Colgate University’s Lois and Frank Lautenberg Jewish Lecture Fund in conjunction with Horizon Series: The Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology Colloquium sponsored Stephen Naron, director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, on Tuesday, Jan. 28. At the talk, Naron discussed the organization’s goals for showcasing survivors’ accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust. Naron’s presentation emphasized the vitality of gathering these testimonies to truly understand the feelings of people who have been through such traumatic experiences.
The Fortunoff Video Archive has collected over 4,500 testimonies and 12,000 hours of recording material which has been recorded in more than a dozen countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia for the last 45 years. Since the Holocaust Survivors Film Project — a grassroots organization founded by the local survivor community — recorded and deposited 183 testimonies at Yale in 1981, the archive continues to bring these testimonies from different parts of the world to students. It serves as an example of using video oral history as a form of “archival activism” by the survivors of these calamities.
Naron explained that other organizations have also reflected the goal of capturing the emotions of individuals who have experienced trauma.
“This project has been a model for many other organizations that have tried to document similar calamities and atrocities in their societies and nations,” Naron said. “A couple of examples are Documenting Ukraine, which documents the current full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russians. Last summer, [the Fortunoff Video Archive] had a summer school on recording testimony, and one of the talking points was recording testimonies of survivors of the partition in India and Pakistan.”
Later, he talked about the history of the organization since its inauguration 45 years ago, elucidating its aim of making the experiences of these survivors accessible to everyone. He also elaborated on the methods used by the archive in collecting these testimonies — namely questionnaires related to the details of their experiences — and the importance of being sensitive to the survivors’ wishes in case they do not wish to share their experiences.
In the collected testimonies, a common feature was the trepidation in the voices of the witnesses, explaining the extent of the crimes they had seen. One of the most important sources of documentation was the “Ghetto Archives,” which demonstrated how survivors risked their safety to preserve hidden recordings.
Naron spoke extensively about the poor documentation of the Holocaust relative to the magnitude of the event. Even though the Nazis left behind many documents, the suffering of the survivors themselves is underrepresented. Naron also discussed the struggle Holocaust survivors’ families faced in locating their loved ones. Another challenge concerns the archive’s future ambitions. As the survivors and their testimonies are slowly disappearing, Naron stressed how the archive plans to shift to outreach and research along with any available testimonies they might find.
Senior Naomi Kraemer attended the talk and spoke about a video shown during the presentation which helped her understand the purpose of the archive.
“[Naron] showed us a video of the overview of the archive, which had a couple of clips from survivors and people running the archive,” Kraemer said. “A quote that stuck with me from one of the survivors was, ‘History is calling us, history never speaks for itself and we are its interpreters.’ I thought that [the quote] encapsulated why this project is so important to remembering history through the eyes of witnesses and allowing people to speak for themselves.”
Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Film and Media Studies Noah Shenker, who invited Naron to give the talk, elaborated on the motive behind the invitation and the idea of archival activism.
“The teaching we are doing around the University involves documenting experiences of histories of violence and genocide, and I want to have people who could speak to different histories and approaches to collecting these stories,” Shenker said. “We need to think about how these collection practices serve as a way of calling attention [to these atrocities] and mobilizing the material [testimonies] in some way. Given the moment we live in, in terms of rises in antisemitism and racism, these practices [of showcasing testimonies] allow us to reflect on the moment we are in now.”
