From April to July 1994, one of the most brutal genocides in human history occurred in Rwanda. It claimed the lives of 800,000 men, women, and children, most of whom were of Tutsi descent. Kwibuka, the official anniversary of the Rwandan Tutsi Genocide, is observed every year on April 7. Explore this selection of testimony clips of survivors and eyewitnesses to the genocide from the Visual History Archive. 

At the end of each interview the Institute recorded for the Archive, the interviewer would ask the interviewee if he or she had a special message for future generations watching the interview. The survivors and other witnesses often spoken about such themes as forgiveness, the importance of individual action, and the need to teach children tolerance. Here are a few messages from the Institute's Archive.

Several people responded to active discrimination by helping the victims in different ways. This is a collection of clips highlighting testimony from survivors and aid givers themselves. One question that sometimes emerges in these clips is "what made you stand up to discrimination and racial intolerance?"

A series of clips from survivors speaking about their experiences with personal as well as institutional forms of discrimination. These clips include testimonies from the European Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda collections.

A collection of clips from the Institute Archive that focus on interviewees describing particular feelings and emotions they experienced, such as fear, gratitude, and attitudes about others.

Possibly the most well-known example of these rescue operations involved individual British families agreeing to “host” children from Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic through a program known as Kindertransport.  Through this program, organized by Sir Nicholas Winton, an estimated 10,000 refugee children, most of them Jewish, were housed in the United Kingdom during the war.  These children were able to avoid ghettoization and camp experiences; in many cases, they were the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, listen to the testimonies of 70 Holocaust survivors, drawn from the Visual History Archive at USC Shoah Foundation, as they recall their personal experiences in the Nazi extermination camp.

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