USC Shoah Foundation Institute E-Newsletter, December 2006

On December 4, the Freie Universität Berlin became the first institution outside of the United States to gain access to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's entire Visual History Archive.

"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. "We are thrilled that Freie Universität Berlin will be one of the institutions to provide this resource to its students, educators, and scholars."

Greenberg and Karen Jungblut, Director of Archival Access and Special Projects, attended the launch event in Berlin, which attracted press interest by media throughout Germany, including national daily newspaper Die Welt, and Germany's two largest public television stations, ARD and ZDF

Dieter Lenzen, President of the Freie Universität Berlin, expressed his enthusiasm to be able to provide the testimonies in the archive as a resource for students and faculty. "This unique archive broadens the opportunities for research on National Socialism, particularly on the Holocaust and on racial persecution. It opens completely new and additional resources for the numerous research and teaching projects in the respective academic fields at our university." Information about the Visual History Archive at the Freie Universität is available here.

Friends of Freie Universität Berlin, a not-for-profit charitable organization located in New York City, was instrumental in creating the collaborative partnership between the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the Freie Universität Berlin that resulted in the University's access to the Visual History Archive.

Today, the Visual History Archive is available at six universities--the University of Southern California, Rice University, Yale University, the University of Michigan, and most recently, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Freie Universität Berlin. In 2007, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute will work with additional institutions to continue making the archive more widely available.

For additional information about the Visual History Archive, or to inquire about supporting an institution in accessing the archive, visit www.usc.edu/vhi or contact Steve Klappholz at 213.740-6051.