»Speaking in Spite of Everything« – Biographical Interviews

The interviews, in which survivors from the Jewish communities of Breslau, Czernowitz, Kaunas, Königsberg, Krakow, Lemberg, Lodz, Prague, Bratislava and Riga tell their life stories, were conducted by the Foundation itself or by other institutions: In the video archive of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, part of the important Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University is publicly presented. In addition, interviews from the »Archive of Remembrance«, a cooperation project of the Moses Mendelssohn Center Potsdam, as well as interviews from the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg and other collections are included in the collection.

All interviews are recorded in a database and can be selected at computer terminals. The interviews are presented there uncut and in full length. Through the various search options, the detailed evaluations and the presentation of transcriptions, translations, tables of contents and topics, CVs and short biographies, passages from the interviews lasting several hours can be targeted. As a result, the video archive database provides unique insights into this increasingly important historical source for the future.

The interview project was supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation.