archive.

In the Spring 2014 issue of PastForward, Holocaust survivor Roman Kent shares his story of survival, education and one very special dog.

Discover the testimonies of Holocaust survivors who share memories of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which is commemorating its 80th anniversary this week as the 2016 Olympics begin in Rio de Janeiro.

The USC Shoah Foundation stands in solemn tribute to the memory of those murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and to those hostages still in captivity. As we mark this day, we reflect not only on the devastating loss of life but also on the dangerous beliefs that led to this atrocity. The attacks on October 7 revealed the persistence of virulent antisemitism in communities across the globe. Antisemitism threatens the memory of the Holocaust, threatens individual lives and communities, and undermines democratic values, the rule of law, and global security.

To meet growing demands for access to the world’s largest archive of genocide testimony, USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education is announcing its Visual History Archive Program, which will reimagine how users connect to the testimonies.

Dartmouth College is the latest university to gain full access to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

Drexel University is now the 45th site in the world to have full access to USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation published 185 Armenian Genocide testimonies in the Visual History Archive on Friday, nearly tripling the size of the Institute’s Armenian Genocide collection.

The “Oral History and Mediation” panel will present three unique research projects that each study a different aspect of giving and recording testimony.

Families exploring USC at Trojan Family Weekend are invited to visit the USC Shoah Foundation exhibit to learn more about the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research staff will be traveling around the world this summer to host academic workshops about the Visual History Archive.

USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education to host its first International Digital Access, Outreach, and Research Conference.

Aided by their exploration of the Visual History Archive, three students and a professor from USC presented a panel discussion at the fifth annual ucLADINO Symposium at UCLA March 2-3, 2015.

Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (MHMC) and Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto announced an historic agreement to have their testimonies integrated in the Visual History Archive as part of the Institute’s Preserving the Legacy initiative.

Northwestern University Library has just become the first institution in Illinois to offer complete access to the nearly 52,000 videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses contained in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's Visual History Archive.

Roughly 1,000 audio-only interviews recorded by students of UCLA history Professor Richard Hovannisian were entrusted to USC Shoah Foundation. This week, Hovannisian and three of his former students gave a talk about how they amassed such a large repository of memory at so crucial a time, “when denialism was huge.”

Secondary school students across France are hard at work on their entries for the 2013-2014 National Contest on Resistance and Deportation – and many of them are drawing inspiration from USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive

Hill-Murray High School teacher receives 2010 Top Teacher Award.

To commemorate the International Day of Memory that marks the 60 th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Shoah Foundation will open two national European Visual History Collections of videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. The Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Central State Archive) in Rome, and the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC) in Paris will house the Italian and French Collections respectively.

The Visual History Archive contains 53,000 eyewitness testimonies to genocide and mass atrocities. What you might not know is that each testimony is indexed to the minute with over 62,000 keys words in the entire Archive. USC Shoah Foundation commemorates National Archives Month this November by participating in #AskAnArchivist Day on Thurs., Oct. 1, and sharing 10 more unique facts about the Visual History Archive.

This summer, the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is hosting three visiting scholars, who have traveled from across the country to conduct research in the Visual History Archive and consult with the staff and other researchers at the Center, as well as staff as across the Institute.

Special event to be hosted at Annenberg center.

USC Shoah Foundation recently launched the Visual History Archive at Harvard University, establishing a powerful bridge from coast to coast, including a vibrant and timely panel discussion examining hate and disinformation in public discourse and concrete pathways to address the problems we face.

USC Shoah Foundation’s French consultant Emmanuel Debono published an article about USC Shoah Foundation and its use of testimony in the French review journal Études arméniennes contemporaines (Contemporary Armenian Studies).

Even absent this current era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” the new Polish law making it a crime to point out Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust would be alarming.  But that it is occurring in today’s climate of demagoguery, heightened nationalism and ethnic tension – an unholy trio that threatens to metastasize on a global scale – is a troubling development. Poland’s effort has come under attack by Israel and stewards of Holocaust memory.