What does home mean to you during this difficult time? Home doesn’t have to be four walls. Home is an idea, a concept, a place of being. Home can be a song, a person, a smell. It can be an action, a story, a dream for the future. Home isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it is challenging, maybe even frightening. Sometimes it is a place you want to run away from and sometimes it is a place from where you are forced to flee. Sometimes home moves with you and sometimes you never go back. Home may be the family you were born into, or it may be the one you create. Sometimes home is noisy or crowded, or it may be just you. Maybe you enjoy the solitude, or maybe you feel lonely.
The 55,000+ testimonies in our archive are a testament to home. They are stories of losing home, recreating home, never having had a home, or never finding the feeling of home again. Most of our testimonies were filmed in people’s homes, the place they came to as survivors.
For 25 years, USC Shoah Foundation has been collecting testimony from survivors and witnesses of genocide. Now, in an unprecedented moment, we as a global community are staying at home. As we enter Genocide Awareness Month, we want to acknowledge the importance of home in all of its emotional complexity.