Lani Silver is an oral historian and political activist. In 1981, Lani founded the Holocaust Oral History Project and over next two decades coordinated l700 oral histories with 1400 Holocaust survivors and witnesses. She was also Steven Spielberg's first consultant for his Shoah Foundation for Visual History, which gathered 53,000 oral histories with Holocaust survivors and witnesses.

Lani's work with the Holocaust lead to her discovery of Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara. Chiune was a Japanese diplomat who rescued thousands of Jews in the Holocaust while stationed in Lithuania in 1939. Sugihara is called the "Japanese Schindler." Sugihara, with the support of his wife Yukiko, and in cooperation with the Acting Dutch Consulate Jan Zwartendijk, issued visas to Jews against the orders of the Japanese government. After the war Sugihara was dismissed from the Foreign Service for "that incident in Lithuania."

Currently, Lani serves as the Director of the James Byrd Jr. Racism Oral History Project, a project of the Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing. James Byrd Jr. was dragged three miles through the outskirts of Jasper Texas in l998, chained to a truck by three white supremacists. The project has conducted 2500 oral histories on racism in America in the San Francisco-Bay Area, Jasper and Houston, Texas.

Lani is a speaker with the American Program Bureau and was named one of five "Women of the Year" by KQED in 2003. Lani is also a poster-maker and songwriter. You can purchase recently released political CDs or help yourself to some of Lani's political drawings. This web site celebrates Lani's passion for human rights work, art and music.

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