Skip to main content
USF Libraries Exhibits

About the Project

3b3ea88f73eaf888500f6f8fc5a8f6af.jpg Speaking Out.jpg

The USF Libraries Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center’s mission is to cross international boundaries to engage information specialists, scholars, educators, students, analysts, and activists in a centralized, interdisciplinary, collaborative, and synergistic approach to genocide education, mental health and public policy, and prevention.  Since it's inception, the Center has collaborated in the creation and collection of narratives by genocide survivors, scholars, witnesses, and other experts.  This exhibit brings together several of these projects to thematically explore the causes and effects of genocide through the voices of people with first-hand experience.

The Holocaust Survivors Oral History Project, begun by USF Department of Communication Professor Carolyn Ellis and her graduate students, in collaboration with the USF Tampa Library and the Florida Holocaust Museum, documents the memories of Holocaust survivors now living in the Tampa Bay area.

The Asaba Memorial Oral Histories is collection of survivor testimonies, which documents the massacre that took place on October 5th 1967, in the Delta State of community of Asaba, in Nigeria. The interviews were conducted in the U.S. and Africa by USF Department of Anthropology Professors Elizabeth Bird and Dr. Erin Kimmerle, USF Department of History Professor Fraser Ottanelli, and Tampa Police Detective Charles Massucci.

The Concentration Camp Liberators Oral History Project comprises over 120 testimonies with the Allied service men and women who helped liberate World War II (WWII) concentration camps. Author Michael Hirsh recorded the interviews for his book The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust (New York, 2010) and donated the tapes and transcripts to the USF Libraries Holocaust & Genocide Studies Center.

The Genocide Factor: The Human Tragedy is a four-hour made for television documentary series, examining the history of genocide and man’s inhumanity to man from early times to the present.  Introduced by Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight, with over eighty scholars, experts, government officials, eyewitnesses, and survivors from around the world participating, the series presents a comprehensive overview of the history of genocide and received the 2002 Gold Special Jury Award for best television documentary at the Houston International Film Festival.  In collaboration with Make a Difference Media, the USF Tampa Library has digitized the interviews.