Archive of Visual History of the Holocaust
University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff - as well as the general public - now have access to the world's largest archive of visual histories of the Holocaust. In February 2007, the University Libraries launched public access to a two-terabyte digital media cache of testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. The University of Minnesota is among six universities worldwide that currently provide access to the Institute's archive.
The archive, which is accessible from workstations on the U's Twin Cities campus, includes nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. These histories, in 32 languages and from 56 countries, were collected by the Shoah Foundation. The vast majority of the interviews—about 90 percent—are with Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution; however, political prisoners, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy) survivors, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and liberators, witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers are also represented in the Archive.
To access the archive, users must be physically present on the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus. Users can access the local VHA site for additional information about the archive.
Read more on the University Libraries News blog.