The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation: Institutional Voice for a Historic Global Undertaking

The client and the stakes

The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was founded by Steven Spielberg in the wake of Schindler’s List with a singular mission: to record the testimony of every surviving Holocaust witness while there was still time to do it. The undertaking would ultimately record nearly 52,000 video testimonies in 56 countries and 32 languages. I joined during the founding period, as the Foundation was rapidly expanding internationally. Every piece of writing it put into the world — to donors, to the press, to the interviewers in the field, to the survivors and their families — carried the weight of that mission.

The problem

An institution of that scale, expanding rapidly across borders, needed a single coherent public voice across press kits, donor communications, brochures, the newsletter, and the training materials used by interviewers, videographers, and volunteers. The writing had to reconcile competing demands at once: institutional dignity, emotional honesty about survivor testimony, operational clarity for a global staff, and the public-relations needs of a Foundation chaired by one of the most recognizable figures in the world.

What I did

• Owned the Foundation’s institutional literature. Working out of the organization’s offices on the Universal Studios lot, I established and maintained a coherent editorial voice across every category of public-facing and internal writing, including the newsletter, press materials, brand visuals, donor systems, and the training and videographer manuals used across regions worldwide.
• Edited Past Forward, the Foundation’s flagship publication. Ran the monthly newsletter that carried the Foundation’s voice to survivors, interviewers, donors, and the broader public, working with an associate editor and directing freelancers, designers, and vendors. Shaped survivor testimony narratives, interviewer profiles, and international production reporting into a publication that read as a single institution rather than a collection of pieces.
• Ghostwrote articles for the Chairman. Wrote pieces published under Steven Spielberg’s byline, holding a voice appropriate to his standing and to the Foundation’s mission.
• Managed the function as an operation. Set and managed the department’s budget and vendor relationships, coordinated production across the Foundation’s departments and international offices, and kept the literature program moving as the Foundation’s worldwide interviewing operation grew.

The result

A body of institutional writing that carried the Foundation’s voice consistently across a fast-growing international operation — from field offices in Central and Eastern Europe to studios in Los Angeles, New York, and beyond — through the period in which the Foundation established itself as the definitive archive of Holocaust survivor testimony. The voice held as the operation grew.

The through-line

The Foundation was racing to capture history. Its public voice had to keep pace, and had to be worthy of the testimony it carried. Building and sustaining that voice across every document the institution put into the world is the work.