The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking organization to document stories of the Holocaust, is expanding its scope. The organization, which houses the world's largest collection of video interviews with Holocaust survivors, will now include testimonies from atrocities and genocides other than that which occurred during World War II. The New York Times reports that five survivors of the Rwandan genocide are receiving first-hand training in the institute's archival methods, part of a broader effort to include at least 1,000 interviews with Rwandans as part of the Institute's collection. First-hand testaments from other mass extermination activities, such as those that occurred in Armenia and Cambodia, are also pending, according to the report. The Shoah Foundation houses more than 50,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors from around the world. The new project, done in partnership with the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda, will provide Rwandans with the resources and knowledge to educate coming generations about their own peoples' atrocity, but also raises pressing questions about what The New York Times calls the "historical uniqueness" of the Holocaust. I think it is extremely important to record and preserve the first-person accounts of all genocides, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, a vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, told The New York Times. My concern would be that we not blur the individual experiences of survivors of the Holocaust, or survivors of Rwanda, into one large blur. Every genocide is a separate act, and must be remembered and chronicled as such. For Yves Kamuronsi, however, one of the Rwandan genocide survivors receiving training at the Shoah Foundation's Los Angeles campus, the opportunity to work with such an established foundation is invaluable. When I look at Holocaust survivors, I realize that they suffered before I was born, he told The New York Times. I am listening to another generation of survivors as a survivor myself. I hope no other generation will have to listen to us as survivors.
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