Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust

Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

4.9 (141)
COURSES

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.

11/23/2023

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
11/15/2023

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
11/09/2023

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
11/02/2023

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
10/26/2023

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
10/19/2023

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
10/05/2023

Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion

When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing of an identifying yellow star, and worse. “Within just a few days,” Mira Verbin recalls, “they started kidnapping Jews.”

26 min

See All (34)

4.9

out of 5

141 Ratings

I hate hitler

Oct 19

🇳🇪ghh

I’m glad that this does not happen anymore and I like how it has multiple speakers talk. I love
Wow

Jul 16

coolhand luke 21

Just…wow
My most important podcast

Apr 2

lkak

Humbled and grateful.
So good but so sad

12/29/2022

Bengal Kat the Cat

I love this podcast. It’s sad but it’s so important not to forget. Everyone should listen to this.

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.