The Survivors of Shoah Visual History Foundation contains the personal accounts (testimonies) of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust of WWII. A Pre-Interview Questionnaire (PIQ) and video that preserve the actual interview document each testimony.

In order to provide access to the collection of testimonies a controlled vocabulary (thesaurus) was composed which is used to index both the PIQ information and the segmented videotaped interviews. The Shoah Foundation Thesaurus contains those words and phrases (keywords or index terms) that have been researched, formatted and agreed upon for use in the indexing and cataloguing process. It should be noted that the creation and application of all index terms are driven by the information presented in the testimonies. The Thesaurus is constantly being updated and supplemented as the indexing and cataloguing of testimonies progresses and new information from interviews is added to the database. A proposal and review process governs the evolution of the Thesaurus, maintaining a balance between usability and specificity. Whenever possible, existing terminology from sources like the US Library of Congress Subject Headings is incorporated but due to the sheer volume and depth of content to be indexed, often localized terms are generated based on literary warrant.

The Shoah Foundation Thesaurus is a hierarchical arrangement of terms designed to facilitate searching and browsing of the keywords. All of the keywords in the Thesaurus fall into one of two broad categories—experiential terms or reference terms.

Experiential terms are those keywords that are used to index the personal experiences of the individual giving the testimony. Although testimonial experiences themselves are often emotionally charged, these descriptors have been carefully crafted as neutral terms in an effort to avoid editorial comment. Many of the terms in this category have been defined in the Thesaurus as they pertain to the events of the period of the Holocaust. In most cases a scope note has been added to provide guidance for the use of the term in the indexing process. Emphasis has been placed on the experience itself and when it has been necessary to distinguish between the various locations that such an experience has occurred a prepositional phrase has been added to the term (e.g.: barter in the camps, barter in the ghettos).

Reference terms are those that refer to a specific or named person (famous or infamous), organization, object, event, or geographic location. Such terms are generally proper names requiring verification through research using approved sources. This process often reveals variants of the name (spelling and language) which are coupled with the preferred term so that either may be used to search the collection. European geographic terms are established as of pre-WWII. All other geographic place names are established as of the year 2000. Certain terms, the specifics of which cannot be verified using the sources available, have been designated as unverified or grouped together under generic terms of the given name.

The Shoah Foundation Thesaurus is a work in progress that grows as the collection continues to be indexed and refined with the discovery of more detailed research materials.