Yad Vashem to receive Holocaust survivors' testimonies from Spielberg

American filmmaker Steven Spielberg's foundation "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History" has agreed to give access to its 52,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies to the Yad Vashem Authority in Jerusalem. With testimonies to be sent to Israel by 2008, Yad Vashem will have high-quality digital copies of what the survivors said, with the Shoah foundation's office in Los Angeles keeping another set. Yad Vashem plans to open a new visual center and museum next year. Complementing that will be the Shoah foundation's archival index of 8,500 testimonies from Holocaust survivors in Israel. Giving Yad Vashem access to testimonies is the second phase of the work of the foundation, created following Spielberg's Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List." By 2006, the foundation plans to expand its anti-Semitic awareness and tolerance education programs into Eastern Europe and the former countries of the Soviet Union.