HISTORY OF THE VISUAL HISTORY ARCHIVE
The USC Shoah Foundation Institute is the successor to the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg to document the experiences of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust through video-based oral histories. The collection of nearly 52,000 testimonies is contained in the Institute's Visual History Archive. With a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a pilot program allowed faculty and students at USC, Rice, Yale, and the University of Michigan to access the entire archive over the Internet2 research network. That pilot program has expanded to include additional universities with access to the network, including the University of Minnesota.
The mission of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is 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 partnerships in the United States and around the world to provide public access to the archive and advance scholarship in many fields of inquiry. The Institute and its partners also utilize the archive to develop educational products and programs for use in many countries and languages.
Offering unmatched historical and geographic breadth, the VHA has been used to enhance research and teaching in a wide variety of disciplines, including history, religion, anthropology, political science, and many others.
Search the Visual History Archive (Recommended Web browsers Windows: Internet Explorer; Mac: Safari)
(Accessible only from workstations on the University of Minnesota — Twin Cities campus)
Questions about this site? E-mail us at vhahelp@umn.edu