The Shoah Foundation or Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation or Shoah Visual History Foundation, was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing the Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. The original aim of the foundation was to record testimonies of all of the remaining survivors of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah) as a collection of videotaped interviews. Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE (born December 18, 1946) is a Jewish American film director. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... Academy Awards The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are the most prominent film awards in the United States. ... Schindlers List is an Academy Award-winning 1993 movie based on the book Schindlers Ark by Thomas Keneally, published in the United States as Schindlers List and subsequently re-issued in Commonwealth countries under that name as well. ... In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. ... Selection at the Auschwitz ramp in 1944, where the German Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation, such as those of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel with the West Bank, the United States, and Jewish communities around the world. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into The Holocaust. ...

The foundation proceeded to collect over 50,000 interviews over the next few years. Testimonies were received from many different survivors, including Jewish, homosexual, Jehovah's Witness, Sinti and Roma survivors, political prisoners, and survivors of the eugenics policy. Jews (Hebrew: יהודים, Yehudim) are followers of Judaism or, more generally, members of the Jewish people (also known as the Jewish nation, or the Children of Israel), an ethno-religious group descended from the ancient Israelites and converts who joined their religion. ... Since its coinage, the word homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings. ... Sinte or Sinti (Singular masc. ... The Roma people (singular Rom; sometimes Rroma, Rrom), often referred to as Gypsies, are an ethnic group who live primarily in Southern and Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Latin America southern states of North America and the Middle East. ... A political prisoner may be someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image are deemed by a government to either challenge or threaten the authority of the state. ... Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution: Logo from the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921, depicting it as a tree which unites a variety of different fields. ...

In addition to survivor testimony, interviews were also conducted with rescuers, aid providers, liberators, witnesses and participants in war crimes trials. A war crime is a punishable offense, under international law, for violations of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. ...

As of 2001, the foundation announced its new mission: "To overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry and the suffering they cause through the educational use of the Foundation's visual history testimonies." For with(out) prejudice in law, see Prejudice (law). ... Intolerance is the lack of ability or willingness to tolerate something. ... A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions differing from his own. ...

In January 2006, the Shoah Foundation Institute partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California. The University of Southern California (also known as USC, SC, Southern California and Southern Cal), Californias oldest private research university, is located in the urban center of Los Angeles, California. ...

Notable features of the Shoah Foundation are the online exhibitions:

Online exhibitions

Surviving Auschwitz - Five Personal Journeys

Organized around an interactive map of the world that traces the survivors’ paths on five continents, Surviving Auschwitz: Five Personal Journeys demonstrates how the shared experience of the holocaust affected individuals from very diverse cultures. This dynamic educational tool—geared to students in grades 8 through 12 and the general public utilizes four hours of testimony video clips from the Shoah Foundation’s archive, more than any other online exhibit on www.vhf.org. Auschwitz, in English, commonly refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp complex built near the town of Oświęcim, by Nazi Germany during World War II. Rarely, it may refer to the Polish town of Oświęcim (called by the Germans Auschwitz) itself. ... A grade may refer to many different concepts, including: in various contexts: Each item in a (generally ordered and finite) collection of symbols or designators used as a particular grade system to distinguish and rank corresponding groups, where distinct members or instances of each group are regarded as sufficiently similar...

Voices of the Holocaust - Children Speak

This online exhibit features testimonies and interactive elements to engage younger students ages 11 to 14 in the exploration of history from the perspective of four Holocaust survivors who were also that age during WWII Enter Voices of the Holocaust online exhibition

Survivors - Testimonies of the Holocaust

The testimonies of Holocaust survivors Bert, Paula, Silvia, and Sol, are presented in short chronological segments, with interactive features that help high school students place each personal story in a historical and geographical context. Enter Testimonies of the Holocaust online exhibition

Testimony Segments for the classroom

Request up to 30 minutes of unedited testimony segments on one VHS tape, designated specifically for classroom use. Learn more

View Testimonies Online

The Shoah Foundation has developed the Online Testimony Viewer which makes segments of English-language testimonies related to particular themes and time periods available to students and educators. Watch testimonies

Documentaries and other works

• Survivors of the Holocaust, 1996
• The Lost Children of Berlin, 1997 [ Edward R. Murrow Award ]
• Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust; Educational CD-ROM, 1998
• The Last Days, 1998 [ Academy Award ]
• Erinnern für Gegenwart und Zukunft (Remembering for the Present and the Future); German Educational CD-ROM, 1999
• Broken Silence; Series of five foreign-language documentaries, 2000
• Remembering Ośwęicim, 2000
• One Human Spirit, 2003

Edward R. Murrow, U.S. newscaster, pioneer in Broadcast journalism Edward R. Ed Murrow KBE (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow), (April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American journalist. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ... The Last Days is a documentary, directed by James Moll and produced by June Beallor and Ken Lipper in 1998, concerning the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. ... Academy Awards The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are the most prominent film awards in the United States. ...

External links

• Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
• Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service
• How the Shoah Foundation works