Jewish survivors of the Holocaust

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

These recordings are powerful personal accounts of the Holocaust from Jewish survivors living in Britain. This collection contains interviews from two oral history projects, the Living Memory of the Jewish Community (C410) and the Holocaust Survivors' Centre Testimony Recording Project (C830).

Oral history recordings provide valuable first-hand testimony of the past.  The views and opinions expressed in oral history interviews are those of the interviewees, who describe events from their own perspective.  The interviews are historical documents and their language, tone and content might in some cases reflect attitudes that could cause offence in today’s society.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the German Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jews. Hitler’s intention was to destroy all Jewish communities, and to build a ‘master race’ of Aryans. Many other ‘non-aryans’ were persecuted including Romanies, homosexuals, and the disabled, as well as those who were politically opposed to the Nazis. This terrible moment in history is now known as the Holocaust. It remains one of the most horrific examples in recent European history of indifference, inhumanity, prejudice and genocide.

The testimonies on this site are drawn from two major oral history programmes:-

 – The Living Memory of the Jewish Community – which between 1987 and 2000 gathered 186 audio life story interviews with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their children. It was initiated by National Life Stories based in the BL’s oral history section and funded by a number of organisations including the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, the John S Cohen Foundation and the Porjes Charitable Trust. A large number of volunteer interviewers, led by Jennifer Wingate and Bill Williams, were recruited and trained, and recordings were made with a wide range of survivors from many parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, with pre-war refugees (such as Kindertransport child migrants) and a smaller number of children of survivors.  The main programme of survivor interviews was later supplemented by interviews with the children of survivors - the Second Generation  Also included here are a smaller number of recordings with UK born members of the Jewish Community,

- The Holocaust Survivors' Centre Interviews was a National Life Stories collaborative project with the Jewish Care Holocaust Survivors' Centre, a Jewish social centre in north London for survivors who were in Europe during the Second World War or who came to the UK as refugees. The project ran between 1993 and 1998 and gathered a total of 154 audio life story testimonies.

Some of the testimonies also feature in an online educational resource – Voices of the Holocaust - available through the BL Learning website at http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/holocaust.html. Other Holocaust oral history interviews are available at the BL, collected through collaborative projects or deposited by other organisations and projects - details about these can be found here: Jewish experience in Britain and Holocaust testimonies.

We are grateful to the Brian and Jill Moss Charitable Trust and the Pears Foundation for their generous support which has enabled National Life Stories to digitise and make available these important recordings.

All recordings on this site are governed by licence agreements.