Salzburg University Gains Access to Holocaust Archive

Researchers, experts, and students at Salzburg University have become the first in Austria to gain access to the Visual History Archive of the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education of the University of Southern California (USC).

The university, as well as other researchers in Austria, now have access to the 52,000 video interviews and testimonies with the survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust that comprise the Visual History Archive. Salzburg historian Albert Lichtblau, who has conducted many interviews with survivors himself, was instrumental in organizing the access for Salzburg University.

The database in Salzburg is linked to the Freie Universität Berlin, which also has access to the Visual History Archive. Berlin was the first city outside of the United States to receive access to the project.

The Visual History Archive is the world’s largest historical video archive and contains over 120,000 hours of film in 32 languages, representing 56 countries. Established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, after he was inspired by his experience making Schindler’s List, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation gathered video testimonies from survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. Now renamed as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, it aims to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry through the educational use of the Institute’s visual history testimonies. The Institute also supports efforts to collect testimony from the survivors and witnesses of other genocides.