by Malka Tor

“They didn’t ask ‘How? What did you do? What happened?’ And I didn’t want to tell them the truth because I had decided to turn the page…”
Zev Reisman of Paris, Holocaust survivor

“I say to myself: ‘What exactly do you want? … There are many people who don’t know anything.’ And this puts me back into the same special box that I’ve been living in… alone in the drawer.”
Kalman Bar On of Yugoslavia, Auschwitz survivor

Despite the feeling common among survivors that “someone who wasn’t there could never understand,” in recent years more and more survivors have contacted Yad Vashem to give oral testimony, perhaps due to a sense that time is running out. These remnants of Europe’s prewar Jewish community are seeking to perpetuate the memory of the vibrant Jewish world that was destroyed and the families that perished, as well as their personal survival experiences: they are telling their entire life stories, sometimes for the very first time.
Yad Vashem’s documentation enterprise began with the underground ghetto archives and has continued in recording studios established by Yad Vashem throughout Israel—for residents and tourists alike—in cooperation with other organizations such as Ginzach Kiddush Hashem and Yad LeZahava. However, many survivors are now unable to get to the studios due to advanced age and failing health, so on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2006, a national testimony-collection campaign in the homes of the survivors themselves was announced. “The recollections of the people who personally experienced the horrors of the Shoah have crucial educational and moral importance,” explained Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev. “They represent an essential vehicle for imparting the memory of the Holocaust.”
In the first two weeks after this innovative proposal was publicized, Yad Vashem received no less than six hundred relevant referrals in Israel, and the Oral History Section is currently making extensive efforts to organize and assemble home-based documentation teams. The interviews will be added to the collection of some 44,000 written, audio and visual testimonies in the Yad Vashem Archives for permanent preservation. In addition, they will be accessible to visitors at the new Visual Center, which will also house tens of thousands of testimonies collected by the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (established by Steven Spielberg) from Israel and around the world.
Yad Vashem urges all Holocaust survivors and their families to contact the Oral History Section to schedule an interview, and help realize the words of the prophet: “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” (Joel 1:3)

For more information, please contact the Oral History Section:
Tel.: 02 644 3752/3/4; Fax: 02 644 3431
E-mail: esther.friedman@yadvashem.org.il

The author is Director of Yad Vashem’s Oral History Section.
 

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