Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust

Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

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Get a small glimpse into the unimaginable experiences that shaped Holocaust survivors and witnesses—and shaped our world. Personal accounts drawn from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.

12 JAN

In Memoriam: Renee Hartman (1933-2025)

Renee Hartman was one of the first four survivors to give testimony to the Fortunoff Archive's predecessor organization in 1979. In this podcast episode, she describes how she 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.We’re re-releasing this episode in celebration of her life.

23 min
23/11/2023

Chapter 10: Aftermath

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.

34 min
15/11/2023

Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge

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.

31 min
09/11/2023

Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat

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.

39 min
02/11/2023

Chapter 7: Liquidation

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.

40 min
26/10/2023

Chapter 6: The Underground

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.

29 min
19/10/2023

Chapter 5: Ghetto Life

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.

30 min
10/10/2023

Chapter 4: The Ghetto

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.

34 min

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5

out of 5

10 Ratings

Such an inspirational podcast!

11/11/2020

Lotus_wild_flower

We complain every day about one thing or another, about nit earning enough, not having the latest gadgets, every single person should listen to those heroes , these people that have been through the deepest hell and they survived, and they become stronger and the had the power to live and bot become bitter or turn into monsters due to what injustices have been done to them! I think wvery single one of those people are HEROES! Well done for bringing to light these amazing stories of survival! I would recommend this podcast to everyone

Get a small glimpse into the unimaginable experiences that shaped Holocaust survivors and witnesses—and shaped our world. Personal accounts drawn from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.