On 30 October, a high-profile delegation from the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation traveled to Amsterdam to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with EHRI.

The aim of the MoU is to develop a close and lasting collaboration agreement between EHRI and the Shoah Foundation. It is expected that this future collaboration will improve access for European researchers to the Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, comprising more than 55,000 audiovisual testimonies of Holocaust witnesses; enhance the sharing of data, knowledge and expertise; and result in a series of joint events and activities. 

The MoU was signed by Dr Robert Williams,  Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, Dr Reto Speck, Co-Director EHRI, and Prof Martijn Eickhoff, Director of NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the EHRI coordinating  institution. During the signing ceremony, all three expressed their commitment to the collaboration and their conviction that it will catalyze important new research. The official signing was followed by a lively roundtable where representatives from all three institutions identified current challenges faced by Holocaust research organizations and archives, and highlighted how such challenges may be addressed by joying forces across geographical and institutional boundaries.

The next day, the cooperation continued in a joint public workshop and discussion in Amsterdam.

Hosted by EHRI and NIOD in cooperation with the USC Shoah Foundation, “Listening to Testimonies of Mass Atrocities” was opened by Dr Karel Berkhoff (EHRI) and Prof Nanci Adler (NIOD).

There were presentations by Dr Robert Williams, Prof Selma Leydesdorff (Amsterdam), Prof Tony Kushner (Southampton), Stephen Naron (director, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies), Dr Dienke Hondius (Amsterdam), and Prof Gelinada Grinchenko (Munich and Dnipro).

Presentations dealt with past lessons and new opportunities, such as the growing recognition of the historical value of audiovisual testimonies, the need to accept complexity, the choice between working with few or with many testimonies, and the increasing availability of transcripts. Grinchenko spoke about the multitude of ongoing recording projects dealing with the current war on Ukraine.