Tablet Studios and The USC Shoah Foundation Join Forces to Launch Multimedia Collection from the October 7 Terrorist Attacks in Israel

In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel, the USC Shoah Foundation and Tablet Studios announced a partnership to collect, archive, and make available testimonies of survivors, bereaved family members, and rescuers who risked their lives to save others during the assault. The initiative combines Tablet Studios’ reach and audiovisual resources with methodologies and expertise developed by the USC Shoah Foundation, a global leader with 30 years of experience collecting and preserving Holocaust survivor testimony.

A collection of October 7 interviews is now available at The Testimonies Archive, a new multimedia website where testimonies are continually being added as crews in Israel and the United States record new interviews.

“The massacre perpetrated by Hamas revealed the terrifying depths of their antisemitism and forced a reckoning for historians, practitioners, and governments,” said Dr. Robert J. Williams, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Chair of the USC Shoah Foundation. “Sadly, Hamas' hatred has echoed around the world, unleashing a surge in antisemitic rhetoric and violence which reminds us there is much to learn and work to be done. We must all recommit to addressing and countering antisemitism for today and future generations.”

The partnership began to take shape soon after the attacks when both the USC Shoah Foundation and Tablet Studios deployed teams on the ground to collect first-hand testimonies from survivors, rescuers, and family members.

Both organizations continue to collect testimonies and have joined forces to create The Testimonies Archive in an effort to grow, share, and amplify the reach of their October 7 testimony collections.

“Like everyone else, watching this carnage unfold left us shocked and heartbroken,” said Liel Leibovitz, Editorial Director, Tablet Studios. “The only thing we could think of doing was reaching out to as many impacted Israelis as we could find and asking them to share their story. We are honored to team up with the USC Shoah Foundation and see to it that these testimonies are collected with care and diligence and that they join the foundation’s already vast collection of painful but seminal accounts. We must make sure that these stories of savagery and of survival and of sacrifice, stories about Jewish lives lost in their prime, are never forgotten.”

Testimonies are being collected by a team of USC Shoah Foundation-trained interviewers in Israel and the United States and by Tablet Studios. A curated collection will be available at The Testimonies Archive in audio and video formats, with translations forthcoming in several languages.

“Combining our knowledge and experience with Tablet Studios' resources enhances our ability to swiftly record interview subjects and build innovative platforms where individuals can immediately engage with October 7^th survivor testimonies, a transformative step towards shaping new forms of learning and public dialogue for the common good,” said Dr. Williams.

The October 7th survivor testimonies will be indexed and preserved in perpetuity within the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive® (VHA), where they also will be available to the public, alongside the testimonies of 55,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses.

Tablet Studios is the premier destination for smart and entertaining Jewish audio content. Our podcasts include Unorthodox, What Really Matters, Take One, and the limited-run series Gatecrashers, Adventures with Dead Jews, Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Story, The Franchise, Hebrew School, and 49 Days to Stretch My Soul.

An invaluable resource for humanity, the USC Shoah Foundation's collection contains more than 56,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, other genocides, and related forms of persecution. The USC Shoah Foundation is currently building its collection focused on Jewish experiences of antisemitism since 1945, with a goal of adding 10,000 testimonies, including accounts from victims of antisemitic terror attacks.

The USC Shoah Foundation holds the largest video testimony collection of its kind in the world. The collection is housed in the Visual History Archive® which is a digitized, fully searchable, continuously updated resource.

The vast majority of testimonies – more than 55,000 – relate to the Holocaust, with the remainder coming from the Armenian Genocide, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and other mass atrocities.

CONTACT: USC Shoah Foundation: uscsfpress@usc.edu; Tablet Studios: studios@tabletmag.com