Penn has become the first university in Pennsylvania that has been granted access to the entire content of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive, containing nearly 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. The personal narratives, in 32 languages, derive from 56 countries. Penn’s partnership with the Institute is supported by the joint efforts of the Annenberg School for Communication, Penn Libraries, and Penn’s Office of Information Systems and Computing. 

“Survivors’ memories are the authoritative source for information on the Holocaust, and the value of audiovisual testimony to other areas of research has been demonstrated at universities around the world, where the Institute’s Visual History Archive has enhanced 275 academic courses in a wide range of disciplines,” Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the Institute, says. “By partnering with the Institute to bring the Visual History Archive to Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated its commitment to scholarship guided by the highest humanitarian principles.”