Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies in Lviv

Center for Urban History has joined the list partner institutions of Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. In our library, you can get access to over 4,400 interviews with Holocaust survivors, as well as with eye-witnesses and rescuers.

The archive’s story dates back to 1979, when in New Haven, CT, the organization Holocaust Survivors Film Project started the video shooting of conversations of Holocaust eye-witnesses. In 1981, their collection was transferred to the library of Yale University. Thus, it has been 40 years that the Fortunoff Archive has worked to record, collect, and store the testimonies on the Holocaust, in order to make the memory available for researchers, teachers, and the broad public. Currently, the collection includes over 12,000 hours of recordings in different languages. The testimonies include stories of survivors, Jews, Romani, and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political prisoners; of those who resisted, and of those who were saving others; and of the military who served in the allied armed forces. The interviews illustrate a broad range of experiences, such as imprisonment in concentration camps, life in hiding places, escapes from the occupied countries, engagement in resistance movement, salvation and protection of those persecuted by the Nazi.

If you wish to work with the materials, please, follow the guidelines on the archives page. After you request is approved by the team of Fortunoff Archive, you can view the materials in the library of the Center for Urban History. For more details, on how to work with the interviews in the Center, please, contact Natalia Otrishchenko [email protected]