Dimensions in Testimony

USC Shoah Foundation. Dimensions in Testimony. Ongoing initiative. https://sfi.usc.edu/dit

Concepts:  Interactive biography | Survivor-authored virtual testimony | NLP testimonial retrieval | Dialogue preservation | Survivor -co-author

Keywords:  Holocaust testimony | Interactive technology | USC Shoah Foundation | Virtual survivor | AI and memory

The USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony is the foundational practice-based precedent for AI-mediated interactive Holocaust testimony. Developed over many years of collaboration with survivors — each filmed for approximately a week, answering around a thousand questions — it uses natural language processing to match user queries to pre-recorded survivor responses, enabling real-time conversational interactions with virtual survivor biographies in museum and educational settings. The initiative’s most significant feature for the log is its survivor-as-author principle: survivors were not subjects of the project but active participants who shaped what questions were asked and what answers they gave, bringing their accumulated knowledge of what had always been asked, what had been missed, and what needed to be said for posterity.

“Nothing can replace the ineffable, dynamic interaction between two human beings.” (USC Shoah Foundation, Dimensions in Testimony FAQ, n.d., n.p.)

“Dimensions in Testimony is a different type of engagement meant to preserve the opportunity to have a dialogic experience.” (USC Shoah Foundation, Dimensions in Testimony FAQ, n.d., n.p.)

“In our ten years of experience with interactive biographies, we have seen users absorb history while engaging in meaningful conversations with survivors.” (Clark, in Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2025, n.p.)