British Library publishes vast audio archive of Holocaust testimonies for Holocaust Memorial Day
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
One of the biggest collections of recordings made by Holocaust Survivors in Britain is being made available online by the British Library
Young children after being bathed and reclothed after the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp in April 1945.© IWM (BU 4111)Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust, an online resource offering worldwide access to 289 audio interviews, running to over 1,000 hours, drawn from one of the largest collections of Holocaust testimonies in Europe.
All but a handful of the 289 interviews have searchable content summaries and have been clustered into themes such as camp experiences, Kindertransport, ghetto life and resistance to enhance access for researchers and general public alike.
Many of the interviews experienced the Holocaust as children; over 1.5 million children perished across Europe in ghettos and camps.
The rescue mission, the Kindertransport, was able to save some in the lead up to the war with thousands coming to Britain as refugees. Many of these children were the only survivors in their family.
A young boy suffering from typhus recovers in his new cot in No 3 Camp, Bergen-Belsen© IWM (BU 4099)“This project has helped to expand access to the collection, making testimonies accessible online and searchable, and ensure they can be accessed by future generations," explained Dr Perks.
Most of the recordings have been drawn from two major oral history projects, Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Testimony recording project, which ran between 1993 and 1998 and the Living Memory of the Jewish Community, a project run by National Life Stories at the British Library between 1987 and 2000.
Aviva Trup, Manager of Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre, which provides social, emotional and practical support to Holocaust Survivors, described how the leaving of “a legacy to ensure people never forget the Holocaust” is extremely important to Holocaust Survivors.
“We support survivors who want talk about their experiences to tell their stories,” she said. “We are delighted that through our partnership with the British Library, these important survivor testimonies are now going to be widely available to all.”
The archive will be launched on Monday January 26 at the British Library as part of an event called Life in a Jar: childhood experience of the Holocaust with Lili Pohlmann and Sir Erich Reich, who both endured the Holocaust as children and who will recollect their experience.
The event will also include a screening of the film Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers, which tells the story of a group of Polish women who saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children. See www.bl.uk/whats-on for more information.
Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on January 27 each year and remembers the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Find out more at hmd.org.uk
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