About the USC Shoah Foundation Institute

University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute for visual History and Education

In 1994, Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to videotape and preserve testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses before it was too late.  As of January 1, 2006, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation became a part of the University of Southern California’s (USC) College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and adopted the name USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. 

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute has produced 10 documentaries that have been broadcast in 50 countries and subtitled in 28 languages, including Broken Silence, an international documentary series with five films in Spanish, Russian, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian, and Volevo solo vivere, an Italian documentary. 

Volevo solo vivere premiered in Rome in January 2006, and was nominated for Italy’s main national film award, the Donatello Award, in the category of Best Feature Length Documentary.  Most recently, Voleve solo vivere was chosen to screen in the Official Selection, Out of Competition, at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

With a collection of nearly 52,000 video testimonies collected in 32 languages and 56 countries, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s archive is the largest visual history archive in the world.

The Institute interviewed Jewish survivors, homosexual survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Sinti and Roma (Gypsy) survivors, survivors of Eugenics policies, and war crimes trials participants.  Currently, 55 Visual History Collections can be viewed at locations in 17 countries, and the entire archive can be viewed at four universities in the United States. 

Using testimony from the archive, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute creates educational programs and products, including lessons, activities, screenings, and online exhibits. These programs and products are reaching nearly two million students in the United States and around the world. 

Today, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is engaged in the urgent mission to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry─and the suffering they cause─through the educational use of the Institute’s visual history testimonies.  The Institute relies upon a global network of partners to provide the general public with broad access to the archive, and develop and support educational programs and products based on the Institute’s testimonies.

For information about the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, visit www.usc.edu/vhi.

THE USC SHOAH FOUNDATION INSTITUTE IN UKRAINE

• The USC Shoah Foundation Institute began interviewing in Ukraine in October 1996. 
  
  
• In total, 3,446 interviews were conducted in Ukraine and in the Ukrainian language outside of the Ukraine. 
  
  
• The majority of interviews were conducted in the Russian language, as well as in Hungarian, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish.

• Interviews were conducted by 44 interviewers and videotaped by 31 videographers.
  
  
• Interviews were conducted in towns and cities around the country, including Kyiv, Odesa, Balta, Berdychiv, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovs’k, Donets’k, Kharkiv, Mogyliv-Podilsky, Simferopol, Vinnytsya, Zaporizhya, and Zhmerynka.
  
  
• The experiences represented in the interviews conducted in Ukraine or in the Ukrainian language include: Jewish survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, and Sinti and Roma (Gypsy) survivors.