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.

 

ATTEND

WATCH

Celina Biniaz, Holocaust Survivor

Celina Biniaz is a Holocaust survivor and a Schindler Jew, one of several saved by Oskar Schindler, who gave us her testimony in 1996. This is a clip from that testimony. Listen to Celina Biniaz's message to the future.

Rosalina Tuyuc, Guatemalan Genocide Survivor

In 2015, Rosalina Tuyuc, human rights activist and Guatemalan Genocide survivor, gave her testimony to Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala. Listen to Rosalina Tuyuc's message to the future.

Aaron Elster, Holocaust Survivor

Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster, who gave us his testimony in 1995, returned twenty years later to so we could interview him for the Dimension in Testimony project. This is a clip from his 2015 interactive biography. Listen to Aaron Elster's message to the future.

CONTRIBUTE

 

Please help us collect the testimony of today with your stories of home.

The final theme of the #WHATISHOMEPROJECT is messages to the future. What do you want future generations to know about this difficult time? How are you getting through the moment? What memories are you leaning on from the past? What hopes do you have for the future?

This week, take a photo, or a short 10-15 second video, perhaps draw something or write a bit of poetry. You can even use spoken word or record the sounds of home to give us a look into your life. It can be abstract or literal. It can be something you create today or use something from your past. 

Contribute by tagging #whatishomeproject and @uscshoahfoundation on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. To be considered for a final curated collection of the #whatishomeproject, please email your submission to vhi-web@usc.edu.

Your content may be shared on social media and may appear on USC Shoah Foundation’s website.

 

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