Yad Vashem has taken possession of copies of nearly 52,000 Holocaust video testimonies, giving it the world’s largest collection.
The USC Shoah Foundation for Visual History and Education, which was started by famed director Steven Spielberg, provided the latest testimonies to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem.
The videos from the foundation at the University of Southern California supplement Yad Vashem’s existing archive of 10,000 filmed testimonies. The cumulative 200,000 hours of video are publicly accessible.
“The testimony of the survivors who personally experienced the horrors of the Shoah are the legacy that they impart to us,” said Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem’s chairman. “Their testimony has crucial educational and moral importance. It allows us to have meaningful Holocaust remembrance for generations to come, and represents an essential vehicle for imparting the memory of the Shoah.”
The Shoah Foundation videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors from 56 countries in 32 languages from 1994 to 2000.
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