Survivors' Stories
Survivors’ personal stories are a powerful primary source for learning about the Holocaust.
The websites listed here focus on digitized oral history interviews with survivors.
Pictured: The grave of Hinde Kharlopsky-Shternberg (of blessed memory),
a victim of the Nazis, who died and was buried in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Near the grave stands her friend, Regina Kshepitsky-Yakubovitsh.
Sefer zikaron li-ḳehilat Veyelun, p. 386.
Pictured: Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and renowned author.
NYPL Digital Collections, Image TH-64778.
Educational Resources for Remembrance
The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience, by Michael Polgar and Suki John
(Free online textbook from Penn State University )
Holocaust Legacies and Oral History in the Classroom (Chad S. A. Gibbs, Eastern European Holocaust Studies)
Survivor oral histories have helped determine research questions in Holocaust studies and propelled the field’s largest archival efforts. With those storytellers now passing at an ever-quickening pace, however, some oral historians are turning to descendants as the faces of memory... This article describes the results of the class “Holocaust Legacies and Oral History. in terms of pedagogies, successes, areas for improvement, and connections created between classroom and community.
The Curator of the Dorot Jewish Division, Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, interviews Prof. Meri-Jane Rochelson about the oral history of her father, Eli G. Rochelson, part of the American Jewish Committee's Oral History Collection at NYPL.
Holocaust Remembrance Day Lesson Plans and Activities (PBS)
Holocaust Remembrance Day: Online Class for Students (Museum of Jewish Heritage)
Educational Resources: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Campaign (POLIN Museum)
Websites
Linguistic and oral history project with Holocaust testimonials.
Blavatnik Archive Foundation - Veteran Testimonies & Ephemera of Russian Jews
1,200 unique video interviews with Russian Jewish men and women who fought in the Soviet armed forces and partisan detachments during World War Two.
Database of Greek-Jewish Holocaust Survivors' Testimonies
Database of testimonies and evidence from Greece. Europe, the USA, and Israel.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University Library)
4,400 testimonies comprising 12,000 hours of video.
The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online
Digitized summary transcripts of 705 interviews with refugees from the USSR during the early years of the Cold War.
Holocaust Studies: Oral Histories, Memoirs, etc. (NYU Libraries)
Digital, archival, and communal resources.
Holocaust Survivors' Stories (Wexler Oral History Project, Yiddish Book Center)
Oral histories of survivors and their descendants.
Houston’s Survivors (Holocaust Museum Houston)
Survivor testimonies from the local community.
Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust: Oral History Recordings (British Library)
1818 interviews from oral history projects.
Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
One of the largest and most diverse collections of Holocaust testimonies.
Lithuanian Yiddish Video Archive (LYVA)
Interviews with Litvish Yiddish speakers, mainly Holocaust survivirs, taped over three decades from 1990 to 2020 in Eastern Europe and beyond.
1500 recorded testimonies of survivors, mostly from Melbourne, Australia.
USC Shoah Foundation: The Institute for Visual History and Education
55,000 video testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors.
Video Testimonies Resource Center (Yad Vashem)
Growing collection of survivor testimonies.
Voices of the Holocaust (Illinois Institue of Technology)
Digitized audio of Dr. David P. Boder's interviews with Holocaust survivors.
Voices of Holocaust Survivors: Oral Histories and Personal Narratives (NYPL)
Guide to survivors’ stories in NYPL’s collection and beyond.