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Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust

Survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are the subjects of “Those Who Were There,” a new podcast from Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The podcast is narrated by Eleanor Reissa, actress and Yiddish theater director, and historical oversight by Professor Samuel Kassow.

“Those Who Were There” podcast features audio from videotaped interviews conducted between 1979 up to the present. “Back in 1979, video was regarded as a remarkable, groundbreaking technology for documenting the experiences of survivors. The testimonies that resulted were and remain very powerful,” said Stephen Naron, director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. “Today, by adapting our holdings to the podcast format, we have an opportunity to bring these intimate personal accounts of Holocaust survivors and witnesses to a world-wide listenership. After all, only a fraction of our more than 4,400 testimonies have ever been viewed. Every voice, every story is important, and the podcast is a chance to provide a public space for each survivor, one episode at a time.”
The podcast’s first season will feature 10 episodes, including accounts from Jewish survivors, non-Jewish witnesses and liberators. The memories shared express a wide range of experiences before, during and after the Second World War by those who experienced it. Still, it is only a small glimpse into the thousands of stories held in this diverse archive.

Copyright: © Fortunoff Video Archive, 2019

Latest Episodes:

Chapter 10: Aftermath Nov 23, 2023

In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety and new beginnings, even as the traumas they experienced remained ever present.

Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge Nov 15, 2023

At war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for the United States or Palestine. But a small group join an effort to seek revenge in Nuremberg, where an international tribunal is underway.

Preview: Into the Stacks at the YIVO Sep 21, 2022

Join co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus on a research trip to the YIVO Institute in preparation for the upcoming season of Those Who Were There that focuses on the city of Vilna—a once thriving center of Jewish life and culture. Their guide on this exploratory dive into YIVO’s archives is Eddy Portnoy, YIVO’s Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions. Among the documents they’re in search of is a rare, typewritten diary of life in the Vilna Ghetto during World War II kept by Herman Kruk. Join Nahanni and Eric on a revelatory and moving journey through time.

Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat Nov 09, 2023

July 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers emerge into daylight while other survivors and Jewish partisans filter back into the devastated city.

Chapter 7: Liquidation Nov 02, 2023

When the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join the partisans. Very few manage to hide. The Nazis also try to eliminate evidence of their efforts to murder Vilna’s Jews.

Chapter 6: The Underground Oct 26, 2023

Young people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an arsenal, but when it becomes clear most Jews in the ghetto don’t support them, many escape to the surrounding forest to join the partisans.

Chapter 5: Ghetto Life Oct 19, 2023

Life in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while young people start to organize a resistance, cultural and sporting events prove to be a much needed diversion.

Chapter 4: The Ghetto Oct 10, 2023

They are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoint to the newly enclosed Jewish ghettos, where the previous inhabitants have already been murdered.

Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion Oct 05, 2023

When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing of an identifying yellow star, and worse. “Within just a few days,” Mira Verbin recalls, “they started kidnapping Jews.”

Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War Sep 28, 2023

With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the hands of the Soviets, then the Lithuanians, then the Soviets again, who set about seizing property and businesses, and arresting and deporting perceived enemies of the state.

Chapter 1: Childhood Memories Sep 20, 2023

Recollections of life before 1939 evoke the rich diversity of Vilna’s thriving Jewish community, including its multiple synagogues and political and social organizations. The impact on daily life of rising antisemitism foreshadows far darker times to come.

Introduction: Remembering Vilna Sep 20, 2023

“Those Who Were There” co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus introduce a few of the voices that, over the course of 10 episodes, will bring to life the once-vibrant Jewish community of Vilna, Poland (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) and chronicle its destruction during World War II.

Episode 10 — Judith Perlaki Apr 01, 2021

Teenaged Judith Perlaki recalled cheating death twice after being deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. But most of her family wasn’t so fortunate. While assigned to sort the belongings of people sent to the gas chambers, Judith discovered the dresses of her little sister and aunt.

Episode 9 — Elias Recanati Mar 11, 2021

When the Germans took control of the Greek city of Salonika, Elias Racanati’s family had one chance to escape—his mother’s family hailed from Spain. But they had to cross German-occupied Europe to get there.

Episode 8 — Malka Baran Feb 18, 2021

Malka Baran expressed her love of children by caring for a toddler hidden in the barracks of a concentration camp and teaching first grade at her DP camp. It was the start of her lifelong commitment to early-childhood education.

Episode 7 - Leon Pommers Jan 28, 2021

Fleeing Warsaw ahead of the invading Nazis, concert pianist Leon Pommers was propelled into a perilous journey around the world in hopes of reuniting with his sister in America.

Episode 6 - Esther Schwartzman Jan 07, 2021

As Polish Jews fled across the border into Hungary bearing stories of Nazi atrocities, Esther Schwartzman’s family and community didn’t believe that such things could happen to them. Then in early 1944, everything changed.

Episode 5 - Abram Merczynski Dec 03, 2020

When Abram Merczynski’s brother organized an orchestra in the Lodz ghetto, Abram promised himself that if he survived the war, he’d learn to play the violin. He lived—and kept his promise.

Episode 4 - Helena Jonas Nov 12, 2020

Deported to the Plaszów concentration camp, Helen Jonas faced almost certain death. Instead, she was chosen by Amon Göth—the camp’s notorious, brutal commandant—to be his servant.

Episode 2 -- Isaac Zieman Oct 01, 2020

Isaac Zieman was a passionate young Zionist with plans to make a life in Palestine. Instead, the Nazi invasion of Latvia propelled him on a years-long journey that took him across the Soviet Union and Europe and finally to the United States.

Episode 1 -- Sally Frishberg Sep 09, 2020

High school teacher Sally Frishberg used her childhood experience of being hidden for two years with her family in a Polish farmer’s attic to create one of the first public high school classes on the history of the Holocaust.

Episode 3 - Annelies Herz Oct 22, 2020

Teenage Annelies Herz saw that fellow Jewish forced laborers were disappearing. So to survive in wartime Germany, she and her twin sister went underground: they secured new identities and never stayed in one place for long.

Season Two Introduction Sep 09, 2020

Hear excerpts from the second season of “Those Who Were There,” featuring testimonies drawn from the nearly 600 interviews conducted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in affiliation with the Fortunoff Archive.

Episode 10 — Sam Kassow Jan 16, 2020

In October 1945, Celia Kassow gave birth to her son Sam in a German displaced persons camp. Seventy-five years later, Sam Kassow reflects on his mother’s life and an astonishing journey of discovery to his mother’s hometown in Eastern Europe.

Episode 9 — Celia Kassow — Part 2 Jan 02, 2020

When Nazi troops seized the Polish farm where Celia Kassow was in hiding, she fled once again—this time into the forest, where she joined the Soviet partisans.

Episode 8 — Celia Kassow — Part 1 Dec 19, 2019

When Nazi bombs fell from the sky, Celia Kassow fled her Polish boarding school and sought help from a classmate who lived nearby. The response? “Get away from here, you dirty Jew.”

Episode 6 — Renee Hartman Nov 21, 2019

Renee Hartman was just a child when the Nazis swept into Czechoslovakia. Her parents and sister were deaf, so she became her family’s ears, alert to the sound of the Gestapo’s boots.

Episode 7 — Leonard Linton Dec 05, 2019

Leonard Linton's story spans half the globe—from Japan to Germany, France, New York, and back to Germany, where as a 23-year-old U.S. soldier he happened upon a concentration camp called Woebbelin.

Episode 5 — Arne Brun Lie Nov 07, 2019

Eighteen-year-old Arne Brun Lie answered the patriotic call to join the Norwegian resistance. But instead of fighting for his nation’s freedom, he found himself in the hands of the Nazis, fighting for his life.

Episode 4 — Sally Finkelstein Horwitz Oct 24, 2019

After liberation from a slave labor camp, Sally Finkelstein Horwitz and her sister returned to Poland where anti-Jewish pogroms forced them to seek refuge in Germany.

Episode 3 — Heda Kovaly Oct 10, 2019

When Heda Kovaly was deported from Prague to the Lodz ghetto, along with thousands of other Jews, she never imagined that of her entire extended family, only she and her husband would return alive.

Episode 2 — Leon Bass Sep 26, 2019

Leon Bass faced racism growing up in Philadelphia, confronted it in the Army, and discovered its “ultimate” endpoint at a German concentration camp called Buchenwald.

Episode 1—Martin Schiller Sep 12, 2019

As a little boy, Martin Schiller was sent to a slave labor camp in Poland along with his family. Separated from his mother, Martin never lost hope of being reunited with her after liberation. This is his story of survival.

Series Introduction Sep 12, 2019

Meet host Eleanor Reissa and hear excerpts of upcoming episodes featuring first-hand accounts of the Holocaust—drawn from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.

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