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The Week in Germany: Culture

December 8, 2006

Freie Universität Berlin becomes first University outside U.S. to Access Spielberg Holocaust Video Archive

A screenshot of the Archive at the FU

“History not only consists of facts and figures, but also of individual ways of life and personal destiny - precisely what the archive documents,” said Dieter Lenzen, president of the Freie Universität Berlin, as he unveiled a platform that will allow students, professors, and researchers to access nearly 52,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust.

Steven Spielberg was instrumental in the founding the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California. After filming “Schindler’s List”, the director established the foundation, which mobilized volunteers across the world to conduct interviews with tens of thousands holocaust survivors over the course of six years.

With the archive complete, the Shoah Foundation is moving to expand access through the latest digital technologies. “A primary goal of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is to provide access to the archive to the broadest audience possible,” said Institute Executive Director Douglas Greenberg. “As the first institution in Europe to provide digital access, Freie Universität Berlin is leading the way in incorporating video and related multimedia applications into the traditional way of teaching and research.”

Until this week, only four universities, all in the United States – Yale University, Rice University, University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California, where the Institute is located – provided digital access to the archive.

Links:

The Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual Education

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