CEU Library Offers Access to USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive

On May 7, 2009, the CEU Library officially opened access for its visitors to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. The library is the first institution in the region to gain electronic access to the archive.

Opening remarks were delivered by Maria Szlatky, Director, CEU Library, Andras Kovacs, Professor, Nationalism Studies, CEU/Director, Jewish Studies Program, CEU and Andrea Szonyi, Regional Consultant, Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.

Established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute maintains an archive of nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses, collected from 56 countries, and in 32 languages. Today, the archive of testimonies is one of the largest video digital libraries in the world. The mission of the Institute is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry—and the suffering they cause—through the educational use of the Institute’s visual history testimonies. The testimonies are made available to the CEU community and outside users (non-affiliated researchers may obtain on-campus access) through an interface which allows the searching and viewing of the fully indexed video testimonies and any additional corresponding data.

Kim Simon, Interim Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation Institute commented: “Providing the broadest possible access to the Visual History Archive is a vital component of the Institute’s mission, and we are so pleased that the Archive will be available to scholars, students, and educators at Central European University. In addition to supporting scholarship and research in many disciplines, the depth and breadth of the archive—which contains personal accounts of life in numerous countries throughout the 20th century—can support CEU’s commitment to nurture respect for human rights and diverse cultures and opinions.”