USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive: VHA Subject Guide

USC Shoah Foundation

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LibGuide: Holocaust Studies

LibGuide: Special Collections

• Armenian Genocide
• Cambodian Genocide
• Central African Republic Conflict
• Contemporary Antisemitism
• 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda
• Guatemalan Genocide
• Holocaust
• Nanjing Massacres
• Roma Interviews
• Belarus
• Bulgaria
• Czechoslovakia
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• France
• Georgia
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• Italy
• Kazakhstan
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Russia
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Ukraine
• United Kingdom
• USSR
• Uzbekistan

Select from the Subject Guide in the left box to learn more about specific events, countries, and experience groups that are strongly represented in the Visual History Archive's holdings.

USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive (VHA) contains 54,975 interviews with witnesses of the Armenian Genocide, Nanjing Massacres, Holocaust, Cambodian Genocide, Guatemalan Genocide, Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar, the ongoing Central African Republic conflict, South Sudan Civil War, and contemporary antisemitism. Originally consisting of the Holocaust testimonies recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation, the Visual History Archive now includes multiple collections shared by partnering organizations.

The indexing of each interview enables researchers to search in detail for the people, places, events, and experiences described in each one. For example, the archive includes over 1.8 million name records—those of the interviewees themselves, their family members and anyone else they talk about in the interview. The indexing terms include around 48,000 geographic locations from all over the world, and around 8,000 experiential terms used to describe the huge variety of events, experiences, organizations, and other subjects (browse the latter in the Thesaurus).

The VHA contains currently interviews with witnesses of the following:

• Anti-Rohingya Mass Violence: 11
• Armenian Genocide: 457
• Cambodian Genocide: 5
• Central African Republic Conflict: 4
• Contemporary Antisemitism: 67
• Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda: 135
• Guatemalan Genocide: 32
• Holocaust: 54,158
• Nanjing Massacre: 101
• South Sudan Civil War: 5

The interviews currently available in the VHA are in 43 languages. (see below)
The interviews currently available in the VHA were recorded in 68 countries (see below).