http://www.sgi.com/Headlines/1995/Mar/shoah_foundation.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)

Survivors Of The Shoah' Project Receives $1.3 Million Donation From Silicon Graphics

Steven Spielberg's `Survivors Of The Shoah' Project Receives $1.3 Million Donation From Silicon Graphics

Los Angeles, Calif. (March 2, 1995) -- Steven Spielberg announced today that the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has received a $1.3 million donation of computer technology and engineering support from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), a leading manufacturer of 3D graphics workstations and digital media servers.

The joint announcement was made today by Steven Spielberg, chairman of the Foundation and Edward R. McCracken, chairman and CEO of Silicon Graphics. The Foundation will videotape as many Holocaust survivor testimonies as possible throughout the world to become the most comprehensive testimony archive ever assembled.

Silicon Graphics' gift of a Challenge(tm) XL media server, four Indigo2(tm) Extreme workstations, and related equipment and support enables the Foundation to archive digitally and make accessible the tens of thousands of hours of testimony that are currently being collected.

"I want to thank Ed McCracken and the company for this most significant gift. Silicon Graphics' contribution plays a major role in helping us achieve the historic and educational goals of the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation," noted Spielberg. "Thanks to their technology, we have developed a system that lets us spend less time getting to information, and more time learning from it."

The system makes possible true "video-on-demand," or instantaneous viewing of any given moment from any testimony in the massive archive, searchable by key words, phrases and names. This Silicon Graphics Challenge XL system is similar to those servers used in several interactive television trials, including the Time Warner Full Service Network and NTT's Joint Utilization Test of Multimedia Communication in Japan.

"We are proud and honored to be a part of the Shoah Foundation's human concern for an accurate and permanent archive of history," added McCracken. "This project uses cutting edge technology to provide vivid access to past events. The Shoah media distribution application will take full advantage of our interactive digital media expertise and establish a unique historical database on the information superhighway."
Spielberg continued, "This is an exciting, creative use of breakthrough technology that gives people a whole new way to look at and maintain a personal connection with history. That connection is key to gaining a deeper appreciation of what happened during the Holocaust, and helps us apply that insight to tolerance and understanding for all people now and in the future."

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of high-performance visual computing systems. The company delivers interactive three-dimensional graphics, digital media and multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical, scientific and creative professionals. Its subsidiary, MIPS Technologies, Inc., designs and licenses the industry's leading RISC processor technology for the computer systems and embedded control markets. Silicon Graphics has offices worldwide and headquarters in Mountain View, California.

The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has its operational base in Los Angeles, with branch offices also conducting interviewer training sessions and collecting survivor interviews in New York, Toronto, Miami, Chicago, Paris, France and Sydney, Australia regions will be open by the end of next month, as the project continues to expand worldwide.

The initial repositories for the collection are the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C., the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, and Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem.

The Foundation is currently making efforts to contact Holocaust survivors and potential interviewers worldwide. Telephone inquiries in the United States and Canada should be directed to (800) 661-2092. Written inquiries can be directed to: Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, P.O. Box 3168, Los Angeles, Ca. 90078-3168.

Contact:
Marvin Levy, (818) 777-4600
Amblin Entertainment

Virginia Henderson, (415) 390-1306
Ashley Mooser, (415) 390-2863
Silicon Graphics, Inc.

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