USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive: VHA FAQs

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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

What is the USC Shoah Foundation?

The USC Shoah Foundation was established in April 1994 to record testimonies of Holocaust survivors and evolved over time to include the testimonies of other witnesses of the Holocaust, genocides, and contemporary antisemitism. See About Us.

The Foundation's "core purpose is to give opportunity to survivors and witnesses to the Shoah—the genocide of the Jews—to tell their own stories in their own words in audio-visual interviews, preserve their testimonies, and make them accessible for research, education, and outreach for the betterment of humankind in perpetuity."

Its mission statement of the USC Shoah Foundation is "to collect, preserve, and share survivor testimonies in order to increase knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust and to build a future for all that rejects antisemitism, hatred, dehumanization, and genocide."

Between April 1994 and December 2005, the organization bore the name Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Between January 2005 and July 2012, it was known as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. As of August 2012, the full official name is USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

What is the Visual History Archive?

The Visual History Archive (VHA) is the search tool that allows users to search and browse the entire collection of audiovisual testimonies collected by the USC Shoah Foundation and other partnering organizations. It is based here at USC. See About the VHA.

How does the VHA work?

Please consult the VHA Help Page.

Is the VHA on the internet?

On the public internet, users can search/browse the entire Visual History Archive and view around 4,600 video testimonies. The full VHA, containing 59,000 testimonies, is accessible only at subscribing educational and research institutions: locations worldwide.

I am a USC student (staff/faculty member). How can I watch a testimony?

See Search the VHA.

I am not a USC student (staff/faculty member). How can I watch a testimony?

See Search the VHA.

How can I get a copy of a testimony?

See VHA Copies & Downloads.

How many interviews are there in the VHA?

Almost 59,000. In total, the VHA contains over 13 years of continuous video.

When were they recorded?

Anti-Rohingya Mass Violence (August-October 2017): 2018

Armenian Genocide: 1970-2017

Cambodian Genocide: 2009-2015

Central African Republic Conflict: 2016

Contemporary Antisemitism: 2015-2019

1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda: 2004-2021

Guatemalan Genocide: 2015-2019

Holocaust: 1980-present

Nanjing Massacres: 2012-2017

South Sudan Civil War: 2015

War and Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2020-2022

Where were they recorded?

In 68 different countries. 

Are the interviews in English?

English is the largest language in the VHA, with over 30,000 interviews. However, there are interviews in 45 different languages. All Kinyarwanda and Mandarin-language testimonies have English subtitles, although most other non-English languages do not. 

Did you only interview Jewish Holocaust survivors?

Testimonies of Jewish survivors make up 92% of the all the interviews in the archive. However, the Holocaust/World War II interviews also include 10 other interviewee experience groups: gay male survivors, Jehovah's Witnesses, liberators and liberation witnesses, miscellaneous, non-Jewish forced laborers, political prisoners, rescue and aid providers, Roma survivors, survivors of eugenics policies, war crimes trials participants.

The Armenian Genocide interviews contain the experiences of Armenian Survivors, descendants, scholars, foreign Witness, Yezidi survivors, and miscellaneous. The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda testimonies are made up of Tutsi survivors, rescuers, elders, Hutu Power opponents, and victims' spouses. The Bosnian War and Genocide, Guatemalan Genocide, Nanjing Massacre, and South Sudan Civil War testimonies are all with survivors of those events. The Central African Republic conflict witnesses were interviewed as delegates to a peace conference in Kigali in 2016. The Contemporary Antisemitism collection contains eyewitness accounts of antisemitic terror attacks in Belgium, France, Denmark, and the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, among other topics. 

How does the USC Shoah Foundation define the term “survivor”?

There are currently 15 different survivor experience groups in the VHA.

In terms of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation has created seven survivor experience groups: eugenic policies survivors, gay male survivors, Jehovah's Witness survivors, Jewish survivors, political prisoners, and Roma survivors. All are defined in relation to surviving targeted persecution while under Nazi or Axis control.

For example, the USC Shoah Foundation's definition of Jewish survivors is "interviewees who were targeted for persecution under laws and/or policies against the Jews. This applies to people in, or displaced from places under Nazi or Axis control between January 1933 and May 1945. Jews from the following Axis countries would be classified as survivors if they suffered persecution after the following dates (when anti-Jewish legislation appeared, not when each country took up official membership in the Axis): Italy - 1938, Romania - 1938, Hungary - 1938, Bulgaria - 1940."

The Foundation created two experience groups for the Armenian Genocide testimonies: Armenian survivors ("Interviewees who were subjected to persecution in the Ottoman Empire under laws and/or policies against the Armenians") and Yezidi survivors ("Interviewees who were subjected to persecution in the Ottoman Empire or South Caucasus under laws and/or policies against the Yezidis").. 

For testimonies of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Foundation defines Tutsi survivors as "interviewees who suffered and survived persecution as Tutsis in Rwanda between April 7th and July 19th, 1994. This includes individuals who were of Tutsi descent or were perceived to be of Tutsi descent."

For testimonies of other genocides and events of mass violence, the Foundation created the following groups: Bosnian Muslim survivors, Cambodian Genocide survivors, Guatemalan Genocide survivors, Nanjing Massacre survivors, Rohingya survivors, and South Sudan Civil War survivors.

How were the interviews conducted?

See Telling the Story.

How is the archive preserved?

See Preserving the Archive.

How do I search the testimonies?

The testimonies can be searched and browsed through the indexing.

Each testimony is indexed in two ways. Biographical indexing refers to the data-entry of the pre-interview questionnaires and/or other paperwork accompanying the audiovisual testimony. Video indexing refers to the minute-by-minute indexing of the video interviews. To do this, each interview was divided into one-minute segments  Then, indexers assigned terms for times, places, people, and experiences directly to digital time codes within testimonies where those topics were discussed - in a similar way to book index entries that specify the page numbers where topics are covered.

The USC Shoah Foundation has created a uniquely large and comprehensive thesaurus of indexing terms to describe the its Holocaust and genocide testimonies. The thesaurus currently contains 71,000 terms, around 70% of which are geographic, 12% concern movement (deportation, flight, emigration/immigration), while the remaining terms cover organizations, famous and infamous people, country-time periods, ships, historical events, and various activities, conditions, situations, and beliefs that are discussed in interviews. View/download the USC Shoah Foundation's thesaurus (15.3 mb).   

See here for more information about our interviewing and indexing, including methodology documents.

Do you have transcripts?

Currently, transcripts are available in the VHA for over 6,800 testimonies (mostly English-language, but also and for all of the German-language testimonies). The transcripts can only be viewed when logged onto the USC Network or to a computer in the network of an institution which has the subscription version of the VHA. 

Is the USC Shoah Foundation still recording interviews?

Yes! The USC Shoah Foundation continues to interview Holocaust survivors and witnesses. If you know of a Holocaust survivor who would like to be interviewed, please fill out the online interview request form.

Other organizations that may still be recording Holocaust survivors and witnesses include the Florida Holocaust Museum (St. Petersburg, FL), Yale Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (New Haven, CT), Holocaust Documentation & Education Center (Dania Beach, FL), Holocaust Museum Houston, Jewish Family and Children's Services Holocaust Center (San Francisco, CA), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), Virginia Holocaust Museum (Richmond, VA), and Yad Vashem (Jerusalem, Israel).